Jurgen Moltmann’s new book is on Christian ethics, and its title is A New Life-style. The title may prove to be a popular slogan. It has been in the air. The Lausanne Covenant spoke of “our duty to develop a simple life-style in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.”

The phrase seems to have originated in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1968, when the Fourth Plenary Assembly of the World Council of Churches set its Section VI to seek “a new life-style.” Explaining the enterprise, Birgit Rodhe then suggested that the term should be taken to denote not merely outward appearance, fashion, or behavior but (as in literature and art) the outer, visible form of some inner content or substance. She felt that Christian life-styles of the past were of little meaning for the present. As examples of “lifestyles,” the final Section VI report (bewildering, as such documents often are, in its pasting together of heterogeneous materials) mentions on one side the “struggle for social justice,” on the other “the refusal to smoke, to drink alcohol, to dance, to use make-up and to gamble, and the eagerness to attend church regularly.”

I’m not going to discuss this confrontation. I shall also refrain from commenting on the second list with its merry indiscrimination, though it has the qualities that tempt my irascibility. Rather, the thing I want to point out is that we may not be altogether well advised to describe Christian life and action as a “life-style.”

The term suggests some characteristics that do not fit with the Christian ethic.

A “style” is the unity of the distinctive forms of expression of a person, an epoch, or a piece of art. It points to some individual manner of action, a manner that remains the same. So its meaning comes close to habit, custom, fashion. It signifies continuity in a way of doing things. It lacks the idea of change—a lifestyle is static.

Uppsala stressed the diversity of lifestyles of Christians in different circumstances: one an illiterate hunter in New Guinea, another a mathematician in the Soviet Union, and another a landlord in Paraguay. But the very term intimates that each of these persons will go on living the same way tomorrow as he is living today. The term “life-style” fails to include the important element of the changing situation and, above that, God’s presence and guidance in it.

A life-style certainly is the expression of some inner content, but the term cannot conceal its origin in the old ideal of life as the public presentation of a person’s selfhood. I sense a strong flavor of human autonomy in the current concept of life-style, and very little to indicate that there are basic God-given moral standards to begin with.

To sum up, depicting Christian ethics as a “life-style” blurs both fundamental concepts of biblical ethics: God’s unchanging commandments, and his presence and guidance in the individual situation.

As we look to Christ himself we discover the true essentials of Christian action. Whoever reads without prejudice the records of his teaching and living will agree that Christ submitted to the Ten Commandments, though not to their interpretation by the scribes. He accepted the commandments as rules for the believer. In addition to this basic commitment, there is indeed an element of “lifestyle” in Christ’s conduct; for example, he attended the synagogue regularly on the sabbath day (“as was his custom,” Luke 4:16). But that was nothing new. What really strikes us is his thorough renunciation of self-will, his sense of listening to the Living God, and his consciousness of mission. We find all these aspects in a saying of key significance, John 5:30: “Of myself I can do nothing. As I hear, so I decide.… For I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who has sent me.” Let us consider these words.

“Nothing of myself.” Christ’s commitment to the Kingdom of God is so overriding and clear that nothing else finds place in his life. When he says, “Of myself I can do nothing,” does it mean he was a weak person? That is not what the money-changers thought when he threw them out of the Temple. It means that it is no longer one man’s will being done, which leads to division, but God’s will. About this Jesus is so determined that he says: “Of myself I can do nothing.” He abandoned his own will—not because he wanted to do less than the humanly possible, but because he wanted to do more. And this perspective he taught his disciples, too, in the Lord’s prayer.

Not only does he not choose his own plans; he does not choose the means for carrying them out, either: “The Father who has sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it” (John 12:49, NIV). We may indeed have understood in part our commission from God, in contrast to our private plans. But we all too often still decide ourselves what we think best for its fulfillment. Once we are free from the illusions about our own power and insight, then and only then can we begin to seek from God the greater wisdom and strength we need for the larger tasks set by him. It is a matter of placing oneself at God’s disposal, a readiness to accept his orders, in short, to act out of receiving.

“As I hear, so I decide.” Such living begins with listening. Quiet times become necessary. Jesus lived according to the prophet’s saying, “The Lord awakens me every morning. He awakens my ear that I may hear as a learner” (Isa. 50:4). Perhaps listening is the clue to Christ’s long nights of prayer, e.g., the night before he elected the twelve disciples. As he heard, so he chose—including Judas, who betrayed him! He did not know God’s will in every detail right from the start. He needed to listen.

How much more this must be true of us! As the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar points out, “Who would speak to the world must first listen to God.” Let us learn from Kierkegaard’s experience: “A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.”

Jesus listened to God before he acted. Theologians have sometimes played the game of reducing the characteristics of a confession to a single formula: Roman Catholics and Calvinists both represented Martha’s activism whereas the Lutheran church resembled Mary, who sat at Christ’s feet listening. Christ himself demonstrates that both attitudes are to be alive in the Christian. He embraces listening and action.

A sense of mission. For Christ, the knowledge that he was entrusted with a definite task and commission was the source and reason for his abandonment of self-will. Also for us, a sense of mission is vital for motivating our work and helping us to withstand the burdens of the day. Under the discerning leadership of our Lord each moment, we are to live so that his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is our life’s purpose and horizon, and it is more than a lifestyle.

The following news account is based partly on a report filed by correspondent Russ Pulliam and partly on Religious News Service coverage.

Some 2,000 Anglican evangelicals gathered at Nottingham University in England for five days last month to take stock and chart new directions after ten years of impressive growth within the Church of England. At the conclusion of the second National Evangelical Anglican Congress, a 20,000-word statement was issued, covering a number of topics. Among other things, the paper affirmed that:

• The “visible unity of all professing Christians should be our goal,” and that evangelicals should join others in the Church of England in working toward “full communion” with the Roman Catholic Church.

• Abortion, “though justifiable in certain circumstances, is to be viewed as analagous to homicide.”

• Anglicans should “repent of our failure to give women their rightful place as partners in ministry with men,” but while “leadership of the church should be plural and mixed, ultimate responsibility normally [should be] singular and male.”

• Government is ordained of God, and therefore Christians should involve themselves at all levels, with the Church of England devoting more of its time and resources to in-depth political education for its members.

• Local churches need to do more to encourage artistic development among their members, and they should consider creating a trust (foundation) to subsidize talented young people in developing their abilities.

In an introduction to the statement, congress chairman John Stott, a well-known evangelical scholar and rector emeritus of All Souls Church in west London, emphasized that it was not intended to be an authoritative declaration of evangelical Anglican beliefs. Each section, he explained, received the endorsement of only one of the nine sub-plenary sections. The aim, he said, was to achieve consensus where possible, but “we made it plain from the beginning that we had no intention of concealing substantial differences between us where these emerged.”

On many broad issues (the Lordship of Christ, for one), the participants managed to remain united. But, in a reflection of the growing numbers and diversity, some differences emerged much more strongly than at the first congress, attended by 1,000 ten years ago at Keele University in Staffordshire.

Some, Stott among them, felt that evangelicals have given insufficient attention to social and political concerns, and that the one day given to these topics at the congress did not permit enough time to evaluate priorities.

A number of delegates expressed disappointment over an apparent unwillingness to tackle or take a strong stand on certain controversial issues, including the doctrine of Scripture. A discussion of this issue arose in a presentation by Tony Thiselton, a lecturer in biblical studies at the University of Sheffield. Thiselton said he hoped the doctrine of inerrancy of the Bible would not develop as an issue. It is, he asserted, “a divisive thing and a retrograde thing.” He added: “It would split our constituency right down the middle. I see the acceptance of biblical authority in broad terms as the watershed, but not the inerrancy of Scripture. Why pick that out? We see this as a more distinctly American issue.”

Stott, the acknowledged leader of the evangelical movement in the Church of England, addressed the issue in his final speech to the assembly: “We believe that Scripture is precisely the written speech of God. The supremacy of Scripture has always been our hallmark.”

Supporters of a strong view of Scripture said they were dissatisfied with the original proposed statement, which assumed the authority of the Bible without defining it clearly. The final statement, however, was amended to include such phrases as “our belief in the divine inspiration of Scripture,” “its entire trustworthiness,” and “reliable in all that it genuinely affirms.”

(Anglican evangelicals are not alone in their hesitancy to embrace publicly the inerrancy of the Bible. Many of the national evangelical alliances in Europe have adopted a similar hands-off position. The objections to inerrancy by members of these groups accounted in part for the somewhat watery statement on Scripture that came out of the 1974 Lausanne evangelization congress.)

Differences aside, the Anglican evangelicals had much to celebrate, looking back on more than ten years of renewal, growth, and increased visibility. One of every two ordinands in the Church of England is considered an evangelical now, according to leaders of the movement. Both of the archbishops who oversee the Church of England—Archbishop of Canterbury F. Donald Coggan and Archbishop of York Stuart Blanch—identify themselves as members of the evangelical camp. Both spoke.

Blanch’s message was cut short by a threat of a bombing that never occurred. His talk reflected a humble spirit that dominated the congress. He lamented the general spiritual condition of the church, suggesting that many people needing spiritual help would not turn to the church in their need “any more than they would go to a banker to have their teeth removed.” He warned that Britain faces a bleak future if the church does not act soon.

An underlying question of the congress was whether the spiritual national emergency the church now faces might be alleviated by a vast evangelistic campaign. In his prepared text, Coggan said he doubted such an effort would be the answer. However, under pressure from delegates pushing for national outreach, he amended the text.

“Some would feel that the organization of some great campaign, perhaps on an ecumenical basis, planned centrally at a great cost of men and money, is the best way forward,” said Coggan. He suggested that “the stimulation of local effort and enterprise, of which there is a very great deal springing up in many parts of the country, would seem a more likely way,” and he pointed out that the use of press, radio, and television “for intelligent teaching about the basics of Christian believing might well be developed to that end in ways which hitherto have not been explored at any great length.”

“We must continue to wrestle with this matter, indeed to agonize over it,” Coggan acknowledged. “We are not making the impact that we should.”

Observers interpreted his speech as leaving the door open to a united British evangelistic campaign. The idea has been under intense discussion in evangelical circles for the past year. If agreement is not reached soon, say the observers, evangelical leaders may get behind a move to bring American evangelist Billy Graham to Britain for a crusade.

Those at the congress included a number of guests from other Anglican and Episcopal bodies throughout the world, along with observers from the so-called free churches in Britain (Baptist, Methodist, and others). There was an uneasiness among these non-Anglican evangelicals over the nod toward the Catholic Church by the Anglican evangelicals, and some were disturbed by the way the Scripture issue was handled. They expressed fears that a future course of “compromise” will nullify the gains and potential influence of evangelical witness within the Church of England, and that it will destroy unity with evangelicals outside the Anglican body.

“People had to ask to get the basics in because they weren’t initially expressed,” commented Robert Horn, editor of the independent Evangelical Times. As for the position on Scripture, he added: “Twenty years ago it would have been solid. Nobody would have gulped and swallowed when inerrancy was mentioned.”

Anglican evangelicals are concerned not only about unity with non-Anglicans but also about internal unity, especially as it relates to the growing charismatic movement in their midst. In another development, an eighteen-member study group representing Anglican evangelicals and the Fountain Trust, a London-based charismatic organization, issued a statement of its findings. The main points:

• Charismatic renewal has brought new life and vigor to many churches and a deeper relationship with Christ to many individuals, but there are dangers “and sometimes disasters” that call for self-criticism.

• The Holy Spirit is “neither more wonderful than Christ nor separate from him,” and Christian experience must not be compartmentalized.

• Many charismatic gatherings could benefit from order, teaching, and robust doctrinal hymns, just as many evangelical services and prayer meetings could benefit from increased spontaneity and participation, a more relaxed atmosphere, the sense of joy and praise in some renewal songs, and learning to listen to God.

• Great care must be taken with exorcism and in dealing with people psychologically.

• The goal of renewal is not merely renewed individuals but a renewed and revived church.

The group concluded that non-charismatic evangelicals and charismatics have more that unites them than divides them.

In Search Of Basics

Ben Raymond of Orange County, Florida, is a farmer-turned-preacher who wants to study the Bible. But he can’t read, so he has enrolled in school—at the age of 110.

Raymond sees through his good eye without glasses, hears without an artificial aid, and smiles through his own teeth, according to an Associated Press story. A farmer for most of his years, he never got around to attending school. He and his 79-year-old wife Leola live in a small house that’s falling apart, and they struggle to make ends meet on their combined monthly income of $214.70. Asked about their favorite food, he said they’re happy for “just something to eat.” And, adds Raymond, his thirst is “for righteousness.”

Coggan, Vatican: Has ‘God’s Time’ Arrived?

In 1960 the late Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, paid a visit to Pope John XXIII, the first meeting between Rome and Canterbury since Henry VIII broke with the Vatican more than 400 years earlier. In 1966 Fisher’s successor, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, called on Pope Paul VI, and out of that meeting came official study and dialogue sessions between Anglican and Roman Catholic representatives. The central topic: unity. A joint study commission issued reports outlining areas of agreement and disagreement in beliefs about Communion, the ministry, and authority. The greatest agreement was found concerning Communion.

Last month, after an appearance at an important meeting of Anglican evangelicals (see preceding story), Archbishop of Canterbury F. Donald Coggan traveled to Rome for his first meeting with Pope Paul. After two sessions with the Pope (one of them in company with other high Anglican and Vatican officials), Coggan reflected on his visit at an ecumenical ceremony at St. Paul’s American Episcopal Church in Rome.

“Has not the time come when we have reached such a measure of agreement on so many fundamentals of the Gospel that a relationship of shared Communion can be encouraged by the leadership of both our churches?” he asked. He pointed out that in many places individual Catholics and Anglicans, sometimes with local approval, are already practicing intercommunion. Then he expressed belief that “God’s time” for “official sanction” had arrived.

The Vatican did not respond immediately to Coggan’s challenge (Rome seems to believe that unity must precede intercommunion), and at a prayer service with Coggan the next day in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Paul prayed for unity between the two churches but made no mention of intercommunion. He pledged to Coggan, however, continued cooperation on the “long road” to “reconciliation and unity in Christ.”

Both sides said the exchange was a warm and joyful one. A joint declaration was issued reaffirming the common elements of the faith of both churches, urging continuation of top-level theological discussions, and calling for more intense collaboration in the field of evangelization.

Coggan acknowledged that he had no illusions about the gulf of disagreement that separates the world’s 532 million Roman Catholics and its 67 million Anglicans (including Episcopalians). “I am not asking for a blurring of the issues—and they are not inconsiderable—on which at present we cannot agree,” he told the St. Paul’s audience. “Truth is not advanced by pretending not to see the divisions and disagreements which still exist.” But, he declared: “We can no longer be separated at the sacrament of unity. We are all sinners in need of the forgiveness and strength of our Lord. We will kneel together to receive it.” At that point, he feels, the healing of the breach can begin in earnest.

From Rome, Coggan journeyed to Istanbul, where he received a somewhat cooler reception. In his welcoming speech. Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios 1 rejected the ordination of women to the priesthood. At the conclusion of his talk the partiarch recited an admonition by the Apostle Paul that could have been interpreted as fatherly advice to Coggan: “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for it is not permitted them to speak.”

Coggan in an address acknowledged that women were already being ordained in some sectors of the worldwide Anglican Communion (in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). “We hold that those who see this to be right should be free to act accordingly,” he affirmed.

The two later signed a joint declaration expressing their firm desire to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of dialogue between the Orthodox and Anglican churches.

Decline in Britain

Britain’s major “Free Churches” (non-Anglican) suffered a collective loss in membership last year, according to a recently published directory. The biggest loss—more than 60,000—was mostly a matter of a change of differentiating between members and adherents by the Salvation Army (from 149,800 members in 1975 to 81,405 last year), according to a spokesman. Some other major Free Church groups that registered declines were: the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 181,798, a loss of more than 6,000; the United Reformed Church, 181,445, down 6,000; and the Presbyterian Church of Wales, 94,116, down 3,000.

The Methodist Church is still Britain’s biggest Free Church, and it records its membership figures only every three years. Its 1975 total was 557,249, and observers expect the 1978 figure to show a shrinkage.

Meanwhile, the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel—one of the biggest and oldest of Anglican missionary agencies—reports a drop from 594 to 340 in missionary staff over the past six years. The agency attributes the loss both to the takeover of many responsibilities by local church leaders and to a lack of response to appeals for workers.

In 1967, the society’s report points out, 65 per cent of bishops in the forty-three countries where the agency operates were expatriates, or foreigners, and 35 percent were indigenous. Now 73 per cent are indigenous, and the trend is continuing, says the report.

Religion in Transit

Governor Reubin Askew of Florida urged the repeal of a Dade County (Miami) ordinance guaranteeing equal job opportunities, particularly teaching jobs, to homosexuals. Askew, a Presbyterian and the father of two teen-agers, said he would not want “a known homosexual teaching my children.” He said he had no known homosexuals on his staff and would not accept any. His remarks constituted endorsement of a campaign led by singer Anita Bryant to have the ordinance repealed, though he did not mention her by name. A referendum on the ordinance will be held June 7.

A new anti-abortion organization, Americans for a Constitutional Convention, has as its chief aim the convening of a constitutional convention to propose a “human life amendment” to curb abortions. Seven of the necessary thirty-four states have passed such convention resolutions: Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Arkansas, Utah, and South Dakota.

Some 400 delegates to the Convention of the American Jewish Congress’s National Women’s Division went on record endorsing the right of all women to have an abortion. Their resolution expressed respect for the religious scruples of antiabortionists but said “we oppose their efforts to adopt laws and government practices that would impose their beliefs on our society.”

By a vote of 70 to 3 the directors of the 1.2-million-member Women’s Division of the United Methodist Church will not hold any national meetings in states that have not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. The directors also encouraged United Methodist women not to take vacations in or make trips to states that oppose the ERA.

Three psychiatrists in a recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiarty tell of six persons who suffered serious psychotic reactions, some of them life-threatening, after participating in the self-help program called Erhard Seminars Training (est). More than 83,000 Americans have participated in est since it began five years ago, according to a New York Times report. They paid $250 each to sit through sixty to seventy hours of self-awareness training by an authoritarian leader who ridiculed them and attacked their self-esteem (see January 21 issue, page 13).

Chicago clergyman Jesse Jackson and his PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) organization are campaigning to get records with indecent lyrics off radio stations listened to by black youngsters. The results so far are mixed. Station owners say they must play what’s on the hit charts in order to remain competitive. Legally, PUSH has little to stand on. A federal appeals court in New York ruled recently that the Federal Communications Commission exceeded its authority in banning a record that allegedly contained obscene language.

A Federal Communications Commission judge has recommended that the FCC refuse to renew the license of WXPNFM, the twenty-year-old University of Pennsylvania student station. He cited the airing of explicit descriptions of sex acts, urging of a child listener to engage in unnatural sex acts, use of narcotics at the station, engineering violations, financial abuse, and other misdealings. Investigators found the station was apparently under nobody’s control. If the FCC agrees not to renew the license, it will be the first time a university station has lost its license for what amounts to improper and obscene programming, as well as other violations. Officials of a number of universities are following the case with more than just passing interest.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may not require citizens to display slogans on their automobile license plates when they conflict with religious beliefs. The case involved a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been arrested for placing tape over the slogan “Live Free or Die” on his New Hampshire license plate.

Personalia

President Douglas B. MacCorkle of Philadelphia College of Bible has announced his resignation, citing his wish to spend more time writing and teaching.

Donald V. Seibert, chairman and chief executive officer of J. C. Penney Company, has been named National Chairman for the thirty-seventh interfaith National Bible Week, November 20–27, sponsored by the Laymen’s National Bible Committee. Seibert, an active layman in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, succeeds Commissioner of Baseball Bowie K. Kuhn, the 1976 chairman.

Eldridge Cleaver, the converted former Black Panther leader, was giving a Christian testimony last month in a theater in Vancouver, British Columbia, as part of Campus Crusade’s “I Found It” campaign when a man came on stage and threw a pie in his face. Police rescued the attacker from outraged members of the audience, but Cleaver declined to press charges. An anarchist group took credit for the attack, saying it was punishment for Cleaver’s “betrayal of the cause.”

World Scene

The Hiding Place, the movie about Dutch evangelical Corrie ten Boom who hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II, has been playing to capacity audiences in British theaters, according to news sources. The film is being handled by commercial distributors, who have been plugging it on British TV (the law forbids religious and political organizations from buying time to advertise or to sponsor a program). A breakthrough, say the people at Worldwide Films, the film arm of the Billy Graham organization that produced the movie.

Translation of the entire Bible into the Somali language, in the making for twenty years, was completed in mid-April. Missionary Dorothy Modricker of the Sudan Interior Mission did most of the translating. Figures released by UNESCO state that literacy in Somalia has risen from 5 to 70 per cent since the government launched its compulsory literacy campaign in 1972.

The lives of United Bible Societies workers in Turkey are being threatened by extremists who are trying to force them to end Bible distribution in the country, according to UBS officials. They said the home of Ameniel Bagdas, Turkish Bible Society secretary, was bombed and acid was thrown in his wife’s face. Other members have been threatened, and two policemen were shot when they attempted to question a gang of youths who had gathered outside the Bagdas home. (Of Turkey’s 40 million people, it is estimated that fewer than three dozen are evangelical believers. There are no organized evangelical churches.)

Dissidents in Czechoslovakia have drawn up a new charter accusing the country’s Communist rulers of discriminating against churchgoers. The document, labeled “Charter 77, No. 9,” claimed the government was violating United Nations declarations on human and civil rights by demanding that officeholders renounce their religious faith. Like its predecessors in the Charter 77 series, the document was signed by former foreign minister Jiri Hajek.

Communist Albania, which has outlawed religion, has unleashed a series of attacks against the Soviet Union for “supporting” religion. The Soviet “revisionists,” said Albanian radio, allow thousands of churches, mosques, and Buddhist temples to remain open, monasteries to exist, seminaries to operate, and theological works to be published”—all because “it serves the oppression and exploitation of the toiling masses.”

Southern Baptist medical missionary Samuel R. J. Cannata, Jr., was detained for sixteen days by Ethiopian authorities on what turned out to be a “misunderstanding” by a local official over the possession of weapons. Cannata has a license to possess firearms to help rid some farming areas of destructive animals. Government troops have been making house-to-house searches aimed at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and certain Ethiopian groups they blame for turmoil in the country, according to sources. Several other missionaries have been detained briefly in the roundup.

On the weekend of April 3 the Romanian security police rounded up a number of dissidents who have been campaigning for human rights. Press reports from Paris said that novelist Paul Goma, 42, one of Romania’s leading writers, had been arrested in Bucharest and eight others sent to work camps for a year. They apparently were the architects of a human-rights appeal publicized earlier this year and subsequently signed by hundreds of other Romanians.

Also taken into custody was Baptist pastor Josif Ton of Ploesti and five other evangelicals who had signed a twenty-page document Ton drafted outlining alleged violations of religious rights of Romanian citizens. One of the five, Pavel Nicolescu, a Baptist lay preacher from Bucharest, was also a signer of the Goma appeal. Ton was preaching at a church in Iasi near the Soviet border when he was taken into custody.

The evangelicals were not arrested or detained, according to both government and church sources, but they were summoned daily for a week to police headquarters for questioning. Friends and relatives of the men sent word from Bucharest alleging that the police had beaten the evangelicals during the interrogation sessions. These accusations were denied by government officials.

In mid-April it was announced that Ton’s ministerial credentials had been removed. Some sources reached by CHRISTIANITY TODAY said the credentials were lifted by the government, but others—including the Romanian embassy in Washington—said that the leadership of the Baptist Union had carried out the action. Despite the ban, Ton preached in Bucharest on April 17, and he is now “in serious trouble,” according to a source who conferred with church and government leaders afterward.

The other signers of the evangelical appeal, besides Ton and Nicolescu, are: physician Silviu Cioata, a member of the Evangelical Christians (Plymouth Brethren); engineer Aurel Popescu, a Baptist lay preacher; Constantin Caraman, a retired Pentecostal minister; and Radu Dumitrescu, a Baptist dismissed from his job as a school teacher allegedly because of his faith.

Ton’s paper, “An Appeal for Respect of Human Rights for Evangelical Believers in Romania,” reached the West on the day the recent earthquake struck eastern Romania (see April 1 issue, page 54), and publication was held up at his request in light of the national suffering. Meanwhile, he distributed copies of the paper to Romanian authorities. There was no public reaction by them until Radio Free Europe broadcast a major story on the document in late March. Ton reportedly had turned down a police request earlier that he call RFE and have the broadcast cancelled.

The document begins by pointing to declarations of human rights adopted by the United Nations and the 1975 Helsinki participants (Romania was a signatory). These are “declarations of principle,” the paper states. “In the light of them each country that signed the agreements should annul every law or directive of administration that contradicts these principles.…” The paper goes on to detail three areas in which believers’ rights have been violated: (1) individuals and groups have been fined for holding meetings in private homes, and the law applied is one that deals with hooligans, parasites, and anarchists; (2) evangelicals are demoted and dismissed from responsible employment on religious grounds; (3) students have been harassed, discriminated against, and denied educational opportunities because of their faith.

In each section the document cites many cases, listing names and dates.

Listed are cases where Christians who were simply dining together or attending a birthday party were fined on grounds they were holding illegal meetings. In another instance, the paper charges, a group of Pentecostals submitted to authorities the necessary forms to request permission to function as a church. The county Inspector of Cults asked everyone to assemble, photographed them, then fined them each nearly a month’s pay for meeting illegally. Evangelist Liviu Olah, the former pastor of the large Baptist church in Oradea (he was ousted in a confrontation with state officials over baptism), was fined a similar amount for failing to obtain proper authorization when he was requested to preach at Buchin, according to the paper.

Among those listed in the employment abuses section is Christian Rosche, 46, a Pentecostal layman in Bucharest. An agricultural engineer, Rosche was for years chief of the Agricultural Documentation Center, which he established in the mid-1960s, in Romania’s Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He published many articles and books. His colleagues knew he was a Christian (he says he witnessed to many of them), but there was no trouble until several years ago when “political officers” began hassling him over his faith. He was demoted, then fired for preaching at a church during free time on an official trip to another city. He has been out of work three years, and his wife, an accountant, has been unemployed for one year (the government controls all employment). Meanwhile, their rent has been doubled. The couple, discouraged, would like to emigrate to Germany.

In the section on students, the paper tells of a confidential directive from state authorities ordering teachers to compile files on the religious backgrounds of children. As a result, these students are often denied membership in the youth organization to which most of the nation’s young people belong. Such membership is a prerequisite to most higher education. The student harassment, the document asserts, has gotten worse since Helsinki.

The paper concludes: “We consider that we have done our duty in trying [without success in the past] to get these problems resolved internally, and now—as a way of finding some healing for the suffering of our brothers in the faith—we are justified to address ourselves to the forums before whom Romania is obliged to respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of man.”

Government officials charged that the paper contains “misrepresentation of facts,” and Baptist leaders said privately that some of the cases were more complex than suggested in the paper. Also, they said, some of the cases were reversed under appeal to higher authorities or in legal negotiations. Apparently, some of the persons whose cases were cited by Ton objected to the use of their names without their permission.

Whatever, it is clear that the Baptist leadership and many of the 160 or so pastors of the Baptist Union—including a number of Ton’s former backers—were distressed by the public release of the paper (see article, page 18).

In an interview in March, Ton said there were rumors that the state wanted the Baptist leaders to stage an ecclesiastical trial in order to banish him from the ministry, an allegation the government would, of course, deny. In talks with certain pastors and leaders, however, it was evident that they were attempting to gather information that could be used against Ton doctrinally. And the clear impression was that these people were so upset with Ton themselves that they needed no prodding from outsiders.

Ton attended the university at Cluj, dropped out of the Baptist seminary in Bucharest after two years, and went to Speranta (Hope) Baptist Church in Arad in 1957 as an unordained evangelist. After one year, Ton left to teach school, and then he underwent a ten-year period of spiritual decline. Part of this time he was separated from his wife. Ton blames his defection on exposure to liberal theology in seminary. “I was left with only metaphors,” he recalls.

Ton says he got back on the right spiritual track following talks with Lutheran clergyman Richard Wurmbrand in the mid-1960s. He devoured Scripture. In January, 1968, he says, he “came back to Christ,” and he went before the congregation at the Iris Baptist Church in Cluj to confess his sins and ask forgiveness. Soon he was preaching in Cluj, and attendance shot up to nearly 1,000 (it had been 100), according to member Paul Barbatei, a lawyer who is now secretary general of the Baptist Union.

With help from the West, Ton attended Oxford. In 1972 he returned to Romania. He was ousted as a teacher of the seminary after circulating papers calling for greater freedom for the churches. The publicity surrounding the papers, though, evidently resulted in relaxation of many restrictions. Yet many of Ton’s peers resented him. They remembered that he had left the Christian camp during the Stalinist period. “We were pastors then, and we are still pastors now,” said one spokesman. “But he doesn’t consider us fit enough to shake hands.” (Ton had called on many of the ministers to stop cooperating with government intrusion into church affairs, and he apparently snubbed a few who differed with him.)

Many young people consider Ton and evangelist Olah, who is a Ton supporter, their spiritual fathers. Their pastors thus tend to feel that Ton is “stealing the hearts of the members of our congregations.” They accuse him of pride, of being uncooperative, of causing trouble.

Ton sees his role of confrontation as a unique one for the churches these days, and he feels that others misunderstand his motives. He insists that he has the ultimate good of all the churches at heart and that he is sincerely following Christ. He does believe some pastors need to “repent” of their unholy alliances with the state.

Whatever, many on both sides of the issue fear schism may occur, and they are praying for a solution. “What the state has failed to do throughout all our history,” comments one leader, “we are doing to ourselves.”

Changes in Cuba

Cuba’s Council of Protestant Churches at a meeting in Havana last month changed its name and adopted a new set of by-laws, according to a Religious News Service report. The changes reflect the expanded character of the twenty-eight-year-old organization, which now includes some Orthodox bodies and para-church groups. Its new name is Ecumenical Council of Cuba.

Council president Raul Fernandez Ceballos announced at the assembly that the Cuban government has authorized the importing of 2,500 Bibles and 2,500 New Testaments, half of what had been requested. The Scriptures will be received through the Bible Society of Jamaica.

Ceballos also noted that sixty-nine Cuban Protestants have received permission to attend ecclesiastical meetings outside the country.

Delegates from thirteen denominations and affiliated organizations attended the assembly, along with visitors from Jamaica and Mozambique.

Graham’s Man In Havana

Fifty businessmen from major firms in Minneapolis took early advantage of the government’s decision to allow Americans to travel to Cuba. Among those making a five-day trip to Havana last month was George M. Wilson, vice-president, treasurer, and business manager of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Wilson reported that Cuban law allows considerable freedom of religion. “The believers are free to witness to the saving grace of the Gospel,” he said, “in homes, the churches, and other group meetings.”

He said it was probably a plus for Protestants that they have not entered into political goings-on in either the Communist Castro government or the one that preceded it. There are reportedly 100,000 Protestants in the country.

Baptist leaders who met with Wilson said they were short of Bibles. On the whole, however, the churchmen were positive. They reported that there are 225 Baptist churches in Cuba and that they are growing. Six Baptist churches have been built since the revolution. There are two full-time evangelists, and the churches hold revival services two or three times a year.

Wilson was asked when Billy Graham would return to Cuba. The evangelist apparently would be free to preach in churches, but a special permit would be needed for stadium rallies.

The trade delegation’s visit was highlighted by an audience with Castro, who quoted from the Bible the words of Jesus that the first shall be last and the last first. “We might apply this to you people who have come here today,” Wilson quoted him as saying. “In trade, however, I believe I can say that the first would be first. I would like to compliment you on the success of American business.”

Wilson subsequently returned the favor by praising Cuban hospitality and quoting from Proverbs 24 from The Living Bible, “Any enterprise is built by wise planning, becomes strong through common sense, and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts.” Wilson added: “This we need to do in our future relations with you.”

Signals From Space

The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) of Virginia Beach, Virginia, last month dedicated a $1 million satellite earth station and began daily religious broadcasting of radio and television programs by way of RCA’s SATCOM II satellite 22,000 miles away in space. The network said it had signed a $5.5 million, six-year contract with RCA to use the satellite for 47.5 hours a week now and for twenty-four hours a day by the middle of this summer.

Stations must have special reception equipment to receive the satellite transmission. Signals are beamed to SATCOM II and retransmitted to other earth stations and satellites, and then to television, radio, and cable television stations around the globe.

The dedication ceremonies, televised live via SATCOM II on April 29, were part of the International 700 Club, a popular CBN program seen or heard on four continents.

CBN is developing an international communications center in Virginia Beach that will provide counseling services, translation facilities, and communications training for students from Third World countries.

Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission (SBRTC) dedicated debt-free its new $3.3 million television studio and training center in Fort Worth, Texas. The studio was described as the largest of its kind between New York and California. SBRTC has grown from four employees in 1955 to become the world’s largest producer of religious programs for radio and television, according to SBRTC spokesmen.

SBRTC president Paul M. Stevens declared during dedication ceremonies that the Christian world is entering a new era of electronic communication, signaling “the beginning of the greatest evangelistic effort in the world’s history.”

Episcopalians: Words of Caution

When Episcopal bishop Paul Moore of New York ordained Ellen M. Barrett, a self-proclaimed lesbian, to the priesthood last January, he touched off a controversy that overshadows in some sectors the debate over women’s ordination. Some parishes cut off denominational giving in protest. Late last month in a meeting at Louisville, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church went on record expressing the “hope” that “no bishop will ordain or license any professing and practicing homosexual until the issue [is] resolved by the General Convention.” (The General Convention, which normally meets triennially, is the highest policymaking body in the church.)

Without specifically singling out homosexuality, the council also voted to “condemn all actions which offend the moral law of the church,” and to underscore the “necessity” for the church to give moral leadership in world affairs.

The council decried what it called “abuse” of Episcopal marriage canons (an issue apparently raised by the recent remarriage of Elizabeth Taylor by an Episcopal priest) and the “refusal of priests to honor the godly admonitions of their bishops.” The latter statement referred to dissident priests who refused to accept the 2.8 million-member denomination’s decision last fall to allow women to become priests. At least half a dozen priests have been suspended and charged with “abandoning the communion” of the Episcopal Church in their actions of dissent, it was reported.

Among those suspended is Canon Albert J. duBois, executive director of Anglicans United and for twenty-four years executive director of American Church Union, an Anglo-Catholic (“high church”) faction within the Episcopal Church. Anglicans United was formed to fight against acceptance of women priests and a new prayer book at last year’s General Convention.

The diocese of Long Island informed duBois in April that he will be deposed from the ministry in six months. One of the charges against him is that he is attempting to form a new denomination through Anglicans United, but DuBois denies having participated in any such plans. Yet AU announcements have indicated it intends to form a new church body, complete with bishops, to carry on as the “true” Episcopal Church. A convention to form the new body is set for St. Louis in September. Retired bishop Albert A. Chambers of the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, last month succeeded duBois as international president of Anglicans United.

In California, Rector Robert Morse of St. Peter’s Church in Oakland, was suspended and threatened with defrocking by Bishop C. Kilmer Myers after Morse’s congregation voted overwhelmingly to break with the national church over the women’s-ordination issue. Defrocking, cautioned Myers, would be honored by the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The implication is that the traditionalist Episcopal body Morse, duBois, and others want to organize will not be recognized as part of the Anglican fellowship.

Evangelicals On Politics

Politics, Americanism, and Christianity, by Perry C. Cotham (Baker, 1976, 335 pp., $5.95), Our Star-Spangled Faith, by Donald B. Kraybill (Herald Press, 1976, 215 pp., $2.50), The Shaping of America, by John Warwick Montgomery (Bethany Fellowship, 1976, 255pp., $5.95), Politics and the Biblical Drama, by Richard J. Mouw (Eerdmans, 1976, 143 pp., $2.95 pb), and Save America!, by H. Edward Rowe (Revell, 1976, 159 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by Stephen V. Monsma, member, House of Representatives, Lansing, Michigan.

These five books, all published during the United States’ bicentennial year, reveal both the quickening of the evangelical political conscience and the distance evangelicals have yet to go in developing even the basics of a Christian approach to politics. The five authors are deeply concerned with the American political system and the proper Christian attitude toward it, but they differ in their conclusions and even in many of their starting points.

There are two particularly important questions with which American evangelicals must struggle—and these five authors do—if they are to develop a basis for an active involvement in the social and political life of the nation.

One of these questions concerns the very need for and basis of Christian political involvement. Should Christians get actively involved in public policy decisions by gaining and exercising political power? If so, what should be the basis of that involvement?

A second question concerns the Christian’s attitudes toward the nation. How much importance should a Christian attach to the nation—and to the United States in particular? Is the United States—or any nation—a proper object of Christian concern and affection? Or is the nation to be seen as unimportant in God’s workings among mankind and perhaps even a positive evil?

In regard to the first of these questions, Mouw, Rowe, and Cotham all argue directly and explicitly for Christian political involvement. Mouw can be distinguished from Rowe and Cotham in that he argues for Christian political involvement largely in contrast to the non-political social activism of John Howard Yoder and others in the Anabaptist tradition, whereas Rowe and Cotham argue for Christian political involvement in contrast to a traditional pietistic separatism.

Mouw argues that government is not simply the result of the fall but would have been present even if mankind had not sinned. Thus in Mouw’s view politics is part of God’s intended ordering of human relationships, not an evil resulting from the fall. But sin has perverted politics into a manipulative relationship. Through Christ’s redemptive work and the action of his Church, politics is made to serve justice.

Out of these foundations Mouw, in chapter 5, responds more directly to Yoder and the Anabaptist vision of bringing about societal change without a political involvement they view as unworthy of followers of Christ. Mouw argues for a Christian political involvement that will have the effect of coercing others but is not motivated by a desire to coerce others.

Mouw thereby builds a biblically rooted, systematic case for Christian political involvement. Whether or not the reader agrees with it, he or she will gain from Mouw’s valuable contribution to the continuing discussion of this crucial and divisive question.

While arguing against the apolitical position of Anabaptism, Mouw recognizes strengths and helpful correctives in Anabaptism. In doing so he forms a basis upon which Reformed and Anabaptist evangelicals can carry on their discussion to their mutual enrichment, rather than engaging in destructive polemics.

Cotham’s book is a broader, more inclusive work than the other four. But a central theme in it is the question of Christian political involvement. Cotham considers three options facing the Christian: non-involvement, political activism, and revolutionary, probably violent, action. He argues against non-involvement, for political activism, and basically against revolution. In a poorly reasoned section, he does, however, allow for the possibility of even violent revolution in extreme circumstances.

Cotham is especially strong in arguing against political non-involvement based on a traditional pietistic withdrawal from the world and its evils. His answers to possible objections to political activism are, however, somewhat overemphasized at the expense of a positive, biblically rooted basis for political involvement. Here Mouw is stronger. But Cotham, a political scientist rather than a philosopher like Mouw, is stronger than Mouw in recognizing the realities of political life and drawing out their significance for political involvement.

Regrettably, Cotham largely ignores the Anabaptist option of bringing about social and political change without actual political involvement. At one point he claims that a Christian who rejects political participation is saying that “Christianity is irrelevant to social problems.” Yoder and those of similar views would object strenuously to this, believing that Christians can—and that Christ did—affect social problems through non-political means. Thus Cotham fails to address himself to a question that is vital to much evangelical discussion.

Rowe’s book too is a strong call for Christian political action. Like Cotham, he urges political action largely in contrast to a pietistic withdrawal from the world. Although Rowe makes a strong case that withdrawal truncates the full Gospel, which is relevant and redemptive in all areas of life, he does not build a systematic, biblical case for political activism. Instead he takes an overly pragmatic approach. He seeks to build a case for Christian political involvement on the basis of its chances for success and the need to save the United States. A more biblically based, systematic approach would lead one to stress healing and justice as they relate to individuals and social groups rather than the need to save the nation as a nation. Unfortunately, Rowe, like Cotham, ignores the Anabaptist alternative to political action being articulated by Yoder and others.

Montgomery and Kraybill touch less directly on the matter of Christian political involvement. Montgomery does clearly come out in favor of it. He thinks that for evangelicals political involvement should rest on a reformation perspective through which they seek to apply biblical insights to current policy problems. His critique of pietism and much of traditional American evangelicalism leads him to advocate a “law and Gospel” reformation perspective. This is not a matter of simply imposing Christian morals on all of society, he says, but of strengthening liberty and bringing “about an elevation of societal standards.”

Kraybill is largely concerned with civil religion in the United States and the tendency he sees in it to substitute the nation and loyalty to it for God and loyalty to him. In reacting to this form of idolatry, he so separates the Christian as a church member and the Christian as a citizen that he leaves little room for Christian political involvement. He does not explicitly draw this conclusion himself, but it is hard to draw any other from his arguments. His separation of church and state seems to lead to a separation of religion and state, which is a very different proposition.

After studying these five responses to the question of Christian political involvement, I concluded that we need to think more carefully about the basic nature of the state and its place in God’s ordering of human relationships. (Of the five authors, Mouw does the best job of this.) Is the state a necessary evil that God permits to exist in order to limit the effects of mankind’s sin? If so, direct Christian involvement in the state becomes very questionable. Or is the state part of God’s intended ordering of human relationships, which sin constantly threatens to corrupt and which Christ died to redeem? If so, Christian political involvement becomes a necessity. An answer to this basic question must come first.

If one disagrees with Mouw and sees the state as an evil, then much of what Cotham, Rowe, and Montgomery say about involvement becomes irrelevant. But if one agrees with Mouw—as I do—that the state is part of God’s intended order, then Cotham and to a lesser degree Rowe are helpful in clearing away other, more practical objections to Christian political activism, and Montgomery is helpful in giving greater direction to that activism.

Concerning the second basic question that evangelicals must resolve if they are to be an active force in the social and political life of the nation—what should be the Christian’s basic attitude toward the nation?—Kraybill argues for the unimportance of the United States as a nation. He sees American civil religion as “an illicit church-state love affair” in which religious and political leaders support each other, corrupting themselves in the process. He argues that neither the United States nor any other nation is the special object of God’s favor and that the United States is not, and never has been, more “Christian” than other nations.

In so doing Kraybill presents a needed corrective to much of the easy identification of America and its policies with God’s will. Without such a corrective there is a constant danger that Christian political efforts will consist of little more than adding a frosting of pious words to essentially secular efforts, or will corrupt the Christian message of justice and righteousness with the idolatry of nation worship.

Having said this, I must add that I think things are not so simple as Kraybill would have us believe. I agree that the United States is not the object of God’s favor in a way that is true of no other nation. But does this mean it is improper, as Kraybill argues, to speak of God’s blessing the United States or to pray that he will guide the nation? Are national days of prayer, called by the government, wrong? Kraybill indiscriminately condemns any religious statement or reference by a political official and any and all religious acts or observances associated with government.

What is lacking is a positive working out of the proper use of Christian values and insights by political officials. Ought the government to pretend we are a nation of atheists? I think not. We need a systematic and positive consideration of a proper Christian response to the state in a pluralistic society.

While Kraybill exemplifies the dangers in overly deprecating the nation, Rowe’s book exemplifies the dangers in overly glorifying it. For Rowe, the basic object of Christian political activism is more to save the nation than to establish justice. The title of the book, Save America!, proclaims this message, and the content confirms it. “The only real hope for the future of our nation lies in the political activism of our Bible-believing citizens,” he says. I am not certain that God wills the survival of the United States; I am certain he wills justice and righteousness.

Cotham, Montgomery, and Mouw all show a more balanced view of the nation than Kraybill and Rowe. Cotham defines civil religion broadly as beliefs, values, and myths concerning the nation that are held in common by the people of a nation. Civil religion can be either good or bad depending on the content of these beliefs. Cotham ably analyzes how civil religion can and does play a positive role in the United States, and how civil religion is sometimes misused. He sees what he calls apostate civil religion as merely legitimizing the status quo. Christianity then loses its prophetic voice.

Cotham goes on to consider the interplay of morality and political issues, what is a proper understanding of patriotism, the ways in which the United States can be considered a Christian nation, and the emerging problems the United States must face. In all of this he takes well-reasoned, balanced, and biblically based positions. I do not agree with all his conclusions. But that is not important. What is important is that he raises important issues, struggles to find positive approaches, and avoids basic errors that would distort all his conclusions.

Cotham views the American nation as a mix of strengths and weaknesses, accomplishments and failures, and the Christian citizen’s obligation as a mix of obedience and criticism, affection and distrust. Whether Cotham always comes up with the proper mix is arguable, but certainly he gets us off to a good start by recognizing that the Christian attitude toward the nation must take into account both the good and the bad and must call forth both acceptance and criticism.

Montgomery offers a broad critique of American culture and society. In Part One, his strongest, he considers the four layers that have conditioned and molded American character and society: the preeighteenth-century era of explorers and Puritans who were Christian; eighteenth-century enlightenment, which retained a strong Christian influence; nineteenth-century pragmatism, which was thoroughly secular; and twentieth-century despair, which is a result of wars and the collapse of traditionally held values. Montgomery is at his best in this historical analysis, which suggests the ways in which the United States can and cannot be considered a Christian nation.

But Part Two, in which he seeks to give direction to Christian attitudes towards the United States, is spotty. He makes some valid, stimulating points and some weak, confusing ones. His theory about the influence of the frontier experience on the development of American character, leading to an adolescent outlook—while probably valid—is overemphasized and is not well integrated with his earlier discussion of the four layers that have formed America. His listing of the strong and weak points he sees in American society is a repeat of points frequently made by secular scholars, and it too is not well integrated with his earlier discussion.

In Montgomery’s view, America is burdened by an intellectual-theological development that has led it to a modern despair and by an adolescent mentality growing out of a frontier-conditioned history. Yet it is helped by a strong commitment to freedom. It is in this America that Montgomery calls Christians to witness and act.

Mouw considers the United States as a nation only indirectly in response to William Stringfellow’s attempts to identify the United States with the Babylon of Revelation 18. In contrast to the view that the United States is totally apostate, Mouw argues that empirically American society has redeeming strengths, and that theologically nations do have a legitimate role to play in God’s plan of salvation.

These five books reveal the disparity with which American Christian writers can view their nation. It seems clear to me that Montgomery, Mouw, and Cotham, who see both strengths and weaknesses in the nation and who call for both loyalty and distrust as components of the Christian’s attitude toward the nation, are closer to a proper approach than either Kraybill or Rowe, who move toward either total rejection of the nation or an overemphasis on it. Christians live in two worlds. We are citizens of heaven, and our true home is not this world. Yet God has placed us in time and space. We are citizens of a nation that gives us opportunities and freedom—incomplete and limited though they are.

Out of this dual citizenship arises a tension that every Christian should feel. We must give to Caesar what is his and to God what is his. But what is Caesar’s and what is God’s? Montgomery, Mouw, and especially Cotham can help us answer that question.

Male And Female: A Catholic Perspective

Whither Womankind: The Humanity of Women, by Robert Kress (Abbey, 1975, 289 pp., $4.75 pb), is reviewed by Judy Brown Hull, elder, Broadway Presbyterian Church, New York City.

Robert Kress unfolds primarily Roman Catholic history and theology in a biblical perspective with a heavy emphasis on pre-Reformation thought. The misogyny of most early church fathers is set in contrast with the biblical data. Kress found an occasional male in the early centuries of Christian history who believed something other than that women must be secluded from public and ecclesiastical life because they are by nature temptresses, weak of mind and body, and incomplete. He finds no biblical warrant to prevent the ordination of women to the priesthood, but he does find much tradition and precedent to explain such a view.

This survey could well engage those who have rejected a Christian feminist position because of such excesses among some in the modern women’s movement as denigrating motherhood and embracing a unisex position. Kress scores the movement with the warning of Jesus that sometimes the condition after liberation from demonic forces can be worse than the prior state. He accuses pro-abortionists of adopting the same stance toward the fetus that chauvinist males take toward women: both view “the other” as objects to be manipulated for one’s convenience and not as human persons of value in their own right.

Kress is relentless in affirming that women and men are equally created in the image of the personal, caring, involved God who can be called both Father and Mother and who can be as validly represented to humanity by feminine forms as by masculine. He is equally relentless in accusing the secular and radical Catholic feminists of throwing out the good with the bad, and he calls for more work on discovering the basic meaning of male and female.

Pitiful Pike: A Biography

The Death and Life of Bishop Pike, by William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne (Doubleday, 1976, 469 pp., $10), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, professor at large, Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, California.

Stringfellow and Towne are the authors of The Bishop Pike Affair, which defended Pike as a Luther-like hero subjected to persecution by hidebound, fusty Episcopal bureaucrats who still thought that heresy trials were possible. Now they have written a stream-of-consciousness, flashback biography of America’s “church alumnus.” The inversion in the title is not accidental: the details of Pike’s death in the Judean desert in September, 1969, form the structure of the book; the colorful and sometimes bizarre facts of his life are sandwiched in between and are sometimes curiously blended with the discussion of his death.

This arrangement appears very odd until one realizes that this book is hagiography: a saint’s life is being set forth, and just as St. Sebastian is primarily remembered at the dramatic moment he became a human pincushion, so Stringfellow and Towne see Pike through the prism of his death under the desert sun of the Holy Land. They have no difficulty in describing his death as a “death to self in Christ.”

Does the life of a saint in fact emerge from this adulatory work? What emerges is no less than a human shambles. Some points: two of Pike’s three marriages ended in divorce; his son, whose “biggest problem may have been his father” (p. 22), committed suicide after severe drug and homosexual involvements; his daughter apparently also attempted suicide but did not succeed at it; a secretary-mistress with whom Pike was having an adulterous relationship committed suicide (her suicide note read: “You are unloving.… I needed hope. You never offered it—never once offered it”); Pike’s third marriage was preceded by adultery (“On that fateful Saturday night in November, Jim and Diane, by grace of the new morality and the old absolutes, had sex.… As of July 25, 1967, Bishop Pike, having been for some time unhappily married and unhappily mistressed and happily mistressed, was happily mistressed only and well on his way to becoming happily married only”—pp. 80, 149); his final years were spent in tacky spiritualistic activity with such doubtful purveyors of the art as Hans Holzer; and his “jettisoning of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation” (as he announced it in the February 22, 1966, Look magazine) was eventually followed by his jettisoning of his episcopal office and membership in the institutional church altogether. Even to an observer who had all the good will in the world, such a life would seem utterly irreconcilable with the portrait of the New Testament saint—to say nothing about the New Testament bishop.

But did Pike “come around” to the biblical Gospel at the end? Francis Schaeffer has hinted as much, emphasizing his public dialogue with the bishop at the University of Chicago. Regrettably, Schaeffer’s efforts to love Pike back were anything but successful: the organizers of the dialogue wrote me that they were deeply disappointed with the absence of clean confrontation (the reaction of the uncommitted in the audience was that both speakers “really believed the same thing”), and my own week with Pike at the McMaster University Teach-In in November, 1967, made it perfectly plain to me that his theology was utterly un-Christian (see my Suicide of Christian Theology, pp. 17–61). At McMaster, the bishop, like a movie entertainer, seemed interested only in the gratifications of contact with his public; he was incapable of any sustained theological discourse and impatient with the suggestion that the Bible (or anything else, for that matter) could have authoritative judgment over his opinions. At one point he actually said, in setting himself up as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and denigrating St. Paul: “If, like me, you people had withstood the blazing desert sun in the Near East, you would understand Paul’s exaggerations.”

Pike did not have the stature of a classical tragic hero or even that of a great heretic, but lessons can indeed be learned from his biography, chief among them being that no talents, however great, can preserve from destruction one who trifles with God’s Word. Other lesser benefits to the reader of this work: insight into the world of today’s mediumistic activity, poltergeists, and the occult, and contact with the only slightly less dubious world of contemporary radical theology (Bishop John Robinson and company).