Are the Ten Commandments still valid for Christians? For everybody? Or is it merely tradition that we still carry them along when they should have been sent long ago to the antiquary dealing with the religious history of the ancient Near East?

Some speakers in prominent Christian positions have come close to the conclusion that it is impossible to draw up a catalogue of eternal norms for individuals in ever-changing situations. And you cannot put down such norms as guidelines for the ethics of law and society. The Ten Commandments were a nomad law, these people add, and as such are altogether unsuitable for the technical age. Even more so for the Church, which by its very nature could not be tied to the law of the Sinai covenant.

We are living in a day where it is more important than ever to ask, Why? If we don’t, we tend to forget the reasons for Christian doctrine and morality and end up in some pious idolatry of traditions handed down to us by former generations. But no one else is being convinced. So, why the Decalogue? Much can be said about the importance of the Decalogue for all men: the Ten Commandments recommend themselves to every man and nation as an admirable definition of the good and just, and as a sensible exposition of the Golden Rule.

At this moment, though, we wish to stress the validity of the Ten Commandments for Christians. There is a paramount need for clarity in the churches.

The Decalogue remains valid for the people of God. In studying the Bible, one of the first rules is to take into account context, circumstances, and direction of a given text. The Decalogue was addressed to a certain generation in the history of the nation of Israel. Even the sons and daughters of those present at Mount Sinai already asked questions about the general applicability of these words. They were taught that God’s covenant and its law pertained to all generations of Israel because the nation was to be understood as a corporate personality (Deuter. 6:20).

But of course, the opening words of the Decalogue, referring to the liberation of Israel from Egypt, prove that the Ten Commandments were given to the nation of Israel. Surely as Christians we are not biologically part of Israel. Also, when we became Christians we were not incorporated into this nation. Nevertheless we form part of the true Israel, in the history of salvation. Paul explains this with a parable: “Branches of a wild tree, you have been implanted into the good olive tree and thus have become partakers of the richness of the same root” (Rom. 11:17). The Decalogue reveals God’s will for all members of the one people of God, and also for Christians as the true sons and daughters of Abraham (Gal. 3:29).

As Luther always pointed out: the authority of Moses does not in itself oblige Christians. It is through the authority of Christ that the Ten Commandments are valid for his followers. Christ accepted the Decalogue with utmost sincerity. He quotes it as the fundamental directive to eternal life in his encounter with the rich young ruler (Matt. 19). He refers to the Decalogue when he speaks of “God’s Commandments” as opposed to the human traditions of scribes and elders (Matt. 15). In the Sermon on the Mount, he begins with the Decalogue; his new teaching revitalizes the contents of the old commandments. It is wrong, too, to argue that Christ demanded the right mental attitude only and was no longer interested in the moral act and its results. He warns us not to form a wrong opinion.

Some contemporary theologians think that Jesus’ attitude toward the Sabbath showed the deliberate breach of a commandment. They take this as approval to break other commandments if the situation demands it.

As always, Christ here fights against religious traditions that have obscured the God-given commandment. He goes back to the original commandment, to the roots, the revelation. The motivations given with the Sabbath commandment show that rest and relief are the aims of this commandment. The healing of a woman from an eighteen-year-old illness is therefore particularly apt to take place on a Sabbath. “To do good and to save life” (Mark 3:4)—an interesting little phrase that shows the core of Christ’s ethos—surely must be allowed on the Sabbath day. So Jesus is in full harmony with the Ten Commandments; “For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:18–20).

Dare we know better than our Lord? For all those who have become his disciples the Decalogue remains in force “until heaven and earth pass.” This can be seen also in the fact that the commandments recur in the letters of the early church, and that it takes up the commandment of setting aside one day of the week for rest and rededication to God’s kingdom. The God of Israel is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ: his nature, sanctity, and righteousness do not change.

Karl Barth wrote that “the Decalogue is the basic event in the history of Israel, the program of the whole history of this nation, and implicitly of the whole history of his chosen Church.… Not by mistake it happened therefore, but rightly so that the Decalogue was received among the main articles of the Christian catechism. It is the basic statute of the merciful covenant of God, valid for all times.”

On the authority of Christ, the Ten Commandments remain valid for the people of God today, as in the remote past: as the framework, the basis for God’s communion with his people and their communion with God. Observing it will spell blessing, neglecting it will bring the curse of the eternal upon men.

Moratorium, cultural revival, and human rights have been much-debated issues in some African church circles the last three years, but the week-long trienniel general assembly of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (AEAM) held July 28 to August 3 in Bovake, Ivory Coast, passed them all upfora less sensational but more practical topic—the Christian home.

When the theme was announced, some critics said AEAM was shying away from Africa’s major issues. The emphasis, however, turned out to meet an African-felt need that also spoke to the major issues of the day.

“We are not running away from current issues,” declared AEAM president Samuel O. Odunaike, a 43-year-old Nigerian oil company personnel manager, in his opening address. “It would be irresponsible for us to fail to raise our voices against issues plaguing the continent. We cannot pretend what is taking place in Zimbabwe [Rhodesia] and South Africa is none of our business. It would also be wrong for us to be ‘evangelically silent’ on the brutalities in Uganda—especially as evidence gives credence to the allegation that the senseless killings are mainly directed against Christians. However, nothing could be more relevant today than the Christian home. It is the bedrock of the nation—the expression of a people’s cultural, political, and social values, and God’s center-piece for evangelism, revival, and renewal. May this assembly swing the pendulum of the African Christian home back to the heart of God.”

A discussion on polygamy continued late one night in dormitory rooms after Gottfried Osei-Mensah, a Ghanaian who is executive secretary of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, questioned the practice of withholding baptism from a polygamist who has become a true believer. Osei-Mensah’s address did not condone polygamy, and some who responded to it agreed that methods other than withholding baptism should be found to emphasize the wrong of plural marriages.

African church leaders were more opposed to the suggestion than most foreign missionaries. “We can see the scriptural point,” they explained, “but we have to face the practical effects on our churches. We might have men waiting until they have three wives before asking for baptism.”

Other clashes of tradition and Christian concept emerged in discussions about the custom of having uncles rear one’s children and about the servant role of women in the household.

Terry C. Hulbert, Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Bible and Mission, pointed out the importance of household evangelism and discipling by families to arrest the disintegration of the home in Africa’s turbulent social changes.

“This is the time for action, not talk,” pleaded Isaac Simbiri, secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of Kenya. “As pastors, let’s start now to pray, to plan, to proceed. Churches grow when families grow.”

“This family emphasis is just what we need now in Ethiopia,” stated one delegate. “Our Christians don’t know which way to turn as Marxist ideology takes over.”

The issue of human rights did not have to be listed separately on the agenda, for delegates who had been denied their rights were present. Concern rather than bitterness marked their reports.

“One hundred years after our pioneers were martyred, persecution has returned,” stated Daniel Kyande, who recently fled Uganda.

“God has a purpose in the troubles in our land,” an Ethiopian said. “He is sifting His church. It will not fail.”

Moratorium—the banning of Western missionaries—received only passing mention; delegates obviously did not agree with the concept and did not feel it worth a resolution. “The growth of the Body of Christ in any environment does not call for either moratorium or segregation,” said D. Marini-Bodho of Zaire. In a paper on “The Family of God” he called for “unity and understanding” among Christians of all races.

The Christian home theme had been proposed by Byang H. Kato, a Dallas Seminary graduate who was AEAM general secretary before his death in a drowning accident in Mombasa, Kenya, in late 1975. Kato had also helped to set in motion several other projects that took shape at the assembly.

The Evangelical Theological Society of Africa was launched by the AEAM Theological Commission. Announcing its objectives, Richard France, until recently a professor in Zaria, Nigeria, stated: “African theology has come to represent liberal theology. Seminary text books are from North America or Europe. They must come from Africa. We need men who can declare what African evangelical theologians think. This was another of Doctor Kato’s visions.”

The Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA) was also formally launched at Bovake. Led by coordinator W. Paul Bowers, thirty theological educators from across Africa set up standards and procedures for accrediting post-secondary level theological institutions. Four key schools, representing Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Zaire, and Kenya, were accepted as candidates for ACTEA accreditation before the assembly ended.

Paul White, dean of AEAM’s new Bangui Evangelical School of Theology, reported that the school will open next month with thirty-five students and offer a program leading to a Master of Theology degree. Studies will be in French.

There were two “firsts”: this was its first meeting in French-speaking Africa, and the assembly elected an all-African executive committee for the first time. The average age of the members is 38 years. President Odunaike was returned to office; Pierre Yougouda (Central African Empire) became vice-president; Isaac Simbiri (Kenya), secretary; Godfrey Mulando (Zambia), treasurer.

To fill the post left vacant by Kato’s death, the assembly elected another Nigerian, Tokunboh Adeyemo, as acting general secretary of the AEAM. The doctoral candidate (Dallas Seminary) will assume office at the end of this year. Tite Tienou of Upper Volta was appointed as executive secretary of the theological commission.

The African family spirit came to the fore as the assembly dedicated the offices to God’s service. Aaron Gamedze, Swaziland’s chief of protocol and the mover of the original motion which brought AEAM into existence, chaired the closing service. He called several delegates to encircle each officer as prayers were offered. Kato’s widow was among them. The feeling of strong spiritual community was dramatic.

“This has been a much different general assembly from our first meeting in 1966,” Gamedze remarked. “AEAM has come of age. Evangelicals in Africa are a force to be reckoned with—and liberals are beginning to respect our position. The liberal viewpoint no longer goes unchallenged.”

The Passing Of a Byzantine

“Don’t forget that Makarios is a Byzantine,” a fellow Cypriot once said of his president. “What he says is one thing; what he means is another; what he does is something else.” No criticism was intended.

Having occupied for seventeen years the dual role of president and archbishop in the pocket-sized Mediterranean republic, Makarios died of a heart attack earlier this month. He was within ten days of his sixty-fourth birthday.

Born Michael Mouskos and early introduced to monastic life, he took the name Makarios (“Blessed”) on being made deacon in the Orthodox Church. He studied theology and law in Athens. Later he went to Boston for post-graduate work on a World Council of Churches grant, a pursuit that was interrupted when he was summoned home in 1948 to become bishop of Kition.

Cyprus was then under British rule, and the new bishop was soon prominent in the struggle for independence. In 1950 he was elected archbishop and spiritual leader of the island’s 78 per cent Greek majority. For suspected collaboration with the colony’s increasingly violent freedom fighters Makarios was forced into exile for three years, but he was allowed to return in 1959, and he was the obvious choice as president when independence came in 1960. He was 47.

The job was no sinecure; he came under fire from different quarters. He was less than conciliatory with the 18 per cent Turkish (Muslim) minority, against whom such strong measures were taken that a London newspaper called him “a priest with bloody hands.”

His more powerful adversaries, however, were those who wanted Enosis (union with Greece), a cause which they considered Makarios to have betrayed. His three senior bishops, all committed to that cause, declared him deposed as archbishop. His dual role, they claimed, was against canon law, the public good, and the gospel injunction against serving two masters. Makarios rejected the proceedings, and in turn drafted a collection of bishops from the Arab world to depose the dissidents. The archbishop promptly donned his presidential hat to ensure that the dismissals were enforced by the civil arm.

This and other opposition from fellow-Greek sources he chose to regard as plotting against national security. To protect himself he stored Czechoslovak arms in the archbishop’s residence, an action in itself not in accordance with any interpretation of canon law. He was notably tolerant to the republic’s small but influential Communist party. He threatened appeal for Russian aid against the periodically menacing mainland Turks, and he established good relations with Arab leaders. To the world he often appeared an enigmatic figure, perhaps because it suited him.

He survived several attempts on his life, one when his helicopter was crippled by gunfire just after takeoff. Finally in July, 1974, encouraged by the Athens junta, mainland Greek officers of the Cypriot National Guard spearheaded a coup against him, and he narrowly escaped with his life to a British air base. Cyprus Radio, indeed, reported his death, an error that gave scope to Makarios’s mordant wit.

But the coup went wrong. The result was not union with Greece but the toppling of the Athens government, the invasion and over-reaction by Turkey to aid the minority community, and the loss to the Greek majority of nearly 40 per cent of the island, which Turkey still holds.

Makarios returned to Cyprus five months later. Just this summer it seemed likely that he was about to make reluctant concessions to the Turks, whose leader he had met for the first time in fourteen years.

He died with no obvious successor, certainly none who could continue the double leadership of church and state, even if this were desirable. His departure leaves a dangerous vacuum.

They buried Michael Mouskos on a mountain slope in the Troodos range. He had chosen the grave himself, in a place just above the monastery where he had been a novice forty years ago.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A Visitor From the Middle East

Patriarch Elias IV of the Antiochian Orthodox Church had never been to America before. Nor had any of his 163 successors in Syrian Orthodoxy’s See of Antioch. So when he came to the United States this summer his visit to the faithful of his church was an event of special significance. Thousands turned out to greet the prelate, who, for his followers, is on an equal footing with Roman Catholicism’s Pope.

The unprecedented visit was climaxed by the patriarch’s appearance last month at the annual convention of the church’s North American archdiocese. A special stained-glass sanctuary of Orthodox icons was set up in the Washington hotel where the meeting was held. Some 3,000 persons from the Antiochian community’s churches (there are just over 100 in the United States and a handful in Canada’s principal cities) participated. The North American constituency is reported at 350,000, including non-communicants who attend church events occasionally. The archbishop, Philip Saliba of New York, told a reporter there are about 50,000 “dues-paying” members.

Among the special events lined up by the convention leaders was an interview with President Carter for the visiting prelate. Elias came away from the Oval Office vowing to go home to “light a candle” for the American chief executive in one of the ancient churches near his Damascus home. Carter requested his prayers, the patriarch told journalists. And he in turn requested Carter to keep working on a settlement in the Middle East.

Palestinian politics was a principal topic when the prelate met reporters during the convention. Jews, he declared, have little “historic connection” with the territory of the current state of Israel. When one of the newsmen suggested that the “whole weight” of Scripture was on the side of the Jews on this issue, Elias calmly replied, “As far as we Christians are concerned, we are the new Israel. The coming of the Messiah fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies.”

He insisted that Jews and Christians lived at peace with Muslims in the area until modern times. He said that his own residence is in the Jewish quarter of Damascus, and that his relations with his neighbors are good. His relations with the Muslim leaders of Syria and other Arab states are perhaps better than with the Jewish neighbors. He is the only Christian leader who has ever been invited officially to Saudi Arabia, and at a meeting in Pakistan once he became the only Christian leader ever invited to address a preponderance of the world’s Muslim heads of state. While he was in Washington, Elias and his North American hierarchy were the guests of honor at a dinner given by ambassadors of the Arab states.

Bolstered by his presence and his outspoken position on the Middle East, the delegates to the convention passed a series of tough-stance resolutions. One statement condemned the action of the Israeli government in legalizing three “additional Zionist-Israeli settlements on occupied Arab lands in violation of international law” as well as other “previous illegal establishment of settlements.” The resolution asked President Carter to persuade Israel to avoid “encroachment upon Arab territories.”

The delegates also advocated “American Christian-Islamic dialogue,” more balanced news media coverage of the Middle East, settlement of the Lebanese conflict with “peace and justice” for all, and relaxation of U.S. and Canadian immigration regulations to allow the admission of Lebanese refugees.

While the Syrian Orthodox faithful were meeting in Washington, the government back in Syria relaxed its own regulations on behalf of some of its Jewish residents. President Assad gave his consent for “proxy” marriages of twelve women to members of the Syrian Jewish community in New York. The women, then considered married under Syrian law, boarded planes for America to meet their husbands and to get married under American law. Most were going to Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway section, sometimes known as “Little Syria.” It has the largest concentration of Jews of Syrian origin in the United States, nearly 25,000, according to the New York Times.

Chile Cover-Up?

Roger Vekemans, the Jesuit sociologist sent to Chile two decades ago to “rescue” that country for Roman Catholicism, is not talking about the money he got from the United States for alleged covert activities. He is now in Colombia, involved in preparations for a 1978 meeting of Latin American bishops.

Enough of Vekemans’s former associates and friends are talking, however, to raise serious questions about his management ability if not about his integrity. The lay-edited National Catholic Reporter (NCR) last month reported that the priest had once been in danger of criminal prosecution for mismanagement of some of the $5 million he got from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). The major expose in the weekly paper again raised questions about the Belgian Jesuit’s connections to the Central Intelligence Agency (see October 10, 1975 issue, page 62).

Vekemans left Chile when Marxist Salvadore Allende became president in 1970. Long before that, officials of Chile, the United States, and various Roman Catholic agencies were suspicious of the effectiveness of the Jesuit’s operations, according to the special report by NCR Washington correspondent Richard Rashke. By 1971 an AID audit showed mismanagement of at least $400,000, according to documents unearthed by Rashke.

An internal AID letter dated September, 1971, obtained recently by NCR indicated that the then-U.S. ambassador to Chile, Edward M. Korry, advised against full-scale investigation and prosecution of the priest. Korry told NCR that Vekemans had asked him to call off the auditors even though he claimed that he could “account for every nickel.”

Korry, according to the 1971 letter, concluded that “a criminal action against Father Vekemans would specifically contradict our objectives in Chile.” The reason he cited was that publicity about criminal activity by the priest would be grist for the Communist propaganda mill. Vekemans was identified in the public’s mind not only with the Roman Catholic Church but also with the anti-Communist Christian Democratic Party of former president Eduardo Frei.

According to NCR, President Kennedy and then-attorney general Robert Kennedy took a special interest in Vekemans’s projects in the early 1960s to increase support for Frei’s party. The Jesuit was a guest in the Kennedy White House and reportedly bragged to a friend after one visit that he had picked up $10 million for his Chilean projects. Frei was elected president over Allende in 1964.

Vekemans refused an interview with NCR on the new charges, Rashke reported. The correspondent was also unable to get some pertinent government documents declassified.

Meanwhile, the World Council of Churches’ press service reported that Chile’s current government (which toppled the Allende government in September, 1973) has recognized a “National Evangelical Coordinating Center” to handle liaison between itself and “junta-friendly” churches. The WCC report said President Pinochet’s policies regarding churches was “discriminatory” and “may be designed to bring about formation of a ‘Protestant State Church.’ ”

Deaths

ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN, 84, nationally known Reform Jewish leader and ecumenist; in West Hartford, Connecticut, after a brief illness.

MURIEL S. WEBB, 64, former Episcopal Church executive and since 1974 the director of the relief and refugees commission of the World Council of Churches; in Greenwich, Connecticut, of cancer.

The WCC: Supporting A New Order

One of the themes that grew out of the 1975 assembly of the World Council of Churches at Nairobi was “the search for a just, participatory, and sustainable society.” By the time the council’s policymaking Central Committee ended its Geneva meeting this month, the meaning of that theme was much clearer.

Committee members learned, for instance, that inherent in commitment to a just, participatory, and sustainable society (JPSS) is support for the “new international economic order.” They were told that since Nairobi the council has initiated or strengthened programs to express “solidarity with the efforts of people’s movements to build countervailing power” and to build awareness among “church constituencies about the issue of a new international economic order.”

Closely related to this question, the 134 WCC policy-makers were told, is the issue of transnational corporations. They learned that two high-level consultations have already been held and a staff task force formed to deal with transnationals.

Creation of another transnational corporation of its own, a “world bank” known as the Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society, was announced during the two-week Geneva meeting. It began operations in July after receiving notification from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the SEC had no objection to the investment of the funds of American church agency trusts in the bank. The new WCC-sponsored financial institution began with an operating capital of just over $1 million. Some $190,000 of that cannot be used, however, until the Charity Commissioners of the United Kingdom agree to the investment of British funds in the venture. The bank is domiciled in the Netherlands and will make low interest loans to projects in the developing nations. The executive director is a Sri Lankan, and so far some 30 per cent of the investment has come from the Third World. The wealthy, tax-supported German church has not yet joined as a shareholder, but it is studying the matter. An American representative has been named to the staff to encourage U.S. church agencies to invest.

Another WCC intervention in world issues, related to the “sustainable” aspect of the JPSS theme, was its representation at the International Conference on Nuclear Power and its Fuel Cycle at Salzburg, Austria, in May. Delegates were primarily representatives of governments, but the WCC team was one of few non-governmental delegations there. In the debate, the WCC spokesman emphasized ethical and moral concerns related to the expansion of nuclear power and refused to give a wholehearted blessing to either the anti-nuclear or pro-nuclear forces. The WCC’s presence in the Salzburg sessions was hailed in Geneva as a triumph for the council.

The committee approved plans for a major international conference in 1979 on the JPSS theme. It will seek to bring together all the various sub-themes now being developed in various WCC units, highlighting WCC concerns in a variety of areas. There would be some 300 official participants, with the majority nominated (but not finally elected) by member denominations of the council.

Proving that it is sustaining itself currently, the committee adopted a 1978 Budget of $14 million, up about $1 million from the current year’s spending formula. Included in the amount is additional funding for the Ecumenical Institute outside Geneva, which was once in danger of being closed for lack of financial support. Its new board has now submitted a balanced budget, and additional outside funding has been pledged. Because of the recent uncertainty, much of the staff has been lost. The director, John Mbiti, will step down next year and resume a teaching role.

In another money matter the WCC announced additional grants from its Special Fund to Combat Racism during the central committee meeting. This year’s allocation, the seventh since the fund was established in 1970, is $530,000, bringing to $2,6 million the total disbursed so far. Various organizations on six continents are the recipients of the 1977 grants. Eleven of the thirty-five groups are getting the WCC money for the first time.

In addition to the JPSS theme, the committee also studied another theme, “The Confessing Community.” Under this heading, a 1,300-word letter was sent to member churches, calling for self-examination and prayer. The letter was the subject of vigorous debate in the meeting, and when the vote was taken on a show of hands, seven members opposed it and seven abstained. Speeches were made by thirty-seven delegates from twenty-five countries during consideration of the letter. It went through three drafts at the meeting but was still criticized for being applicable only to the developed nations. There was also criticism that it did not communicate directly to congregations. A Cuban pastor, Francisco Norniella, said it was too pastoral and not prophetic. Bishop Henry Okullu of Kenya complained that the whole process of drafting and discussing it diverted the energies of the committee away from more pressing matters.

Taking action on some of the “more pressing” matters, the committee:

• Condemned white minority governments of southern Africa for perpetrating “grave and blatant injustices … in the name of Christian civilization.”

• Expressed concern that some white South Africans were planning to emigrate to Bolivia to transfer racism there.

• Declared that “torture is epidemic” in today’s world and urged churches to expose it.

• Authorized further revision of statements on baptism, eucharist, and ministry in the hope that there can be agreement on a theological document on these subjects at the next WCC assembly.

• Approved establishment of an advisory group on human rights (see September 10,1976, issue, page 69), with the hope that it will begin work within the next six months.

• Accepted four churches as full members and two as associate members, bringing to 293 the number of affiliated denominations.

Religion in Transit

ABC-TV says it is remaking parts of the first two episodes of its controversial comedy series, “Soap,” scheduled to premiere this fall. The series was attacked sharply after church and secular previewers published analyses. Some observers, including a number of executives of ABC affiliates, still have reservations: they fear the clean-up will not be thorough enough, and they suspect that moral barriers will be under continual assault as the series progresses.

The United Presbyterian governing body of churches in Orange and Los Angeles counties in California, voted against admitting graduates of the charismatic-oriented Melodyland School of Theology as candidates for the ministry within its territory. Neo-Pentecostalism is not part of Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, the presbytery said.

Young Life staff member Robert Mitchell has been appointed executive director of the organization, succeeding the retiring president, William S. Starr. Young Life, headquartered in Colorado Springs, has more than 1,100 clubs involving 100,000-plus teen-agers, 600 staffers, and 6,000 volunteers in the United States, Canada, and thirteen foreign nations, according to leaders of the group.

Guy Charles, a former leader in the gay-rights movement, resigned as president of Liberation in Jesus Christ, a Virginia-based evangelical “ministry of healing” for homosexuals. Personal problems and board pressure preceded the move.

Street evangelist Arthur Blessitt led more than 1,000 Christians in a witness encounter on crime-ridden Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles last month. He gave them training in a week-long “street university” along with crash instructions the night before on a Christian television channel. The evangelist has been carrying a large wooden cross around the world (he recently spent two months in Israel where, he says, the response was “phenomenal.”) He is spending the summer preaching in California before embarking for South America.

Pastor James G. Harris of University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, a past president of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, died at age 64 of an apparent heart attack while jogging shortly before a Sunday morning worship service.

About 600 delegates took part in the Ghana Congress on Evangelization at Kumasi last month. Stronger ties of unity were forged among the participants, who came from a variety of denominational and nondenominational backgrounds. Reports given at the congress on the “New Life for All” movement indicated that the outreach campaign was having significant impact in the churches: there were remarkable conversions, healing of divisions, and increased giving for mission support. The delegates themselves took part in evangelistic crusades throughout the area during the final three days of the congress.

At last month’s ceremonies of her million-dollar American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, Madalyn Murray O’Hair announced that she intends to step up her attack against religion in America’s public life. Two of her objectives: the removal of “In God We Trust” from coins and of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. A local law firm confirmed that a suit is being prepared seeking to have the motto on coins declared improper.

“Atheists’ human rights are being violated,” declared the 58-year-old woman who in 1963 successfully argued before the Supreme Court against prayer in public school. “We’re all being forced to carry a symbol of God in our pockets.”

Ms. O’Hair said she plans to sue the government to compel strict enforcement of the prayer ban. The ban must extend to parent-teacher associations, she added (she had a spat in May over an invocation at her local PTA meeting). She wants federal funds withheld from school systems where there are “continuing violations of state-church separation.” In line for special attention from her is the Dallas school system, which teaches the creation story in science classes.

Jimmy Carter’s election has been a “boon to atheists,” said Ms. O’Hair. “He keeps smiling and putting his foot in his mouth and quoting those idiocies, because the Bible is an idiotic book,” she railed. But, she added, it has caused a lot of atheists to come out of the closet and support her. “Things are going so well,” she said, “that if I weren’t an atheist, I might even say, ‘God is with us.’ ”

Some things weren’t going well, however. A few days after the big American Atheist Center sign went up, the insurance company dropped its policy on the building, and the mortgage company called in the mortgage, Ms. O’Hair disclosed. Nevertheless, she said, the group now had enough money to pay it off.

In a curious development this month, Ms. O’Hair teamed up with Southern Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington of New Orleans in a barnstorming tour designed to permit both to get their respective messages across—but with the crowd advantage decidedly in Harrington’s favor. The pair had debated each other before in more than a dozen television appearances, but now, said the publicity, it was a “fight to the finish.”

The “fight” began in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just down the road from where the famous Scopes “monkey trial” was staged in 1925. Harrington, a master phrase-maker known widely as “The Chaplain of Bourbon Street,” paid $5,000 in advance to rent the 5,000-seat municipal auditorium and flew in for a day-long publicity blitz to help promote attendance. He appeared first on Harry Thornton’s morning TV talk show. Thornton, who is also a professional wrestling referee, had agreed to moderate the public confrontation between the evangelist and the atheist that night. Thornton said he couldn’t understand why several prominent local ministers had told their people to stay away. “Everybody who believes in Bob and his work should be at the auditorium tonight,” he asserted.

“If God’s people don’t wake up,” warned Harrington, “America-one-nation-under-God will become America-one-nation-under-atheism. I want people to see how dedicated this demon-directed damsel is. Then they’ll want to help me stop her.”

As for Ms. O’Hair, she said she wanted to show that “Bob Harrington is stupid and [to] get the atheists out of their closets to support me.”

About 4,500 showed up at the auditorium. Atheists were hard to find. From the moment Thornton welcomed the crowd to “this history-making event” until Harrington’s farewell almost three hours later, the auditorium reverberated with cheers for the preacher and boos for the unbeliever.

A down-home gospel group, “Little Richie Jarvis and Our Brother’s Keeper,” warmed up the crowd with foot-stomping, hand-clapping music. A chorus of catcalls greeted Thornton’s introduction of Ms. O’Hair. “You’re very rude,” she scowled, “but that’s to be expected from Christians.” A fog-horn voice boomed back, “Praise the Lord!” And so it went for the next half hour, with Ms. O’Hair trading barbs with the audience while contending that America’s founding fathers (“all anti-Christian”) never intended for the country to be a Christian nation.

When Harrington’s turn came, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. “I’m glad Madalyn is here,” he said. “I believe the more we expose her to you, the more America will shun atheism and turn to God.” Instead of answering Ms. O’Hair’s charges, he chided the audience: “While you were out having fun being saved, this woman went to the Supreme Court and got prayer and Bible reading taken out of our schools. She’s done more to set God back in America than anyone before. But she’ll never do it again.”

The debate portion of the program itself was mostly a case of Harrington baiting O’Hair and O’Hair baiting the audience. “Are you trying to get converts?” asked Harrington? “O my God, no,” exclaimed the atheist. The crowd screamed in glee at the apparent lapse in her unbelief. “I program that into my speeches,” she explained quickly. “It always sets you hypocrites off.” (Her son William Murray, the subject of the 1963 Supreme Court case and presently the executive vice-president of Ms. O’Hair’s atheist center, says that his mother’s reflex vocabulary is affected by the conditioning of her Presbyterian childhood but that they are “working” on the problem.)

At one point, Ms. O’Hair said that her 12-year-old daughter Robin was “tormented,” roughed up, and given the silent treatment by pupils at “a stinking Christian public school” in Austin. Her description evoked shouts of “Praise the Lord” and “Tell her about Jesus.” Harrington said he was sorry the Austin pupils didn’t “share some love” instead. Replied Ms. O’Hair: “Oh, they shared Christian love all right. They shared hatred, rejection, intolerance. That’s all that Christians have ever shown to the world.”

Thornton called an intermission. Volunteers passed offering buckets. Printed checks on offering envelopes could be designated to “Bob (God and country) Harrington” or “Madalyn (no God, no country) O’Hair” (representatives of both sorted the envelopes). Then the evangelist called attention to his $10 “victory bags” available in the lobby (they contained books, records, and literature), and Ms. O’Hair handed out subscription forms for the American Atheist magazine, a slick-paper monthly in full color with a reported paid circulation of 10,000. The event ended with written questions from the audience.

William Murray insists that “the big checks” in the offering were designated for Ms. O’Hair from professionals and executive types while Harrington’s gifts were mostly small ones. He says this was true in meetings in Nashville and Huntsville, Alabama, too. Capacity crowds of 2,000-plus attended in both cities.

The debate tour was Harrington’s idea, and he pays all the bills. Ms. O’Hair (she gets no fee from the evangelist) went along with the idea in order to get the public exposure, says Murray. (The annual gross income of her American Atheist Center has grown from $75,000 five years ago to $500,000 presently, according to Murray.)

Although Harrington succeeded in getting a lot of people aroused over the issue of atheism, there were some backfires of sorts. In Huntsville, some main-line church people left the meeting early, expressing disgust at the conduct of the majority in the audience. A number of pastors declined to promote the meetings. Some said they didn’t think such a platform ought to be given an atheist. Others objected to the sensationalism. Still others refused to cooperate because of personal issues involving the evangelist.

Several of these issues came up in a press conference at Chattanooga. In response to a question about his business affairs, the evangelist placed his organization’s net worth at $3 million and his personal net worth at $250,000. (A source close to the organization said its income has averaged about $200,000 a month during the last two or three years. Revenues include sales of books and records, rally offerings, mailed contributions, and sale of a motivational course entitled “The Total Man,” authored by Harrington.) Harrington said his board consists of himself, three staffers, his lawyer, and a former Southern Baptist pastor who now sells insurance. He added that he is a member-in-good-standing of the Southern Baptist Evangelists’ Association, and that he is a member of First Baptist Church in New Orleans (he has not attended for more than a year, however, according to a church source).

In reply to another query he acknowledged that he and his wife of thirty years are separated. The couple have two married daughters in their twenties. He attributed the split to incompatibility and extensive travels away from home. Harrington, who will be 50 next month, left his wife in November. He meanwhile had established a relationship with a staff member, Zonnya LaFerney, a divorcee, according to sources close to Harrington. In protest against the affair, his sons-in-law resigned from their staff positions with Harrington. The next day the evangelist fired most of the other staff members, retaining his mother and father, a retired Methodist minister who looks after a counseling chapel in rented quarters on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. A year earlier, evangelist David Wilkerson had spotted Harrington and Miss LaFemey allegedly drinking together on a plane between Toronto and Dallas. Wilkerson “rebuked” Harrington, the sources say. Harrington denies the drinking and illicit; liaison changes.

Miss LaFerney, who often travels with the evangelist, is described as Harrington’s business manager, director of public relations, and director of his “Total Man” program.

Sources close to the Harrington family describe Joyce Harrington as a deeply spiritual woman who still loves her husband and is praying for him to return “to the Lord and to his family.”

News of the evangelist’s domestic situation has spread widely, and as a result, a number of his speaking engagements have been canceled. This reportedly prompted him to discuss with the board recently the possibility of his moving into a broader, more secular-oriented “ministry.”

JAMES C. HEFLEY and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Two Planes Are Down

Two fatal crashes last month involving Missionary Aviation Fellowship planes claimed the lives of both pilots and seven other persons. Bad weather figured in the accidents. In each case the accident occurred while the plane was landing.

At Bota-Victoria in Cameroon, Africa, veteran pilot George Wall, two missionaries of the Basel Mission (Switzerland), and a staff member of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon were killed. Another national was injured. Wall, of Reedley, California, is survived by his wife Kathy and four children.

Pilot Chris Davidson and four of five members of a Dutch Christian and Missionary Alliance family were killed at Tagma in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Pieter and Nell Akse, their son Henerik, 5, and their daughter Marleen, 3, are survived by a third child, Ellen, age 7, who was away at school at the time of the crash. Davidson, a former Marine Corps pilot, is survived by his wife Nancy and three children. His father is pastor of First Baptist Church, Chanute, Kansas.

Another CMA missionary, H. Myron Romley, witnessed the crash, but he was unable to approach the burning wreckage for more than two hours.

Disclosure Is Closer

It may not come this year, but some veteran legislators think it is a certainty by the end of 1978. “It” is a federal law requiring financial disclosure by charitable organizations—including religious groups—that solicit the public for funds.

The possibility that such legislation will emerge from Congress appeared to be stronger than ever before as the House of Representatives began its August recess. H.R. 41, a disclosure bill that has been criticized by several religious leaders (see May 6 issue, page 61, and May 20 issue, page 26) won approval of a subcommittee just before the recess. In its amended form it could be taken up by the full Post Office and Civil Service committee as early as next month. The measure, introduced by California congressman Charles H. Wilson, cleared the subcommittee on a close 4 to 3 vote after the author agreed to amendments that would limit the power of the Postal Service in its enforcement of the law. The version of the bill now going to the full committee also exempts from disclosure certain organizations that solicit only their own members, trustees, alumni, and their families, but it is still generally applicable to all groups using the mails to request or receive contributions from the general public.

If H.R. 41 becomes law, it would require all covered organizations that solicit funds through the mail to include with the solicitation a disclosure statement (including the percentages of receipts used for the group’s announced “charitable purpose” after deduction of fund-raising and administration costs). It would also force organizations asking television viewers or radio listeners for mailed gifts to broadcast such information as a part of the solicitation.

When first introduced, the Wilson proposal was opposed by what seemed to be a solid front of religious leaders from a broad spectrum. After the subcommittee action that front seemed to be less than solid, with some now ready to accept some kind of disclosure requirement.

Taking the lead in the strategy to get a law that might eliminate fraudulent operators while not unduly burdening legitimate religious groups is Senator Mark Hatfield, one of Capitol Hill’s best-known evangelicals. He said, “The fact is that there is a great need for legislation to discourage the kind of fraud and misrepresentation which often occurs under the sponsorship of apparently legitimate religious organizations. On the other hand, of course, we need to be careful not to burden worthwhile agencies with a great deal of paperwork.”

The Oregon Republican predicted that the Wilson bill faces an “uphill fight,” but he suggested that he was considering the introduction of “alternate legislation” of his own to “provide essentially the same benefits” but without some of the “impossible demands” of H.R. 41.

One of the organizations that has not decided that legislation in this area is inevitable is National Religious Broadcasters. NRB’s executive secretary, Ben Armstrong, said all of the organization’s members are being asked to express their concern to their congressmen. An NRB statement called the Wilson bill “abhorrent” and “a threat to religious freedom in the United States.”

NRB is particularly concerned with a section of the bill that regulates fund appeals over radio and television. But even if this were dropped, said Armstrong, “the basic threat to religious freedom would still remain. As part of the religious community, NRB advocates the defeat of this bill in its entirety.”

Although some Christian-college presidents and fund-raisers are not convinced yet that a federal disclosure law is inevitable, others are. A lawyer working with one group of colleges has prepared draft legislation to shift responsibility for enforcement from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department. No member of Congress has introduced that alternative yet, however.

One Washington lobbyist observed that several proposals have been advanced to exempt certain categories (churches, schools, health care institutions, or broadcasters) from the disclosure bill, but he said the current public interest in disclosure would dictate a bill with few exemptions.

A number of organizations, meanwhile, were taking new looks at their codes of ethics and accounting practices in an effort to demonstrate that they are self-policing and need no government regulation. Leaders of Catholic orders, for instance, have drafted new guidelines for fund-raising. Among them are prohibitions against vesting all control of an order’s funds in any one person and soliciting for “undefined future needs.” The new guidelines are being submitted for approval to the nation’s bishops at their fall meeting.

All of the action on the disclosure front is not at the national level. Some state and local governments have also moved into the field, and legislation is now pending in a variety of jurisdictions. One national religious organization that solicits the public has already been required to comply with such regulations in thirty-eight different states or counties.

Missouri Synod Aftermath

“We are over it. We are going to enter into a new era. We’ll be lifting up our voices in praise to the Lord.”

That’s how President J. A. O. Preus, 57, of the 2.8-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) sized up the state of the church in a speech to an LCMS laymen’s auxiliary this month in Denver. He based his views primarily on the outcome of the LCMS biennial convention in Dallas in July.

The convention was belabored by as much discussion about dollars as about doctrine—in distinct contrast with the past three conventions. It marked the end of a stormy period in LCMS history during which time conservatives under the banner of biblical inerrancy took over the denominational machinery, installed one of their own as president (Preus), ousted theological liberals and moderates from LCMS schools and places of leadership, and made it virtually impossible for the so-called moderate movement to regain power for at least the next two or three decades.

In the only jolt of sorts for Preus he failed by two votes to be reelected president on the first ballot (546 were needed), but he won easily on the second ballot. A last-minute challenge had been mounted by some of the same hard-core conservatives who succeeded in wresting the presidency for him in 1969. Missouri pastor Herman Otten and his Christian News weekly tabloid led the challenge. The Otten camp accused Preus of having become too soft on the liberals and of not being hard-nosed enough in relationships with other Lutheran bodies, especially the American Lutheran Church (ALC), with whom the LCMS has had altar and pulpit fellowship since 1969.

To show they meant business, the dissidents promoted the candidacy of seminary teacher Walter A. Maier, an LCMS vice president, for Preus’s seat. Maier came in third on the first ballot (with 168 votes), after district president Charles Mueller (with 279). On the second ballot, Maier lost forty-nine votes, presumably to Preus.

The two key doctrinally oriented issues centered around continued fellowship with the ALC and approval of a joint Lutheran hymnal.

By a substantial vote the some 1,100 clergy and lay delegates passed a resolution placing the LCMS’s fellowship with the ALC in a state of “protest.” They called for a study that could lead to a cessation of fellowship in 1979 if the main issues of contention are not cleared up. These include the ALC’s more liberal stance on interpretation of Scripture, the ordination of women (practiced by the ALC but considered heresy by many in the LCMS), the ALC’s ecumenical ties, and its views of the nature of fellowship (not as confined as the LCMS’s views).

By a closer vote the delegates decided not to accept the proposed joint hymnal but to study it instead until the 1979 convention. There were insinuations but no documented proof that the hymnal was doctrinally impure. Ironically, it was the LCMS in 1965 that persuaded the ALC and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) to join in the common-hymnal venture. Following the vote at Dallas, ALC officials were furious.

“We took out some of our hymns that the Missouri Synod didn’t want in the hymnal,” complained ALC president David Preus (a cousin of the LCMS Preus). “Now we’re stuck with Missouri-Synod hymns in it that we don’t want.” (Both the LCA and ALC already have given the hymnal preliminary approval; they will probably publish it jointly early next year, which means the LCMS likely will have to take it or leave it as is in 1979.)

David Preus used the time given him for fraternal greetings to offer the LCMS delegates some stem pastoral advice instead. He expressed sadness at the fellowship-of-protest action and said it was “incomprehensible that our churches, which share allegiance to Christ and his church, to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, should be sidetracked from mutual fellowship.” He said the sidetracking resulted from “poking away at matters which are not directly addressed in either the Scriptures or the Confessions”—a slap at recent LCMS actions requiring specific doctrinal conformity in certain areas of interpretation. He said there was little serious effort on the part of the LCMS to show the ALC that alternative positions on ecumenism and women’s ordination, for example, are preferable. “No,” he said, “there has only been a handful of people telling us that this is the way the LCMS sees it, and unless we see it like you do, there will be an end to fellowship.”

The ALC president said his church believes the “entire Scripture to be the inspired and authoritative word of God.” But, he added, the demand that all should agree that biblical inerrancy means “just exactly what some Missouri-Synod theologians say it means” sounds to ALC members like “ecclesiastical pride and tyranny.”

Many observers believe the ALC will make no major changes to accommodate the LCMS any further, and they predict official fellowship therefore will cease by vote of the next LCMS convention.

In other actions, the delegates:

• Called for increased evangelistic efforts among Jews and members of cults.

• Adopted budgets of $30 million and $32.9 million for the next two years.

• Warned against “false teaching” practiced by “some” (a word added by amendment) in the charismatic movement.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Easing the Pains In Plains

It took the wisdom of Solomon for President Carter to manage a Sunday visit in his hometown this month without offending anyone. It was his first trip to Plains, Georgia, since Plains Baptist Church split in June (see July 8 issue, page 37). Carter was a member and Sunday-school teacher of the church for years before he left for Washington (where he joined First Baptist Church), and he has relatives and friends on both sides of the schism. The split, preceded by the forced departure of pastor Bruce Edwards, occurred after months of feuding over issues of race, politics, and pastoral policies.

Carter solved his dilemma by attending Sunday school at Plains Baptist and the morning worship service at the forty-member breakaway Maranatha Baptist Church, which is housed five miles outside of town in a 110-year-old white frame building once used by Lutherans.

At Plains Baptist, where Carter was baptized in 1935, teacher Clarence Dodson of the men’s Sunday-school class welcomed his former co-teacher back and told him the church has missed his influence and drawing power (“there’s been many a vacant seat since you left”).

Waiting outside was the man over whom the simmering differences came to a head on the Sunday before last November’s election: Clennon King, a black minister and political gadfly from Albany, Georgia, just back from creating a scene at Edwards’s newest pastorate in Hawaii. King had demanded admission as a member at Plains Baptist, setting off a fight—led by Carter and Edwards—to overturn the church’s ban on black members. The policy was changed, but the congregation later voted not to accept the non-resident King as a member.

King was all but ignored as the presidential entourage hurried out of the Plains church and sped off to Maranatha Baptist. Carter was welcomed there by Maranatha’s pastor, Fred Collins, who had preceded Edwards as pastor at Plains Baptist. It was the second birthday of Carter’s grandson Jason, so the congregation sang “Happy Birthday,” and the boy plopped two pennies into the collection plate. Collins preached on the doctrine of election during the hour-long service, then called on the President to give the benediction. Carter’s prayer reflected the conciliatory spirit he tried to impart to his friends at both churches:

“O Father, bless this small and new church, separated, we all pray, not out of a sense of estrangement or alienation or division or hatred, but out of a sense of love and rededication to thee. Let all the tensions be alleviated and disharmonies be removed, and let there be a genuine search for reconciliation when needed. May there be a permanence about this church based on love and forgiveness and dedication. And those in the Plains Baptist Church—let it not be a sign of weakness in thy kingdom but the strength of having two churches instead of one.”

Afterward, he commented to reporters: “I think it’s a healthy thing to have two strong churches. They’re both good churches.… I want both of them to grow and flourish.”

Then the President was whisked away to a reunion of wife Rosalynn’s family in the fellowship hall at Plains United Methodist Church.

Dying And Death

Death, Dying, and the Biological Revolution, by Robert M. Veatch (Yale, 1976, 323 pp., $12.95), Death, Dying and the Law, edited by James T. McHugh (Our Sunday Visitor, 1976, 88 pp., $1.75), Who Shall Live?, by Leonard J. Weber (Paulist, 1976, 138 pp., $3.95), and Should Treatment Be Terminated?, by Thomas C. Oden (Harper & Row, 1976, 93 pp., $2.95), are reviewed by Robert A. Case II, associate in ministry, McLean Presbyterian Church, McLean, Virginia.

Every seminarian learns of the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient pagan myth of Edenic morality. Gilgamesh, half-god and half-man, searches for immortality only to have the hope taken from him when he least expected to lose it. The moral theme of this story is that since Gilgamesh cannot escape from death, he must come to terms with it. These four books seek to bring us mortals to a similar point.

We seem to think that medical science has thrust upon us new moral choices with which our ancestors did not have to wrestle. Such arrogant foolishness! Do we really think that during the plagues of Egypt there was no anguish in the Egyptian families as their loved ones died excruciatingly painful deaths? Are we to suppose that during the horrible bubonic plague years in Europe family members never thought of suicide or homicide (“mercy-killing”) in the face of the terrible suffering? Death and its attendants, sickness and suffering, have dogged mankind since the Fall. Francis Schaeffer has rightly noted the profundity of Genesis 5:5.

Since 1969, when Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s seminal work On Death and Dying appeared, an entire literature on death has developed. These four books fit into that genre and are above average in clarity and usefulness.

Robert Veatch has written perhaps the benchmark volume on death and medical science. It deserves a place on every serious Christian counselor’s bookshelf, not because its author is an evangelical (he is not) or does any exegesis, but because he has given us the most comprehensive discussion of death now in print. Unlike the other three books, this one is heavy going. It is for the reader with the time and stamina to do some detailed study in the area of death and could well be considered a companion volume to Kübler-Ross’s work.

Seeking to define death, Veatch concludes that it occurs when all spontaneous respiratory, circulatory, and cerebral functioning has irreversibly ceased. The patient (or family) will set the criteria in the final analysis, he says, and the death-pronouncing physician shall not have conflicting interests (i.e., the possibility of transplanting organs from the patient after death).

Veatch moves through chapters dealing with the patient’s (or family’s) right not to “prolong dying” and to refuse treatment. Underlying these chapters is the clearly stated assumption that the physician is an agent of the patient and must respond in a way that benefits the patient. As he points out, “The right to refuse medical treatment, for any reason, is well established in the Western legal tradition.” Veatch has a tendency to beg the question in these chapters by using such quality-of-life rhetoric as “prolong the dying process” and “death prolonging treatment.” He calls such treatment in some cases “torture,” and a judge who allowed such “torture” to be stopped (and the patient to die) “compassionate.” Unfortunately, he has not proven his ethical reference points well enough for those characterizations to be valid.

Veatch spends a good deal of space differentiating between “death prolonging treatment” and “lifesaving treatment.” His conclusion is that it is really the patient’s choice how long and under what circumstances he or she wants to continue life.

In the last half of the book, Veatch makes specific proposals for public implementation of the conclusions he drew in the first half. The first half, therefore, has the best chance of retaining its importance, since after the current legislative season the last chapters may be passé. He discusses the mechanics of decision-making (e.g., ad hoc committees and “living wills”) and the legislating of a decision-making structure. He stresses the need for truth-telling in the near-death situation, but before doing this he gives a helpful survey of the argument over this point, which is currently getting a lot of attention in the medical community. He devotes a chapter to organ transplants and ends the book with a call for a national public policy committed to the goal of extending life as long as possible and yet enabling death to be as uncomplicated as possible. In the end, the Judeo-Christian ethic continues to be persuasive, even in thanatology (the science of death); Veatch concludes that we need to affirm “simultaneously that death is an evil and yet certain deaths ought to be accepted.”

James McHugh, a pro-life priest in Washington, D.C., has compiled four essays into the little volume entitled Death, Dying and the Law with the intention of illuminating the legal and medical issues surrounding euthanasia. Although the authors are Roman Catholic, they do not use the standard casuistic approach to their morality. James Doyle notes three reasons for the current interest in death: new medical technology, the advancing “art” of transplantation, and the contemporary “rights” movement. McHugh calls us a “comfort-oriented society” that rejects physical suffering as an inhuman indignity. Ned Cassem gives us five reasons why the “death with dignity” movement has met with well-founded opposition: (1) the moral domino theory; (2) the difficulty of defining irreversible illness; (3) the fear of being accomplices to suicide; (4) the fact that it limits care for the sick; (5) the distrust of human nature. The final essay, written by McHugh and Michael Taylor, makes the crucial point that laws defining death must deal with the death of a human being, not simply the cessation of vital functions of cells, tissues, or organs. They write, “Human life exists in a human person, and the absence of certain qualities or the inability to perform certain functions does not reduce a human being to the animal level or to being nothing more than a ‘human vegetable.’ ”

There are several appendixes dealing with legislation and euthanasia. Although written in 1976, this section is already dated, in view of the recent developments in California, New Jersey, and Tennessee. There is also a limited but useful bibliography of books and films.

The Leonard Weber book deals with medical intervention in cases of deformed infants. Like McHugh, Weber is a Roman Catholic who does not emphasize the casuistic approach to moral problem-solving. His book is eminently readable and instructive. He clearly sees the logical extension of the question of the minimal criteria for humanness (the question being asked in the abortion context)—that if the question is asked with the unborn, it will in time be asked of the born also. Indeed, Joseph Fletcher has already asked (and answered) the question. Incidentally, Weber claims that the minimal requirement for humanness is the ability to reflect consciously.

The author sees two prevailing points of view in the current discussion of death and medicine. One view sees life as a possession that the possessor can handle however he or she wants (Veatch), while the other sees life as a gift with certain limits on what can be done with it (Weber). He also sees three main categories of “value-of-life” positions: one claiming that life counts for everything; one claiming that life counts for much; and one claiming that only a life free from suffering and pain counts for anything.

In the chapter entitled “The Debate,” Weber outlines six current positions on treating the handicapped newborn infant and sees that their proponents can be roughly divided into those who want to decide in terms of the child’s interest (as they see it) and those who want to decide in terms of society’s interest.

Other chapters in this small volume cover such topics as who should make the decision to treat the child and the “role of the public” in this matter. There is also a profound chapter entitled “The Value of Life,” in which the author moves with eloquence through the moral landmines of death and medical technology. He writes in one place, “The fight against discrimination has been made by insisting that, once you get beyond the individual differences, we are all equally good. The quality-of-life ethic (as opposed to the sanctity-of-life ethic) says that once we get beyond the circumstances there is nothing of value whatsoever.” In another place he writes, “To say that life is good and that its value is not man’s to give or take or decide upon is to stand before life with an attitude of acceptance rather than one of control.” Finally, he draws the bottom line when he states, “For an adult who has long had a grasp on life, success may be interpreted in terms of the fullness of life; for the infant who has never really had much of a grasp on life, just to be alive may be a great success.”

Thomas Oden is a Protestant ethicist who in Should Treatment Be Terminated? posits forty-two ethical guidelines to help families of the seriously ill deal with their traumatic situation. Putting himself in such heady company as Ramsey, Vaux, Gustafson, and Thielicke, Oden argues for the sanctity of life. And yet his list of seven factors to be considered in each case of serious illness lacks an important eighth factor, the philosophical appreciation of life. Furthermore, in an amazing bit of ethical game-playing he used a computer and some colleagues to develop an order of priority for his twelve guidelines for determining when to withhold treatment from a deathly ill patient. Between them, the academicians and the computer relegated “religious beliefs or moral convictions” to last place on the death-determining dozen.

Despite the omission on the list and the grotesquely absurd computer game, Oden shows himself elsewhere to be a person of moral courage and sensitivity. For instance, he notes that a severe temporary depression may come on a patient during major illness or surgery and that the physician, knowing this, has an obligation to the patient to prolong his or her life during this phase, despite the expressed desires of the distraught patient.

He also notes that there is almost complete freedom for any person to control his or her last days outside a hospital but that the hospital, by moral necessity, assumes a degree of surveillance and medical control over the person committed to its care. Oden correctly states that consensus ethics is foolhardy ethics and yet that poll-taking does give us an idea of what will constitute workable legislation.

He later writes, “There is a serious danger that ‘quality of life’ can inadvertently become an upper-class elitist concept. ‘Equality of life’ is more likely to be preferred by the poor as a principle for making treatment judgments.” Oden calls the practice of applying the term “vegetables” to deathly ill or comatose patients “a pejorative, prejudicial, and dehumanizing use of metaphor.” A target hit!

Oden waits until the last chapter to open the Scriptures, but when he does so he takes them seriously and knowingly. He brings the Word of God to bear at several crucial points in his sanctity-of-life position. I wish he had given us the benefit of his exegesis throughout his book.

My recommendation on these four books is this: if you are a Christian counselor by profession, you need the Weber, Oden, and Veatch books. If you are a pastor doing counseling, then Oden and Weber ought to be in your study. If you are a layperson who wants to begin a study of death, then Weber is your best bet.

Recent Religious Education

Foundations for Christian Education in an Era of Change, edited by Marvin J. Taylor (Abingdon, 1976, 288 pp., $5.95 pb), is reviewed by Kenneth O. Gangel, president, Miami Christian College, Miami, Florida.

The tip-off is in the table of contents: we see that the chapter on “Simulation-Games Theory and Practice in Religious Education” is nearly twice as long as the chapter on “Theology and Religious Education.” James Michael Lee, representing the Roman Catholic position in this compendium, surely speaks for the majority of the contributors when he says, “There appears to be an emerging trend—sometimes explicitly stated, more often implicitly enacted—among religion teachers, curriculum developers, and administrators toward the social-science approach to religious education and away from the theological approach.”

The feeble efforts of Sara Little in the chapter on theology are only brief flickers in this otherwise dense theological fog. Evangelicals would surely agree with Little’s concluding sentence: “In the final analysis, then, whatever the shape of the future, the ‘health’ of religious education is intertwined with that in theology.” But, Little’s theology is relative; she rejects the “theology as norm” approach.

To be sure, she refuses the alternative that “theology is irrelevant.” She wants to see theology related to psychology and the social sciences but not as any more crucial in the scheme of religious educator than any of these other disciplines. Theology, like Toynbee’s Christianity, is among the great influences but is not essentially superior to any of them.

One brightens up at the beginning of chapter four, when H. Edward Everding, Jr., states: “My thesis is that hermeneutics provides the proper frame of reference within which to develop educational theory.” But though some useful material appears in this chapter as Everding discusses such important matters as the linguistic context, literary context, and historical context, he ultimately pits “traditional historical interpretation” against “existentialist interpretation,” opts for the latter, and raises again the dusty Bultmannian banner with new stripes offered by the works of Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann.

Consequently, we are not surprised to learn that “the Bible is interpreted as the unrepeatable primal form of the historical emergent, Christian existence, as well as the occasion for trajectories of meaning into the present, Christian tradition” and that “there is, then, no absolute and unchanging interpretation, for each person’s interpretation is correct since it is his own.”

There are, of course, bright spots, such as Wyckoff’s chapter on “Curriculum Theory and Practice” and Snyder’s refreshing “Worship as Celebration and Nurture.”

Evangelicals are thrown a sop in the form of one chapter, and we can be grateful that this chapter was written by Hayes, whose scholarship and articulateness make him a good spokesman for the evangelical side. Hayes emphasizes the theological commitments of evangelical Christian education. He does, however, give a somewhat more positive nod to psychological relationship than I think it deserves (“A proper ‘I—thou’ relationship, ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ attitude is essential”).

Marvin Taylor’s “Selected Bibliographies Since 1966” is very disappointing. Of its 253 entries, fewer than 10 could be called evangelical.

Evangelical educators need to know what’s going on in liberal religious-education circles, and this volume can be useful in showing them. It makes it clear that there is no return to any kind of serious biblical position. It also shows the continuing bias (which is anything but “liberal”) against evangelical institutions, publishers, and scholarship. Really, Taylor ought to know better. He is associate director of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and so has a firsthand view of numerous flourishing evangelical seminaries.

Barth’S View Of Politics

Karl Barth and Radical Politics, edited by George Hunsinger (Westminster, 1976, 236 pp., $6.45 pb), is reviewed by Jack Buckley, teacher, Covenant Circle, Berkeley, California.

Karl Barth was a socialist.” With that thesis, Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt began a flurry of revisionist theologizing among German professors and churchmen in 1972. Marquardt is professor of systematic theology at the Free University of Berlin. Even those who sympathize with his interpretation of Barth’s sociopolitical stance grant that when Marquardt pried into Barth’s politics he was motivated not a little by the socialist students’ challenge to the relevance of the church.

Modern theology is known for its faddish fickleness. One of the contributors to this book laments that “American theologians continue to ignore Barth. His influence, if even acknowledged at all, is viewed with suspicion. At best his thought is accorded only historical interest; one phase in the evolving theology of the modern period.” Marquardt in Germany and now George Hunsinger in America aim to revive his credibility and to move the church leftward in keeping with the spirit of our times. Barth’s famous name, they seem to hope, will help.

Hunsinger, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale in religious studies, has gathered together some essays on Barth’s socialistic concerns. We are given a translation of an address on Jesus Christ and the movement for social justice that Barth delivered in 1911, Marquardt’s 1972 essay, and five response pieces (three by Germans, two by Americans). While Marquardt comes in for some criticism, especially from his Berlin colleague Hermann Diem and from Dieter Schellong of Münster, none of the contributors doubts his basic theme that Barth’s theology was organically related to a socialist praxis. Each, in one way or another, accepts it as given and works to develop it as today’s hope for tomorrow’s church in the world.

One wonders how it was that Barth-as-socialist was not discovered long before liberation theology came into vogue to unsettle the already restless post-death-of-God theologians. These essays suggest that no one was really looking for him. Barth’s social conscience is well known, from his anger at the German intelligentsia’s endorsement of World War I to his opposition to Hitler and rallying of the Confessing Church in the 1930s. But he was strenuously criticized for his refusal to speak out against the Russians during the Cold War. Former friends supposed that he was not so much politically motivated as perhaps emotionally involved in the German crisis. Certainly, they saw no clear connection between his theology and his social thought.

Hunsinger et al. maintain that Barth’s biography must be known if one is to understand just how directly his dogmatics and his social praxis affected each other. It is a fact that in his Safenwil pastorate Barth was a member of the Swiss socialist party, and that he joined the German Social Democrats in 1932. Marquardt and Hunsinger trace his development from old liberal (theologically) to neo-orthodox radical (politically), insisting that his radical doctrine of God inevitably fed his radical outlook on how society might be made more just by means of socialism.

If these writers are right, the interesting question arises: Did Barth’s concept of God and his transforming work in Christ convince him of socialism as a way of life, or did his political leanings give birth to the great volume of new theology for which he has been famous these many years?

Many theologians, to Barth’s left and right alike, might be inclined to wonder what difference it really makes. But those who contributed to this book obviously put a great deal of hope in their rediscovery of Karl Barth’s affinity with the political left. If they have their way, Barth’s influence within and outside the Christian community is far from dead.

Briefly Noted

Fine, vivid poems by a Christian are offered in The Secret Trees, by Luci Shaw (Harold Shaw Publishers, 80 pp., $3.95).

Self-esteem is often thought to be somehow unchristian, but there is nevertheless a command from Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves. See Loving Ourselves, by Ray Ashford (Fortress, 104 pp., $3.50 pb), The Art of Learning to Love Yourself, by Cecil Osborne (Zondervan, 154 pp., $5.95), and Celebrate Yourself, by Bryan Jay Cannon (Word, 138 pp., $3.95 pb). For a short, colorfully illustrated attack on the vultures of self-put-down, see Vulture by Sidney Simon (Argus, 72 pp., $1.95).

Freedom through forgiveness of oneself and of others is explored in Come Clean, by Charles Keysor (Victor, 155 pp., $1.75 pb), and Start Loving: The Miracle of Forgiveness, by Colleen Townsend Evans (Doubleday, 119 pp., $4.95). Keysor, of Asbury College, uses Psalm 51 as a springboard for discussing confession and total surrender to God as the key to removing guilt. Evans offers an easy personal account of learning how to forgive.

Readings in Third World Missions (294 pp.) and The How and Why of Third World Missions (248 pp.) both by Martin L. Nelson (William Carey, 1977, $6.95 ea., pb), are two excellent source books for the student of current missiological thinking. They follow up a 1973 survey of Third World churches. Case studies and extensive bibliographies are included. The later book draws especially on the author’s Korean experience.

Christian Politics: False Hope or Biblical Demand, edited by James W. Skillen (available from the editor at Gordon College, Wenham, Mass. 01984, 85 pp., $3.95 pb), contains five short, scholarly essays on politics and government, American civil religion, American political parties, and the idea of progress from a Reformed perspective. Thoughtful and challenging.

Pius Wakatama in Independence For the Third World Church (InterVarsity, 118 pp., $2.95 pb) seeks to end the employer-employee relationship between the missionary and national church through a “selective” moratorium that limits American missionaries to those particularly qualified to train nationals for future responsibility. Wakatama also makes a good case for furthering indigenous Christian publishing.

You Must Be Joking, by Michael Green (Tyndale, 220 pp., $1.95 pb), tells how to take the offensive in answering “hard” questions most commonly asked by those who want to avoid commitment to Christ.

Moishe and Ceil Rosen of Jews for Jesus explain how to witness sensitively to Jewish friends with an understanding of their presuppositions in Share the New Life With a Jew (Moody, 80 pp., $1.50 pb).

How to Conduct Backyard Bible Clubs, by Pamela R. Prichard (Moody, 72 pp., $1.50 pb), tells how to supplement more traditional VBS in reaching unchurched children in the neighborhood.

Sharing the Gospel of Christ is the priority of today’s minister and he is constantly searching for ways to expand his outreach. Thousands of missionaries, pastors, and evangelists use the radio to teach and preach. Television, though much more expensive than radio, is being used by others in their attempts to reach people.

One medium, the newspaper, is often ignored by pastors. It can become the means through which a ministry can explode beyond the walls of a church. And the syndicated newspaper column is the way to do it.

Several years ago I tried to find ways to evangelize the person who did not attend church or read religious books and articles. I got copies of newspapers from several states and searched them carefully for the type of material published most often. Religious columns appeared frequently. Sunday School lessons, question-and-answer columns on a number of subjects, and various church-oriented articles were abundant. But one thing was missing—a human interest column with a moral punch-line.

I discussed my interest in writing a column of this type with a local newspaper editor. He said, “I’ll be happy to publish your column if you will dig in and get the material to me each week.” He told me that his experience with some people wanting to write columns was not a happy one. As the newness wore off, and the pressure of meeting a weekly deadline mounted, most aspiring columnists gave up. So, I wrote several samples of a column for his evaluation. We selected the name “Mountain Moments” to try to capture the attention of a large segment of readers.

I keep the column simple. I don’t write on theological subjects nor do I preach. However, the strong overtones let the reader know that there is something deeper here than just the subject discussed. A recent column tells of a trip to Washington, D.C., and an interview with Pat Boone and Charles Colson. Woven into the story is a meeting with Cleavant Derricks, who has written hundreds of gospel songs, and the column closes with the punch-line: “And once again we are reminded that sometimes ‘just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.’ ”

My name was unknown outside the area where I lived so I bought a copy of “Editor and Publisher” and methodically wrote a personal letter to each newspaper in my home state offering them the column. I then wrote a similar letter to editors in adjoining states. For those outside the mountains the name “Country Clipboard” was used to avoid regional identity. The material, however, is the same. I use human interest stories, incidents from my background, and items of folklore, but each column contains a moral.

When the requests for the column were returned on the postage paid card I had enclosed, I sent a news release, a picture, and four columns to the newspaper. The news release gave personal information and announced that the new column was to be a weekly feature.

Most of the cost of the column is for envelopes (printed with my logo) and paper. I can mail at least two articles at one time and I send them by first class mail. The columns are mimeographed and mailed a month in advance. A copy is dated and filed as part of the permanent record.

At the end of each column a tag identifies me and I frequently request readers to write to me. I have received several hundred letters since the column first appeared. Some simply offer compliments, others request additional information, and a few suggest topics for a future column. Sometimes I use the letters themselves in a column.

“Mountain Moments” and “Country Clipboard” now appear in 192 newspapers in seventeen states each week. I am able to speak to hundreds of thousands of people who may never see me or hear me preach. Through the newspaper I can regularly visit in many homes.

Every pastor has the same opportunity to syndicate a newspaper column. Here are some suggestions.

1. Design a good letterhead. Editors can’t see you in person, so you must invest some thought and money to have a simple, yet attractive letterhead. Don’t forget envelopes, either.

2. Learn how to write a good letter. Address it to a person. Letters addressed to nobody are thrown in file 13. Offer your idea or column in as few words as possible. Never send out form letters.

3. Be sure to enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope or card. If you don’t, you may never see your material again. Editors are swamped with promotional material so make yours easy to return.

4. Begin small. Don’t try to land a large daily. Write for a weekly or a small daily. Get an article with your name on it and send reprints to other editors.

5. Be an expert. Write about something you know. Do research if necessary, but don’t go out on a limb and write about something you’re not sure of.

6. Wait on the Lord. Don’t be impatient. A lack of space will be the most common reason for rejection, especially if the feature is untried. However, one thing leads to another and editors want to publish popular material.

You can be a newspaper columnist. A minister has the most important product in the world to sell, so why not use the newspaper column to share your faith.—K. MAYNARD HEAD. Director of Public Relations, Clear Creek Baptist School, Pineville, Kentucky.

Ideas were buzzing in my head like angry flies caught in a bottle as I sat eating a picnic lunch by the lake. The lapping of the waves against the rocks and the swish of baby swans swimming to their mother should have been soothing me. But it came to me sharply that I was cancelling out the contentment of the moment with my worries. I couldn’t appreciate the fruit and sandwiches, the honeysuckle, or the sound of swooping gulls. We are always in danger of blotting out the enjoyment of what we have for the things we lack or by worrying about the future. The noise inside my head was drowning out the pleasant things to be tasted, felt, heard, smelled, and seen.

Perhaps that is part of what Paul meant when he said, “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Phil. 4:11). Often we think that verse only commands contentment in adversity or when we have meager material goods or a lowly job. We apply it to the big sweeping problems of our life or to a situation covering a span of time. As I ate I thought of how to work at becoming content with life. An active contentment occurs as a moment by moment thing. Its ingredients are not necessarily some sweeping emotional spiritual experience after which one is always content no matter what, but they vary from hour to hour and from day to day. The ingredients are like raw fibers that we can weave moment by moment into a fabric of contentment.

We need to grow contented in order to grow spiritually. That is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We need to be contented with our food and clothing. We also need to concentrate on what God has given us to enjoy and not fret for what we don’t have. He’s given us the ability to enjoy life, but too often we fail to exercise it.

In Hebrews 13:5 we are told, “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” God is at our elbow, wherever we are—at a lake side with ferns or a busy street corner filled with sounds of honking horns and screeching brakes. We should turn from the covetous thoughts that slip into our minds, and turn to appreciate the things we have right now. The fact that we are turned off by Pollyanna platitudes should not give us a smug superiority about finding something to take us a step further with Paul in learning to be contented. How, in the midst of difficult circumstances that absorb one’s energy and time, can one practice contentment? Taxes may be too high, the baby crying, the new roof leaking. Or someone spills coffee on a new chair. A student fails an exam. Your office is moving to a place you don’t want to live. But despite any troubles you might have, God has given you the ability to be contented, and he’s given you something to be contented about.

Without ignoring prayer or the available help the Holy Spirit provides, God has also given us help through our senses. We can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel his beautiful universe. Yes, things have been spoiled since the fall, and we are not going to be perfect until Jesus comes back. But we can experience contentment as we immerse ourselves in the enjoyment of God’s universe. Each of us should ask, “What am I contented with right now?” And God will give you something with which to answer that question. You will need to ignore the worries that buzz around and blot out the enjoyment of the moment. But if you look around and appreciate what God has given you, you can prevent your contentment from being cancelled out.

A middle-aged man from a proud and wealthy family, well-educated, active in politics, famous in literary circles for his love lyrics, married, with four or more children, suddenly finds his life and his thoughts thrown into confusion. After a lifetime of being a loyal citizen of his town, devoted to the ideals and activities of his community, after having served on the governing council of his native Florence and travelling as an envoy to the Pope, he returns to find himself an exile, charged with fraud and corruption, forbidden entry to his beloved city unless he is willing to be “burned with fire till he be dead.” His wife and children choose to remain in the sanctuary of the city. “Thou shalt leave everything beloved most dearly; this is the first shaft which the bow of exile lets fly,” he wrote. For the rest of his life—twenty long years—this lonely wanderer climbs other men’s stairs and eats the salt at other men’s tables. Loving and wealthy patrons are generous to him, but he can never return to his former life. He carries with him scant but ample baggage: his anger, his love, his great talent, and his faith.

Although many of us in the middle of the journey of life find ourselves in a dark wood, not many know the hell of loneliness, indignation, and disappointment alloted to Dante Alighieri of Florence in his final years. His compensation lay in the deeply mystical experience that took him from the hell of self through the stages of renewal to the ecstasy of the vision of God. His legacy to the world is the complex and beautiful record of this marvelous journey, which has come to be known as The Divine Comedy, or The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine.

In the final years of his life looking back on the pain and the discovery of those middle years Dante acknowledged the redeeming power of love—not wealth, not talent, not family, not city—but love. Dante’s world was held together by love—as is ours. God’s love led him to create the universe and to place man in it. The medieval man thought that this universe was a three-storied one, and that God was the unmoving Mover of the heavens and the earth. Dante’s religion also was his cosmology, his geography, and his physics. In a thrillingly unified vision of God’s creation, he considered love as the key to all attraction—mental, physical, and spiritual. Thus, love of evil and the material stuff of creation draws man deeper into Hell, a place frozen and dark because of the absence of God’s love, where man gnaws at his fellows, mutilates them, lies to them, snarls at them, a place dominated by that lord of hate, Satan. God does not need to place man in his proper sphere of Hell; the individual’s love of his own peculiar evil draws him there to spend eternity repeating, without joy or hope, the sins he loved on earth.

If man loves Christ rather than Satan, he moves instead to the sunlit home of penitents—Purgatory. As he eagerly seeks both the whip and the bridle, he finds there that the one lashes him to enthusiasm for virtue, the other restrains him from vice. Again the sinful Christian determines by his own faith and failure his abode in the afterlife. Since on earth he divided his love between wrongful loves and rightful ones, he settles first in the place where his particular sin is to be confessed and cleansed. Living with both day and night, the rhythms of earth, he finds himself gradually cleansed of his sins, growing lighter and brighter and more joyful as he approaches purity and holiness. The rhythm of labor and rest, the sense of movement upward, the life of song, prayer, and penitence seems idyllically monastic. It is in startling contrast to the static despair of Hell.

Although the Protestant may reject the basic doctrine of Purgatory, he will find the perception of the psychology and theology of sin and salvation full of insight. The organization of Purgatory like that of Hell is based on the seven deadly sins. Purgatory’s highest point parallels Hell’s; in Dante’s natural history, Purgatory was formed when Satan fell to earth. Hell was a result of the impact and the shrinking from his evil by the very earth. The displaced land rose up to form the seven-story mountain. Psychologically as well as physically it is the counterpart of damnation. Thus, while Hell is founded on despair and hatred of God, Purgatory is based on hope and love of God.

The key to the ordering of the sins in Purgatory is distortions of love. Dorothy L. Sayers spent the last years of her life studying and interpreting and translating this great poem to make it more accessible to English readers. She explained the system of Purgatory in her preferatory notes. The lower section, where the proud, envious, and wrathful do their proper penance, is the farthest from primal innocence, for love has been perverted. Those who should love their neighbor instead seek their neighbor’s harm. Middle Purgatory, where the slothful hurry to their salvation, is the home of defective love—those whose lukewarm love keeps them from exertion for the love of God. Nearest to innocence are the covetous, the gluttonous, and the lustful. Their flaw is the love of God’s creation rather than of God himself. The drunkard, the miser, and the fornicator ignore the primary good and focus their desire on the secondary. The lustful soul is the closest to purity because his is the warmest of sins. His love of the flesh and his desire for another human being can be transferred to a delight in the incarnation and a dedication to Christ far more easily than the man who loves himself.

Dante uses the medieval Roman Catholic understanding of sin and of the psychology of repentance. He pictures the public confession of sin, the repentance (contrition), the penance (satisfaction), and makes each step clear. Although the mountain seems to stand physically in time, the journey from sin to salvation, the return of man to innocence through the redeeming love of Christ, the freeing of the will by the submission to Christ are timeless and universal. Dante studies each of the sins to discover its root causes; he acknowledges his own sins and bows his head in confession of his own pride and lust. His delight in redemption and renewal at the top of Mt. Purgatory is a thrilling moment.

Heaven too is portrayed as a place of love, where the saints of the Church triumphant live in the radiant presence of God. They see face to face and know the truth, remembering no part of earthly life with regret, loving fully without need to possess either things or people. In the light of God’s love, their vision is restored so that they can see and love all things properly. The nine spheres, each with its planet, its supervising angels, and its inhabitants are contained in the mind of God. The image breaks through in Paradise and lives outside time and space. The saints seem to be in the various spheres. But the spheres are only metaphors. All the saints live in the presence of God, in the primum mobile, in the glorious light of his love. In a blinding moment Dante finally experiences God and admits that his mystical moment is ineffable; his art cannot record the truth:

Thither my own wings could not carry me,

But that a flash my understanding clove,

Whence its desire came to it suddenly.

High phantasy lost power and here broke off;

Yet, as a wheel moves smoothly, free from jars,

My will and my desire were turned by love,

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Paradiso, Canto XXXIII

This divine love that Dante experiences so richly takes different forms for him, as it does for each of us. His art is his own loving response to God; his love of other artists (such as Virgil) is not adoration of secondary goods, but delight in the image of God shining through human experience. Dante so identified his love of God and his love of beauty that he organized his divine comedy on the basis of the Trinity—three in one. The three parts of the poem, the divisions within the poem, the three-fold interlocking verse form all testify to his delight in the majesty and unity of God’s three-fold nature.

His love of other people follows a parallel pattern. Another human being, Beatrice, serves as God-bearer for him. Using the frame-of-reference provided by his age to explain his experience and his emotions, he discovers in the image of Beatrice a means of access to the love of God. Her intervention for him, her prayers for his salvation, her delight in his redemption culminate in her appearance at the top of Mt. Purgatory, where she crowns him as his own pope and emperor, a free man in Christ, who is now pure and prepared to leap up to the stars (Canto XXXIII).

As we watch the various appearances of the God-bearer Beatrice through the story we come to understand that she is not simply the beautiful wife of a Florentine banker who stirred and snubbed the young Dante and haunted him all his life. She becomes instead a human form through which God speaks to the young man and encourages him to love more than the flesh, to climb the platonic ladder of love to a higher love than lust alone can ever know. In her appearance in the Earthly Paradise she becomes an image of the Church, which encourages man to leave his limited loves for the immortal love of Christ. Like a good wife—the Bride of Christ—she nags man out of his preference for the physical to an adoration of the spiritual. Her admonitions shame him and her love heals him. She is a good mother as much as a good wife, warning the erring child, encouraging him, laughing gently at his confusion, helping him toward his next stage of development.

With Beatrice as his guide Dante bursts into Paradise. There in the presence of the saints he gradually discovers insights into theological truths. With each sphere Beatrice grows more beautiful, her smile more brilliant, until she finally must turn from Dante for fear of blinding him. As divine illumination floods into his life Beatrice becomes (in Sayers’s phrase) a “divine schoolmistress,” leading, explaining, protecting, nudging, hinting, helping the learner to see more clearly. By the time she turns him over to his final guide, the saintly Bernard, she has become unnecessary to his spiritual development and can return to her blessed rest. The human love that she represents can lead mankind to God because it mirrors his love. Not seeking oneself like the proud, nor desiring to possess another like the lustful, the true love is content to lead the pilgrim upward and to release him to the waiting hands of God.

Dante then discovers, as do many people, that we learn love first from human images—fathers, mothers, friends, and mates. The quality of that love may stop with self or lead the beloved on to a larger experience of immortal love in God. The beloved Dante, without rejecting Beatrice, is content to look beyond her to the greatest lover of all: the archetype of father, mother, sister, brother, husband, and lover. And Beatrice is fulfilled in the knowledge that Dante has used her image to see through it to God.

Perhaps the story is old-fashioned and quaint in many ways. Certainly the richly physical view of the afterlife and the detailed account of its geography and inhabitants lead many modems to classify it flatly as fiction. We may argue with the physical nature and origin of Purgatory and dispute the cosmology of Paradise. We may smile condescendingly from our liberated heights at his hopelessly romantic view of women and the idealized notions of the Holy Roman Empire. But we can learn a great deal from him—the psychology of sin, the path to repentance, the nature of free will, the priorities of the Christian life, the reality of evil, and the redemptive power of love. In the poem he quotes the Scripture passage we all know so well: “Faith—hope—love—but the greatest of these is love.” Having lost in the middle of the journey of life all those human loves that are so central to existence, he discovers the fuller meaning of the Scripture. Not the love of a woman, who could die, or the love of a family, which could be lost, or the love of a city, which could fail, but the love of God, who himself is love.

Nancy M. Tischler is professor of English and humanities, Pennsylvania State University, Capitol Campus, Middletown, Pennsylvania.

This is the text of a statement by Billy Graham being given this month on the “Hour of Decision” broadcast.

Since the beginning of our evangelistic ministry we have been deeply concerned about the financial integrity of our work. We believe we are accountable to God for all money entrusted to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). We consider ourselves stewards before the Lord.

When we began our evangelistic ministry almost all evangelists were supported by voluntary “love offerings.” Occasionally this led to financial abuses, and in the minds of many people mass evangelism came to be associated with an “Elmer Gantry” image of financial irresponsibility and even dishonesty.

We set out to change this image by forming a small board and setting up a non-profit religious organization. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was formed in 1950. We stopped receiving “love offerings” shortly thereafter and put every member of our staff, including myself, on a fixed salary. All funds received for our ministry go to the BGEA. In 1950 this was a new concept in this type of evangelism; we were determined to have total financial integrity.

When the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was founded we not only prayed that God would provide the finances necessary for our own direct ministry of evangelism, but that he would entrust us with enough financial resources to help missions and other evangelical projects throughout the world. We determined to attempt to tithe all funds that were given to us for evangelism, and dedicate this tithe to help other ministries that supported evangelism, missions, and Christian education. We felt at the time that it was scriptural and that God would honor our efforts and motives. I understand the great evangelist of the last century, D. L. Moody, once said “God will allow millions to pass through my hands for the work of God if none of it sticks to my hands.”

All finances of the BGEA are under the supervision of a board of directors. Our board has twenty-five men and one woman. It includes distinguished lawyers, bankers, businessmen, a seminary president, and distinguished clergy, including two outstanding black clergymen. The entire board meets three times a year. The executive committee, made up of seven men, meets approximately every six weeks for anywhere from one day to two full days. No paid employee, including myself, is on the executive committee. I do not attend the executive committee except by invitation.

We have insisted on the highest possible standards of financial ethics, business procedures, and spiritual principles in the business affairs of the BGEA. We have taken extra precautions to be certain that everything is done with complete integrity so no dishonor might come to the name of Christ. Our books are audited every year by one of America’s best known accounting firms.

About three years ago we asked one of the largest and most distinguished law firms in America to assess our organization and its affiliates in every possible detail, to see if there were any financial safeguards or practices we were overlooking. After a thorough two-year study this firm (which specializes in non-profit organizations) reported that they had rarely found an organization with higher standards and better financial control than ours. One of our board members, for many years the treasurer of Harvard University, stated, “I have served on many boards but have never been associated with an organization that has such high standards of business procedure and financial controls as BGEA.”

I can assure you that your contributions are handled legally and with the highest sense of Christian ethics and spiritual concern. If you designate any gift, we guarantee it will go 100 per cent where you want it to go. For example, several years ago we established an “emergency relief fund” to help the victims of disasters throughout the world in the name of Christ. We take nothing from that relief fund for administrative expenses. Through this fund, for example, we have been able to help earthquake victims in Guatemala and Romania and famine victims in Africa. We have helped in New Guinea, Bangladesh, and many other emergency areas. We believe such relief efforts are commanded by Christ. We also believe countless people are open to the Gospel because of such actions of practical love and compassion.

Earlier, I explained how we decided to tithe our income to other evangelical causes. God has honored this commitment for more than a quarter century. We have been able to help seminaries, Bible schools, missions, hospitals, scholarships for overseas students, relief work, missionaries, evangelists, and evangelical periodicals throughout the world. We have given small and large amounts to hundreds of Christian groups that were being used of God across the world. For example, we help support a halfway house for prisoners in Mexico, a tuberculosis clinic for nomads in the Middle East carried on by devoted missionaries, and a graduate seminary and colleges in several countries of the Far East. We have also provided scholarships for seminary and college students from the Third World, help for refugees from Uganda, and thousands of scholarships for Bible school, seminary, and college students to the Schools of Evangelism in connection with all of our major crusades around the world.

Most people did not know that we helped sponsor and pay for world conferences on evangelism, such as the Berlin Congress on Evangelism (1966) and the historic Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization (1974)—and we have either totally paid for, or helped in part, at least a score of evangelistic and missionary conferences throughout the world. We gave substantial financial help to the Pan African Christian Leadership Conference in Nairobi last December.

We never have sought to draw attention to this side of our work, believing that this kind of attention might be mistaken for boasting and pride. We took seriously the words of Jesus: “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father, which is in heaven. Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly” (Matt. 6:1–4).

As the years passed we began to see the tremendous need for a special fund to help undergird evangelical ministries throughout the world to a greater extent than we were able to do. Our board of directors also felt that we should take steps to insure the wise long-range investment of gifts that came to BGEA from time to time in the form of stocks, trusts, estates, foundation grants, and a certain amount of undesignated funds. A fairly large percentage of gifts that we receive have no designation. People are giving to us to act as stewards of the Lord’s money and to invest it in his kingdom as God directs us.

So, in 1970 we formed a foundation, which now is called the World Evangelism and Christian Education Fund (WECEF). There are several facts I would like you to know about the WECEF Fund.

1. It is a legally incorporated non-profit foundation registered with the Internal Revenue Service.

2. It is administered by a dedicated board of trustees made up of some of America’s most outstanding Christian businessmen. Its executive committee consists of the former president of the American Bakers Association, the chairman of the board of trustees of the Baylor Medical Center and Baylor University, and the former treasurer of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Wheaton College Board of Trustees.

3. There are no full-time employees of WECEF. No board member receives any financial benefit from it.

4. The money given to WECEF (as to BGEA) is committed to benefit projects in missions, evangelism, and Christian education.

5. In order to be good stewards, the trustees of WECEF have directed the investment of the funds in a prudent manner until distribution.

6. The WECEF Fund is audited annually by a nationally recognized auditing firm, and an official “990” IRS report is filed annually with the federal government.

7. WECEF has been on the public record since its inception—open for all to inspect, but it has not been publicized. For one thing, we felt it was scriptural. For another thing, extensive publicity, we knew, would mean we would be innundated with requests for help that we could not begin to meet. We already knew of far more projects than we could support, and we did not want to have to divert money from worthy projects to employ a large staff to handle such requests.

8. WECEF is the only foundation or fund to which BGEA is affiliated.

The reason I have tried to outline all of this to you is that there has recently been some misunderstanding about the World Evangelism and Christian Education Fund. The Bible says, “Let not your good be evil spoken of” (Rom. 14:16). God has greatly used WECEF, and we have a responsibility to tell you the facts about it. I hope you will pray for its ministry.

In recent years we have thought and prayed frequently about the future of our ministry. God has given us an increasing burden for training other men and women who will do the work of evangelism in the decades ahead. When I entered full-time evangelism I was president of a liberal arts college and a Bible school with 1,200 students in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have always carried this burden of training others. About fifteen years ago we came very close to building a university. We had the land and a great part of the money offered us, but at that time we felt it would be too much of a diversion from our evangelistic crusades. So after much prayer and soul-searching we decided not to build it.

But Paul told Timothy, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2), and I believe God is leading us in two major projects to fulfill this vision. First, we are helping to build at Wheaton College in Illinois what I believe is destined to become one of the world’s unique training centers in missions and evangelism. It will draw students and laymen from around the world for intensive courses in training for evangelism. Church leaders from various countries will be able to come for further training. In it will be one of the finest libraries on evangelism and missions in the world. It will also house Wheaton’s growing Graduate School in Biblical Studies and Communications. It will also house the records and memorabilia of our ministry. The first floor is designed so that a visitor walking through will be confronted with the claims of Christ. It is our hope and prayer that people will find Christ every week, just visiting this center. Construction will begin this fall. It will be a continual evangelistic effort long after God has called us to heaven. This institution will be owned, operated, and directed by the board of trustees of Wheaton College.

Second, tentative plans are underway for a Bible training center specifically designed to train laymen in the Bible. It will not be a Bible school in the traditional sense, for there will be no academic credit or graduation diplomas. It would bring outstanding Bible teachers from many denominations and other parts of the world for short periods of teaching. A layman or a student or even a clergyman could go there for a month, or three months, or even a year, and study the Bible in depth. We have felt it should be in a secluded spot where they could have time for long walks, places for quiet and prayerful decision-making concerning their life’s priorities. Many people are converted late in life and cannot take time off to go to a Bible school or seminary, but they could take a month off for an intensive Bible survey study. As far as I know, this would not be in competition with any denominational effort anywhere in the world. A beautiful location in western North Carolina has been purchased and preliminary studies have already been completed. However, since we will not begin this project until the Wheaton Center is finished, it may still be at least three or more years away. Already proposals for other sites in other parts of the country are coming in. Three years is a long time in this swiftly moving world. We are waiting upon God to either open this door or close it. We pray “thy will be done.”

The World Evangelism and Christian Education Fund is committed to help fund both these projects. However, we do not have the full resources needed to build these two great projects and also meet the needs of many other important projects that we now help. We need your increased financial support if this work is to continue. If you desire to designate gifts for either of these two projects or any other evangelistic project, you may do so through your gift to the BGEA. In addition, we need your continual support for our ministry of evangelism through radio, films, and literature. We are having to face rising costs in everything from postal rates to the purchase of television time.

We find ourselves limited to the many visions and dreams that God has given us to touch the world for Christ in our generation. Calls are coming from every part of the world for us to come and proclaim the Gospel and to help in various ways. Unfortunately, we have to write hundreds of letters each year turning down worthy requests. We are limited because of physical strength, time, and finances.

One of the interesting things is that when we go to other countries in response to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ to go into all parts of the world to proclaim the Gospel, our income goes down. I would like to challenge you with the responsibility of the whole world for Christ. When you hear that we are in some other country ministering, I hope you will increase your giving and consider it a missionary contribution. When we go to many parts of the world we bear the team expenses from BGEA and usually have to help substantially in the crusade expenses, especially in the underdeveloped countries whose financial means are limited.

We are living in a very ominous, critical, and serious moment in history. It has been my privilege during the past few months to talk to a number of leaders in different parts of the world from various walks of life. I found a great deal of pessimism.

Yet I am not pessimistic. Doors are open right now as perhaps never before. I am told that as many as 50,000 people a day are becoming Christians. This is an age of unprecedented harvest. If ever we are to pray and give, it is now. “The night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4). It is a question as to how long we can remain on television and radio with the same freedom of proclaiming the Gospel as we now have. It is a question as to how much longer we can have the freedom to hold evangelistic crusades in many parts of the world.

We are ready to spend our strength and our energy, if you will stand behind us with your prayers and your financial support. God bless you.