Epistolics Anonymous

The following column appeared in the first issue ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 15, 1956. The author, the first in the Eutychus series (the current is Eutychus VII), was later revealed to be Professor Edmund Clowney of Westminster Seminary. The editor’s comment too is from that first issue.

To THE EDITOR:

Can you tell me, please, whether it is proper to launch an ICBM rocket with a bottle of champagne? Having flunked physics, I am somewhat unsure of myself in this atomic age. It would be great fun for an inveterate non-alcoholic to contribute some verbal pop and fizz to the launching of your new magazine, but I don’t know whether it would be appropriate.

I’m a little over-awed. Your magazine, you say, is “designed for worldwide impact.” Looking at your streamlined brochure and the impressive list of editors and contributors I can well believe it. The jet take-off of your first issue is going to be something to see!

But sir, you need a Pseudonymous Letter Writer, for which position I herewith make application. I can hear you muttering, “The pseudonymous, while not synonymous with the anonymous, is equally pusillanimous.…” I wish you wouldn’t talk that way. Where would American literature be without Mark Twain? Besides, as that great master of pseudonymity, Soren Kierkegaard, has explained, using a pseudonym may show too much courage rather than too little! My nom de plume suggests not a personality but a picture. Easy slumber under sound gospel preaching was fatal for Eutychus. The Christian church of our generation has not been crowded to his precarious perch, but it has been no less perilously asleep in comfortable pews.

The resemblance to Eutychus does not end there. Eutychus prostrate on the pavement is more appropriate than we know as a symbol of Christendom today. To tap sleeping Eutychus on the shoulder, to embrace dead Eutychus in love, faith, and hope, is your task.

Believe me, my heart is with you. “Evangelical Christianity” … never were those words more significant than in this time when many who falsely or foolishly claim the noun would assure us, in the name of unity, that the adjective is unnecessary—either meaningless or sectarian.

But if we are to contend for the truth in love, humbling humor is good medicine. When men take a cause seriously enough, there is always great danger that they will take themselves too seriously. If we see ourselves as others see us, we may discover why everyone is laughing!

May your cause prosper, your letters-to-the-editor department flourish, and may I remain (this is a threat and a promise)

your humble scribe,

EUTYCHUS

• So that the Editor will be assured of at least one letter fortnightly, CHRISTIANITY TODAY welcomes Eutychus the volunteer. Except in the case of Eutychus, whose identity is already established (cf. Acts 20:9), communications must be accompanied by the name and address of the writer. The title “Eutychus and His Kin” is employed for letters to the Editor because Eutychus is an apostolic symbol for one made drowsy under the long exhortation of others, or providentially awakened to new opportunities.—ED.

A Little List

I’ve got a little list of items that never would be missed if permanently excluded from CHRISTIANITY TODAY. (I’m a new subscriber, but old acquaintance via borrowed copies.) The book issues are eagerly snatched and happily opened while still warm from the zip box. But—when the “varied compendium” announced on the cover (Sept. 10 issue) percolated into the gray matter—Marabel Who?… At least some of those more frabjious phrases could have been edited out of the interview: “It’s a super …,” a “super-duper sex relationship,” “a fantastic challenge,” and that patronizing reference to the “little old lady.” (Why are they always so little?) What ever happened to your blue pencil? I have a good supply I’d be happy to lease you, having been a copy editor once myself.…

Item two: Please chuck into the Refiner’s Fire and let them be utterly consumed—those superfluous pseudo-serious critical reviews of “Jesus Rock” (revolting phrase, whatever the horror may be). I cannot imagine that a very large segment of C.T. readers care half a decibel about any kind of “rock,” particularly this brand. Surprised at Word, too, putting out such hokum. And as bad as the noise itself are those phony phrases of the reviewer: just what is “selectivity sensitivity”? Something was “too syrupy” for her taste—does that mean too little thumping beat? I have no idea who Gary Paxton is, and am happy to leave matters so, echo-chamber imitations or no. And as for the “always clever” and “imagistic” (what’s that?) lyrics of some other rocker, how vulgar can you get with or without a “superbly played honky-tonk piano”?… Is it too much to request equal time for records of serious, classical sacred music to be reviewed?

C.T. still holds more of interest and information for me than otherwise, but these items seriously rocked my respect for your good taste and sincerity.

EDITH M. MACHEN

Harrisburg, Pa.

What Crept In

In your September 10 issue you have an article in the “News” section with the headline “God and the GOP in Kansas City.” The headline is extremely more apropos than the superficial reading matter that follows it.… The authors must be marginal in spiritual perception or are presenting subtle political propaganda.

The opening sentence reads as follows: “Little of the overt spirituality that crept into Baptist Sunday-school teacher Jimmy Carter’s campaign found its way into Kemper Arena at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.”

It is apparent that the authors of this article did not see either the Republican or Democratic Conventions on television or witness either one from inside the halls.… They carp about the time limitations set by the convention managers on invocations and benedictions and the requirement for advance copies, which seems to me to be only normal prudent assembly procedure. Invocations and benedictions are not sermons and if carried to length diffuse into meaningless prolixity. They mention nothing of the spiritual content of these and completely miss the great spiritual moments of the convention. These occurred at the close of both of the acceptance speeches of President Ford and Senator Robert Dole. These were the perorations of the addresses of both of these candidates in which they implicitly recognize the awesome responsibilities of the offices and publicly declared their need for the guidance and help of God.

If the writers of your news story had listened to the acceptance speeches of Sunday-school teacher Jimmy Carter and minister’s son Mondale at the Democratic Convention they would have noticed that there was absolutely no reference to God or any expression of need of God’s help.…

I do not know what this denotes on the part of the Democratic candidates. It could indicate an inflated ego or such a preoccupation with the mechanics of writing an acceptance speech that the eternal things of the Spirit and the Infinite are totally forgotten.

But these are the times when we need leaders conscious of the abiding presence of God, who dwell in the shadow of his wings, whose strength, like David, is in the Lord, and who are made great by the gentleness of God.

HOWARD T. JORDAN

Cincinnati, Ohio

Best On Books

Thank you for the nice mention of my bibliography in your September 10 issue (“Bible Study, Peace on Earth Handbook, and Other Approaches,” by Donald Tinder.) I appreciate it sincerely. Let me also say that I thought this particular book survey was the best that I have read in the four or five years that I have been reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It was a great job, and the cover was especially captivating.

ALBERT J. MENENDEZ

Assistant Editor

Church and State

Silver Spring, Md.

Balancing The Adjectives

W. Ward Gasque’s review of the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Books, Sept. 10), after his “admittedly hasty” first reading, was moving along objectively to wrap-up point—when he suddenly has a compulsion to baptize his readers with bias, or (if you prefer) to immerse them with impudence. It is likely that virtually all readers will have long since settled into a satisfying view of the Scripture teaching on baptism, while virtually none of them will have seen the volume, much less evaluated the articles. But the mere adjectives “superb” and “desperate” do not connote opposite let alone objective assessments. That the article on infant baptism was intended by the editors to “balance” the one on baptism does seem evident enough, but that the one is superb and the other desperate is purely in the eye of the beholder—an eye with its own desperate grasp of Scripture, exegesis, theology, history, documentation and scholarship.

Really, what objective basis is provided for quartering the biblical covenant and casting it to the judgment of the gods of dogma out of hand? Must summary assessments follow, no matter how radical, without the slightest effort of the reviewer to justify it?

CLYDE W. FIELD

Bible Presbyterian Church

Kalispell, Mont.

This year’s political campaign has made me remember something I heard a thousand ages ago: religion and politics don’t mix. I have urged Christians to get involved in the political processes and will continue to do so. The worm in the apple is that so many of the saints who agree with me about religious matters seem to be so ornery, so obtuse, so recalcitrant—in other words, so opposed to my opinions—in matters political! I’m grateful that presidential elections do not come along more often than once every four years.

The English poet Rudyard Kipling once wrote about a young Englishman who left his homeland, determined to put the East to rights. He went, he saw, but conspicuously he did not conquer. Kipling poignantly recounts the sequel:

The end of the fight is a tombstone white

With the name of the late deceased

And the epitaph drear, ‘A fool lies here

Who tried to hustle the East.’

Times have changed, I discovered while attending the Chinese Congress on World Evangelization, held in August in Hong Kong. (See the News account in the September 24 issue.) A blistering pace was established; no longer does the East offer that eyrie where peace comes dropping slow. The conscientious participant, sticking rigidly to the schedule, would have breakfast at seven and be bused back to his hotel at 10:30 P.M. Most of the eight days he would attend no fewer than ten meetings, with breaks only for meals and a one-hour afternoon rest period. Some of the elders found willing spirit and weak flesh in conflict, particularly when extreme heat was succeeded by tropical rainstorms.

This must be written before I have adequate time to mull over my notes, but some general comments can be made about a congress that, according to the chairman, Dr. Philip Teng, would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. At that time there was not the desire for cooperation and unity that there is now. The Chinese churches have matured. Past international gatherings were sponsored by Westerners; right from the start the Hong Kong congress was entirely a Chinese project.

Teng saw the congress also as symbolizing “the sense of responsibility on evangelism of the Chinese church [so that it] will no longer only ‘receive’ but ‘give.’ ”

Perhaps the most moving moment came at the beginning of an hour called, a little misleadingly, “East West encounter.” This saw Chinese and missionaries coming onto the platform two by two, hand in hand. (Kipling had again proved a bad prophet, with his denial that East and West would ever meet.)

There followed a series of six-minute addresses in which missionaries had been invited to participate (exceptionally, for the missionary presence generally was low-keyed and unobtrusive). One of them put the position succinctly: the colonial attitude had been, “We do it; you help.” The modern nationalist attitude tended to say virtually, “We do it; you help.” The pendulum has now come back to the middle, with an admirable internationalism: “Here’s the job; let’s do it together.”

From the Chinese side there was abundant evidence that congress members do not think the day of the missionary has passed—nor will it, until the Lord returns. No one was rash enough to deny tensions, but they came over only obliquely. One speaker reminded participants that love is to be shown to those in Christ as well as to those outside. But everything here was said and taken in love, and all hailed as a miracle the fact that Chinese from every continent could come together at all. Now that they have had such an experience they are determined to ensure that it will be kept alive, and a proposal was made to hold another evangelism congress in another Asian country in 1980.

The heart of every Chinese evangelist still tingles to the call “Back to the Mainland!,” and this is a matter of fervent prayer. It might also lead to a circumscribed vision, but one of the encouraging areas in this congress was the recognition of uncompleted tasks in other areas—not merely among Chinese, but in terms of the Great Commission that knows no boundaries of nationality. There was something almost unbearably moving about hearing Chinese Christians sing “Jesus Shall Reign” (a hymn traditionally associated with Western valedictory services), and realizing that they are thinking now also about the non-Chinese unevangelized.

Not all of this is yet fully articulated; one of the missionaries delicately reminded the congress of the need for seminary graduates trained to formulate a theology to which their own Chinese expositors could make a significant contribution. All kinds of practical questions need to be faced. One young pastor privately deprecated the term “Chinese church.” He recognized the semantic usefulness, but felt that the term might convey the impression of limited horizons for evangelization. (It seemed a minor thought until I began to think about it!)

Sensed just beneath the surface were the psychological barriers of centuries. Erosion is under way, but it will take time. Young missionaries, despite their training, sometimes even yet come with an attitude of superiority, seen in a conviction that they are there to teach. In the forefront of Western missionary thinking (and this was a Western missionary talking to me) should be the question: “What is the role of the missionary?”

Among the Chinese, on the other hand, “Missionary, go home!” is found less frequently than another expression of Chinese reaction to Westerners: “Are they going to give me something worthwhile to do?” This may come out of a lingering feeling of inferiority, at least among some, intermingled with a true Christian humility from which we Westerners have much to learn.

For many Chinese the Hong Kong congress was a moment of self-discovery, a date with destiny (one participant’s words) wherein they not only met one another for the first time but saw beyond Chinese horizons to a dying world and a task to which they, with Christians everywhere, were called.

Because of political pressures it was not possible for the congress to discuss plans for the future evangelization of mainland China. This was, however, the subject of continual prayer. The vision and the burden are still there. Such evangelization was debarred as a debating theme, but the Chinese church is no less committed to that cause.

Another significant note struck at the congress was that evangelical churches should not withdraw from the World Council of Churches and its subsidiaries but rather should help work toward a more biblically oriented approach from within. It is pertinent to add that many denominations, including Lutherans and Anglicans, were represented at Hong Kong.

Finally, an indication of responsible Christian stewardship was reflected in the fact that all 1,500 participants in the congress received no subsidy for travel or hotel expenses from congress sources. The venue (Kowloon City Baptist Church) was manned by some 200 voluntary workers. Total cost: only $160,000—in itself an impressive achievement.

Every morning on my way to the meetings I passed a building marked “China Power and Light Company Limited.” Strike the last word as incongruous and you have a fair description of the Chinese Congress on World Evangelization.

Korean prophet-evangelist Sun Myung Moon wants very much to capture the attention—and affection—of the American people. Since his arrival in the United States in late 1971 to promote his Unification Church and its doctrine of a latter-day messiah, the 57-year-old Moon has spoken in scores of cities and staged several media-oriented extravaganzas, including a much-publicized rally last month at the foot of the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital.

Attendance at these rallies has fallen short of expectations, however, and much of the attention and news coverage Moon covets has turned out to be negative. Reporters, government investigators, religious leaders, and irate parents of “Moonies” have been delving deeply into his background and beliefs as well as the current dealings of the Unification Church. Serious questions have been raised, and a number of them are still unanswered, partly because Moon and his aides don’t want to talk about them.

The Moonies tried hard at the Washington rally to drown the controversy in a million-dollar media splash. Their noisy celebration was designed to show off Moon as a kindly spiritual benefactor. The rally attracted about 50,000 people, according to an estimate of the National Park Service. The chief Moon spokesman, Unification Church of America president Neil A. Salonen, told the crowd there were 200,000 present as the evening program began, however.

Moon’s message, scheduled just prior to a fireworks spectacular, lasted only thirty-seven minutes, including the consecutive translation by his aide, Bo Hi Pak. Listeners vigorously applauded and waved small flags eleven times during the speech after the interpreter finished key paragraphs.

In the address Moon positioned his church as a part of a new trinity. He declared, “Judaism was God’s first central religion, and Christianity was the second. The Unification Church is the third, coming with the new revelation that will fulfill the final chapter of God’s Providence. These central religions must unite in America and reach out to unite religions of the world.”

The Korean also called on Israel, the United States, and Korea to form a type of trinity since they are the “nations where these three religions are based.” Earlier in the speech he spoke of the failure of Israel to recognize Jesus Christ as the messiah. This failure 2,000 years ago presumably does not disqualify modern Israel from a role in the new search for “one world under God,” however.

Moon did not point to Christ as the messiah, and he did nothing to dispel the belief many of his followers have that he has been given that role. Salonen said of Moon in a Washington Star interview on the day of the rally, “We believe he is the prophet and God’s central figure.”

Months of preparation preceded the Washington rally. Without identifying themselves as members of the Unification Church, hundreds of Moonies quietly moved into the area, taking over several small hotels for the duration. They became involved in community activities designed to gain them trust and good will. They helped with children’s programs and recreation projects, and they organized block paties, picnics, cleanup campaigns, arts and crafts workshops, street concerts, and anti-smut demonstrations. Then came lectures and films on Moon, and open recruiting.

Parents and local-government officials reacted angrily, charging that the Moonies had engaged in a subterfuge in order to proselytize. Moon spokesman Michael Runyon replied that it was all a matter of priorities. “Our priority now is to spread Reverend Moon’s message,” he said. “We’re not trying per se to be a social-service agency.”

Meanwhile, teams of Moonies hustled on streets and door to door for donations. They solicited the support of area pastors. The clergymen were told that Moon was interested mainly in spreading the love of God and the spirit of brotherhood. Some of the ministers, mostly blacks, endorsed the upcoming rally, and the Moonies circulated their names. As the rally date neared, hundreds of thousands of brochures were handed out. More than 500 buses were chartered to provide free transportation to the rally site from within the metropolitan area, and hundreds of other buses were lined up to bring people in from other Eastern cities at reduced rates ($7 round trip from New York, for example). Sound trucks worked the streets, and music groups put on impromptu street-corner concerts. Nine full-page advertisements appeared in both Washington dailies, and there were spots on radio and television.

To help polish his and the church’s image following a disastrous rally in New York’s Yankee Stadium last spring, Moon hired a top-flight New York advertising executive, Stephen Baker, creator of the successful “Let your fingers do the walking” and “You have a friend at Chase Manhattan” themes. The expert PR touch was evident in Washington.

At the Yankee Stadium rally, an estimated 30,000 attended, but many walked out when Moon began to speak, and there was heckling from bands of youths in the upper deck throughout the program. Outside, a variety of anti-Moon demonstrators held forth. They included about 2,000 persons from thirty-two evangelical churches and groups, ranging from the Salvation Army and Jews for Jesus to the Chinese Christian Assembly. Among them were some 400 persons from New York City’s Calvary Baptist Church, co-organizer of the evangelical protest. George Swope and other members of his anti-Moon parents’ coalition were on hand.

Representatives of Jews for Judaism and Hineni Fellowship, another Jewish youth organization, also took part in the New York protest. Miriam Sabat acknowledged to correspondent Robert Niklaus that a number of Jewish youths had joined Moon’s group. “They took our children, and we want to get them back,” she declared. Also present were Hare Krishna devotees who objected to the exalted religious role attributed to Moon by his followers (they call him “Father,” and some ex-Moonies say they prayed to him using that title).

Moon, who spent time in a North Korean Communist prison in the 1940s (see March 1, 1974, issue, page 101), has been living with his wife (he has been divorced at least once), seven children, and dozens of aides in a twenty-five-room mansion overlooking the Hudson River in Tarry-town, New York. He calls the 350-acre estate, estimated to be worth up to $9 million, “East Garden.” Some of his time is spent relaxing aboard his fifty-foot cabin cruiser New Hope.

A multi-millionaire, Moon heads an industrial complex in Korea. He told Newsweek his five Korean companies, among them an arms manufacturing plant, are worth $30 million. His church owns a number of U. S. businesses and properties. Property purchases for church use include a former Catholic monastery in Barrytown, New York, used as the church’s seminary ($1.5 million); the Columbia University Club in New York City ($1.2 million); the big New Yorker Hotel across the street from Madison Square Garden ($5 million); and the Manhattan Center (“more than $2 million”).

The Unification Church’s assets are out of proportion to the size of its North American membership, which probably numbers fewer than 7,000. Moon claims hundreds of thousands of followers in Korea, but that figure is disputed by Christian leaders there. They say it is only a fraction of that. Moon also boasts 210,000 members in Japan, where his church has assets of $20 million (according to figures given Newsweek), and 6,000 disciples in Germany, where he plans to make his next big push for acceptance.

Moon’s beliefs are set forth in his book Divine Principle, published in 1957, and in lectures to insiders. In 1936, he says, he had a vision while praying on a Korean mountainside. Heaven opened, he explains, and “I was privileged to communicate with Jesus Christ and the living God directly.” Since then, he adds, “I have received many astonishing revelations.” Between 1936 and 1950, when he founded the Unification Church (as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity), he developed the revelations into teachings. These can be summarized as follows:

Adam and Eve were meant to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth through having perfect children. This involved obedience to God, including a period of sexual abstinence. However, Lucifer (Satan) seduced Eve; this resulted in their fall (and the spiritual fall of mankind). Eve in turn seduced Adam in an attempt at self-restoration, and this resulted in man’s physical fall. Cain was the offspring of Eve’s affair with Satan, and Abel was the product of her relationship with Adam. Eventually, Cain came to be symbolic of Communism, and Abel represents democracy.

No one obeyed God perfectly until Jesus came on the scene, his way prepared by Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates. The idea was for all religions and cultures to become unified through mutual acceptance of Jesus. He would find a perfect mate and they would produce perfect children. Thus would be achieved the world’s spiritual and physical salvation. The Jews, however, refused to accept Jesus, and he had to settle for being the means of only spiritual salvation through payment of his life as an “indemnity.” There was no marriage, there was no physical resurrection, and deity cannot be attributed to Jesus. Hence the work of physical salvation must be left to another messiah, “the Lord of the Second Advent,” born in Korea in 1920 (the year of Moon’s birth) and to be revealed by the year 2,000.

In Moon’s plan of the ages, Korea is the front line in the battle against the Satanic forces of Communism, and America is destined to lead the way to victory (either ideologically or militarily). In time, the world will be unified under the Korean messiah.

Understandably, perhaps, Moon has been pushing for American support of South Korea. This has landed him in hot water with government authorities and the press. Recent news stories and an ABC television documentary have linked him and translator Bo Hi Pak to the Korean government, particularly the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Colonel Pak served for years as a military intelligence attaché in the Korean embassy in Washington, and during at least part of that time he was a high member of the Unification Church (he reportedly joined in 1953). When he left government service in 1964, Pak teamed up with a former American intelligence officer, who has since died, to form the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, a Moon front in Washington.

Moon spokesmen deny any illegal dealings or lobbying on their part, although they acknowledge that they do have a “ministry”—in a campaign to “try to bring God into government”—manned by several dozen Moonies on Capitol Hill. Moon and his top leaders have declined to testify in government hearings.

An investigation is still being carried on to determine how much control Moon and his people have of the Diplomat National Bank in Washington. The bank’s bylaws prohibit anyone from owning more than 5 per cent of the stock, but government officials found that the Moon people own at least 44 per cent—a controlling interest.

The U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service recently ordered deportation proceedings against 700 Moonies from Japan and Korea. The order came after a court ruling upheld a similar order issued in 1974. The INS found that much of the foreign Moonies’ time was spent in fund-raising and not in missionary training as required under visa regulations. Unification president Salonen says most of the young people were to be sent to Germany by March anyway.

The number of ex-Moonies is growing. Some have been taken by force under their parents’ direction and “deprogrammed” by professional anti-cult workers. Others have left of their own choice, in most cases because they have become disillusioned. One such person is John Spradling, a Vienna-trained pianist who left the Unification Church in July and shortly afterwards professed Christ as Saviour in a service at Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. While some ex-Moonies feel they had been brainwashed in the Unification Church, Spradling insists his will power and that of others remained intact though voluntarily harnessed to Moon’s purposes.

Many young people are attracted to Moon because they are lonely and the Moonies offer friendship, Spradling told correspondent James Hefley. The Unification Church also offers purpose and a channel for idealism, he pointed out. Although he was troubled by some of the Moon sect’s practices, he said the basic problem “is that Sun Myung Moon’s teachings disagree with Scripture.”

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Southern Africa: Seeking Solutions

Is anyone really communicating with anyone else in southern Africa? As U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was trying last month to get whites and blacks on the same wavelength, churchmen were stepping up their efforts to avoid a communications breakdown.

Since the June riots in Soweto (on the outskirts of Johannesburg), Christian leaders both inside and outside the region have taken unprecedented steps to state their positions or to seek reconciliation. Within South Africa, for instance, the new (inaugurated in 1976) medium of television has been pressed into use in search of a just solution to the nation’s problems. On a nationwide telecast Christians were urged by Professor Tjaart van der Walt of Potchefstroom to go against their own people, if necessary, rather than to deny the Bible. He said, “Christians should be able to exercise self-control, and Soweto was no example of self-control. South Africa has lived through a black week, but there can be a bright future for us if we approach it in a spirit of resolution, love, and self-control.”

Ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church, often accused of being the chief support of the ruling Nationalist party’s policy of apartheid, have published unusually critical letters and articles in the Afrikaans press.

The quadrennial meeting of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, held in Cape Town in August, was the occasion for churchmen to confer with South African prime minister B. J. Vorster. A six-man delegation from the international Calvinistic organization met for more than two hours with him. It was the first time a delegation from Reformed churches of various races had presented its views directly to the prime minister. Vorster told the visitors that churches seldom came to him directly but that he usually found out in the press what they wanted to communicate to him. He indicated that his door would always be open. In the delegation were representatives of the black and white branches of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Reverend Sam P. E. Buti and the Reverend Pieter E. S. Smith. They decided afterwards to seek a second meeting with him in order to find an effective way for bringing black concerns directly to his attention.

At its Cape Town meeting, the RES passed three resolutions on the South African racial situation and additional resolutions reaffirming its position favoring interracial worship and finding no biblical ban on interracial marriage. J. D. Vorster, brother of the prime minister and a delegate to the meeting, abstained from voting on the marriage resolution, but he explained afterwards that this did not mean he had withdrawn his opposition to the practice. The synod, a body made up of representatives of thirty-eight denominations around the world, passed the statement unanimously.

Another international body, the executive committee of the Lutheran World Federation, sent an open letter to the South African prime minister last month to urge “prompt correction of injustices” in order to avert a wave of violence throughout southern Africa. The Lutherans accused the Vorster government of pursuing a course of “institutional violence” that has involved “bannings, imprisonment, torture, and wanton cruelty.”

Inside South Africa, a representative of the Dutch Reformed Church addressed a meeting of the anti-apartheid South African Council of Churches for the first time in thirty-six years. F. E. O’Brien Geldenhuys, the church’s ecumenical-affairs director, spoke on the church’s role in liberation. He called for separate and distinct roles for church and state, but he said, “Wherever the Word of God should demand it, the church should fulfill its prophetic function in spite of popular opinion.” Before his address some delegates walked out. In its annual meeting the council continued its criticism of the government. Its presidium called for an immediate “roundtable convention, representative of all races” to plan for a new system of government.

A number of church leaders have been arrested during the riots, and several churches and church-related buildings have been burned.

South Africa’s neighbor, Mozambique, has continued to be a base of operations for groups pressuring the white-ruled countries of the region. The Marxist government there has maintained trade with South Africa, but it has restricted Christian activity within its own borders. Late last month, however, it released the last American Nazarene missionary in its prisons. Armand Doll, who had been jailed for over a year, was released without advance warning.

Fighting Words

More than 2,000 of John Wesley’s ecclesiastical heirs came to Dublin the last week of August to see how much they still had in common—with him and with one another. They were barely settled in their seats before they were virtually jolted out of them by a stinging keynoter.

United Methodist Bishop Earl G. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina sharply criticized both clergy and laity, describing the church as “languishing on the shoals of diminishing membership and deteriorating influence.” One veteran observer of the Methodist scene said the speech was the most severe indictment he had ever heard from a bishop. Hunt urged Methodists to “rekindle that original ardor which caused the brilliant son of Epworth … to leap on the back of his horse and ride out to save England and the world.”

Delegates to the thirteenth World Methodist Conference also heard a report on the progress of consultations with Roman Catholics, and then voted to continue the talks.

The Reverend Joe Hale, an American who as a young man made a commitment to Christ during a Billy Graham rally, was named full-time head of the World Methodist Council secretariat.

The council adopted a five-year plan designed to reach as many people as possible who “have not received the good news of Jesus Christ.” The plan was described as emphasizing “a personal experience of God, private integrity of living, and a radical challenge to the unjust structures of society.”

Uncommon Publicity

Great Britain’s membership in the European Common Market has brought it some uncommon problems as well as some benefits. Latest of the problems to be brought to the attention of officials—all the way up to the Queen and the Prime Minister—is the membership provision that allows citizens of other market nations to enter the country. At issue is the proposed entry of a Danish filmmaker, Jens Joergen Thorsen, to make a much heralded movie on the sex life of Jesus.

Prime Minister James Callaghan says it isn’t quite that simple. Nationals of other Common Market members can be excluded if they threaten public order, security, and health, he noted. Whether Thorsen can actually be kept out on any of these grounds remains to be seen, but officials hoped he would take the hint that he was not welcome.

Thorsen, who specializes in erotic films, meanwhile boasted that all the publicity was a great help. He has failed to get the necessary backing for the project in France, Denmark, and Sweden, but the controversy has brought with it many offers to finance the film.

Among those publicly stating their opposition are Donald Coggan, the archbishop of Canterbury; Basil Hume, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Britain; leaders of the Salvation Army and the Free Church Federal Council.

In the midst of the controversy, Colin Morris, president of the British Methodist Church, said Christians could be “falling for one of the oldest con tricks in the book.” After his blast at those who are helping Thorsen by protesting, he announced he would not be available for interviews on the film. He said he would be available for interviews on the “meaning of the Gospel itself,” but there were no takers.

Interviews And Issues

Religion and the personal beliefs of the major presidential candidates have shown no signs of going away as a campaign issue. Instead, they seemed to reach a new plateau of attention late last month as the candidates headed into their televised debates.

Four days before the first debate, a long Playboy magazine interview with Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter was leaked to reporters on the campaign trail. In it he covered a variety of subjects, including his personal faith, but news-media attention was drawn to Playboy’s favorite subject, sex.

President Gerald Ford, meanwhile, was responding to a variety of questions for different audiences. In a Ladies Home Journal interview on family life he said he would “protest in a most vigorous way” if he learned his daughter was having an affair. Unlike his wife, who a few months earlier said she would not be surprised at such news, the President said he would be surprised. He expressed general disapproval of early marriages and added that he made it his business to find out about his daughter’s boyfriends.

Ford also shared his views on abortion and other subjects with the same group of bishops that met with Carter (see September 24 issue, page 54). After about an hour in the Oval Office, the bishops told reporters they were “encouraged” by the President’s position on abortion. They emphasized, however, that they had discussed a variety of issues, including food, employment, illegal aliens, and human rights as they relate to U.S. foreign policy. Spokesmen for the hierarchy went to great pains after initial news coverage of the meeting to explain that the bishops were not endorsing Ford because of his stand on one issue.

In the week following the visit by the bishops, the President scheduled an Oval Office conference with three leading evangelicals. Invited to the White House were: Nathan Bailey, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance and of the National Association of Evangelicals; Ben Armstrong, executive secretary of National Religious Broadcasters; and Harold Lindsell, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. (Linsell was unable to attend, and Arthur H. Matthews, associate editor, went in his place.)

During their visit a variety of evangelical concerns were discussed, and Ford agreed to answer in writing a list of questions left with him by the three. He also taperecorded a brief interview on his own faith for NRB. Written replies to the questions were returned to the visitors the day after their White House visit.

On the tape, which NRB is distributing to its member broadcasters and to the subscribers to its World Religious News program, the President speaks of his “commitment to the Christian faith” and his “relationship with Jesus Christ through my church.” He also explains, “Faith means the dedication to His life and to His principles, and I seek to follow in my own public as well as private life those principles.”

In response to a question about religion as an issue in the campaign, Ford said, “I believe a candidate’s personal religion is a proper concern for voters when they are choosing their President. However, I do not believe that it is proper for any political figure to deliberately exploit religion for his or her political advantage. If I am asked about my beliefs, I will respond, for I am proud of the convictions I hold.”

The chief executive, in his written replies, strongly endorsed separation of church and state and expressed fear that “big government” could curtail religious liberty. He promised to “resist government bureaucracies’ intruding into the free religious institutions of America” and specifically promised to counter federal attempts to control them.

Ford replied that he planned no presidential initiatives on prayer and Bible reading in public schools. He said, however, that he believes “that prayer in the public schools should be voluntary.” He also indicated a concern that public education should not “show any hostility toward religion.”

The President reaffirmed his opposition to the Supreme Court’s 1973 abortion decision and the 1976 decision that permits a minor to have an abortion without her parents’ consent. He described the Republican platform plank on the subject as fully consistent with his own view that a “states rights” amendment to the U.S. Constitution should be passed to let each state decide on abortion. He did not reply in writing to a part of the question about curbing federal expenditures for abortions, but in the conversation with the evangelicals he said staff members were under orders to find ways to accomplish this.

On homosexuality, Ford’s reply was that “homosexual relations are wrong” since “the teachings of the Bible are very explicit on this.…” He stipulated that he had “always tried to be understanding and fair about people whose views are different from my own” on this subject.

The President answered a question about Communist expansion by speaking of it as a threat to freedom and world peace. He said he would not “like to see us return to the cold war or return to an uncontrolled arms race” but believes a “strong and determined” America is one way of preserving peace and stability. He added, “From the standpoint of the world-wide missionary effort, I recognize the importance of world peace and world stability, for only then can these humanitarian efforts flourish.”

Also visiting the White House last month was evangelist Billy Graham. He told reporters he had been invited to go with the President to a reception for visiting Liberian President William Tolbert, but he declined to answer journalists’ questions about the campaign.

Carter’s Playboy interview drew an immediate response from some prominent fellow Southern Baptists. Jaroy Weber, immediate past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, called it “regrettable.” Another former president, W. A. Criswell of Dallas, said the article would hurt the Georgian with evangelicals. But Harry Hollis, a staffer at the SBC Christian Life Commission, complimented the candidate on his “openness, honesty, and great understanding about the life and teachings of Jesus.”

At issue were Carter’s statement that he had committed adultery “in his heart” many times but that he had been forgiven. There was also objection to some earthy terms the candidate used in the interview. Carter warned against pride on the part of those who saw others sinning while they themselves had been able to resist temptation.

Pressed about how much his personal convictions would influence his official actions, Carter defended his beliefs but said, “Anybody can come and look at my record as governor, I didn’t run around breaking down people’s doors to see if they were fornicating.”

Asked if he would appoint judges who would be particularly harsh or lenient toward such offenses as adultery, drug use, homosexuality, Carter replied, “I would choose people who were competent, whose judgment and integrity were sound. I think it would be inappropriate to ask them how they were going to rule on a particular question before I appointed them.”

The former Georgia governor told the magazine that the homosexuality issue makes him “nervous” and that he does not see “how to handle it differently from the way I look on other sexual acts outside marriage.”

The candidate’s press secretary told reporters that the published interview was an accurate account.

Religion In Transit

More than 21,000 Indonesians, many of them Muslims, enrolled in a Bible correspondence course as a result of a newspaper advertising campaign during 1975 by the AMG International mission agency of New Jersey. Of these, about 3,500 professed Christ, according to an AMG spokesman. Currently, national workers associated with AMG in Pakistan are processing thousands of responses to newspaper ads there. Most requests are for Scripture portions.

Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, enrolled 354 students (including 51 in graduate studies) this fall. The figure for the 1973–74 academic year, before the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod institution became the focal point of a denominational crisis, was 690. This fall’s total is almost four times the number of those who remained on campus after the spring 1974 exodus, a seminary announcement noted. President Ralph A. Bohlmann said the enrollment indicated a “remarkable recovery.”

The tent revival planned for Whidbey Island Naval Air Station but canceled by Navy officials (see September 10 issue, page 78) was held off base with many civilian churches joining military personnel in the interdenominational effort.

Many United Methodist institutions own the blue chip stock of the Coca-Cola Company, which was founded by Methodist layman Asa Candler. Those with investment policies like those of the church’s Board of Global Ministries World Division will have to decide soon whether they can keep them. The division’s investment committee meets next month to take a new look at its 12,800 Coke shares in light of the announcement that the company will buy Taylor Wines. The policy prohibits getting or keeping stocks of firms “deeply involved in … the promotion, manufacture and/or sale of alcoholic beverages.”

Personalia

Forrest Boyd, longtime White House correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, has become the first director of communications for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He will handle news-media relations for Graham as well as a wide range of public-relations responsibilities for the association.

Donald R. Hubbard, 46, has been installed as pastor of Manhattan’s Calvary Baptist Church and the voice of its radio ministry. For ten years he has been the pastor of Berachah Church in the Philadelphia suburb of Cheltenham, Pennsylvania.

Dennis E. Shoemaker has resigned as fulltime executive secretary of the 126-publication Associated Church Press but will continue on a part-time basis until the ACP board decides future staffing policies. Another dues increase planned for 1977, to help cover staff costs, has been rescinded.

Ulster preacher-politician Ian Paisley has formally constituted the first congregation of his Free Presbyterian Church outside the United Kingdom. He installed a pastor in Toronto, Ontario.

Noting that women were not yet fully represented in the ordained ministry of the Episcopal Church, bishop-elect John Coburn of Massachusetts assured an Episcopal women’s gathering last month that the way would become open “in God’s time.”

A few days later, God’s time apparently arrived. The House of Bishops and the 912-member House of Deputies (clery and lay delegates) in close votes approved the ordination of women to the Episcopal priesthood. The action came during the triennial convention of the church in Minneapolis. It was bitterly contested, and it may lead to an in-house schism, the establishment of a church within the church.

Some conservatives were jolted again when both houses voted overwhelmingly to adopt a new modern-language prayer book to replace the 1928 Established Book of Common Prayer. The old book, a guide to worship virtually unchanged from its ancestry dating back to the Elizabethan prayer book of 1549, can be used side by side with the revised one until 1979. A second vote must be taken at the time in order for the new book to become standard.

“If the church can survive this,” said an observer of the Minneapolis convention, “it can survive anything.” He described the proceedings as the Episcopal version of Vatican II.

There were other important actions, but the ordination and prayer-book issues overshadowed everything else, including indications that spiritual renewal is for growing thousands of Episcopalians the really significant story of what is happening in the 2.1-million-communicant church.

The women’s-ordination issue had simmered for a long time. In 1970 women were given the right to seek ordination to the diaconate and were seated as deputies for the first time. Proposals to admit women to the priesthood (and episcopate) failed that year in the House of Deputies and again in 1973. The bishops, however, endorsed the principle of women’s ordination to the priesthood at a 1972 meeting, a stand confirmed several times since then. In the summer of 1974, three retired bishops—acting against the request of Presiding Bishop John Maury Allin—“ordained” eleven of the 120-plus women deacons to the priesthood in a service in Philadelphia. Four more female deacons were similarly “ordained” later in Washington, D.C.

During the uproar that ensued throughout the church, the church’s bishops in a special meeting ruled the ordinations invalid, and they censured the retired bishops. Refusing to back down, some of the women celebrated communion—an act reserved for priests. This touched off clashes between bishops and pastors who permitted the women to officiate at communion in their churches. Two of the pastors were reprimanded in ecclesiastical trials. Two of the fifteen women eventually dropped out of the struggle, but the others insisted their ordinations were valid, and some went on performing priestly functions. One, Betty Schiess of Syracuse, New York, sued Bishop Ned Cole for $30,000 under the 1964 Civil Rights Act for declining to license her as a priest. That case is still pending in the courts.

As the crucial 1976 convention neared, anti- and pro-ordination forces organized and mounted a propaganda war. On one side was the National Coalition for the Ordination of Women, and on the other side were such groups as the American Church Union (ACU), the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen (FCC), and the Coalition for the Apostolic Ministry (CAM). The 9,000-member ACU is an organization of conservative Anglo-Catholic or “high-church” clergymen and laypersons. The FCC is an association of fifteen special-interest magazines and organizations. Together they claim the support of more than 400,000 Episcopalians, according to Albert J. duBois, semi-retired former executive secretary of the ACU. The CAM is a three-year-old anti-women’s-ordination organization led by seven bishops.

Bishop Allin, in a peace-making effort, met with representatives of both sides during the past summer. Seeing no other way to avert a showdown, he submitted a proposal that would open the priesthood to women but allow each bishop to follow his conscience and implement or reject it at the diocesan level. The result would have been that women priests were accepted in some dioceses but banned in others.

At Minneapolis there were public hearings on the ordination topic, and both houses debated it for hours. The arguments against women’s ordination centered on the maleness of Christ, the teachings of Paul regarding women, the tradition of the church, and relations with the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which do not ordain women. Pro-ordination advocates countered with other Scripture passages on women and equality of the sexes, and with references to the changing times (“it is an idea whose time is come” was a recurring assertion). It was pointed out that the eight other members of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) ordain women, and Catholic nuns and sisters were quoted as saying that a pro-ordination vote by the Episcopal Church would help them win a similar struggle in their church.

Neither side favored Allin’s compromise solution, although the pro-ordination people were willing to live with it. The arrangement would lead to further confusion and division, argued critics. Also voted down was an attempt to make women’s ordination a constitutional rather than a canonical matter. The constitutional route would have required another vote in 1979 before it could become effective. Making it part of the church canons (laws) required only a majority vote at Minneapolis to implement it January 1 (or earlier, if so voted). Postponement of the final decision would “let the guts of this church churn and churn,” declared John Coburn, president of the Deputies since 1967. (An educator and clergyman, the well-known Coburn will be consecrated as bishop of Massachusetts this month.)

The bishops voted 96 to 90 to make the canonical change permitting women to be priests. In the complicated procedure by which the Deputies vote as units in four-member deputations (delegations) according to clergy and lay orders, the results were as follows: clergy, 60 for, 39 against, 15 divided; laity, 64 for, 36 against, 13 divided (divided delegations are counted with the negative side). The vote was preceded by a five-minute period of silent prayer and an eloquent plea by committee chairman David Collins, dean of St. Philip’s Cathedral in Atlanta, that there be “no winners and no losers.” In compliance, after the vote was announced, there were only subdued expressions of joy and sorrow among the gallery of 2,500 visitors.

Immediately after the vote in each house (concurrence of both bishops and deputies is required for most legislation) opponents of women’s ordination dissociated themselves from the action. A statement introduced by Bishop Stanley Atkins of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, announced that dissidents would not “bolt the church” but that they could not “accept with a good conscience” the action. The statement rejected the authority of the convention to act unilaterally apart from a consensus of the world-wide Anglican communion and in the face of disapproval by the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Thirty-eight bishops signed the statement, as did a large number of deputies when it was introduced in their house. A number of bishops said the action now places them in a conflict between obedience to conscience and obedience to the church.

Other reactions were predictable. Women’s groups applauded the vote. Anglo-Catholics and other conservatives expressed anguish. DuBois issued a call for a meeting to be held early in 1977 to discuss what to do next. There were hints at attempting to establish a non-geographical diocese within the church that would operate without recognition of women priests (and with the 1928 prayer book). Meanwhile, say the dissidents, they will boycott any services in which women priests participate, and they will refuse to accept the validity of women’s priesthood.

A related thorny issue concerned the status of the Philadelphia Eleven and Philadelphia Four. In a stormy session the bishops voted 87 to 45 to adopt a position paper stating it was “the mind of the house” that those women be required to receive “conditional ordination” to erase doubts as to validity.

When the majority then tried to make this a binding mandate, twelve bishops served notice that they would refuse to require the affected women to submit to a public service in which a bishop would say, in effect, “In case you have not already been ordained, I now ordain you.” After hours of debate, the majority agreed to restore an alternative that had been voted out of the position paper. The option will permit a bishop to accept in a “public event” the women’s “irregular” ordinations and not require a second laying on of hands.

Although settled on the surface, the issue of women’s ordination will continue to be a source of divisiveness. Some bishops say privately they will not ordain women in their dioceses, and they apparently have that right of choice. More than 300 women are seminarians currently, and many intend to seek ordination. A number of those who are already deacons were expected to take immediate steps toward ordination. The upshot will be “women dioceses” and “non-women dioceses.”

Another problem will confront many of the women when they seek employment as parish pastors, especially as senior pastors of multi-minister staffs. Officials say few churches are willing to call a woman as pastor. Some observers envision women taking bishops or churches to court at some future date in order to achieve equal employment opportunities. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 male priests can’t get pastoral work.

For a while it appeared that the prayer-book issue would be as controversial as the women’s topic. A number of the same organizations fighting ordination were also opposing the revised prayer book. They were led by the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer. Opponents of the revision said its language lacks the majesty of the old English and uses a text that waters down important doctrines, an allegation rejected by proponents by the new book.

Work on it was begun in 1964, and the convention made only minor changes in the 1,001-page draft. It incorporates large segments of the 1928 book and offers alternatives in some rites. The voting results: clergy deputations, 107 dioceses for, 3 against, and 3 divided; laity, 90 for, 12 against, and 9 divided. The crunch will come in 1979 when it is up for a vote again.

The only snag occurred when the deputies reinserted the so-called Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed. The prayer-book commission had deleted “and the Son” in the section on the Holy Spirit and the Godhead, in accord with Orthodox and new Catholic texts. The bishops deleted it and sent it back to the deputies, who again inserted it. It was allowed to remain.

Almost unheard and unnoticed in all the hubbub was another coalition, Pew-action. For the most part, the alliance of fifteen organizations emphasizing spiritual renewal, especially among the laity, was confined to the exhibit hall. Members of the coalition include: the 4,500-member Brotherhood of St. Andrew, a national men’s witness-resource organization: Faith Alive, a group patterned after the Methodist Lay Witness Movement using Campus Crusade for Christ materials; the Bible Reading Fellowship; the Order of St. Luke the Physician, a group stressing healing; the evangelical Fellowship of Witness, a Pittsburgh-based group sponsoring the Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, an evangelical seminary; and the 24,000-member Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship.

Bob Hawn, 49, executive secretary of the Florida-based Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship estimates that 25 per cent of the active Episcopal clergy are now identified with the charismatic movement, up from 10 per cent just three years ago. Bishop William C. Frey of Colorado, a charismatic, is not sure about these figures, but he says a “growing hunger for a deeper encounter with God” is evident throughout the church. “A revolution is going on,” he asserts, and many people are engaged in in-depth Bible study.

Elmore Hudgens, 59, executive secretary of the St. Andrew brotherhood concurs. A number of renewal groups are experiencing rapid growth in membership, he says, and many Episcopalians are getting involved in personal evangelism. “There’s a big job to do, and we shouldn’t be around here worrying about these little issues,” he declared. He and others are afraid the warfare over ordination and the prayer book will disrupt what the Holy Spirit has in mind for the church.

Evangelical America

Nearly 50 million Americans age 18 and over—34 per cent of the nation’s adults—say they have been born again, according to the latest Gallup Poll. Pollster George Gallup, an Episcopalian who told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that he is one of those who have been born again, defined the experience as a turning point in life when one commits himself or herself to Christ. The poll’s conclusions are based on a sample of 1,500 persons. One-half of the Protestants said they were born again; 18 per cent of the Catholics sampled claimed the experience.

Among the earmarks of a born-again Christian, says Gallup, is belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible and an urgent sense of duty to spread the faith to others. The view that the Bible is the Word of God and is to be taken literally is held by 38 per cent (46 per cent of the Protestants, including 60 per cent of the Baptists but only 10 percent of the Episcopalians, and 31 per cent of the Catholics), and 47 per cent said they tried to encourage someone to believe in Jesus Christ or to accept him as Saviour, according to Gallup.

Thirty per cent of those in the 18-to-29 age group consider themselves “very religious,” and many others the same age believe they will become very religious later in life.

The findings, says Gallup, a member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey, constitute a warning to mainline churches, which are losing members in the face of rapidly growing evangelical faiths. “What do members of mainline churches have to hide?” declared the pollster at the triennial Episcopal convention in Minneapolis last month. “Isn’t it time for us to bring our religious feelings out of the closet?”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

What Preachers Think … and Do

What’s the minister’s chief beef? For 70 per cent of those responding in an unprecedented poll of North American clergymen, it is the lack of pastoral care by their denominations.

Of the 2,490 preachers polled by the National Council of Churches, only 28 per cent thought the pastoral care they were getting was effective. Taking part in the survey, described by the NCC as the first such ecumenical effort, were clergymen in the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the United Church of Canada.

Another complaint was that they had to spend too much time in administrative work and did not have enough time for visiting church members. Most reported that they spent the largest block of their time on sermon preparation.

The poll, taken in December 1975 and January 1976 but released at the end of the summer, found considerable tension between the theory and practice of many ministers. In the area of evangelism, for instance, 83 per cent said seminary training for evangelism was important. It ranked ahead of theological studies (61 per cent) and counseling courses (52 per cent) and only slightly behind biblical studies (87 per cent). Greater effort in the field of evangelism at the national church level was called for by the ministers, but when asked how much time they spent on evangelism, 40 per cent responded that they spent no time on it.

Voted the church’s most important task by the clergymen was “helping members to be Christians in all aspects of their lives.” Nurturing the young got second place in the list of tasks.

Speaking out on social issues as a task of the church got relatively low marks, and 68 per cent replied that they spent no time working for social justice. Of the United States ministers polled, 57 per cent registered agreement with the National Council of Churches. However, 66 per cent considered the NCC, the World Council of Churches, and the Consultation on Church Union “valid expressions of ministry.”

Faulting Figures

Students of statistics could easily get the impression that the United States is about to dry up, but that is definitely not the case. So says the legislative director of the nation Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Mrs. John E. Dillard. The statisticians are responsible for government figures that indicate a drop in consumption of alcohol, she claimed at the WCTU’s annual convention in Richmond, Virginia.

Mrs. Dillard accused the federal agencies of either being “grossly negligent” in their record-keeping or else responsive to pressures from special interest groups. The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Commerce Department was singled out as the chief culprit by the WCTU leader; she said it revised its 1974 figure on expenditures for alcoholic beverages from the $29.3 billion published earlier to $22.9 billion. The revised figures, for the years 1969–74, were issued because of a “demand for re-evaluation” from unidentified sources, she reported. She added. “It is strange that ‘on demand’ the bureau’s statistics should take such a great drop.”

She also suggested that there has been tampering with the figures in the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. That agency reported a total consumption of 402 million gallons of distilled spirits in 1973 and then a drop to 292 million gallons in 1974.

As for the WCTU’s own statistics, leaders told reporters it was holding its own. It gains as many members as it loses, with about 250,000 on the rolls. Some 700 of them participated in the 102nd convention.

Tribal Togetherness

For years the Tutsi and Hutu tribes of Burundi and Rwanda have carried grudges against each other that sometimes erupted in bloody civil war marked by atrocities and massacres. Recently, members of both tribes knelt together in prayer and reconciliation. The occasion was a conference for pastors and their wives at the Anglican cathedral in the university town of Butare, Rwanda. They represented five Protestant denominations in Rwanda and Burundi. The principal speakers were Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere and canon Abraham Zari of Uganda. The Holy Spirit melted many, and deep repentance and reconciliation took place, reports Kivengere. “The whole group began to praise the Ford together … both Tutsi and Hutu,” he said.

Stolen Songs

F.E.L. Publications, a music publisher, sued the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and five representative Chicago-area parishes for $180,000 in a copyright-infringement suit. F.E.L. owner Dennis Fitzpatrick charged that Catholic churches in the Chicago area and across the country print F.E.L.-copyrighted songs in their songbooks without paying the company $100 a year per church for permission to copy them. He alleges that in the past ten years his company has lost nearly $30 million through the use of pirated material by about 10,000 U.S. churches.

Pushing Outward

Four hundred congregations strong, the Presbyterian Church in America decided at its fourth General Assembly to push for further expansion into areas it is not now serving. All four of its agencies were voted healthy budget increases for 1977, but the majority of the increase was put into the hands of Mission of the U. S., the unit charged with homeland ministries.

The overall budget figure adopted for the 1977 work of the agencies is $3.43 million, up some $840,000 from the 1976 allocations. One-half of the total is earmarked for overseas work.

The young denomination’s governing body took a cautious line on educational expansion. It turned down an opportunity to bid on an available college property.

The 595 commissioners (delegates), meeting in Greenville, South Carolina, cast an eye northward more than once. They accepted a Christian Reformed Church invitation to meet in 1978 in Michigan. Next year’s assembly is scheduled for suburban Atlanta, Georgia. While many of the churches were formerly affiliated with the Presbyterian Church U. S. (Southern), the new denomination’s congregations and missions now stretch from California to New Jersey. The overseas interest of the young denomination was underlined in the election of William A. Mcllwaine, retired missionary to Japan, as its moderator.

Facing The Nation

Whose faces would be chiseled in the face of South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore if America wanted its spiritual leaders there instead of politicians?

Editors of seven church publications decided on four as the basis of a September article they all ran. They specified that the winners were chosen “not as great Americans, but as great Christians whose dedication to the love and justice of God shows that what it takes to make America great is Americans willing to serve others.”

The winners: Jonathan Edwards, eighteenth-century evangelist; James Gibbons, nineteenth-century Roman Catholic cardinal; Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian at New York’s Union Seminary; and Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights figure. They were chosen from among sixty-four nominees.

Participating were editors of the Lutheran (Lutheran Church in America), A. D. (United Presbyterian Church and United Church of Christ), the Disciple (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopalian, Presbyterian Survey (Presbyterian Church in the U.S.), Church Herald (Reformed Church in America), and U.S. Catholic (Claretian Fathers).

Carter’S Background

The Man From Plains: The Mind and Spirit of Jimmy Carter, by David Kucharsky (Harper & Row, 1976, 150 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Wesley Pippert, principal United Press International correspondent covering Jimmy Carter, Washington, D.C.

This is more a book about the American religious mood and milieu out of which Jimmy Carter emerged than it is a biography of him. And that is its great value. Of the seven or more books about the Democratic presidential nominee, most are mini-biographies or campaign puffery, or both. Only Kucharsky’s attempts to put Carter in context.

Kucharsky provides short essays on the Southern Baptists, of which Carter is a member; fundamentalism and evangelicalism, with which Southern Baptists are identified; the social gospel; and neo-orthodoxy and Reinhold Niebuhr, whose statement, “the sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world,” Carter frequently quotes.

Kucharsky’s credentials for speaking authoritatively on these things can be summed up simply: he is senior editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In many ways, The Man From Plains can be far more useful to the non-Christian who has little knowledge about such matters as being “born again” and who may tend to think of fundamentalism in terms of “holy rollers” and hellfire and brimstone. I know from personal experience of the attempts of many members of the national media to write with insight about Carter’s religion; the result is usually distortion, a matter of the blind leading the blind.

My own guess is that the need to understand Carter lies in three areas:

1. His relationship with Christ.

2. His being a product of the rural South. He comes from a “black belt” county that was a hotbed of resistance to the civil-rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., was jailed at Albany and Americus, Georgia, the nearest cities to Plains.

3. His relationship with blacks. With no other group does he establish a better rapport.

Kucharsky paid too little attention to the last two. He came to grips with the first, but many questions still remain to be answered before we have an adequate insight into this man who came from almost nowhere to the brink (at least) of the presidency. Why is Carter different from his many neighbors and fellow Southern Baptists? Why did he vote for integrating the Plains Baptist Church years ago when other “born again” people in the church did not? Why is he so politically active toward, as he puts it, “the poor, black, those who speak a foreign language and are not well educated, who are inarticulate, who are timid,” while many evangelicals are not? Why are so many evangelicals suspicious of him? What were the processes by which Carter integrated his personal trust in God and his political tactics? Theologically, his statements about abortion (personally opposed, but not favoring a constitutional ban) don’t baffle me nearly as much as his continual affirmation that the American people are good.

Kucharsky has begun a good foundation in The Man From Plains. But I hope that he and others keep digging, for there is much to be learned.

Constructive Critique Of Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer’s Apologetics: A Critique, by Thomas V. Morris (Moody, 1976, 128 pp., $2.50 pb), is reviewed by Terry Pence, doctoral student in philosophy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Some evangelicals have been reluctant to criticize Francis Schaeffer for fear it might diminish his overwhelmingly good influence in weaning evangelicals away from anti-intellectualism. Morris points out weaknesses in Schaeffer’s arguments that probably many have noticed, but he does so in such a way as to enhance one’s appreciation of the man and his thought.

In part one, he explicates Schaeffer’s defense of the Christian faith by giving his argument and strategy a lucid structure. Schaeffer’s approach is to challenge non-Christian presuppositions by first calling attention to various epistemological, metaphysical, and moral features of the universe or human life and then attempting to show that Christian presuppositions offer the most satisfying explanations of these features. Non-Christian presuppositions are argued to be inadequate because they fail to account for such things as personality, rationality, and morality; they either deny these things, which is a practical impossibility in some cases, or hold them inconsistently.

As Morris fills out these arguments, he develops three main complaints about Schaeffer’s apologetics. The first is lack of clarity. Schaeffer leaves some of his key concepts undefined or inadequately discussed, including “presupposition,” “reason,” “rational,” and “rationality.” There is a similar vagueness at times in the problems he raises and the solutions he recommends. This is particularly true of “the problem of unity and diversity” and his solution, the concept of the Trinity. It is to Morris’s credit, however, that he not only notices these weaknesses but often provides a strengthening clarification.

The second complaint is more serious. It is clear from Schaeffer’s language that he means to show that adopting Christian presuppositions is necessary or “the only answer.” Morris convincingly argues, however, that Schaeffer’s arguments show only that Christian presuppositions are possible or probable answers. The reason why they lack the necessity Schaeffer claims for them is that either additional non-Christian positions or sophisticated versions of considered positions can evade Schaeffer’s criticisms. Additional arguments would be required to rule them out. Schaeffer overstates the power of his arguments, says Morris. This is why Morris recasts what seem to be transcendental arguments into an “argument from design.” Although this may depart from Schaeffer’s intentions, it is more in accord with what his arguments actually accomplish.

The third critical theme deals with Schaeffer’s model of human thought. Morris argues that Schaeffer has a mechanical, depersonalized model of human thought in which “the reader is almost led to imagine men formulating syllogisms and proof lines over lunch.” What this model overlooks is the non-rational, personal, and passionate elements involved in coming to believe. Morris devotes a good deal of space to correcting this model and commenting on the role of these other than purely rational factors in belief. He has many interesting observations about the psychology of belief, but construed as a criticism of Schaeffer what he says confuses apologetics with evangelism. Apologetic arguments have been known to bring persons to faith, but their primary function is to show that Christian belief is rationally acceptable. Syllogisms may or may not stir the soul, but soul-stirring is not their purpose.

Francis Schaeffer is an influential evangelical thinker. Until now we have not had a clear presentation of his apologetic method and a discussion of its limitations. Morris admirably supplies this in a way that is well worth reading.

Positive Thinking On Sex

Thank God For Sex, by Harry Hollis (Broadman, 1975, 167 pp., $4.95), Secrets of Eden: God and Human Sexuality, by Jim Reynolds (Sweet, 1975, 191 pp., $2.45 pb), Why Wait?, by Letha Scanzoni (Baker, 1975, 140 pp., $2.95 pb), and Sex For Christians, by Lewis Smedes (Eerdmans, 1976, 250 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by C. E. Cerling, Jr., minister of education, Hopevale Memorial Baptist Church, Saginaw, Michigan.

Sex is fun, good clean fun, and it’s about time that Christians began to spread this good news. Sex is not just a bunch of “thou shalt not’s” but a positive “thou shalt enjoy thyself as God intended.”

For years the Church has spoken plainly on the Bible’s negative teaching about sex. While we were preaching the prohibitions, non-Christians were learning to enjoy and talk about the pleasures. And as often happens, we suddenly learned through the world something the Bible has always taught. God created people sexual beings, and a part of this sexuality is the joy of physical sex. Hollis states this; the others implicitly affirm it.

Another theme emerging in these books is that sex is far more than a physical union. It is an experience that involves the total person. Letha Scanzoni develops this theme as a primary basis for her argument that marriage is the place where sexual experience should occur. In a finely written book she attempts to take seriously the contemporary sexual scene. “Relationships are important,” say today’s young adults. “We agree that sex apart from a meaningful relationship is wrong. However, you should not condemn sex in a meaningful relationship in the same breath with casual sex by saying, ‘It’s all sin.’ ” Scanzoni agrees in part, but points out that only in the total commitment of marriage can the most meaningful relationships occur. Apart from marriage sex cannot be the full experience of two persons because they have not given themselves completely to each other. This book is excellent for the present generation of young people, even Christian young people, who are asking Scanzoni’s title question, “Why wait?” The attitude that sex is enjoyable also affects Lewis Smedes in Sex For Christians. If sex is truly fun, if it is a deeply satisfying experience, then we should recognize the deep need it fills in the lives of those who use it wrongly. A sexual ethic that is mere legalism and does not take into account the human factor is less than Christian. Smedes is deeply concerned about people. He adds a new dimension in evangelical sex ethics by including the vital element of compassion.

As Dwight Small’s Christian: Celebrate Your Sexuality (see review in the April 11, 1975, issue, page 18) set the standard for a Christian theology of sexuality, Lewis Smedes sets the standard for a Christian sexual ethic. Whether a person agrees or disagrees, Smedes cannot be dismissed. His chapter on creative fidelity is a clarion call for Christian morality. He shows not simply that extra-marital sex is wrong but, with Scanzoni, that sex can be fully experienced only in the intimacy and total freedom of the marriage relationship. He brings out again the theme that the sexual act is more than genital expression; it is the union of personalities.

In a more compact volume Jim Reynolds does much the same as Lewis Smedes. His book is a well-written summary of what is happening in sexual ethics.

Two problems loom large in the contemporary sexual discussion, masturbation and petting. Masturbation, until recently condemned, is now readily accepted—too readily, in my opinion—and petting is largely overlooked, though it is uppermost in the minds of many young people.

Masturbation is increasingly accepted by evangelical writers on sex. But the acceptance rarely deals with the problem of sexual fantasizing that is often a part of masturbation. Smedes, too, fails to discuss this problem when he states that masturbation is just a phase in sexual development. Maybe so, but are the fantasies that often accompany it sinful according to Matthew 5:27, 28 as a part of the “lustful look”?

Smedes produces an interesting though curious solution to the problem of petting. In the chapter “Responsible Petting,” his thesis is that all sexual activity, from the first touch to intercourse, should be an appropriate expression of the stage of the developing love relationship. Intercourse is reserved for marriage by God’s command. Everything else should be an expression of the level of the love relationship. Petting is permissible if the relationship has progressed to that point.

Isn’t it asking too much of sexually aroused young people sitting in a parked car to expect them to weigh the level of their love and the appropriate way of expressing it? I realize that Smedes is attempting to make an important distinction between sexual experience short of intercourse and intercourse, so that young people will not say, “Well, we’ve gone this far into sin, we might as well complete the job.” Nevertheless, the deceitfulness of the human heart seems an unrecognized part of the problem and a hindrance to his solution.

Human sexuality is a mystery, and all our analysis will not remove that mystery. It is a subject to be approached with reticence; nonetheless it must be approached. Everyone in the world is discussing the subject while the Church has spoken only its No. These books are ground-breakers, opening the way to discussion of a subject we have too long ignored.

Conflicting World-Views

The Universe Next Door, by James W. Sire (InterVarsity, 1976, 236 pp., $4.25 pb), is reviewed by Richard H. Bube, chairman, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California.

James Sire, the editor of InterVarsity Press and associate professor of English at Trinity College (Deerfield), performs a valuable service by gathering together the major presuppositions of eight views that affect people’s perception of themselves and the world. The views are: Christian theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, atheistic existentialism, Christian existentialism, pantheistic monism, and “the new consciousness.” The book traces the disintegration from Christian theism down to nihilism, and then the abortive attempts to recover what had been lost.

In arguing that a consistent acceptance of naturalism inevitably leads to nihilism, Sire would do well to define terms a little more carefully. When he speaks of chance as “absolutely irrational, … causeless, purposeless, directionless,” he should make it clear that he is speaking of chance as a total world-view and not as a mode of scientific description. Events and processes that are described scientifically as “chance occurrences” can in the larger picture still be elements in design and purpose, provided that God is active in all reality. To condemn a scientific description on the grounds that it was a “chance” description and hence violated basic theological principles would be an unfortunate confusion of categories.

Again, when Sire says, “Naturalism holds that perception and knowledge are either identical with or a byproduct of the brain; they arise from the functioning of matter,” it would be interesting to know what the alternatives are. According to what we know about living human beings, perception and knowledge do arise from the functioning of matter—that unique functioning which is itself responsible for the fact that we are human beings.

On both of these points I expect that Sire would make the appropriate distinction if questioned, but his reader may not do so without some specific aid.

Another place calling for caution is the description, in the section on existentialism, of paradoxes as “sets of seemingly contradictory statements.” Here it is important to be clear on the difference between a paradox and a logical contradiction. A contradictory statement, one that affirms that both A and not-A are true, cannot be tolerated; but theological paradoxes are not of this type. The intrinsic biblical teaching of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is a paradox, but hardly a contradiction.

Most notable among the traditional world-views that Sire does not discuss is humanism, which does not strictly fit into any of the categories treated. Another absentee that I wish he had included is Islam, in view of the widespread influence of this derivative of the Judeo-Christian position.

Sire makes a very significant contribution in setting forth the still-forming dimensions of what he calls “the new consciousness.” Here is a dominant world-view that is taking shape all around us among students, intellectuals, and even formerly conventional scientists. It is only a slight exaggeration to predict that one will not be able to understand major trends in modern thought without understanding this world-view. Sire properly sees it as “a Western version of Eastern mysticism in which the metaphysical emphasis of the East is replaced by an emphasis on epistemology.” It has roots in modern theories of physics as well as in the occult. Sire clarifies the situation by discussing in some detail the writings of Carlos Castaneda, a colorful and articulate exponent of this view.

This is a valuable book for everyone who attempts to integrate the beliefs and actions of human beings. Everyone has a world-view, whether he articulates it or not, and Christians should be aware of the mental framework of those to whom they witness.

Demonic Deluge

New books on demonology, the occult, and parapsychology are legion, and the variety of stances almost as numerous. The writers of all the following books accept the reality of a personal Satan and seek to be faithful to the biblical teachings. Demon Possession edited by John Warwick Montgomery (Bethany Fellowship, 384 pp., $4.95 pb) consists of a score of papers presented at a conference last year sponsored by the Christian Medical Association. Medical, historical, anthropological, and theological perspectives are represented. The Case Against Possessions and Exorcisms by Juan Cortés and Florence Gatti (Vantage, 271 pp., $7.50) does not deny the biblical accounts but argues that we have misinterpreted the word “demons,” confusing it with Satan’s angels, who exist but do not possess. Adolph Rodewyk disagrees with fellow Jesuit Cortés in Possessed by Satan, in which he presents the traditional Catholic teaching on possession and exorcism (Doubleday, 190 pp., $6.95). An Episcopal rector, Elijah White, calls for avoiding extremes in Exorcism as a Christian Ministry (Morehouse-Barlow, 80 pp., $2.50 pb). Morton Kelsey, a professor at Notre Dame, presents a positive case for parapsychology, with some warnings, in The Christian and the Supernatural (Augsburg, 168 pp., $3.95 pb). Clifford Wilson links—and warns against—demons, Eastern religions, Western occultism, astrology, and, with some qualifications, parapsychological phenomena in East Meets West in the Occult Explosion (Creation-Life, 176 pp., $1.95 pb). In view of its comprehensive scope, Wilson’s book could be of value for Christians to give those who are dabbling widely. Satan’s Angels by Ken Anderson (Nelson, 153 pp., $3.50 pb) is a much needed warning to Christians that Satan is more of a threat to them in subtle ways such as materialism and pride than in the more obvious occultic ways. Demons Yes, But Thank God For Good Angels by Lehman Strauss (Loizeaux, 121 pp., $1.96 pb) also warns against Satan’s influence in traditional guise. Two chiefly biblical expositions are Spiritual Warfare by Ray Stedman (Word, 145 pp., $4.95) and Satan Cast Out by Frederick Leahy (Banner of Truth, 181 pp., $2.50 pb). The former homiletically treats the Christian’s armor of Ephesians 6 while the latter gives a survey of biblical teaching as the basis for handling post-biblical manifestations down to the present. Gary North in None Dare Call It Witchcraft (Airlington, 253 pp., $8.95) insightfully surveys the resurgence of occultism and correlates it with humanism.

Last in the series “Evangelicals in Search of Identity”

Many evangelicals, longing for spiritual normalcy in the best sense of the word, are quite ready to go beyond obsolete institutional loyalties and to follow more challenging life charts. Desiring the evangelical community to be what it ought to be, they are ready to venture upon more biblical ways. But they will not be bludgeoned unpersuaded into new paths. They are waiting for trusted leaders who will rally fragmented forces to comprehend and carry out the new vision of a uniting task.

Often, unfortunately, these leaders champion their own special causes as the superhighway into the future. Many discerning laymen and clergymen know, however, that a numb conscience is one of Satan’s choice wishes for the evangelical community. Such a conscience reconciles Christians to the pressing needs of the age. To rely solely on already existing resources and on frontier techniques perpetuates evangelical deficiencies.

Fortunately the evangelical movement is not, for all its tensions, deeply haunted by a pluralism that embraces radically contradictory beliefs. Evangelicalism insists and relies, moreover, on the regenerating reality of the Holy Spirit to spiritually enliven those who find forgiveness of sins through the crucified and risen Lord, and it demonstrates much of the moral power that distinguishes a redeemed people from their secular milieu. In our sexually adolescent and aberrational age, evangelicalism fosters wholesome family resources. In a time when for multitudes work lacks meaning and challenge, it can define vocation in terms of divine calling and human service. In a land of greying goals and values, it can stress anew the nation’s answerability to God, who gave it birth and preserves it still for justice at home and abroad. Evangelicals have abundant vitality that, if properly applied, can energize both them and the world with promise and hope.

Yet we often deport ourselves on the public scene like outcasts to Russia or China; we resign ourselves to a subculture if not underground existence. That is the surest way for a minority—and Christians are likely to be a minority in many if not most places—to turn the possibility of underground existence into actuality. Our churches are more frequently cities of refuge than bases from which to invade the secular society that in the past made the Puritan distasteful and is now trying to make the evangelical no less so.

We need first and foremost a fresh touch of fire upon our lives and lips. There is little to fear from this anti-intellectually-tempered age. Ecumenists have become “manythingarians,” Unitarians are phasing into “nothingarians,” and liberals are fading into “anything-and-everything-arians.” Trinitarians have seldom had so opportune a day in which to champion the claims of revelational theism; it is nothing short of high tragedy to withhold a bold evangelical witness.

Perhaps we have too many alien alliances to present evangelical Christianity forthrightly and persuasively; perhaps we have substituted clichés for conscientious conviction and need to reinstall informed dedication. Perhaps television routinely robs us of time better given to serious reading and contemplation and prayer. Perhaps our love of God has paled and we need, in keeping with our own message, to return in contrition to the Risen Lord who asks, “Lovest thou me?”

Some key evangelicals are not even on speaking terms, let alone on learning terms. How does one speak convincingly to the world of a body whose members are indispensable to one another when the arm disowns the head or the mouth declares of the ear, “I have no need of you”? How do erstwhile Christian co-workers drift apart? How do charismatics invalidate one another’s tongues and even go to court with one another while trumpeting charisma as the deepest unifier of the Christian community?

Perhaps we ought to listen in on what our children are saying, those who resist part of what was their evangelical heritage because they desire greater loyalty to Christ and the Word. It would be illuminating to have a major evangelical dialogue that involved not simply elder statesmen but also younger statesmen such as John Woodbridge, Clyde Donald Taylor, Thomas McIntire, Richard Kantzer, Marlin VanElderen, John Walvoord, Tom Howard, Stephen Monsma, Don Wyrtzen, and Paul Henry. We might learn whether in overcoming the polarities of the recent past they are simply rearranging these polarities, whether they are enmeshed in new polarities of the emerging future, or whether they are blessed, as we hope, with insights that assure a better day.

Those who declare that unabashed commitment to biblical inerrancy guarantees theological vitality have the past twenty-five years of meagre production by the Evangelical Theological Society to explain. Those who contend that personal evangelism best guarantees national sensitivity to morality and social justice have the breakdown of public ethics to explain. Those who maintain that doctrinal consensus best guarantees ecclesiastical unity have to explain the ongoing divisions among evangelicals, whose churches have much more in common theologically than do ecumenical congregations. Those who insist that God frowns upon any and all cooperation with those outside our own church structures should honestly examine the fruits of such exclusiveness. Those who contend that the theology of revelation is the most persuasive context for forging world-life concerns must explain the dearth of serious philosophical exposition of rational theism in our evangelical college circles.

In modern warfare, supremacy at sea means little without supremacy in the air; in Christian engagement, evangelistic success and social change devoid of theological truth and power are but temporary and vulnerable gains. Social change without evangelistic regeneracy easily capitulates to radical excesses or unexpected reversion; theological profundity without evangelistic compassion spawns arid ecclesiastical introversion. We are fighting in the modern world with seriously impaired strength if we think that even at the human level the evangelical cause depends mainly on the evangelist or the theologian or the social activist per se, and does not involve a three-pronged approach.

While we supposed leaders champion our special interests and assure our followers that the evangelical prospect was never brighter because of what we represent, more and more discerning Christians are asking what has happened to comprehensive, coordinated leadership that stimulates not only evangelical initiative but also evangelical reconciliation. It is time that the evangelical movement sees itself for what it is: a lion on the loose that no one today seriously fears.

A long, dark tunnel of work stretched out with no end in view. A tunnel with a rough floor, twists and turns in the dark, protruding rocks for walls, can be a dismal place indeed—and the decision to keep on seems impossible at times, although to turn back is a waste and may turn out to be disastrous.

My husband Fran stood over his two tables, placed together to make a large working space. Spread out before him were sheets, manuscript copies of his original, that had on their wide margins handwritten additions and suggestions made by a number of researchers. Instead of reading down one page, he had to deal with several manuscript pages for each page—ideas had to be considered as the handwriting was deciphered, and decisions made. Would the work ever come to an end? Was it right to start it in the first place? What did he have to put aside to do this? Had he correctly understood the Lord’s leading? Should he continue in this tunnel of work, writing a book and narrating a documentary film on the rise and decline of Western thought and culture so that people could have a Christian alternative to the humanistic documentaries put out on history, philosophy, science, art, music, law, government, and theology? (He tells about this project in the interview elsewhere in this issue.) Or was it all too much? The prayer was. “Show us, Lord; make it clear to us.”

Before breakfast one morning, with the table full of work waiting silently, Fran was reading his Bible and I was reading mine. Suddenly he said, “Listen, Edith, I’ve just come to Ezekiel 33,” and he read the chapter to me. “It seems clear that the Lord is speaking to me. There is no turning back.”

We discussed it. We have read this chapter frequently since then. Each time I read it, it seems to speak with fresh strength in our own moment of history. The marvel of God’s Word is that it was written by God, through men whom he chose and inspired, to apply to all moments of history in a way that no work of man’s limited wisdom could do.

“Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying.…” Verse one makes vivid the fact that God is speaking to Ezekiel, and in verse two, “Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them …,” God is telling Ezekiel to verbalize a message clearly so that people can hear and understand something that is to make a difference to their future.

What Ezekiel is to say is that when God brings a sword upon the land, or judgment, there is to be a watchman who will stand upon the wall and warn the people in time to do something about the enemy, or the coming judgment. That watchman is to blow a trumpet to warn the people in time. In fact, the chapter goes on to make it clear that if the person hearing the trumpet is warned, he will be safe; if not, then he will die. However, if the watchman does not blow the trumpet, the blood of the unwarned people is upon his hand.

The compassionate God of the Old Testament is seen here. This is a chapter speaking of judgment, yet it commands a careful preparation for warning the people in time. A strong responsibility is placed upon those who are to be watchmen: “When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die, if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.”

“Oh, it doesn’t really matter much,” someone may say. “We’ll all be happy in heaven.” But God does not speak to us without meaning. We may not understand the total meaning of his warnings, but we know they mean something. There is meaning in the statement, “I will require his blood at thine hand,” and the opposite, “But thou hast delivered thy soul.”

That meaning is the background of the following verse: “Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel: Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?” The question today is: “If humanism has been a failure, if there is no satisfying answer to life that starts with man, and leaves God out of it all, if the concept of an impersonal universe has brought forth the chaotic situation that surrounds us, how should we then live? What is the answer to life?” The question needs to be placed in men’s and women’s minds to shake them, to make them think. We have a responsibility to do something that people will hear, as they would hear a trumpet blast.

The title of my husband’s book and film was chosen from this verse: “How Should We Then Live?” As he moves through Western history and culture from the time of the Romans until now, it becomes clear that humanism has failed to produce utopia. We pray that every unbeliever who sees this film or reads the book may ask in some way, “How should we then live?”

God’s answer in Ezekiel is one of tenderness and compassion: “Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (v. 11). The trumpet sound, the call to stop and consider the judgment to come, was a call to “turn to God.”

Come to the last few verses of Ezekiel 33: “Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that Cometh forth from the LORD. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.”

We are strongly told here that covetousness is a barrier, a stopping place, between hearing and doing the Word of God. The Word of God is not to be heard as lovely music and then forgotten. Covetousness of money, material things, time, honor, acceptance, success, a variety of crass or subtle things, can be a sudden wall that stops us from being the kind of people God means us to be, for our own sakes, for his glory, and for the sake of the lost people around us. The question needs to be asked by those of us who are Christians, too: “In the light of all this, how should we then live?”

A group of people known as the Genesis Project want to perform plastic surgery on the face of church-school education. It will take some thirty-two years to complete, but the operation is under way. Here is the way Genesis sees a newmedia Sunday-school class.

The lesson: Luke 1. The Bible: a ¾ inch video cassette (also available in 16mm or 8mm film). Teaching materials: two filmstrips per cassette, with record or cassette recordings, leader’s guide, and a new magazine, Bible Times. The students don’t read the lesson; they watch and hear it. The video portion was filmed in Israel in color. Background music is an original score. No dialogue is used other than that recorded by the writers of Scripture. Elizabeth, Zechariah, Mary, and Joseph speak Hebrew in the background while the class hears a word-for-word narration in either the King James, the Revised Standard, or possibly the New American. If it’s King James, Alexander Scourby narrates; Orson Welles handles the Revised Standard. The actors, other than the Israeli actor Topol, who plays Abraham in this series, are unknowns.

Prolific film producer John Heyman, who began research for the Genesis Project (or the New Media Bible) six years ago, serves as chief executive officer. Over the next thirty-two years he plans to film the entire Bible for sale to churches, synagogues, libraries, and educational institutions. A charter subscription costs $2,000. After November 1 the price goes up $500.

The first twenty-two chapters of Genesis and chapters one and two of Luke are the initial installments of the multi-million-dollar project ($5 million has been spent so far, the money raised from American and British businessmen). Portions of the Old and New Testaments will be filmed and issued year by year. Early in the marketing stage the company has sold more than 400 subscriptions.

Each film runs fifteen to twenty minutes. The story of Noah, presented as a colorful cartoon, might disappoint more conservative churches or schools. But the New Media Bible leaders have tried to translate Scripture into film with authenticity and without a liberal or conservative approach. The other sections of Genesis are realistic and straightforward; the birth of Cain is perhaps too realistic for younger children. The journeys of Abraham present some interesting sociological facts, and the accompanying filmstrips and magazines detail what is shown on film.

Unlike much Sunday-school material, Bible Times thoroughly explores the cultural setting of the biblical narratives and provides maps, photographs, and glossaries to aid in the study of Scripture. The magazine also explains how Bible history fits into the history students learn in school.

To appeal to as broad a market as possible, the New Media Bible is available in two different tracks. The basic film is the same, but the support material comes in either a liberal or an evangelical color. Leaders used conservative scholars as resource personnel for the evangelical track. And the inerrancy of Scripture is upheld in both magazine and filmstrips.

Each magazine includes a scholars’ “Roundtable” discussion that considers the Bible passage and its interpretation. The late Charles F. Pfeiffer edited the section on Abraham’s first journey. Among the others involved were Ronald Youngblood from Bethel Seminary and Marvin Wilson from Gordon College.

Genesis leaders want to provide a solid tool for teaching the Bible in today’s visually oriented society. How the material is used and what interpretation certain thorny passages get will rest with the church or institution.

How well the project succeeds in creating a new tool to revive the ailing Sunday school will depend in part on how well the producers have translated the Bible into film. The Luke films, completed after the ones from the book of Genesis, show an exceptional level of sensitivity to the texts. Since we hear no dialogue, the strength of the films depends almost totally on the facial expressions of the actors, camera angles, color, and to a degree the background music.

The segment on the Annunciation melds music and action. The temple scenes are compellingly low key. And the camera shots through the menorah (Jewish candelabra) add texture and depth to what could have been a bland, documentary-like shot. The narration never overpowers the action. Through careful editing, the narration was blocked to provide silent spaces when our attention focuses on the acting. Zechariah’s encounter with the angel is one of the most moving sections of the film. The mellow colors, too, contribute to this visual feast. Although I didn’t think the Nativity film as strong or visually effective as the one on the Annunciation, it is frames ahead of the sentimental celluloid we usually see.

Fifteen minutes is a short running time for a film, but the producers have used skill and imagination to insure an intense, involved reaction from their audiences. Because these are educational films first, anything longer would have overloaded us.

The first segments were not the most challenging to film (though they may have been the most challenging to film in a fresh way). What will Heyman and company do with Paul’s letters, David’s Psalms, or Solomon’s Proverbs? And think of the decisions regarding the book of Revelation.

Authenticity and educational effectiveness can be achieved in many ways. To me, a blend of scholarly research, imaginative filming, and twentieth-century technology—the way the New Media Bible has chosen—is one of the best. We remember what we see. If the Genesis Project succeeds only in bringing freshness to the familiar passages of Scripture, it will have been well worth the effort. And it promises to do much more.