Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?” Modern man has scarcely any idea how to begin to answer these questions. As a result, he, in the words of philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev, “lives in agony.” Having given up faith in God, he finds that he no longer has faith in man, least of all in himself.

Among intellectuals, this present predicament of man has led many to despair, “to writhe in the convulsions of the catastrophe called Nihilism” (as Nietzsche predicted). In general society, the loss of a sense of purpose in life has led people to seek consolation in a relentless and never-to-be-satisfied “pursuit of happiness” fraudulently promised by the American Declaration of Independence as man’s inalienable right, and by means of this frantic pursuit to avoid the hard questions about existence. But the questions won’t go away.

From the Christian point of view, the answer to the question “Why am I here?” has never been more satisfactorily put than in the opening sentences of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

QUESTION 1. What is the chief end of man?

ANSWER. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

In the biblical understanding of things, man finds meaning and purpose in his all-too-transitory life on earth by answering the call to seek the honor of God in all he does and to enjoy fellowship with God.

“Man’s chief aim is to glorify God.…” How are we to glorify him? God is glorified as we respond in trust and obedience to his revelation of himself in his Word and in the person of his Son, as we obey what we know of his directions for our lives, as we give our lives to him to use as he knows best, as we worship him by speech and life, as we acknowledge his lordship over the world in which we live and over our individual lives.

To know what God intends us to do, we first must get to know God himself, for his will for our lives is closely related to his character. As John Calvin wrote, “It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has seriously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look at himself” (Institutes I, i.2). And the more we get to know God, the further along we will be toward carrying out his will.

Well, how do we get to know God? The answer is found in the Bible, the written Word of God, for it is here that God has chosen to reveal himself. In the Bible we read the story of God’s self-disclosure of himself to the ancient Israelites and, finally, in the person and work of his Son (Heb. 1:1, 2). In the narrative of the story of redemption we are able to catch glimpses of what he is like by seeing how he deals with his people and by looking into the face of Jesus Christ. And through the words of his inspired prophets and apostles we receive his commands, which become torches lighting the pathways of our lives (Ps. 119:105).

“… and to enjoy him for ever.” The second part of the Westminster answer has been undeservedly neglected. As a result, glorifying God has been approached as a burden rather than a delight. If man “surrenders” his will to the will of God, some seem to imply, God will ask him to do the very thing he least wants to do.

Nothing could be further from the truth! God’s will for man is intended for his blessing and benefit. The person who seeks to do his will finds fullness of life. The purpose of the creation of man has always been that he might walk with God “in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). The purpose of Jesus’ coming into the world was “that men may have life, and may have it in all its fulness” (John 10:10, NEB). Paul speaks of the will of God as that which is “good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2), not as something odious. The psalmists celebrate the blessedness of walking in the law of the Lord, the sheer pleasure to be found in a life of obedience to God (Ps. 1; 19:7–10; 73:25–28; 119; etc.) I have often observed that the person who has committed his life to doing God’s will finds himself doing exactly what he most enjoys. God is no harsh and capricious taskmaster. He is a loving Father who desires the very best for his children.

In the matter of doing God’s will and seeking his glory, we tend to think in strictly religious terms. The will of God is that we go to church, pray, read the Bible, witness, preach, offer ourselves for missionary service, and the like. But these activities represent only a small portion of our lives, and they by no means exhaust God’s will for us. The Lord did not place us on the surface of this globe primarily to be religious. Our obligation to do his will is not fulfilled just by what we do on Sundays and during devotional times. Doing the will of God is an all-day, every-day occupation.

The will of God and the glory of God have to do with the whole of human life. In First Corinthians 10:31 Paul writes, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” And in the model prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, the mundane concern for “daily bread” is included. In the biblical perspective, the whole of life is sacred; God is the lord of the totality of the creation and of every aspect of human existence.

At a theoretical level, God’s will for man begins with what Reformed theologians call “the cultural mandate” given by the Creator to man as his “image” in the world. Whatever else may be included in the idea of the imago Dei in the first chapter of Genesis (vv. 26 and 27), it means that man has been given the responsibility of representing the Creator in his creation, of serving as a co-laborer with God in the task of caring for the world. “God set man in the world as a sign of his own authority, in order that man should uphold his—God’s—claims as Lord” (G. von Rad, Old Testament Theology). As the image of God, the first man was commanded to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth” (Gen. 1:28, Jerusalem Bible). The entire creation is given to him and to his descendents (Gen. 1:29, 30). Man is given the responsibility of cultivating the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15) and naming the animals (2:19, 20), and this signifies his stewardship and dominion over creation as God’s representative.

Thus Genesis 1–3 underlines the call of man to culture. In fact, our word “culture” comes from the Latin colers, meaning to cultivate, till (the ground), and is closely linked to the command of Genesis 2:15. In its root meaning it is much broader than “high culture” (art, music, literature, sculpture, and the like) and includes the entire human enterprise of conquering the earth and its resources in the attempt to bring them into the service of man for the glory of God. As T. S. Eliot said, “culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living” (Notes Toward the Definition of Culture). God has given man a cultural mandate that includes the whole range of human endeavors—from agriculture to theoretical science, from the beautification of a garden to the creation of fine art, from the establishment of families to the development of nations. In responding to this command of God—in seeking to unearth earth’s treasures for the benefit of mankind, to imitate the great Architect and Artist of the universe, and, in the words of Kepler, to “think God’s thoughts after him”—man fulfills the creative purpose of God. Man becomes a co-worker with God in bringing the creation to its proper fulfillment.

In more everyday terms, this means that God is concerned as much with a person’s work as with his worship, though the two are closely linked. Observe in the Genesis narrative the focus of the Creator’s commands upon man’s vocation as a worker. In this the dignity of work is affirmed. As Carl F. H. Henry points out, “the Bible nowhere depicts human labor as a result of the Fall. According to the creation account, the Creator assigned work to man even before sin entered [the world]. Adam was given a specific task that involved a work relationship both to God and to the world …” (Aspects of Christian Social Ethics). For the man or woman who recognizes this basic biblical perspective, work can never degenerate to meaningless drudgery but will always be permeated by a sense of the divine purpose. In one’s daily work, even if it seems insignificant, one is involved in the service of God and man, seeking to bring glory to God. The high dignity of work is highlighted further by the example of God himself, whose “works” of creation, redemption, and preservation of the world are manifest to the believer, and by the example of his Son, a carpenter from Nazareth.

The will of God for man, then, is not fundamentally some lofty, other-worldly vocation, involving a withdrawal from the world, but rather the service of God and man in the world. Man is called simply to be man, to live out his humanity, to fulfill the mandate given to the first man in the Garden of Eden. The purpose of God is that man be the image of God in the world, exercising the stewardship he has been given over the created order. Man is called to present the earthly back to the Creator as an offering well pleasing to him (Gen. 4:1–7) and to glorify God in his body (Rom. 12:1, 2). This involves a call away from selfishness to a preoccupation with the Creator-God, the call to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength (Deut. 6:4, 5; Mark 12:29, 30; Matt. 22:37; Luke 10:27), and in this way to love, appreciate, enjoy, and care for all that he has made.

Implied in the concept of man as the image of God is the call for man to be God-like in his attitudes, to represent God in the world by acting out his character and by demonstrating his concerns. The “dominion” that man is to exercise in relation to the creation is no arbitrary subjugation that might lead to a thoughtless abuse of the world and its resources; rather, it will manifest itself by showing the same care for the created order that God himself, who made the world and pronounced it good, shows toward it. Man has the awesome responsibility not only of managing the world in a manner that pleases the Creator but also of refusing to abuse it. As God’s steward, man must care for the world and protect it.

Man’s care for the world extends also to his fellow man, for man is not only viceregent in the world but also a part of the creation. Cain’s insolent question to the Almighty, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9), is answered by the rest of the Bible by a resounding, “yes!” Man is charged with the responsibility not only of loving God but of loving his neighbor (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8). This fundamental concern is found at the heart of the Old Testament and the New—in the call of Israel to be a holy people as Yahweh their God is holy, in the concern for social welfare in the legislation contained in the Law of Moses, in the message of judgment proclaimed by the prophets to those who ignore both personal and societal standards of justice, and in the teaching and example of Christ and his apostles.

“And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward” (Matt. 10:42). “And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.… Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:31, 35, 36). “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me.… Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:34–36, 40). And there is also, of course, our Lord’s celebrated parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37).

How is this love for the neighbor to find expression? First, by obedience to the cultural mandate. The Christian’s concern for culture is not a selfish concern, not some form of elitism, but a way of showing love for the neighbor; it is a concern for the care of the garden, to insure that life continues to be worth living.

Second, love for the neighbor finds expression in the individual Christian’s involvement in the task of relieving human suffering and bringing about justice. The Christian must always be committed to the establishment of God’s standard of righteousness in the world. The kingdom of God begins with the Christian Church, the new humanity being created by Christ; but this is only the beginning, not the end, of God’s rule on earth.

Third, love for the neighbor will find expression in evangelization, in the worldwide mission of the Church. In the final analysis one can do no greater service for a neighbor than to offer him the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. If God’s will is to be done in intellectual, social, aesthetic, and political life, there must be a large task force of regenerate men and women to permeate every stratum of society, pledged to reclaim the whole world in the name of their Lord and Saviour. Evangelism is not the be-all and end-all of the human task, but it is certainly at the heart of the Christian calling.

But who is sufficient for these things? When we consider man’s high calling as God’s representative in the world and compare this with the history of human endeavor, we are faced with the problem of man’s abysmal failure to live up to the standard of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23). Certainly, the results have not been all bad, as witness mankind’s great achievements in art, science, technology, and even occasionally in the social and political spheres. But we are unable to bypass such gaping failures as the frequent destruction of the natural order, the enslavement of man by man, and the intellectual devastation wrought by autonomous man.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrestled with this problem. He quotes the psalmist’s beautiful meditation on the narrative of Genesis 1: “What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou carest for him? Thou didst make him for a little while lower than the angels, thou has crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet” (Ps. 8:4–6). This calls forth the reflection, “Now in putting everything in subjection to man, [God] left nothing outside his control. As it is, we do not see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus …” (Heb. 2:6–9).

By looking at Jesus Christ we begin to understand something of what man was meant to be—living in unbroken communion with God (Matt. 11:27; John 10:28, 30), radiating the glory of God in all its fullness (Heb. 1:3), incarnating the will of God without any limitation whatsoever (John 8:29). This Man, the last Adam (Rom. 5:9–21; 1 Cor. 15:21, 22, 45–49), became the key of all that was originally intended for the first Adam. God’s eternal Son became a truly human person, a real man—indeed, the first truly perfect man, the ultimate Image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; compare John 14:9). And in Christ we see God himself taking on the true image of man.

In the final chapter of God’s divine plan, man achieves his chief end in Jesus: God is glorified, and man receives the promise of entering into the eternal enjoyment of God. In Jesus, God’s perfect man, we shall one day see all things completely under the dominion of man (1 Cor. 15:24–28). In the God-Man, the purpose of God in the creation of man is fulfilled and the Creator, “from whom and through whom and to whom are all things” (Rom. 11:36), is fully honored.

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him’ ” (Gen. 2:18, NASB). So God fashioned a woman and brought her to the man and they became one flesh. Jesus drew the obvious conclusion: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt. 19:6, NASB). God’s ideal for the human race was firmly established at the outset: one man and one woman together for life. Marriage is the usual pattern to follow. It is God’s means for perpetuating the human race and for bringing children to maturity. And permanency in marriage was God’s intention.

While marriage is the usual pattern, however, it is not the only acceptable pattern. Jesus spoke of those who have been given the gift of celibacy (Matt. 19:10–12). Paul encouraged some to remain single in order to give themselves more completely to the things of Christ (1 Cor. 7:8, 26, 32–35). And Jesus and Paul were both single. Singleness is a normal way of life that can be satisfying and fulfilling. In the last census (1970) there were 22 million Americans over eighteen who had never married.

While permanency in marriage is God’s will and we should never stop working toward that goal, human beings are sinful and fall short of God’s standard in every area. Marriage is, obviously, one of these areas; divorces now occur at the rate of about a million a year. Society’s permissive attitude toward divorce is affecting the evangelical Christian community as well, and there are divorced persons in our churches. We may have differing opinions about the scriptural view of divorce and remarriage, but one thing is certain: God has not turned his back on the casualties of a broken marriage. He still loves them and seeks to minister to their needs.

If we add the widowed to our list of those never married and those formerly married, we find that a sizable segment of the population is single—43 million in the United States at the last count, or one out of three adults. The percentage may be nearly that high in many of our churches. Are we not obligated to minister to single adults the way we do to children and families?

There are problems, admittedly. The Church is one of the world’s most family-related institutions, and it seems to have to contend with a persistent prejudice against singles. The unmarried become the objects of embarrassing matchmaking efforts. If they resist these efforts, they may be suspected of being immature, or maladjusted, or even homosexual. It seems difficult for most married people to accept the fact that some people may have willingly and prayerfully chosen to be single.

The prejudice against the formerly married is even greater. Strong feelings against divorce are often transferred to the divorced persons themselves. At the time in their lives when they most need the encouragement of other believers, they feel shunned. One whose mate dies usually has the support and sympathy of his other fellow Christians, but one who faces the equally traumatic death of marriage by divorce may be condemned and treated as an outcast. Married couples sometimes view the divorced person as a threat. Adult Sunday-school classes and social units may let the divorced person know in subtle ways that he is not welcome.

Some singles may have personal peculiarities. Some may not have married because of low self-esteem, fear of getting close to another person, or some other emotional problem. But certainly there are married people with similar problems or idiosyncrasies, and we do not let that keep us from ministering to them.

Some divorced persons may have exceptional traits also. They may be carrying a heavy load of guilt that adversely affects their relations with other people. They may not yet have acknowledged their share of responsibility for the failure of the marriage nor accepted God’s forgiveness. They may be harboring bitterness against their former mates or resentment against God for not making their marriages succeed. These negative attitudes do not contribute to the spiritual strength of the church. But there are husbands and wives living together with equally destructive attitudes, and we do not let that keep us from ministering to them.

A further problem in ministering to singles may be that the church does not have a staff person to lead the program. But many successful singles’ ministries are led by dedicated laypeople who have a deep concern for people and their needs. God will provide the leadership necessary for the work he wants to do.

When singles are asked about their problems, their first response is almost always the same: loneliness. Certainly a person can be lonely while married, but there is an intense feeling of aloneness that often engulfs the single. This is particularly true of divorced persons. Forsaken by their mates, perhaps alienated from their friends and rejected by their churches, they feel that they are all alone in the world and that nobody really understands how they feel. They may even feel rejected by God for failing in marriage. They need Christian friends who will be there, listen to them, assure them that their feelings are normal, encourage them with hope for the future. Friends who will let God care through them can help to fill the void in the divorced person’s life and guide him or her back into a close relationship with the Lord. We need to teach the people in our churches to be that kind of friend.

A second problem that singles often mention is their lack of a sense of self-worth. Those who wanted to marry but didn’t may think they have been passed over because they are not worth having. The formerly married may feel useless and discarded, as if nobody will ever want them again. Their sense of failure and guilt over the broken marriage further lowers their self-esteem. Some withdraw in self-pity. Others compensate by hyperactivity and heavy dating; that often compounds their problems by getting them involved with the wrong people or leading them to marry unwisely on the rebound. Acceptance by Christians and loving biblical counsel can help them accept God’s forgiveness and accept themselves and their new situation in life. Giving them opportunities for service in the church can help to make them feel worthwhile and useful again. Some singles complain that their churches let them type the bulletins, care for the nursery, and cut the grass but will not let them relate to people. Yet divorced persons who have grown spiritually through their trial may be those who are best able to help others in similar circumstances.

A third problem is a lack of direction in life. Those who hope to marry may see their single state as temporary and put off making major decisions. They may need guidance in facing the possibility that God wants them to remain single and in seeking his direction for the future. The formerly married find themselves in a sea of uncertainty. They may need counsel on such matters as vocation, managing money, relations with their former mates, dating standards, coping with sexual desires and temptations, and remarriage. Studies have shown that divorced people who were in neurotic marriages nearly always remarry into the same type of neurotic relationship (Christian Medical Society Journal, Winter, 1976, p. 4). And the U.S. Census Bureau verifies that second marriages have less of a chance of succeeding than first marriages (59 per cent of second marriages and 37 per cent of first marriages fail).

A fourth major problem concerns the children of the divorced. Single parents may grow to resent having no one with whom to share the responsibilities of child-rearing, no one to relieve them of parental chores when they are tired. The church can provide counsel to help single parents with the difficult task of raising children alone. We can encourage two-parent families to invite one-parent families into their homes and involve them in family activities. The children need to see what complete family units are like—the struggles and tensions as well as the pleasures. They need to see good models of the parent they lack in order to develop healthy views of love, marriage, and family. We can also provide more social events involving both one-parent and two-parent families. We can encourage two-parent families to take care of the single parent’s children on occasion so that he or she can get away to a helpful meeting or just get a break from the constant pressures of running a household alone. If our churches are caring communities, as God wants them to be, we will be serving one another in love.

Groups designed especially for the singles in the church can help to meet their needs, though such groups should not replace the involvement of singles with the broader church family. The existence of a singles’ group tells them that the church cares about them. Such a group exposes them to persons who are willing to listen without condemnation as they share their feelings and frustrations. It offers hope by assuring them that others have been through the same experiences and are finding fulfillment in life. It offers practical help in dealing with problems by putting them in touch with people who have handled similar problems successfully. It encourages them to accept their station in life and get on with the business of living.

Walking through the door into a singles’ group for the first time, especially after a divorce, may be a hard thing to do. Some may view it as an admission of failure. Others see it as an announcement of availability, a way of saying “I am looking for a mate.” Still others feel that their situation is unique, that other singles are different and they do not want to be identified with them.

But proper goals and prayerful planning can help remove the stigma. Here are some suggestions. First, encourage members of the group to kindle a friendly spirit that reaches out to other singles. People need people, and close friendships can be a substitute for the companionship of marriage. Friends can be a person’s greatest asset in the days that follow the loss of a mate. Members of a singles’ group should cultivate a caring spirit and communicate it to persons outside the group. They shouldn’t simply wait for those in need to come to them. Friendly, outgoing singles who care about others will help to erase some of the misconceptions about singles’ groups.

Second, avoid any emphasis on matchmaking or dating. Some will inevitably pair off and “graduate” from the group. But that is not its purpose. Singles need to know that they can converse with one another, share their feelings, and cultivate friendships apart from the pressures and game-playing that romance and dating often entail. Foster a Christian brother-sister atmosphere in which men and women can confide in one another without feeling any pressure to date. If it becomes obvious that a social parasite has joined the group, one whose sole interest is to use the group as a source of dates, deal with him or her firmly and decisively.

Third, be sure some activities of the singles’ group involve the children of singles as well. Children may resent the time their parent gives to the group unless they themselves are benefiting from it. Plan social events that include the children. Encourage the singles with children to help one another. For example, one single man invited the two sons of a single woman to accompany his son and him to a ball game. By doing this he helped to provide a much-needed father image for those boys without the threat they might feel if he came into their home.

Fourth, provide continuity of leadership and supervision, whether from mature singles within the group or from a loving Christian couple with a burden for singles who will work with them rather than tell them what to do. There is often a heavy turnover in attendance at singles’ meetings. Somebody has to be there all the time, available to listen to the newcomer pour out his bitter story, to introduce him to the people who will be of greatest help to him, to encourage and support those with unusual needs. God has used faithful and unselfish leaders like this to mend and redirect countless lives.

Finally, be prepared to minister to persons in various states of spiritual growth and with a wide variety of spiritual needs. When needy people find a place where they feel welcomed by others who care about them and have help to offer, they will come. Make the ministry of God’s Word central in every regular meeting, for the Word has something powerful to say to every person, no matter what his or her spiritual condition. The Word, faithfully applied in the wisdom of the Spirit, can meet needs and change lives. Its message is the greatest help we can offer.

You can’t run a church like a business!” Sometimes we hear it from a pastor, sometimes from a layman. But “running the church like a business” is a different concept from managing the church like an organization. And things are changing.

After years of apathy, if not outright hostility, the concept of “management” in the Church is attracting interest among both pastors and the executives of Christian organizations. Ministers are flocking to management and leadership courses. They are reading books on “Christian leadership.” After a recent swing around the country, a seminary dean reported that the question most often asked by pastors was, “Where can I find a good administrator for our church?” An issue of a seminary journal that was devoted entirely to management in the Church was so well received that it is now in its third reprint. Seminary professors in both Christian education and pastoral theology continue to search for better materials on management and administration. Many large churches are starting their own how-to-do-it courses (most of which appear to be this-is-how-we-did-it). Newsletters about leadership are finding acceptance in all areas of Christian organizational life. And there is now a management association for Christian organizations (Christian Resource Associates).

What’s happening? Why the change? Is this just the Church’s traditional lag behind the culture? Perhaps More likely, yesterday’s system, whatever it was, is no longer working satisfactorily.

In our increasingly fluid and dynamic society, the needs of people are changing rapidly and in many different directions. It follows that the organizational response to such needs must also change. “But we’ve always done it that way” is just not satisfactory. Rapid change demands a flexible, adaptable organization. Organizations are really structures of relationships between people. An organizational structure must be tailored to the particular situation, and it must be able to change as the need changes. In church after church and Christian organization after Christian organization, the people who get things done are those who tailor the organization to meet the need.

Thinking along the lines of “fluid organization” has not come easy in the church. Christians, and particularly evangelicals, are used to stating their beliefs in propositional terms; the truths they believe are unchanging. There is a natural tendency to think of organizational structures and the functions within those structures as being unchanging also. “Leaders” are considered necessary, but they are pictured as having various “gifts” and “styles” of leadership. Little thought is given to the acts of leadership. The result has been a continual and often futile search for the appropriate organizational structure.

To many, “management” sounds manipulative. It seems to imply pushing people around, to involve rigid planning and controls and a predetermined future. It is all right to have a “business” administrator. But to ask the pastor to picture himself as the manager of his organization seems to many to be an inappropriate, worldly concept. This is the result, of course, of the spiritual-secular dichotomy with which the Church has wrestled all its life. Things and means and methods are viewed as inherently sinful when in fact it is only people who are sinful.

And we have a problem with language also. Some worry about “interfering with the work of the Holy Spirit.” They imagine that any statement about tomorrow is an attempt to dictate to the Lord. They misread James 4:13–15. Rather than seeing James’s statements about the future (“You do not know about tomorrow.… You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes”) as statements of faith, and therefore in the Lord’s hands, they see them as an admonition against making any statements about the future.

Regardless of what we think of the term “management,” someone has to manage. Otherwise an organization cannot survive. One definition of management is “getting things done (reaching goals) through other people.” The late President Eisenhower defined it as “the ability to get people to do what you want because they want to do it.” When you think about it that way, there’s a lot of management going on in the Church—under such headings as recruiting, motivating, training, and supporting, which are acceptable terms.

Those who dispute the need for management in the Church might point to the many large, thriving churches that seem to have gotten along very well without having a leader who has studied management. Aren’t these large and growing churches proof of the power of the Holy Spirit to get things done without “man’s” help?

But the size of the average U.S. congregation is between 150 and 200. Furthermore, a close look at most of these “super-churches” will reveal that one or more of three important ingredients has been present: (1) There was a vacuum in the community, a large felt need into which the church could move very rapidly. (2) There was a strong leader with a clear vision (goals and plans!) of what needed to be done. (3) There was an outstandingly good job of management.

Someone else might ask, “What about people? Don’t the best laid plans have to be put aside when people are hurting?” Of course they do! It isn’t a question of people versus organization. It’s a question of how to help people most effectively.

A great deal of organizational development theory centers in the understanding that shared purposes and goals have more power to motivate people than any other single force. Good managers are people who create an enabling environment, an environment in which people can do things that support their common goals. Management is concerned with setting goals, making plans necessary to reach the goals, organizing people to carry out the plans, getting programs going, and continually evaluating progress and performance in relation to the agreed upon goals. All these are people actions.

Most of the practice of management has occurred in the business world. As Peter Drucker, an outstanding management theorist, points out, one of the reasons we equate “management” and “business” is that the business world is where we have had to make organizations perform. Now not-for-profit and service organizations are multiplying, and what has been learned in business is only a start. It seems to me that if we ever do learn how to manage churches effectively we will have much to teach secular organizations.

If you are a pastor struggling to manage your church and wondering why it seems so hard, take heart! It is hard. The local church is probably the most complex and highly developed organization on the face of the earth. Why? Well, a business organization is fairly straightforward. It knows specifically what its goal is: to make a profit within a given market. The not-for-profit organization has a somewhat more difficult task, for whether it attains its goals depends not only on whether it breaks even financially but on whether it has met a particular need. The volunteer organization, such as the Red Cross, has a still more difficult task. Its “market” is entirely people’s felt needs, and its motivation is entirely that of finding people who want to be involved in meeting those needs. But the local church is faced with the gigantic task of not only using volunteers and motivating them toward a common cause but at the same time nurturing and caring for all its members. And the only qualification for membership in this organization is that one has allegiance to its Leader; therefore the Church must accept all kinds of walking wounded. The leaders of such an organization are faced with a very difficult management task.

A skilled outsider can be very effective in helping a local church redefine its purposes and goals and organize to achieve them. Some organizations and individuals are now performing this kind of consulting ministry. Sometimes they are called “facilitators,” other times “enablers.” Most of these consultants are trained in the behavioral sciences.

A large California church that was faced with a great deal of internal tension on how to handle its future growth brought in one of these church management consultants. He led the various staffs and committees of the church through a series of self-discovery discussions. Common goals were discovered and adopted. This is an example of how a management consultant can help.

Management training seminars for pastors are proving to be effective. Some are conducted by management specialists within denominations and some by Olan Hendrix, Campus Crusade, and World Vision. They appear to have had a lasting effect on many of the hundreds of pastors and Christian leaders who have come to them. A professor of management systems who did a twelve-month followup of pastors who had attended World Vision’s “Managing Your Time” seminars found that approximately half were applying principles they had learned at the seminar a year before. As management seminars go, this is a pretty high percentage. One pastor—and his letter is typical of hundreds—wrote, “Since I’ve started setting some goals for myself, my family, and my congregation, I’ve discovered a whole new dimension to my ministry. I feel much more at peace with myself and my ministry. We’re moving! I wish I had had a management seminar like this twenty years ago!”

A number of seminaries are recognizing that management is a needed ingredient of the pastor’s training. Bethel and Fuller have pioneered in this area. One can forecast a growing recognition at the seminary level that “administration” must give way to broader concepts of management that include communications skills, group dynamics, organizational theory, and specific skills in goal-setting and planning.

The concept of “life management” seems to be catching on in both secular and Christian circles. There are more and more seminars on developing strategies for living, setting up individual purposes and goals, establishing priorities within marriage. More and more books written within a Christian context are based on the principle of defining a need (i.e., to reach unchurched people, or do a better job in Christian education), setting goals for meeting it, and then letting the organization and the resources flow into whatever shape is needed to reach those goals. This type of need-oriented thinking is bound to affect the way we think about management.

Perhaps management will find its place in the church under a different name. “Organizational development” is a growing field dealing with how organizations can bring about planned change and better meet the needs they are facing. Courses in organizational development are being offered in many secular schools and also in some seminaries.

As I suggested at the start of this article, retraining of laypeople is needed. The businessman is likely to believe that “we don’t do things that way in the church.” True, we cannot run a church as we run a business; a church is a far more complex organization. However, many of the tools of business can be very useful in the church.

Probably no one has written more on the subject of introducing new ideas to the Church than Lyle Schaller. In his book The Change Agent he explains with a great deal of clarity the process of innovation and change within churches. Parish Planning brings us some of the nitty-gritty of what really goes on. In his latest book, The Decision-Makers, he sheds a great amount of light upon how decisions are made within the Church. Ted Engstrom has written extensively in this field also, as have I myself.

The only way to move an organization into the future is to place before it continually a new vision of what it ought to be and what it can be. Management theory calls such a vision “goals.” Large churches and small, pastors and laypeople alike, are discovering that new vision, new goals, have tremendous power to take their eyes off the mud of the present situation and lift them toward the sky of what God wants them to become.

Of Closets, Chains, And Christians

A mature Christian woman recently said, “It’s time for me to come out of the closet and admit that I’m a lesbian.”

I applaud her honesty and her desire to end pretense and hypocrisy, but I regret her hidden acceptance—for many years—of a condition that the Bible calls sin. And I am grieved that this person who has helped so many others find a variety of deliverances found no deliverance herself. But this is not unusual.

John Bunyan once said, “I preach deliverance to others, I tell them there is freedom, while I hear my own chains clang.” (Don’t ask me for the reference; I have lost it.) Whatever his chains, Bunyan did not rationalize them away.

Many people seem to be coming out of the closet these days. Not just a homosexual closet, but a lot of other kinds as well.

What’s a closet?

Webster’s New Collegiate (1976) says it’s “an apartment or small room for privacy; a monarch’s or official’s private chamber for counsel or devotions; a cabinet or recess for china, household utensils or clothing: a cupboard; a place of retreat or privacy.”

A closet is a place we go to be alone. It’s the storehouse of our personal artifacts.

Jesus said something about closets: “When you pray, enter into your closet” (Matthew 6:6).

Maybe we need to go into the closet today, rather than come out of it. The closet of communion—and struggle—with God, not the closet of frustrated self and fondled chains.

EUTYCHUS VIII

The Soul And Social Issues

Congratulations on your June 3 issue, in my view the best you have published in a while. David Kucharsky’s interview with Archbishop Fulton Sheen was fantastic. This insightful discussion of bottom-line theology served as the superstructure which provided continuity and strength to the entire magazine. This was most evident in Sheen’s discussion of the need for Christians to balance concern for the individual soul with a social concern.… You exemplified this attitude of balance between social and spiritual. Frazier’s excellent article on child abuse, the editorial support of President Carter’s human rights leadership, most of the news articles, and Edith Schaeffer’s article on food and consumption all reflected such a balance. The evangelical community needs desperately to be made more aware of and involved in social concerns and this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY made a great contribution to that effort.

STEVEN RAMSLAND

Princeton, N. J.

I want to thank you for the interview with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

WILLARD S. FENDERSON

Prineville Community Church

Prineville, Ore.

Your interview with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was of much value, yet discouraging at the same time. It was of value in that it gave insight into one of this generation’s great leaders. Great sensitivity, a love of learning, ability to articulate ideas, and a passionate concern for humanity were just a few of his qualities the article brought out. Many evangelical leaders would do well to learn of and acquire such characteristics.

Yet the article was also discouraging in that it gave such positive identification to a representative of the Roman Catholic Church. I do not mean to suggest that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should adopt the rabid anti-Catholic rhetoric that has been all too prevalent in many evangelical publications; you would soon lose my subscription if you did. I do feel, however, that with such an article you unfortunately honor not only the man but also the error he has sincerely, but mistakenly, defended. Historic evangelical Protestantism arose from the need to clear Christianity of the error Catholicism had become mired in. It is hoped CHRISTIANITY TODAY will remember this historical fact and will not, in its desire for Christian unity, negate the evangelical truths it was founded to defend.

JOHN S. HALE

Clemson, S. C.

Thank you so much for your cover and interview of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. I love that man! I sat at his feet on a retreat he led for Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy five years ago. I’ll never forget the experience. He’s a man of God.

HOWARD W. FRITZ

First United Presbyterian Church

Barrington, N. J.

The emphasis in your cover-article was misplaced, considering the stature of the man. I read it to mean “What Evangelicals Can Learn From a Catholic Archbishop.” Why an interrogative when there is no room for doubt?

KEVIN H. BROTTON

Chapel Hill Assembly of God

Vassar, Mich.

Science And Faith

I wish to express my appreciation for your inclusion of the interview with Professors Jack Haas and Richard Wright in your series of three articles on creation and evolution in the June 17 issue. These two Christian scientists, with indisputable scientific credentials and with unquestionable evangelical Christian commitment, present a moderate, intelligent, and well balanced response to the issues.

A comparison of their response with those of editor Tom Bethell and theologian Harold Lindsell emphasizes anew the importance of issues involving science and Christian faith being treated by individuals who are fully aware of the scientific and the biblical implications. The fact that details of the Darwinian formulation of the theory of evolution may be changed with time is simply a manifestation of the normal process of scientific description; the conclusion that the theory of evolution itself is therefore about to be forsaken is totally ungrounded. The option of theistic evolution is not one to be dealt with simplistically without a fundamental understanding of the ways previous authors have dealt with the interaction between scientific and biblical perspectives in this framework.

RICHARD H. BUBE

Stanford University

Stanford, Calif.

In his article on origins Harold Lindsell asks, “if the Bible’s teaching cannot be reconciled with science, do we then let science sit in judgment on the Bible, or do we let the Bible sit in judgment on science?” It should be noted, however, that neither alternative is acceptable; the Bible is in no more of a position to sit in judgment on science, than is science to sit in judgment on the Bible. Scientists have a variety of criteria for evaluating scientific theories, but whether or not a theory agrees with the Bible is not (and cannot) be such a criterion, any more than whether or not the theory agrees with the Bhagavad Gita, Das Kapital, or Alice in Wonderland.

This is by no means to suggest that these literary works are as authoritative as Scripture (or even authoritative at all), nor is it to imply that science is value-free. It is merely to emphasize that working scientists cannot be expected to abandon a scientific theory because it conflicts with certain beliefs or ideologies. However, a theory will be discarded if it is incompatible with the value system of the scientific community at large. But these decisions are not capricious; they are based on well defined (although at times unconsciously applied) procedures.

Therefore the difficulty which the theory of evolution presents to the Christian is not simply a result of wrongheaded thinking by theistic evolutionists and atheistic naturalists. Even if all the biologists in the world were special creationists, we would still be confronted with the problem of reconciling biblical revelation with the current scientific evidence. While it would be folly to ascribe infallibility to any scientific hypothesis, most scientists regard the scientific endeavor as a reliable method of learning about the physical world, and few practising biologists can afford to ignore the evidence for the theory of evolution.

Although I admire and share Dr. Lindsell’s commitment to the authority of Scripture, I feel that he makes no useful contribution to the discussion with his specious remark that accepting the literal biblical account creates no “problems for Christian scientists who accept the supernatural and regard miracles as part of the data of Scripture.” While it may pose no serious difficulty for armchair theologians who can afford to pass judgment on the exegetical competence and moral integrity of scientists, it is ironic that it is precisely those scientists who choose to take the Bible (and science) seriously who are confronted with the greatest dilemma.

CHARLES T. GRANT

Assistant Professor of Physics

Carleton College

Northfield, Minn.

I found the articles by Tom Bethell and Harold Lindsell more convincing than the replies of the two professors to Singer’s questions. Not only was it apparent that the professors had not read Bethell’s article but they seemed unacquainted with the literature which his research had uncovered.

As for that “old chestnut” of the second law of thermodynamics, Wright’s rejoinder, “As long as you have a continual input of energy from outside the system, things can indeed move from disorganization to organization,” is no answer. It is not the input of energy which fosters organization and improvement, but its management.

The necessity of management is really the fundamental “missing link” in the logic of Darwin.… Tom Bethell implied this powerfully. When scientists exclude God they almost invariably end up defying and personifying nature.

RICHARD S. TAYLOR

Church of the Nazarene

Kansas City, Mo.

Rejecting The Call

I must respectfully dissent from your apparent approval of the Chicago Call (News, June 3 and Others Say, June 17). Perhaps those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat its errors; but the call does not merely warn against such ignorance, rather it would have us interpret Scripture “with respect for the historic understanding of the church.” The purpose of interpretation is to ascertain what meaning an author intended to convey by the particular words he employed. Surely the intentions of the biblical authors are not in the least influenced by the writings of Athanasius the Great, Augustine, Calvin, or the edicts of any post-apostolic council. But, then, since church tradition does not rightly serve as an interpretive tool, what role does it play in the Chicago Call’s scheme of things? The answer is that tradition is erroneously elevated to the status of being a source of revealed truth. Such folly will only serve the cause of Scriptural disobedience under the guise of “interpretation with respect for tradition,” and will sow the seeds of a new battle for the Bible some decades hence. Let us not be ignorant of the much bad fruit borne by the Roman Catholic doctrine that sacred tradition together with sacred Scripture make up the Word of God. I do not mean to deprecate all church tradition; yet we must be keenly aware that tradition without truth is but time honored error.

EDWARD Y. CROSSMORE

Ithaca, N. Y.

The call made points which are good and essential if biblical Christianity is to survive. I wonder, though, why there was not a more representative body which drafted the call. Why, for example, were there but four women in the group? Why no one from the ranks of the working people? Pastors, seminary professors, publishers and students are all well and good, but hardly what one might call representative of Christendom. How many blacks, American Indians or Latinos were consulted? A group so unrepresentative of the church can be unrealistic if they are not careful.

JAMES HUFFMAN

Chicago, Ill.

Since the last issue of C.T. we have moved our editorial offices to Carol Stream, Illinois. Soon after that my wife and I went to Taiwan for some lecturing. It is good to be home. I look forward to a great fall and winter; we have some exciting articles coming up for our readers.

Since 1960 I have been a regular contributor to a Church of England newspaper. “Say whatever you like,” said the editor cheerfully at the outset. I did. I corrected English misconceptions about Scotland, got in some good Calvinist theology, and clobbered the bishops—“Attaboy!” said my wily editor. The maddening thing was that when I met them (bishops and lesser mortals), they would thank me with genuine warmth and say how nice it was to see themselves as others saw them. One prominent clergyman, now elevated to an ancient see, called to me once through a jostling crowd at London Airport, “Hello, Jim, I pray for you every Tuesday.” This left me the target of envious eyes but feeling vaguely threatened.

Over those years I saw the evangelical movement in the Church of England expand in numbers and influence as the two other identifiable parties declined. Anglo-Catholics, dominant between the wars, seemingly found difficulty in adjusting to a changing world. Liberal churchmen, on the other hand, found it fatally easy, and brought to mind a cryptic comment of John Knox about churchmen of his own day: “As they sought the world, it fled them not.”

It was the evangelicals, children of the Reformation and the eighteenth-century Revival, who grasped the need for reevaluation. In a previous age they had been active not only in missions but also in such areas as the reform of factory laws and the abolition of slavery. Thereafter, however, they became more inward-looking, stressing evangelism and personal holiness. Their churches were (some still are) described as “refuges of comfort and safety rather than communities which equip us for the challenge and insecurity of mission in the contemporary world.”

Then came the National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Keele in 1967, which evangelicals regard as a milestone. They admitted the deficiencies of the old ways, saw in traditional evangelism something that was “less than biblical,” lifted eyes to a wider world than their fathers knew, and acknowledged the unwisdom of disinheriting Christians who thought differently.

They began to take an interest in politics, the arts, and social and economic questions as proper concerns for redeemed man. Still tending individual casualties, they began also to probe the problem of brigandage on the Jerusalem road. Formerly dismissed as otherworldly, they now sought to face the challenge of injustice in society. The church, as one evangelical document has it, was to be regarded as “no longer a pastoral institution in a largely Christian country, but rather a minority in a missionary situation.”

To assess the strength of Anglican evangelicalism is difficult. In 1967, the forty-three-strong House of Bishops included three or four evangelicals, but none of these was notably “conservative,” with the possible exception of Archbishop Coggan. In 1977 the picture is different. Both archbishops (Canterbury and York) are regarded as evangelicals, and there are probably enough others to field an eleven-man cricket team—led naturally by Bishop David Sheppard of Liverpool, who used to captain England in that sport. A number of young archdeacons are on the way up; well-filled evangelical colleges now train almost half the church’s ordinands; and evangelical scholarship, once rejected as obscurantist, is now widely respected. Such vigor is the more promising when one considers that only 4.3 per cent of England’s population (fewer than two million souls) are currently registered on the national church’s parish electoral rolls.

Last April the second National Evangelical Anglican Congress met at Nottingham University—the place where in 1964 the British churches had imaginatively but unrealistically covenanted for union by 1980. No such striking gesture came from the NEAC’s two thousand participants (one-third of them clergy), but a 20,000-word document reflects current thinking among Anglican evangelicals. [Elsewhere in this issue John Stott discusses and quotes extensively from this statement; see page 30.—ED.]

The statement, inter alia, recommends tithing, gives cautious approval of the charismatic movement, upholds the episcopal system (while saying it is nonessential for the church’s existence), apparently approves women ministers but not women bishops, and rejects indiscriminate baptism, abortion on demand, and disestablishment.

“We evangelicals are Bible people,” said congress chairman John Stott; “the supremacy of Scripture is the hallmark of an evangelical.” It is also, he continued, the position of authentic Anglicanism; tradition and reason are subordinate to the elucidation of Scripture. Nevertheless the congress acknowledged that “our handling of inspired and authoritative Scripture has often been clumsy and our interpretation of it shoddy, and we resolve to seek a more disciplined understanding of God’s holy Word.”

In all these declarations there was no belligerence but a proper humility. Differences among themselves and with fellow Anglicans of other traditions were discussed in a spirit of brotherly openness. This was apparent even when the draft statement on “The Power of the Media” was scrapped and rewritten when it provoked a revolt of major dimensions.

The congress, at which both archbishops spoke, was evidently intended to be a domestic Anglican occasion. As such there was something depressingly insular about it. Other English churches fell into two categories; Roman Catholicism and “the Free Churches.” The former rated a whole section of the congress statement, the latter were handled courteously in a few lines. One might have hoped for more on cooperation with fellow evangelicals, and more on world issues.

The other national church in these islands, the Church of Scotland, was never mentioned, nor were observers from the Kirk invited to Nottingham. Anglican evangelicals may indeed have a wider vision than before, but directed northward it stops at the Tweed. They are not hostile to us Presbyterians who live across the border; they just have nothing to say to us. Naturally the fact that I’ve been lecturing them for seventeen years has nothing to do with it.

Following the overwhelming rejection last month of a gay-rights ordinance by Dade County (Miami) voters, groups on both sides of the controversy began laying plans for similar battles in other cities.

“We’re going to set up in Washington next to fight gay proposals before Congress,” declared Robert Brake, co-founder with singer Anita Bryant of Save Our Children (SOC), the group that led the opposition to the ordinance in Miami. “We’ll advise and help any anti-gay group in the country that invites us in,” he said. He said there were already inquiries from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and San Antonio.

“We got beaten badly in the battle here, but the war is just beginning,” commented John W. Campbell, chairman of Coalition for Human Rights, a Miami homosexual group. “We’re coming out of Miami with national unity and momentum,” he added.

The vote in Miami was impressive: 202,319 for repeal and 89,562 against. The ordinance, which guaranteed equal-employment and other rights to homosexuals, was passed in January by the Dade County Commission in a 5 to 3 vote. The people, said Miss Bryant, “have voted to repeal an obnoxious assault on our moral values.” Other prominent names figured in the repeal crusade (among them: Florida governor Reuben Askew and Chicago Cubs coach Alvin Dark, both evangelical Christians), but Miss Bryant was considered the leader. In a series of lectures and concerts, she helped raise almost $200,000 for SOC’s campaign.

Pastor William Chapman of Northwest Baptist Church, where Miss Bryant and her family attend, introduced her at a press conference after the voting results were announced. She is the homosexual movement’s “greatest foe,” said Chapman, “but we simply know her as a Christian, as a mother, and as a person who says it’s time for America to stand up for what we have believed in for all of our history.”

Miss Bryant pledged that “with God’s continued help, we will prevail in our fight to repeal similar laws throughout the nation which attempt to legitimize a lifestyle that is both perverse and dangerous—dangerous to the sanctity of the family, to our children, to our freedom of religion and freedom of choice, and to our survival as one nation under God.” She pledged also to “seek help and change for homosexuals themselves.”

Religious groups figured centrally in the repeal efforts. The local Roman Catholic hierarchy issued a letter to area Catholics criticizing the ordinance. A coalition of twelve Spanish-speaking Catholic lay groups said the ordinance “does not in fact contribute to human or civil rights of homosexuals” but “would limit the freedom of parents to protect their children” from homosexual influences (the main debate in the campaign was over whether homosexuals should be allowed to teach in public schools). All seven members of the local regional unit of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, a Conservative Jewish body, objected to “allowing gays to occupy positions as teachers or clergymen, where they come in contact with impressionable children as role models.” They called for repeal of the ordinance and adoption of one that “will protect homosexuals from random discrimination, harassment, and criminalization, while upholding the centrality of the heterosexual family unit.” Many Protestant churches gave all-out support to repeal efforts.

There were some clergy voices of dissent, however. Executive G. William Sheek of the National Council of Churches told Dade County commissioners in a letter that Miss Bryant and others in SOC “certainly do not represent the total Christian community.” He noted that the NCC governing board in 1975 had passed a resolution upholding equal civil rights for everyone without discrimination as to affectional or sexual preference.

Rabbi Sanford Shapiro, a regional director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a Reform Jewish group, noted that his organization is on record affirming that “homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection of the law with all other citizens in [such areas as] employment and housing.”

The board of elders of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, a homosexually oriented denomination, charged that Miss Bryant’s campaign was “both un-Christian and un-American.”

In other developments:

• A defrocked Episcopal priest, Claudius Vermilye, 48, was sentenced by a Tennessee court to a prison term of from twenty-five to forty years after being found guilty of charges that he used in obscene films boys at a rehabilitative home he operated. On the stand, he denied charges that he had committed homosexual acts with the boys.

• Education officials in San Francisco announced plans to introduce a new public school curriculum to “sensitize” students to accept—or at least tolerate—homosexual life-styles as just another way of living. Parents will be permitted to have their children excused from the classes. The proposal has been open for debate at school-board meetings for two years, but no one has stepped forward to oppose it, according to a spokesperson. Signs of opposition are becoming evident, however, and a major clash is expected when the word gets around.

• Gay-rights leaders asked the Federal Communications Commission to require broadcasters to give air time to the gay point of view when they air Anita Bryant’s anti-gay views. The gay activists complained that KVOF-TV in San Francisco, owned by Faith Center in Glendale, California, gave six hours on three programs to Miss Bryant and her husband Bob Green of SOC, but that it refused to grant time to gays.

• The National Gay Task Force, a coalition of homosexual organizations, launched a $1 million fund-raising drive in a campaign to educate Americans about the alleged plight of the nation’s “millions” of homosexuals.

• A California state senate committee voted to ban state recognition of gay marriages; the legislature was expected to approve the bill, which stipulates that marriage is a civil contract entered into by a man and a woman.

Polling The Preachers

Any ecclesiastical trend-watchers who fear that the United Church of Christ is turning conservative can take comfort from a clergy survey issued last month on the eve of the UCC’s biennial synod.

A survey of 2,100 ministers in the UCC, the United Methodist Church (UMC), the United Presbyterian Church (UPC), and the Reformed Church in America (RCA) was conducted by the office of research, evaluation, and planning of the National Council of Churches. The responses of UCC clergy to the multiple-choice questions showed them the least conservative of the four denominational groups on nearly every subject.

Fewer than half (47.1 per cent) of the UCC participants in the poll thought “conversion of individuals to Jesus Christ” constitutes the way “a more Christian society will come.” In contrast, 65.9 per cent of the RCA ministers chose that answer. Of the Methodists responding, 57.9 per cent picked the “conversion” answer, while 48.1 per cent of the Presbyterians did.

Other options offered for achieving “a more Christian society” were: “Efforts of individual Christians for social betterment,” “cooperative efforts of socially minded persons and organizations in securing legislation to advance human welfare,” and “leadership of organized churches in advocating measures for social betterment.”

Chosen by 73.3 per cent of the UCC clergy as “the chief aim of missions” was: “release in both individuals and society the redemptive power of God disclosed in Jesus Christ so that all human life may be made whole.” That response was also given by 38.5 per cent of the RCA, 58.9 per cent of the UPC, and 61.5 per cent of the UMC respondents. Only 1.6 per cent of the UCC, 8.7 per cent of the UMC, 7 per cent of the UPC, and 17.1 per cent of the RCA clergy chose “save those who know not Christ and will be lost unless He is made known to them” as the main missions goal.

Asked about “Christianity’s primary way of relating to other faiths (including Judaism) and ideologies,” 53.9 per cent of the RCA ministers replied, “seek to convert their members.” To the same question, 51.9 per cent of the UCC respondents said, “accept them.” Another 14.4 per cent of the UCC clergy chose “incorporate their best parts.”

In the four-denomination sample, 39.9 per cent called evangelicals “a traditional emphasis,” 31.4 per cent saw them as “a needed corrective,” and 13.3 per cent said they are “a divisive force.” More Methodist (17.1 per cent) than UCC ministers (8.2) selected the “divisive force” answer.

More of the clergy (35.7 per cent) in the composite sample chose “communicating the implications of the Gospel” as the “role the church school performs” than chose “providing instruction in and about the Bible” (30.7 per cent).

Schism in Plains

After months of controversy, President Carter’s hometown congregation, Plains Baptist Church in Georgia, has officially split. Some fifty members left last month to form the Bottsford Baptist Mission, which will be supported in part by the Southern Baptist Convention home-missions board. A former pastor of Plains Baptist, Fred Collins, will serve as pastor of the new church. Meanwhile, Bruce Edwards, who resigned the Plains pastorate under pressure in February, accepted a call to become pastor of the Makakilo Baptist Church in Honolulu.

Edwards and Carter had both worked to overturn a ten-year-old resolution barring blacks from membership in the church. After that was done last November, feuding factions (race wasn’t a surface issue) kept the pot boiling. At a congregational business meeting in February, allegedly stacked with a number of inactive members, the anti-Edwards faction succeeded in obtaining his resignation (see March 18 issue, page 51).

Like Edwards, Collins served the Plains church for only a short time (both he and Edwards were criticized for making too few visits in homes, and Collins reportedly created an uproar when he switched the order of service on Sunday mornings to have announcements at the beginning rather than in the middle).

Leaders of the new church were strong backers of Edwards, and they include Hugh Carter, the President’s cousin. Miss Lillian, the President’s mother, has attended Plains Baptist for more than fifty years, but she told reporters she doesn’t want to be “in any split-up church.” She said she doesn’t want to attend “the old church” in its present condition but doesn’t want to join the new one yet, either. “I’ll have a long talk with Jimmy before I do anything,” she said.

The President expressed no opinion about which church he will attend if he visits Plains on a Sunday. “Tragic,” said he of the church split, according to a press spokesman. (He is now a member of First Baptist Church in Washington, where he occasionally teaches an adult class.)

Little Presbyterians: Drawing Closer

Although no mergers are in sight yet, the nation’s smaller and more conservative Presbyterian denominations showed signs at their 1977 assemblies of drawing closer to one another. One sign of the decreasing isolation is the decision of several to meet at the same time and place in 1978. Bodies aligned with the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC) have been invited to meet on the Grand Rapids campuses of Calvin College and Seminary. The latest to accept the bid last month was the 11,000-communicant Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The OPC also agreed to reopen the question of union with the 18,800-communicant Reformed Presbyterian Church-Evangelical Synod (RPCES) and possibly to vote on the matter in 1979.

The 62,000-communicant Presbyterian Church in America, youngest of the NAPARC bodies (see July 4, 1975, issue, page 62), had earlier voted to hold its 1978 assembly in Grand Rapids. The PCA and OPC are active partners in a Christian-education publishing venture.

The OPC assembly also approved establishment of fraternal relations with the 29,000-communicant Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, which has applied for NAPARC membership.

The RPCES, at its annual synod, took a preliminary step toward inviting the PCA to share in the ownership and control of its Covenant College on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Several PCA elders already serve on the college board, and the RPCES elected one PCA member to the board of Covenant Seminary, St. Louis.

The 5,400-communicant Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America took two steps at its spring synod that put it more in line with the other NAPARC members. It dropped its “closed communion” policy, leaving it to the discretion of local church elders whether to admit to the Lord’s table Christians from other bodies. The synod also dropped the requirement that all members must subscribe to the church’s full doctrinal standards. (In the other denominations, only officers are required to subscribe.)

The largest of the NAPARC members is the 280,000-member Christian Reformed Church. Its top governing body and those of the other four NAPARC members will meet simultaneously at Grand Rapids next year.

The Newest Saint

Pope Paul VI last month canonized the third American saint, the late Bishop John N. Neumann of Philadelphia (1811–1860). Neumann, born of a German-speaking family and educated in what is now Czechoslovakia, is the first member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States to receive his church’s highest honor (the other two were nuns, Mother Cabrini and Mother Elizabeth Seton). In several respects the honor is unusual, for his career as bishop was short. Less than eight years after his consecration in 1852 he fell dead of a stroke on a Philadelphia street at the age of 48.

Neumann came to America in 1836 to work among German-speaking immigrants. His life-style reflected the poverty of those among whom he worked throughout the East. Wherever he went, churches began to be constructed at an astonishing rate, and parochial schools soon followed. In his years as bishop of Philadelphia, the indefatigable Neumann established eighty new parishes and fifty new schools.

After beatifying him as “venerable” in 1921, the Vatican took up the slow task of checking out “miracles” attributed to his intervention. The occasion of his sainthood was celebrated by thousands of Catholics who visited St. Peter’s Church in downtown Philadelphia, where his body is displayed in a glass casket.

GLENN D. EVERETT

The Choice

As many of the faithful can attest, tides of spiritual renewal are flowing in the Roman Catholic Church, thanks largely to the modern-day emphasis on the Bible and the ten-year-old spread of the charismatic movement in Catholic ranks. This swirl of activity and thought has resulted in new kinds of problems for some parishes. For example, a Catholic priest in the San Francisco Bay area lost his pastorate and is now suspended from the duties of office for what he sees as his “fundamentalism” and “bringing the charismatic movement out of the basement” but what his superiors of the Oakland Diocese see as “parochial mismanagement.”

Father John Dollard, 58, has pastored St. Charles Borromeo in Livermore, a suburb southeast of Oakland, for the past twelve of his thirty-one years as a priest. For four years after the church’s founding he held services in area schools, and then a building was erected.

His problem, according to press accounts, began last June with letters sent to the diocese by some of his parishioners. Bishop Floyd Begin, 74, soon held a series of hearings at St. Michael’s church, also in Livermore. On July 19 the diocese charged Dollard with unorthodoxy and removed him from St. Charles. Through a technicality the order was rescinded, and he remained until September 20, when he received a letter from Bishop Begin citing him for “parochial mismanagement.” He was asked to resign and to appear for reassignment by November 11.

Then on November 15 the weekly diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice, announced without comment the appointment of priest James Keeley to St. Charles. On December 12 a local daily reported Dollard’s suspension from celebrating Mass, offering the sacraments, and preaching in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. The suspension, said the account, would continue until he came to the diocese for reassignment. Next it was reported that Dollard had started the Church of the Body of Christ in a Livermore school. Approximately eighty adults attend there each week. Most formerly attended St. Charles. A spokesperson describes it as “an independent Christian congregation.”

What will happen next is uncertain. Dollard says excommunication is a possibility but he doesn’t consider it very likely. He thinks that the next move is probably up to him. Nor does diocesan chancellor Brian Joyce think church officials will take any action. He says, though, “Father Dollard’s forming his own church may cause problems at this point. That’s not the usual way of doing things.”

During a telephone interview, Joyce also discussed the bishop’s letter and the causes for removal. He quoted the letter as saying Dollard was in “good standing” and was encouraged to report for a new assignment. “When Father Dollard didn’t respond to the letter. Bishop Begin telephoned him, but he wouldn’t come in to discuss this or any other matter,” said Joyce.

Joyce emphasized that the charismatic movement, Scripture, and theology were not mentioned in the letter as causes for removal. “I respect Father Dollard highly and feel he’s doing a lot of good in bringing people close to the Scriptures,” he commented. He added that the diocese doesn’t discourage the charismatic movement: there are more than fifty such prayer groups, and a vicar was appointed especially to help them. A number of priests are charismatic, including the one who temporarily served St. Charles in the fall, he pointed out, and St. Charles still has a charismatic prayer group of about fifty.

“Father Dollard’s perception of the problem may be in terms of fundamentalism and preaching the Bible,” said Joyce. “The bishop’s were of pastoral considerations, of attending to the parish. For one thing, Father Dollard’s financial policy had alienated many parishioners.”

Dollard, also contacted by phone, admitted to causing an uproar in 1970 when he told parishioners to contribute or else receive only minimal services from the church. “We had a building and people weren’t paying the bills,” he explained. (The priest made headlines for his ultimatum, and church membership plummeted from 800 to 250. Not long afterward, however, it returned to 500. By the time of his removal, he says, the church was financially sound.)

Dollard says he believes the trouble occurred because he brought the charismatic movement to the pulpit and because he preached the Word. “Ninety per cent of the people are traditional and don’t want to hear anything against tradition,” he charges. Even for many Catholic charismatics, he says, the tendency is to take the movement and paste it onto Catholic tradition. “God is blessing the movement, but someday people will have to make a choice—either the Word or tradition,” he predicts. “When I saw conflict between the two, I didn’t throw out the Word, I became silent on it,” he says. “In areas of conflict, I didn’t preach.”

What disturbed people most, he feels, was the “revival” in his parish last June when 250 people received the “baptism of salvation” and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as it is known in charismatic circles. “They weren’t used to hearing that the baptism of salvation is an act of faith, by accepting the redemptive act of Christ.”

Reaction to the charismatic issue itself can be found in two other diocesan sources. One is a committee report published in November, 1975. In its findings it states: “This is a Christ-oriented movement, deeply dedicated to the Holy Spirit.… For many people the Charismatic Movement has meant either a renewal of faith or a return to it. Others have been brought deeply into prayer and the reading of Sacred Scriptures.”

It warns, though, against a “tendency on the part of some toward fundamentalism, self-centeredness, categorizing nonmembers as non-Christians (or lesser Christians) and overemphasis on some of the gifts, such as tongues, healing, etc.”

Worth It All

Democrat H. Thomas Colo, a Roman Catholic member of the Massachusetts legislature, thinks two Catholic priests who serve as chaplains to the law-making body are overpaid for their services. He estimated that House chaplain George V. Kerr and Senate chaplain Christopher P. Griffin are paid $70 a minute for saying a prayer each day. Kerr, who has served in the appointed post since 1959, is paid $8,397 a year, and Griffin is paid $8,881. Griffin, a retired pastor, served as House chaplain from 1955 to 1959 and has been in the Senate since then. Kerr doubles as a parish pastor in Roxbury. Both are eligible for state pensions.

During a speech that lasted nearly two hours, legislator Colo said: “As a Catholic and as a Christian citizen, I am offended. What we ask of all people, no matter how high or exalted, is that their positions are held honestly.” But he failed to get enough votes to pass a bill he introduced aimed at determining whether the chaplains are classified as “regular state employees” and thus subject to a forty-hour work week.

Argued Republican opponent Sidney Q. Curtiss: “Their work is a matter not measured in minutes or hours. They are available at all times.”

The prayers—and pay—will go on.

The other source, The Catholic Voice, regularly announces healing services and special speakers (including Protestant Pentecostal David du Plessis). In its January 17 issue, however, it carried an article entitled “Bible and Church: Is There Conflict?” The author, priest Paul Schmidt, a regular contributor, acknowledges in it that “one of the most exciting signs of renewal in the Church today is interest in the Bible.” But he insists that the Church and its ministry precede the Bible in importance and time: “As an inspired record of early stages of that living witness [the Church], the Bible also acts as a guide to continued reliability for the Church. But the Bible belongs to the Church; the Church doesn’t belong to it.”

Bible study, he says, will give the reader a new appreciation of the Church, “for apart from the living Word [the Church], the written Word doesn’t really make sense.” His remarks seem to confirm Dollard’s contention that the believer must choose either tradition or the Bible, for which he has opted.

CARLA STEPHENS

Steeple Unnecessary

Whether a building looks like a church or not is unimportant. It is a church if it is being used for regular religious services. That, in effect, is what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled when it upheld the conviction of Joseph E. Gedra, a traditionalist priest who conducted masses in his home. He was fined $50 for violating the zoning laws of Fairfax County, Virginia, where an ordinance prohibits places of worship in residentially zoned areas without a special permit.

The justices let stand a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that he was rightfully convicted. He appealed the state decision on grounds that the ordinance referred to structures that had steeples and crosses or otherwise looked like churches. His home in Vienna, Virginia, looked like the others on the block, he said. Any state interference with what went on inside the house was a violation of his right of privacy and his freedom of religion, he argued in vain.

Gedra, formerly a priest in the diocese of Washington, began celebrating the unauthorized Latin rites in 1972 for Catholics who reject the liturgical changes ordered after Vatican Council II. In 1973 he requested but was denied a zoning variance to use his home as a church.

Celebrating Unity

The so-called international faith-and-order movement will be fifty years old next month, but the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical bodies have already celebrated the anniversary. The formal launching of the Christian-unity effort and the recent official recognition of its half-century of existence both took place in Lausanne, Switzerland.

While the locale was the same (some parts of both events took place in the city’s 700-year-old Gothic cathedral), the 1927 and 1977 gatherings differed in other respects. One of the most noticeable differences was the participation of Roman Catholics this year. Pope Paul sent a message saying it is “urgent that Christians find again a unanimous agreement on the contents of their witness.…” The area’s bishop, Pierre Mamie of Fribourg, was there to represent the church hierarchy, and a prominent participant in the program was Dominican priest Yves Congar. Also included in the four-day commemoration were songs and dances by members of the Catholic Focolari movement and a prayer vigil led by the ecumenical Taize community. No Catholics participated in 1927, but now there are Catholics on the WCC faith-and-order commission.

“There are no doctrinal differences which justify continued separation of the churches,” German theologian Jurgen Moltmann said in a key address. He identified work toward a “common celebration of the eucharist” as one of the urgent needs and declared that the time for ecumenical efforts that do not lead to commitment is coming to an end.

The preacher at the principal Sunday service in the cathedral was Emilio Castro, an Uruguayan Methodist who directs the WCC’s section on world mission and evangelism. In the absence of common doctrinal statements and eucharistic fellowship, he noted, it is still possible today for Christians to express unity in the “profound, living, existential reality of a solidarity in love and justice” in the service of human liberation.

Memo From Brazil

On her recent state visit to Brazil, First Lady Rosalynn Carter met with two U.S. missionaries who had been detained for four days without charges in a Recife jail. Police apparently suspected that Thomas Capuano, a Mennonite lay worker, and Catholic priest Lawrence Rosebaugh were engaged in Communist activity as they carried out relief work among the poor. The pair spoke of denied rights, brutality, and vile conditions within the crowded jail. Mrs. Carter told reporters later that she had a “personal message” from them to take back to the President. Meanwhile, embarrassed government leaders reportedly fired the jail officials (the pair claimed their money was not returned). Capuano, described by colleagues as “a deeply committed, compassionate Christian,” says that is not enough. What is needed, he says, is wide-scale reform of the penal system, with an eye to protection of “inalienable human rights.”

French Outreach

In a French follow-up to the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, some 160 pastors, church and organizational leaders, educators, and students gathered recently in Strasbourg for a Congress on the Theology of Evangelization for French-speaking Europe. Participation spanned traditional denominational and institutional barriers, and there was a rare and strong sense of Christian unity.

The congress provided a foundation for next year’s Impact 78, a campaign of simultaneous evangelistic outreach centered in local churches and aimed at the 60 million French-speaking people in Belgium, France, and Switzerland. There were plenary sessions on theology (participants agreed that evangelism must rest solidly on the authority of the Bible), workshops on how to evangelize various social and religious groups, and evening meetings open to the public.

Congress preparations were carried out by an eight-member committee representing the French Evangelical Alliance and the French Evangelical Federation. Foremost in the leadership were Professor Henri Blocher of Vaux Seminary in Paris, clergyman Andre Thobois of the French Baptist Federation, Gerard Kuntz of French Inter-Varsity, and Theodore Snitselaar of the Scripture Union in France.

Religion in Transit

Newly released government statistics show 1,036,000 divorces were recorded in the United States in 1975, a 6 per cent increase over 1974 and the first annual total to top one million. Marriages seem more prone to go on the rocks in the South (5.5 divorces per thousand population) and the West (6.5) than in the Northeast (3.1) and North Central area (4.5). Regional differences are attributed in part to religious makeup (for example, the large Catholic populations in northern urban centers). A record 1.12 million children under 18 were in homes that broke up in 1975.

The largest and wealthiest congregation of the United Church of Canada—the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto—has accepted a grant from Wintario, the government lottery, for music instruction. The action was in apparent definance of an oft-repeated denominational policy against gambling. “Depressing,” commented the United Church Observer in discussing what Timothy Eaton did.

Park Street Church in Boston registered nearly $450,000 in missions pledges for the coming year.

Commissioner Arnold Brown, 63, the Salvation Army’s territorial commander for Canada and Bermuda, has been elected General—the Army’s highest executive position. He succeeds Clarence Wiseman, who will retire in July. The London-headquartered Army has 2.5 million officers and adherents in eighty-two countries. After his election, Brown promised to do all he can to spread the Army’s evangelistic message and bring people to Christ.

Celebrations marking Queen Elizabeth’s twenty-fifth year on the throne began with special Sunday services in churches of all denominations throughout England last month. The queen herself attended a national service of thanksgiving in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan preached, urging that the teachings of Christ be made the foundation for personal, family, and national life. He called for national penitence, dedication to God, and thanksgiving for God’s guidance and the example of leadership “in our Royal House.”

Death

NATHAN H. KNORR, 72, president since 1945 of the Jehovah’s Witnesses; in Wallkill, New York.

Georgi Vins, the jailed Soviet Baptist dissident, was reported to be “very sick” when his wife and a son visited him in late May. He had recently been in the hospital and still needed a crutch to walk. His skin was broken out, the family says. Not long ago, a supply of mercury was found at the camp, and a number of prisoners now are wondering about the possibility of mercury poisoning, says Vins. He gave his wife a written appeal calling for an international commission to investigate the prison camp, but it was confiscated by authorities. A lawyer for Vins was to ask President Carter to intervene.

Radio Uganda reported last month that President Idi Amin has decided to forbid representatives of churches in his country from attending church meetings and other conferences abroad. The ban applies especially to Christian leaders who would like to visit Tanzania and Kenya, the radio said. In another report, Target, a Christian newspaper in Kenya, said Anglican bishop Henry Okullu of Kenya would be arrested and tried if he were to enter Uganda. Okullu, president of the National Council of Christian Churches of Kenya, denied Ugandan allegations that he was involved in a plot to overthrow Amin.

The fifty-fourth Synod of the Spanish Evangelical Church issued a call for complete religious freedom in Spain and an end to “the state confession” of Roman Catholicism.

Going from village to village, six teams of Kenyan Baptists have baptized 2,177 people and started 145 new congregations during a twenty-four-week period, according to a European Baptist Press story. The converts are from among the coastal Giryama tribe, most of whose members were either without religious beliefs or were spirit worshipers when the campaign began.

Ever since the Book of Mormon was first published in 1830, its origins have been disputed. As Joseph Smith, the founder of the rapidly growing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), tells it in official church writings, the book is a miraculous translation of “reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics” on golden plates he dug out of a hillside in 1827 near Palmyra, New York, a village between Rochester and Syracuse. But as some of his contemporaries and a number of modern critics allege, the book is at least partly the pirated work of Solomon Spaulding (or Spalding), a retired Congregationalist minister and novelist who died near Pittsburgh in 1816.

The issue is a critical one for the Latter-day Saints: they believe that the 522-page Book of Mormon is the divinely inspired, correctly translated Word of God. As such, it has been called the “keystone” of the 3.8-million-member Mormon church by LDS leaders. If the book is ever proved to be something other than what Joseph Smith claimed, the church’s foundation itself will be in question. At stake also will be Smith’s credibility in other basic documents of the church (Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price).

Until now, the critics’ case has rested on circumstantial evidence (similarities of style and subject matter, and testimonies of perhaps biased persons claiming to know of a relationship between Smith and another man who may have had access to a Spaulding manuscript).

Now, however, three young researchers in southern California claim they have a firm case. They obtained enlarged photocopies of several of the original manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon that are in archives in Salt Lake City. These reproductions and known specimens of Spaulding’s handwriting were submitted to three prominent handwriting analysts with impressive credentials. Working independently, and unaware of the Book of Mormon connection, all three analysts concluded that Spaulding had written all the material they examined.

The manuscript section in question is part of the so-called Kimball acquisition of twenty-two pages of First Nephi, as dictated by Smith to “an unidentified scribe,” according to Mormon historians. (Smith used a number of scribes in his work, producing more than 4,000 words a day for between sixty-five and ninety days, according to a Mormon authority. Two manuscripts were produced. One—the edited printer’s copy—is in the archives of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Missouri. Smith placed the original manuscript in the cornerstone of a house in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1841. In 1882 a wing of the house was torn down, and the contents of the cornerstone were scattered. Mormon member Sarah M. Kimball in 1883 obtained the most legible of the remaining manuscript pages from the man who married Smith’s widow. Other pages—about 120—and fragments were obtained later.)

In a book to be published by Vision House, the three researchers—Howard A. Davis, Donald R. Scales, and Wayne L. Cowdrey—tell their story, attempting to document the links between Spaulding’s work and that of Smith years later.

The three handwriting analysts they cite are Howard C. Doulder, William Kaye, and Henry Silver, all from the Los Angeles area. All are in private practice, are nationally recognized experts in examining questioned documents, and are often called on to testify in court cases. Doulder formerly was a document examiner for the Milwaukee police department and the U.S. Treasury Department, and he has served as chairman of the Questioned Document sections of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the International Association for Identification. Kaye’s clients have included many large business firms, the Michigan attorney general’s office, and Scotland Yard. Among the thousands of cases the internationally known Silver has been involved in is the dispute over the Howard E. Hughes estate.

Doulder says his identification of the Spaulding handwriting is a “qualified opinion” that can be rendered “positive” only if he examines the original documents. Kaye offers his “considered opinion and conclusion that all of the [examined] writings were executed by Solomon Spalding” (the spelling used by the authors throughout their work). But, says he, to be more exact about dating, he would have to examine the original documents. Silver’s opinion is unqualified.

In response to the allegations—and implications—LDS press spokesman Don LeFevre issued the following statement: “The authenticity of the Book of Mormon has been challenged by many during the past 147 years. The so-called Spaulding story was long ago laid to rest by even the most credible of [anti-Mormon] critics. The book has held up under other attacks over the years and will withstand the latest allegations as well. Truth is unchanging, and the truth of the matter is that the Book of Mormon is precisely what the church has always maintained it is. It is a divinely revealed scriptural record of ancient American people. More specifically, it joins with the Bible as a witness of the divinity of Jesus Christ.”

Dean Jessee, a church historian who categorized the various manuscript remnants, said: “Any competent handwriting analyst will easily spot numerous differences in the two hands. In fact, even the untrained eye can see the basic differences.”

Will the church have an analysis of the handwriting made? “We don’t need to,” replied a spokesman. “We know where the manuscript came from.”

During an interview, LDS historian-editor Leonard J. Arrington led this reporter to a vault and presented the now-laminated manuscript pages for examination. The Kimball-acquisition pages, ragged at the edges, are a little over six inches wide by sixteen inches long, and the paper seems to be uniform in stock and age. They are written on both sides in black ink, and appear to be in sequence, although the handwriting seems to differ from section to section. Jessee has tentatively assigned two of the sections to John Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery, close associates of Smith who were among the “witnesses” to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. The other section is the one that Jessee says was written by “an unidentified scribe”—but which the handwriting experts have identified as the work of Solomon Spaulding. (The experts have not examined the other two sections.)

Since Spaulding wrote at least fourteen years or so before Smith began dictating, the casual observer is left wondering how there can be so much similarity in paper and ink quality throughout the Kimball acquisition.

The three researchers believe they may be able to come up with answers if experts are permitted to examine the original documents. Press spokesman LeFevre told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that the researchers are welcome to inspect the manuscript pages.

The Book of Mormon is basically the story of two migrations of people from the Middle East to the Americas, the first from the Tower of Babel about 2250 B.C., the second from Jerusalem about 600 B.C. American Indians are portrayed as descendents of one of the immigrant families, the Lamanites, who were cursed with a dark skin because of sin. Moroni, the last survivor of another family, the Nephites (who alone used the “reformed Egyptian” language and who were preached to by Christ after his resurrection), in 421 A.D. buried a set of plates on which his father Mormon had inscribed a record of the migrations and struggles. Fourteen hundred years later, Moroni delivered the plates to Smith, according to Mormon teaching.

Large chunks of the Book of Mormon are passages from the King James version of the Bible. Anthropologists and archeologists have generally scoffed at the historical sections of the book, and they say there never has been such a written or verbal language as “reformed Egyptian.”

There are indications that Smith liked to dig for hidden treasure as a youth and that he resorted to “peep stones” as a fortune-telling aid in finding it. Legal records in New York show he was arrested several times between 1826 and 1830 for fortune-telling practices.

No one but Smith ever saw the gold plates (Moroni took them away after making sure the translation was correct), and he usually dictated from behind a curtain.

Some critics cite similarities between what Smith produced and what James Adair wrote in his History of the American People (London, 1778).

Those who believe Smith made use of a Spaulding manuscript usually implicate a Baptist-turned-Campbellite preacher named Sidney Rigdon, who officially converted to Smith’s new faith shortly after it was founded in 1830. Several sources indicate that both Spaulding and Rigdon moved to the Pittsburgh area about 1812. Spaulding left a manuscript of a novel known as “Manuscript Found” at a Pittsburgh printer. It subsequently disappeared. The novel reportedly attempted to portray a biblical origin of American Indians. Friends of Rigdon are on record saying he showed them such a novel. And they say that Rigdon had a close friend who worked at the print shop where Spaulding’s novel had been left.

Rigdon served as pastor of a small Baptist church in Pittsburgh from about 1820 to 1823, when he was ousted in a controversy over doctrine. He drifted back to Ohio where he became identified with the Campbellite movement and its emphasis on “restoration” of the true church, a prominent theme in the Mormon faith. Anti-Mormon researchers believe he met Joseph Smith in his travels in the later 1820s. Several sightings of Rigdon and Smith together are reported in documents, but so far no hard evidence of such a link has been uncovered.

In 1884 a Spaulding manuscript was found by the president of Oberlin College on a visit to Hawaii. Its title was “Manuscript Story.” It contained some parallels to the Book of Mormon but no verbatim passages. Mormon leaders later announced that “Manuscript Story” and “Manuscript Found” were the same manuscript, thus dismissing the alleged Spaulding link to Mormonism. Anti-Mormon students claimed, however, that “Manuscript Found” was a different work, a contention backed by Spaulding’s daughter Matilda. In the August, 1880, issue of Scribner’s, she declared that she had heard her father read to her from “Manuscript Found,” and that it contained many of the names and references mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

If the California handwriting experts are correct, part of “Manuscript Found” has indeed been found—incorporated in the Book of Mormon, and safely stored by the LDS church. Why a scribe would insert the Spaulding pages themselves into the manuscript instead of rewriting them remains open to conjecture.

Mormon doctrine states that man exists as a spirit before birth. His destiny is to become a god or a ministering angel. To become a god he must in this life embrace the Mormon faith, be baptized, marry celestially (have a spouse for the next life), and engage in good works. Salvation is synonymous with resurrection, and everyone will be saved (resurrected), some to be gods, some to be angels with still another chance to try for godhood. To accommodate those who lived in pre-Mormon times, baptism and celestial marriage ceremonies are performed by proxy for the dead in secret temple rites (hence the Mormon emphasis on genealogical study). If one is born black it means that he sinned in his earlier state; this bars him from full participation in the Mormon church in this life and confines him to angelhood in the next life (from which he can strive toward godhood).

Smith and his followers ran into disfavor and had to keep moving. From New York they went to Ohio, then Missouri (where they believed God would establish his kingdom Zion), and Illinois, where Smith was lynched by a mob in 1844. Rigdon was excommunicated in a power struggle with other leaders. Under Brigham Young’s leadership the Mormons trekked to Utah in 1847.

The Mormons enjoy a high degree of public respect today, thanks to their famed Tabernacle Choir, welfare programs, genealogical projects, emphasis on family life and clean living, and pursuit of old-fashioned American virtues. The LDS church has nearly three million members in the United States and about 800,000 overseas. It boasts 25,000 fulltime, self-supporting missionaries who serve for two years. Its far-flung holdings are estimated to be worth billions of dollars (the church stopped issuing financial reports in 1958). An Associated Press study a year and a half ago estimated annual income at more than $1 billion. It operated at that time eleven radio and television stations in seven major U.S. markets, it owned many businesses in Utah, and its holdings included $18.3 million worth of stock in the Times-Mirror Corporation, which publishes the Los Angeles Times. It recently built across the street from its Salt Lake City temple a 28-story, $33 million church administration building that dominates the city’s skyline.

Church officials are concerned about the growing numbers of “jack Mormons,” the dropouts no longer seriously pursuing the faith. An increasing number of intellectuals are among them. Dissidents are unhappy about the church’s views of blacks (the church believes in progressive revelation, so the president, Spencer W. Kimball, could conceivably announce a divinely ordered adjustment in doctrine and practice). One of the three California researchers, Wayne Cowdrey, is a direct descendent of Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith’s trusted aide. He left the church as a result of his research into the origins of the Book of Mormon.

And then there is the chipping away at the foundations. For example, one of the church’s respected scholars, Egyptologist Dee Jay Nelson, was asked in 1968 to translate the then newly discovered Joseph Smith Papyri fragments, dating from 100 A.D. or earlier. They purportedly had been the basis for the Book of Abraham in Smith’s Pearl of Great Price. Some of the fragments were glued to heavy paper with hand-written notations on the back linking them unmistakably to Smith. Nelson discovered that the text was part of an ancient pagan ritual of death and not what Smith had “translated” in the Book of Abraham. The church refused to publish Nelson’s translation (corroborated by other Egyptologists), and an estrangement began that led him to resign from the LDS in 1975.

“It is not my fault that [the papyri] did not say what Joseph Smith claimed they did,” says Nelson.

The church is slowly discovering that a crisis of truth exists in its roots.

Law For Legislators

If a vote is to be taken on the Ten Commandments, should each law be considered separately or are they all one package?

After some debate, members of the Tennessee Senate decided it would be unwise to cast a separate ballot on each section of the Decalogue. So they approved the whole package. Approval came after the senators defeated motions to table the commandments and to delay approval until next February.

The thirty-three-member legislative body got into a theological discussion before it ended its spring term when members began offering amendments to a code of ethics that had been framed by a committee. The code, described as one of the strongest in the nation, was finally adopted after the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule were added.

“When Jesus came to earth,” said one senator who did not want to include the commandments in the code, “he abolished the old order.” Another disagreed with the interpretation. One solon reminded his colleagues, “There has been only one person in history who has been able to live up to the Ten Commandments.”

Then a veteran politician warned the Senate, “If you take out the Ten Commandments and the rest of it, I don’t believe a man here can be re-elected.” Faced with the prospect of having constituents misunderstand their negative votes, the members of the upper house then approved the code, with commandments.

Trouble in the Kirk

A student poster pinned up in the hall made its own commentary on the recent Church of Scotland general assembly: “When all is said and done—there is a lot more said than done.”

What was said—and seen—was nonetheless often memorable. In her jubilee year Queen Elizabeth paid the third visit of her reign to the Kirk assembly, and duly told the 1,300 commissioners of her intention to maintain Presbyterian church government in Scotland. The Queen is known to be worried about separatist tendencies among Scottish Nationalists, and must have been reassured when the assembly broke out into a Jacobite song written originally about Bonnie Prince Charlie: “Will ye no’ come back again?”

At a later session a former moderator, George Reid, firmly grasped the nettle. The English, he said, had at times shown an extraordinary ignorance about Scotland—the sort of thing that could turn moderates into extremists. He proposed that the assembly urge the government to hold a referendum to learn the wishes of Scottish people on devolution. The assembly agreed.

It was more divided when it resumed last year’s controversial debate on second baptism (see June 18, 1976, issue, page 31). Still shying away from facing up to the theological issues, officialdom astonishingly suggested that those who insist on going through a form of second baptism should be advised to consider joining the Baptists. Clergyman W. Wallace of Wick said that when people joined the Kirk they took vows that make no reference to any particular form of baptism. “The integrity of the church is very much in doubt,” he declared, “if we get people to take [such vows] and then ask them to leave the church because of the small print we have dug up somewhere.” The official reply that a guideline, not a regulation, was under discussion likewise astonishingly convinced a majority. More will be heard of this matter, for a number of the Kirk’s ministers have admitted to having been rebaptized.

An even more serious issue was raised by the retiring moderator, T. F. Torrance, when he pointed out that there are some three million people in Scotland who belong to no church. They are not hostile to the Kirk, he said, but hungry for the Spirit and Word of God. “We need to match the opportunity with a new vision of mission,” he declared. (The assembly later endorsed a call for a new campaign of evangelism throughout Scotland.)

Reports revealed that membership of the Church of Scotland fell over the past year by some 22,000 and now stands at 1,019,961—one-fifth of Scotland’s population whereas in 1952 it was one-fourth. (Scotland’s Roman Catholics now number 814,000). Average giving was 35p (65 cents) a week, and the Kirk appears to be heading for deep financial trouble; the equivalent of $30 million will be needed for 1978, $5 million more than in 1977. Sales of the Kirk’s magazine Life and Work dropped to 133,000 (it is still the biggest-selling religious periodical in Britain).

Another report indicated that unity talks with four smaller, more conservative Presbyterian bodies had failed to find ways to establish closer relationships.

Other distinguished visitors to the assembly included Cardinal Gordon Gray, leader of Scotland’s rapidly growing Catholics, and Donald Coggan, archbishop of Canterbury. In the course of a deeply spiritual address, Coggan made a tentative appeal for restoring talks between the two national churches—and was immediately criticized in some quarters of the 44,000-member Episcopal Church in Scotland.

The most moving feature of the assembly was a contribution by a minister who is dying of cancer. The clergyman, Gordon Riddell, had not intended to speak, but he found a pro-euthanasia motion was being discussed academically and felt compelled to give an inside view. Stuffed with pain-killer (his own expression), the 60-year-old minister from a Shetland Islands parish told his story dispassionately. He had gone through several crises in his battle against cancer, he admitted, but there were “two simple reasons why I hold no truck with euthanasia.” He told the packed assembly what they were. “I feel that in my calling as a minister of God I must set a proper example … to others … who rightly look to the church for leadership in this very difficult dilemma. I have invariably found in these great crises of pain—if they are faced up to as best one can in prayer and faith—there is this surprising paradox that there comes within the next hour or two a great experience of spiritual uplift of a kind you have never known before. Compared with that experience, any comfort … offered by some form of euthanasia is very much second best.” The motion against which he spoke was overwhelmingly rejected.

A decision on whether to receive an overture calling for a review of the office of moderator produced a tied vote and was withdrawn before the present incumbent of the chair was put in the invidious position of having to use a casting vote. There was more in this than met the eye. Presbyterians have always been proud of adhering to the principle of parity of ministers, but the retiring moderator had, among other things, accepted an invitation by a government minister to join in talks with “church leaders” of other denominations. Presbyterianism knows “no such animal,” complained another former moderator.

The assembly also:

• Decided by a five-vote majority to exhort members to abstain from all forms of gambling, including raffles in aid of church funds.

• Sent down to presbyteries for comment a proposed plan of union with Scotland’s 11,000 Methodists.

• Elected as moderator clergyman John R. Gray of Dunblane Cathedral.

J. D. DOUGLAS

American evangelicals whose only acquaintance with Anglicanism is with the Episcopal Church of the United States are often surprised to discover the strength of evangelical witness within the Church of England. Since the end of World War II the evangelical movement within England’s national church has steadily grown and deepened. Starting as a despised minority, it became politely tolerated and is now a force that is respected by most, is looked to for leadership by some, and can be ignored by none.

The Church at large became aware of this development in 1967 when about a thousand people gathered at Keele University for the first National Evangelical American Congress. A decade later, just after Easter this year, nearly two thousand assembled at Nottingham University for the second, with the theme “Obeying Christ in a Changing World.” The pre-congress study material had been published in three paperback symposiums entitled The Lord Christ, The People of God, and The Changing World. At the congress itself the authors responded to the responses they had received to these, and then the debate was taken a stage further in innumerable study groups. The participants (two-thirds of whom were lay men and women) threw themselves with evident relish into three and a half days of hard intellectual work. And each morning and evening in plenary session we celebrated the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ with great joy. [The Current Religious Thought column in this issue contains another report on the Nottingham congress; see page 41.—ED.]

Now the 20,000-word Nottingham Statement has been published by Falcon Press (50 p.). It claims to be neither a comprehensive nor an authoritative declaration of what Anglican evangelicals believe, for it contains both gaps and a few inner contradictions, and no part of the text received a final endorsement from more than one of nine subplenary sessions. Nevertheless, the Nottingham Statement does claim to be a faithful expression of the mind of the Nottingham Congress. It should stimulate and provide material for further debate.

In the statement, familiar evangelical beliefs are reasserted with conviction, but also often with a difference. For example, the Incarnation is called “the foundation truth on which Christianity rests” (para. B.1), and “the bishops of the Church of England as guardians of its doctrine” are solemnly called upon “to confirm the church’s historic faith concerning the person of Jesus Christ the Lord” (B.2). At the same time, Jesus is declared to be “a real man in every way,” and we confess that “we have not always taken full account of Jesus’ humanness” (B.3). The “divine inspiration of Scripture, its entire trustworthiness, the sufficiency of its teaching for salvation, and its unique authority” are all reaffirmed (D.1), for “it is our abiding evangelical conviction that in order to obey Christ we must obey Scripture” (A.7). At the same time, we confess our failures in study and obedience, and we commit ourselves to a “creative listening” to the text that takes with proper seriousness the cultural horizons of both biblical author and Bible reader (D.2).

On the subject of mission, after an appreciative reference to the Archbishops’ “Call to the Nation” in 1975, the hope is expressed that “some kind of ‘Mission to the Nation’ may follow it.” Important convictions are then added that “regional enterprise is greatly preferable to a centrally imposed plan,” and that “every coordinated evangelistic effort requires a common statement of faith and purpose, a diversity of approaches and methods, and a commitment to continuous outreach” (A.4).

The large central section of the statement is devoted to contemporary church issues that we evangelicals have sometimes ducked. The Church’s identity is refreshingly redefined in terms of a threefold “commitment”—to “Christian truth” (Scripture as God’s revelation and the creeds as the historic expression of Christian faith), to “a Christian lifestyle” (including the two sacraments of the Gospel), and to an “every-member ministry” (E.3). This latter point receives particularly strong emphasis. “Christianity is a one-caste religion. All Christians are equally called to minister to Christ in the world.… Clerical professionalism has gravely inhibited the proper development of the diversity of ministries. We deplore the prevalent pattern of ‘one-man ministries.’ … The New Testament pattern is always for a group of presbyters to form the leadership” (J.1 and 2). Moreover, “we repent of our failure to give women their rightful place as partners in ministry with men,” a statement balanced by the qualification that many believe preserves a permanent biblical truth: “Leadership in the church should be plural and mixed, ultimate responsibility normally singular and male” (J.6).

Two sections bravely tackle questions of church unity as they relate both to the “Ten Propositions” now being debated by English churches and to the Roman Catholic Church. Our goal is reaffirmed on biblical grounds as a unity that becomes visible when Christians “not only share in a common baptism and a common confession of faith, welcome each other to the Lord’s Table and work together in mission, but also merge their institutional structures to the point where there ceases to be any concept of ‘each other’ but only of a common life of all” (L.1). The present state of play in Anglican-Roman Catholic discussions is described: it is firmly but courteously stated that “agreement on fundamental doctrines must precede any formal act of reunion” (M.1); and some penetrating requests are made for clarification, e.g., whether the Roman Catholic Church now places itself under Scripture “as the final authority under Christ,” whether it teaches that sinners are “justified by grace through faith, with their good works a fruit of justification and not a source of merit,” how “the Eucharist is related to Christ’s sacrifice,” and what standing the Marian dogmas have (M.2).

On the thorny issue of establishment, the hope is expressed that the Church of England “will not seek to renounce, but to share with other Protestant churches the ancient constitutional ties that establish her as the church of this realm.” “We value these,” it is judiciously added, “not for privilege but for service, not for the church but for the nation,” that is, in order that the church may accept its mission to the nation and its responsibility to be the nation’s conscience (K.7).

The third section of the Nottingham Statement takes up questions of social ethics that were only broached ten years previously at Keele, and then with naïveté and tentativeness. Now, however, there are thoroughly thought through paragraphs on “power in our democracy” (which challenge “the accepted norm that ever-growing economic prosperity is the sole aim of a responsible society” and call for “real participation by the whole community in political power”—N.3 and 4), on “the power of the media” (both weighing their effects on society and welcoming the opportunities they afford for “human creativity in artistic terms”—P. 1–3), on “the law and education” (Q. 1–3), on “marriage and the family” (including also references to the single life, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, and the differing roles of men and women—R. 1–8), on “responsibility in mission” (in a multi-racial society, in urban areas, and in the world—S,T, and U), and on “global stewardship” (with reference to such matters as harvesting the world’s resources, human rights, government aid, multi-national corporations, and simple lifestyles—V.1–10). It is extremely heartening to see evangelical Christians seeking to apply their biblical faith to such complex problems of today.

Looking back on the Nottingham experience, I was struck by the spirit of love, joy, and openness that characterized the debates. We by no means always agreed with one another, but we were given grace to listen to others with a new level of respect. Ten years ago at Keele we were not yet ready to face the charismatic controversy; at Nottingham it seemed already to belong to the past. The recent publication of the agreed evangelical statement Gospel and Spirit had defused it, and we expressed our “wish to live and work together from now on without any sense of the ‘them and us’ to which both sets have often been accustomed” (L.5). Several other areas of disagreement emerged. For example, the section on “power in our democracy” was thought by some to be faintly pink in color, and so includes an “alternative statement” (N.8) that was evidently written in a bluer ink. But the determination to face such differences in love and not conceal them is to be seen as a mark of growing evangelical maturity, Besides. Nottingham (though important) was only an episode in our continuing domestic evangelical dialogue.

Machen, Riley, Norris, Et Al

Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies, by C. Allyn Russell (Westminster, 1976, 304 pp., $15), is reviewed by Erling Jorstad, professor of history and American studies, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.

If we in the mid-1970s are witnessing a resurgence of popular evangelical expression, we can profit by studying its historical parentage, namely, the fundamentalism of the 1920s. In this carefully researched and well-written revisionist study, the veteran church historian C. Allyn Russell adds considerably to our knowledge about those years, the issues, and the leaders. The revisionism rests in his correction of earlier historians such as Furniss, Cole, and Gasper who contended that the movement centered on clearly defined doctrines such as the “Five Fundamentals.” Russell shows that the movement was really several parallel but decidedly different currents more than a single stream.

In a refreshing break from the earlier narrative histories, Russell presents portraits of the seven leaders of fundamentalism in the 1920s he finds the most influential: J. Frank Norris, John Roach Straton, W. B. Riley, J. C. Massee, J. Gresham Machen, William Jennings Bryan, and Clarence Macartney. Each is studied in a chapter that gives a brief biography and a summary of the subject’s theology, ethics, ecclesiology, and influence on public opinion.

By focusing on personalities rather than historical forces, Russell can present far more information about the subjects’ attitudes towards the major social questions of the decade; he has some delightful tidbits and surprising quotations from each, culled from primary sources. He tries harder than previous historians to be fair in his presentations and evaluations. For the most part he succeeds, although it is clear that he personally endorses those spokesmen more inclined toward social outreach, liberal tendencies in theology, and higher criticism. Each chapter, however, contains some discussion of a hitherto neglected trait to praise or to criticize. On balance, this is a far more objective history than any of its predecessors.

The revisionism stands at the heart of Russell’s argument. Following up on Ernest Sandeen’s earlier suggestion that no single list of five or nine or any number of “fundamentalist” doctrines united the movement, the author argues that these seven leaders (among others) agreed only on the inerrancy and verbal inspiration of the Bible and on the supernatural origins and character of Christianity. They disagreed openly on one or more of the other teachings that traditional scholarship has said are their hallmarks. I find Russell’s thesis compelling.

Still, some reservations must be entered. Acknowledging that seven leaders (four Baptists, three Presbyterians) cannot be considered fully representative of the thought of the age, Russell might well have included a chapter of brief portraits of other “fundamentalist” leaders of other denominations. Furthermore, since these seven differed so widely in temperament, social position, and most doctrines, one wonders if the term “fundamentalist” has any useful meaning for further classification. We need a more sophisticated typology of the anti-liberal, politically conservative Protestant spokesman of the 1920s than is presented here.

For the present, however, this study moves far toward correcting earlier misrepresentations and misunderstandings of our evangelicalist forefathers. Then, as now, the cult of leader personality threatened the teachings of the churches; then, as now, the trustworthiness of Scripture served as the lightning rod attracting the strongest debates; then, as now, the extent of social outreach kept conservative Christians arguing among themselves. The outcome of the struggle in the 1920s is clearly recorded in this book. Let’s hope history does not repeat itself.

Church And State And The Courts

The Wall of Separation: The Constitutional Politics of Church and State, by Frank J. Sorauf (Princeton, 1976, 394 pp., $15), is reviewed by Dean Kelley, staff associate for religious and civil liberty, National Council of Churches, New York City.

Frank Sorauf is dean of the college of liberal arts and professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. After a dozen or more years of intermittent research, he has produced a solid work of significant scholarship, reporting on the legal dynamics of church and state in the United States in an era of exceptional judicial attention. He does this by scrutinizing sixty-seven cases decided between 1951 and 1971 by the U.S. Supreme Court and high state and federal appeals courts, sketching their origin, proponents, opponents, appeals, outcomes, and effects, and particularly the significant part played by separation-minded groups.

The three separationist organizations that helped to shape the law of the United States in this area are the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Jewish Congress, and Americans United. The most consistently effective of these is the American Jewish Congress, whose special counsel, Leo Pfeffer, is credited with being the mastermind of the separationist effort (which still continues).

Sorauf tells about the development of the separationist coalition, the uncoordinated “accommodationist” resistance, and the strains and struggles in various communities, states, and regions, and in Congress and the lower courts. He vividly describes the plaintiffs and defendants, the attorneys on both sides, the judges, and other principals. Much of the book is absorbing reading, at least for anyone interested in church-state relations or how the law is shaped and reshaped by political forces. It is even more absorbing to those who participated in the twenty-year struggle, and I can attest that Sorauf’s account is generally accurate. In fact, the whole book is exceptionally well crafted.

Less impressive are the forty-nine tables interspersed through the text and the rather limited generalizations derived from them (e.g., “[church-state cases] are more common in the metropolitan areas and the least Protestant states, [and] … there is a marked tendency for one church-state case to spawn another”). Some of these findings support what one would suppose to be the case; others may be artifacts of the relatively random play of many complex causes. They are not nearly so informative as the author’s summary of a sequence of events, and they give the work a pseudo-scientific air. Why do political scientists feel obliged to bulwark themselves with tables when their simple factual narration is informative enough?

Despite the author’s propensity to tell us more than we want to know about the sixty-seven cases in his ken, he does tell us a great deal about how the current American understanding of church-state relations emerged under the persistent pressure of the separationist consortium. That is no small achievement.

Popular Apologetics

No Room For Doubt, by Herbert Lee Williams (Broadman, 1976, 163 pp., $2.95 pb), and The Defense Rests Its Case, by Donald Gutteridge, Jr. (Broadman, 1975, 96 pp., n.p., pb), are reviewed by Robert death, professor of speech communication, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Christian advance occurs when believers boldly proclaim that the self-disclosing God of love is also the God of truth. The persuasive advocacy of the truth of Christianity in view of perennial questions of human existence and particular issues in a given culture is necessary in every generation. Two new popularly written paperbacks in defense of the Gospel by two clear-thinking, evangelical, non-professional theologians provide compelling arguments that will help to ground today’s Christians in their faith and help them assert its valid truth claims. Williams, a journalism professor at Memphis State, attacks doubts of God’s Word and God’s Son head on in No Room For Doubt. Attorney Gutteridge seeks to answer “tough questions” that challenge the Christian faith in The Defense Rests Its Case.

Williams recognizes that doubt—as differentiated from healthy inquiry—is a proud, negative, decisive attitude that demands answers on the doubter’s own terms. Faith, in contrast, is a free and positive search that follows the data wherever they lead—even where verification reaches beyond the limits of logic. He writes, “The doubter can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman.”

He asks people to give a fair hearing to the Bible, God’s communication that reveals the Lord’s redemptive acts in nature, in the heart of man, and in history, and points us to the supreme revelation, Jesus Christ. He offers limited but sound evidences for the inspiration of the Bible based on its ideals, its efficacy, its integrity, its composition, its indestructibility, and its foreknowledge. His discussion of the establishment of the biblical canon and the remarkable means by which its manuscripts have survived for centuries with only minor variant readings will build confidence in the Christian reader. Williams’s thumbnail sketches of the sixty-six books of the biblical “library” show their diversity of information and style and their unity of message.

On the topic of the Bible and science, Williams emphasizes that no conflict exists between them; the conflict is between pseudo-science and pseudo-religion. Their methods differ, but both point to the ultimate source of power, the one true God. His comparison of the geological ages of earth and the biblical days of creation is thought provoking. His discussion whets the reader’s appetite for more detailed works on science and the Bible.

Williams challenges people to read the Bible with eyes of faith, open to the Holy Spirit, who will make understandable its message of redemption in Christ. Its miracles will not strain credulity when one recognizes God’s omnipotence and the corroborative external evidence. He recommends that the Bible be taken literally unless its obvious intention is symbolic or metaphorical. He tells of how the Bible has met his own deepest needs as he has discarded doubt and surrendered to Christ. The book has a strong evangelistic appeal for the honest searcher and instruction for those who want to strengthen their Christian witness.

Gutteridge too uses “apologetic evangelism” to motivate Christians to contend for the faith. He deals with common questions asked by non-Christians: Is the Bible the Word of God? Who is Jesus Christ? Did Christ really rise from the dead? What about God and evolution? His answers are brief forms of the traditional answers found in more extensive apologetic works. His evidences for Christ’s bodily resurrection make up his strongest section. He argues for Christ’s resurrection on the basis of biblically recorded testimony of witnesses, the burial of the body and the subsequent empty tomb, and Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, and refutes common contrary theories. He makes a strong case worthy of an attorney’s skills of advocacy.

He also considers questions that are often used to evade the critical question of Jesus Christ. These include: Won’t a good person get to heaven? What about the heathen? Why does God allow suffering? Are miracles possible? What about all those hypocrites? His answers suggest even the language a witnessing Christian may use in reply. Their substance is, regrettably, somewhat superficial.

Gutteridge asserts principles of evangelism that all Christians should take to heart: (1) pray constantly and expect results; (2) let God open doors and then move in; (3) keep the message simple; (4) be alert and flexible in methodology; (5) be honest and straightforward and not clever; (6) preach Jesus Christ.

Both Williams and Gutteridge have written brief, readable, and biblically and logically sound books that advance the cause of Christian evangelism. They are not in the same scholarly league with apologetic works by Carnell, Lewis, Pinnock, or Ramn. Yet if No Room For Doubt and The Defense Rests Its Case are absorbed and used by witnessing laymen, the results will be the winning of many people to faith and life in the God of truth and redemption.

Who Are The Palestinians?

The Palestinians: Portrait of a People in Conflict, by Frank H. Epp (Herald Press, 1976, 229 pp., $10), is reviewed by Robert Smith, associate, Cornerstone Community, College Park, Maryland.

Palestinian: the word itself evokes images with strong emotional connections. Who are these people and what are they saying?

As a Mennonite and a deeply committed Christian, Frank Epp empathizes with the victims of injustice and communicates a concern for the unheard minority. From his perspective, the Palestinians are this minority in the Middle East.

It is not my purpose to refute or affirm what Epp says. The importance of the book is that it allows us to hear one side clearly. We are asked to listen actively to what the Palestinians are saying.

To hear their words merely as those of terrorists or refugees is to fall prey to a misconception. Whether in or out of refugee camps, living in the west or the east, educated or Bedouin, the majority of these people are ordinary citizens caught in an international conflict. To find out what Palestinians are saying, the author interviewed 172 persons. His findings are supported with 32 pages of photographs and numerous tables of data. Here are some of the things Palestinians say:

1. They have been forcibly thrown out of their homeland. “Our problem is very simple. A foreigner came and took our land, took our farms and our homes, and kicked us out.” Or if they stayed they have been relegated to a second-class citizenship. “All Jews have a card, a type A card. Why does the Arab living in Israel twenty-two years still have identity card type B?”

2. The people have been denied their basic human rights. “The word ‘refugee’ evokes a humanitarian response that includes blankets and food, but not the main requirement—justice,” says Epp.

3. They are frustrated by their lack of any means short of violence to bring about a change. “If there is not any hope, we have to fight, and we are ready to fight.”

4. They cannot accept the West or Christianity. “The people here cannot believe what the Western people are saying or declaring. There is mistrust. They mistrust the whole Christian church,” said a Catholic bishop from Nazareth. Historically they have felt that the Jews influenced British policy while the Palestinians had no influence and that the trend has continued in the United Nations and the United States. This has led to a mistrust of the West.

5. They want to live in their own homeland. “We will go back. It may take a hundred years, maybe a thousand years. But we will return.”

The background for these feelings stems from biblical times. Palestinians, like all Arabs, are Semitic brothers with the Jews. Many trace their lineage back to Abraham. In modern history, the Palestinians lived in Palestine (biblical Canaan) until the United Nations mandate partitioned this area in 1948. The people were further dispersed after the Arab-Israeli War in 1967. The United Nations decision flowed from the British policy outlined in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The visionary was Theodor Herzl of the World Zionist Congress movement, which first met in Europe in 1897. Before Britain, the Turks occupied this area.

Westerners have a short history compared to that of the people of the Middle East, who have the “longest memory on earth.” If the Palestinians deny their rights to their homes, they are left without dignity. They are forced to respond—violently if necessary. Arab Christians see a difference between religious Zionism and the nationalistic, political Zionism that is backed by Western military technology. Some believe that a democratic co-existence of Arabs and Jews is an option.

In the United States there was considerable debate over whether we should absorb a few thousand Vietnamese refugees. The Arab countries have somewhat reluctantly been forced to absorb more than a million Palestinians. To consider the case of the Palestinians as a minority while one recalls the recent struggle involving minority rights in our own country is most disturbing.

Frank Epp encourages us to re-examine our position by stripping away the trappings of foreign relations, balance of power, and extreme nationalism. He gives an “unheard minority” a chance to be heard. As one Palestinian said, “We want you to hear us and know us, hear both sides and then decide for yourself. God has given you all the wisdom to see and think and find the truth. That is all.”

What Jesus Did

The Life of Christ, by Robert Duncan Culver (Baker, 1976, 304 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Charles C. Anderson, professor of religion, Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas.

Although the life of Jesus continues to attract the attention of biblical scholars, the production of “lives of Jesus” has markedly declined. One of the few recent attempts is this volume by the pastor of the First Evangelical Free Church of Lincoln, Nebraska, who formerly taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Culver organizes his book around John 16:28 and divides his analysis into four parts: Jesus’ birth, public ministry, passion, and post-passion experience. He accepts the first three Gospels as “both truthful and actually ‘synoptic’ ” and “the Fourth Gospel as a genuine first-century document, probably Johannine, and consciously supplemental to the three Synoptics.” He also ties his study closely to the Old Testament.

It is surprising that he makes no mention of either form or redaction criticism. He doubtless has no sympathy with either, since he compares, for example, “learned negative criticism” with “devout scholarship.” However, it would have been well for him to deal more openly with these disciplines. The fact that much of the book has very old documentation is apt to raise suspicions on the part of those not inclined toward his theological position.

Culver concentrates on the life of Jesus rather than on his teachings; he makes no pretense of treating the teachings thoroughly and gives extended consideration to only a small number of examples. His knowledge of Palestinian geography, topography, and local color contributes significantly to his discussion. In eleven excurses he handles subjects that do not fit naturally into the narrative. Maps, diagrams, photographs, and marginal notes of biblical references also enhance the value of the book.

The book is written in a very readable style in which the flow of the narrative sometimes takes precedence over historical certainty, in the depiction of emotions, the production of dramatic effects, and the like. Overall, the jacket claim that the book is designed for students at Bible colleges and for first-year seminarians seems a bit expansive. The book would be more suitable for laypeople.

Briefly Noted

The following recent books offer helpful, biblical insights into divine guidance. How to Know the Will of God by Knofel Station (Standard. 112 pp., n.p., pb) clearly distinguishes between the universal and specific wills of God. Station pictures God’s will as “freedom with boundaries,” meaning that, within limits, such specifics as marriage, vocation, and location are left up to us. But are God’s desires for his children no more specific than a human parent’s desires for a child? The reference to Jesus in support of this view can be challenged. However, the author gives very helpful discussions of the problems of evil, suffering, and illness. Provocative for group discussion. Live Confidently: How to Know God’s Will by Michael R. Tucker (Tyndale, 138 pp., $2.95 pb) presents an overview of God’s will in specific areas. Good discussions on carnal Christians, the costs of doing God’s will, marriage, divorce, and, notably, television. Questions for group discussion included. God Holds Your Tomorrows by Roger C. Palms (Augsburg, 104 pp., $2.95 pb) contains many accounts of God’s leading in the author’s and others’ lives, not least in vocation and marriage (God has his “best” in marriages, and he carefully prepares each of us for the specific ministry to which he calls us). Knowing God’s Will and Doing It! by J. Grant Howard (Zondervan, 116 pp., $4.95) clearly presents the theological distinctions between the decretive and preceptive wills of God, with many biblical references. Citing the written Word as the complete but not comprehensive revelation of the will of God, Howard emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s role as Teacher and Helper. Excellent sections on receiving counsel and on the role of the human conscience (the stronger conscience is not necessarily the stricter). Living God’s Will by Dwight L. Carlson (Revell, 157 pp., $2.95 pb) is an examination of God’s will in all its facets—perfect and permissive, decretive and preceptive, and universal and specific—with excellent discussions of personal responsibility vs. faith and trust, the place for human initiative, the alterability of God’s will on the human level, and the Christian’s need for a “game plan.” Deep, spiritual wisdom and biblical insight and illustrations characterize this very comprehensive work. On the basis of John 10:3–9, God’s will is seen as very personal for each Christian, and this similarly characterizes Carlson’s view of the Christian’s walk with God. Excellent questions for group study and discussion.

A hospital chaplain, Vernon Bittner, in Make Your Illness Count (Augsburg. 126 pp., $3.50 pb) affirms that illness can be a direct result of our wrong responses toward God’s molding of our lives. His deep insight into helping a patient find meaning in illness makes this book very valuable to both the afflicted and those who seek to comfort them.

Dallas Seminary professor Roy Zuck in Barb, Please Wake Up! (Victor, 127 pp., $1.75 pb) exhibits deep trust in God’s perfect will in the wake of his daughter’s nearly fatal accident and long recovery. Woven throughout are references to Scripture that sustained the Zucks and suggestions for helping (and not hurting) people in similar situations.

Ronald and Myra Sue Pruet describe their struggles with his multiple sclerosis in Run From the Pale Pony (Baker, 159 pp., $4.95). They deal with the various levels of coping with chronic illness and how her struggle to do so brought on her own “pale pony” of emotional disturbance. The Pruets are very frank about their continuing problems and the resources God makes available to them as they ask him.