Catholic bishops across the United States will take a page from the revivalist’s book next month, and in the process they may learn just how big an issue abortion will be for Catholic voters in November. Every parishioner at mass October 3 (just a month before the presidential election) will be asked to sign a decision card renewing his commitment to the sanctity of life. The cards will be collected at the exits, and diocesan pro-life coordinators will then tally the results and report them to the bishops’ Washington headquarters.

The unprecedented decision-card procedure, officially called a “bicentennial reaffirmation,” is just one indicator of the role being played by religion in this year’s presidential politics. Abortion is only one of the “religious issues” in the campaign, and Jews, liberal Protestants, and evangelicals are just as involved as the Catholics, but so far, it has been the issue receiving the most attention. Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter has been working since his party’s convention to try to undo the damage his platform writers did when they inserted a plank opposing an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

The former Georgia governor sought a conference with Catholic hierarchy leaders, and the bishops finally granted a meeting with their executive committee on August 31. Among those present was New York’s Cardinal Terence Cook, chairman of national pro-life activities. After the one-hour session in Washington, Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati, president of the bishops’ conference, announced, “[Carter] did not change his position. At this time he will not commit himself to supporting an amendment. We therefore continue to be disappointed with the governor’s position.”

There was no photograph of the candidate and the bishops in a happy meeting. The pictures in the papers the next day were of Carter and one of the nation’s most popular Catholic politicians, Senator Edward Kennedy, who had just promised to campaign for the former governor. Before the day was over, Carter was telling reporters in New York, “I’ve never said I would actively oppose every possible constitutional amendment that was proposed on the subject of abortion.”

President Gerald Ford, the Republican nominee, meanwhile was trying to conserve any support generated by his party’s platform plank favoring an anti-abortion amendment. He invited the same group of bishops to meet with him at the White House ten days after their meeting with his opponent. They accepted, but their agenda was sure to include discussion of current government procedures (which they believe encourage abortions) as well as other issues.

While Catholic leaders were in the spotlight on the abortion question, evangelicals who share their concerns were watching from the sidelines. Even though the media have been full of speculation about the political power of evangelicals (estimated to number upward from 40 million), neither candidate is known to have sought an audience with any group of evangelical leaders on moral issues. The anti-abortion Christian Action Council sought conferences with both candidates, but as of early this month the only commitment was for a meeting with a Ford aide.

Pro-abortion forces were heard from immediately, however, when Carter sounded as if he was softening his position. The Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, representing twenty-four Protestant, Jewish, and unofficial ad hoc Catholic organizations, asked the Democrat for a meeting on the issue.

Rabbi Richard Sternberger, chairman of RCAR, declared, “Any kind of amendment is unacceptable to those of us in the religious community who support the law of the land [a reference to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion]. No constitutional amendment can avoid causing injustices, no matter how framed and with how many exceptions. Any amendment would violate constitutional rights to exercise one’s freedom of religion and rights of privacy.”

Also raising questions about Carter’s stand on a moral issue was Guy Charles, the Arlington, Virginia, ex-gay director of Liberation, a Christian ministry to homosexuals. Gay activists have claimed that Carter agreed to sign an executive order assuring homosexuals of equal-rights protection and also to favor criminal-code amendments. Charles said repeated attempts to get a statement from the governor have been fruitless.

Carter was also dogged by the discovery of a preface he wrote for a 1972 book, Women in Need. In his page and a half he does not actually state a position on abortion, but he lists it as one of the methods of birth control deserving consideration by lawmakers and other community leaders.

Also discovered by campaign-year sleuths was a 1973 proclamation in which Carter, as governor of Georgia, hailed the Reverend Sun Myung Moon as one who “has dedicated his life to increasing worldwide understanding of hope and unity under God.” At the time, Moon was relatively unknown in the American press. A Carter campaign spokesman had no immediate comment about either the Charles or Moon issues.

In other developments:

• James Wall, editor of the Christian Century and a Carter campaign worker for months, announced he was taking a two-month leave of absence until election time to remove “any questions as to a threat to the [Century] foundation’s tax-exempt status.”

• Terry Sunday, for the past five years an administrative assistant to the general secretary of the Catholic bishops’ conference, joined the Carter campaign staff as deputy campaign director for Catholic affairs. A nun was also recruited for the “ethnic desk.”

THROUGH A GLASS

There are some predictions that followers of American astrologer Jeane Dixon would like to forget. Back in March the seer told the National Enquirer that Ronald Reagan would be the presidential nominee of the Republican party. She also said that President Ford would be wounded “slightly” in an assassination attempt “probably in July” in “a northern city,” and that he would resign shortly before the Republican nominating convention because of a health crisis.

She did predict Carter would be the Democratic nominee—but only after a battle between him and Hubert Humphrey at the convention. She saw Carter and Reagan in a down-to-the-wire fight for the Presidency, with Carter’s “vibrations” indicating that he would win.

Exit John Conlan

In a bitterly contested Republican primary bid for a U.S. Senate seat, Arizona congressman John Conlan was defeated 102,506 to 92,812 by fellow five-term congressman Sam Steiger. Conlan, a member of the 700-constituent Scottsdale (Arizona) Bible Church, is well known in conservative evangelical circles. His voice on capitol hill will be missed by some in those circles when the new Congress convenes in January. The two-term legislator has spoken out in the House against a proposed camp safety act that could force a number of Christian camps to shut down, a proposed child care program designed to help low-income families, certain educational materials developed by the National Science Foundation, and “secular humanism.”

The primary campaign had religious overtones, some of them ugly. There was little for Conlan, 45, and Steiger, 47, to disagree over politically, so the battle tended to degenerate into personality clashes and mudslinging. Conlan, a suave Harvard graduate, said he’s tried to keep a clean record in Congress, and he pitted his “integrity” against the “too many skeletons in Sam’s closet.” Steiger, a rancher and non-practicing Jew, saw something sinister in Conlan’s alliance with many conservative Christians, and he suggested that they were behind an alleged anti-semitic campaign against him. Conlan hotly denied the charge, citing his pro-Israel stance. He accused Steiger of lying, and suggested the anti-semitism issue was a Steiger ploy to gain sympathy votes. The only legitimate religious issue, counter-attacked Conlan, were attempts by critics “to get me to renounce my faith in Jesus Christ.”

Unpersuaded, Senator Barry Goldwater, a half-Jew with Episcopal ties, denounced Conlan for failing to stop the alleged anti-semitism of his aides, and he publicly endorsed Steiger (as did the state’s Republican establishment and major newspapers). Goldwater also accused Colan of dishonesty in politics.

Next, rabbi C. Joseph Teichman of the Har-Zion Congregation of Scottsdale called a press conference to defend Conlan against the anti-semitism stigma. Teichman was flanked by Southern Baptist pastor Richard Jackson of the 6,500-member North Phoenix Baptist Church, pastor Joseph Smith of Camelback Christian Church, a Catholic priest, and Conlan’s pastor, Don Sunukjian, 35.

Less than a week before the primary, a letter was sent by two millionaire friends of Conlan to 800 Arizona ministers. In it, the pair—Tempe builder Elmer Bradley and Phoenix contractor Ralph Eaton—certified Conlan as a “keen Christian with a clear testimony and high personal and public ethics who has not succumbed to back-room politics.” Because of his faith “and his refusal to drink and carouse” with the political crowd, he had great odds against him, the letter asserted. It went on: “We most sincerely urge you to urge every registered Republican you know—your friends, family, members of your congregation, and others—to please turn out and vote for John Conlan.”

Eaton and Bradley signed the letter (sent in Conlan’s official-business envelopes with postage stamps affixed), identifying themselves as the respective chairmen of the 1964 and 1974 Billy Graham crusades in Arizona.

A howl went up from some clergymen over the letter, and the clamor spilled over into the press. Eaton and Bradley explained it was their intent to ask clergymen to solicit support for Conlan from their parishioners privately, not from the pulpit. Some pastors said they saw nothing wrong with the letter.

Conlan filled a number of speaking engagements in churches during the primary campaign. He spoke on the value of a Christian witness in Washington, and he warned his listeners to be on guard against certain legislation and programs that could hurt both the Church and the nation. He made no attempt to enlist congregations to support him, said Sunukjian. If people wanted to help him, they did it on their own, the pastor explained. As for Scottsdale Bible Church, “we stayed out of the campaign,” he added, “and I didn’t tell my congregation who I was voting for.”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Graham: Bright Future

An article in Newsweek this month brought to the surface some long-simmering differences between evangelist Billy Graham and founder-president Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ. The article retraces ground covered earlier by the young-evangelical magazine Sojourners in showing the mutual interest of long-time friends Bright and conservative Republican politician John Conlan (see preceding story) in getting Christians involved in conservative politics (see May 7 issue, page 37).

The article, by Newsweek religion writer Kenneth L. Woodward, goes on to quote Graham as being concerned by “the political direction [Bright] seems to be taking.” It reveals that Graham not only turned down Bright’s invitation to become chairman of the Christian Embassy, a Campus Crusade-related outreach center in Washington, D.C., but also declined to preside over the embassy’s dedication service. The evangelist is quoted, too, as having reservations about Crusade’s “Here’s Life, America” effort to evangelize, the United States this year. Graham indicated he has a stake in what Bright is doing because Crusade “has been using me and my name for twenty years.”

In interviews and on an “Hour of Decision” broadcast, Graham acknowledged that he had been quoted accurately in the article, though “out of context” and with misleading implications. He acknowledged that differences of viewpoint on evangelistic strategy and political involvement indeed do exist but that he and Bright remain close friends.

Months ago, Graham wrote a letter to Bright outlining his concerns and reservations. He sent a copy of the letter to Woodward for private backgrounding. The writer subsequently interviewed Graham and Bright at length. Graham answered questions openly, says Woodward, but Bright denied that any trouble existed beween him and the evangelist.

In the week following publication of the article, Bright spoke at length with Graham. On the broadcast, Graham said no split had occurred between them. He reaffirmed confidence in Crusade’s leadership (a point Bright is trying to communicate to his constituency). “Bill Bright and I are determined not to allow the devil to sow dissension and division among us,” Graham declared. “We believe great victories for Christ will result from our discussions during the past week. We both are still being taught valuable lessons by the Lord.”

FROM HAIR TO ETERNITY

At Bennett’s barber shop in San Bernardino, California, getting a haircut also means hearing some Bible reading, a hymn, or a prayer from the pastor-barbers. “We feel we have a unique and very important ministry here,” says the shop’s operator, pastor Cyrus Alvah Bennett of the Church of the Gospel Ministry. “Many of our customers never darken the doors of a church. We are able to bring the Lord to them as we cut their hair.”

Examine Closely

At its 117th annual meeting, the independent Minnesota Baptist Association warned its members against “being deceived” by religious descriptions of political candidates. Candidates’ platforms and lives ought to be examined closely and in the light of Scripture, said the resolution. “Some candidates are using terms such as ‘conservative,’ ‘fundamental,’ and ‘new birth experience,’ ” it stated, but these terms are “used by liberals with a completely different meaning as used by true biblicists in their true historical origin and sense.”

In other actions, the association said women and girls should be encouraged to wear modest dresses rather than pantsuits at all church services, men and boys should be advised that “long hair is an offense to the teaching of God’s Word,” and the charismatic movement, the World Council of Churches, and new versions of the Bible should be opposed.

Church Of God: Growing

More than 15,000 delegates from across the nation and fifty-five foreign countries attended the biennial general assembly of the rapidly growing ninety-year-old Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) in Dallas recently. The church has some 750,000 members (plus a million other adherents) and 11,000 ministers, divided about evenly between North America and overseas. Only the ministers can vote. In business sessions they chose denominational executive Cecil B. Knight to be general overseer, the church’s highest elective post. A strong anti-abortion position was adopted.

Moderator Pieter Swanepoel of the Church of God in South Africa reported that the Angolan civil war generated a religious revival, with more than 3,000 church members meeting for worship in southern Angola. Overseer Ricardo Ramirez of the Church of God in Chile said 80 per cent of recent membership gains there were young people. Churches of 1,500 and 2,000 members respectively were recently established in Valparaiso and Santiago, he reported.

Trying God

Tiffany of Fifth Avenue in New York a year ago came out with a “limited” edition in jewelry—a “Try God” pin or pendant in silver ($10) or vermeil ($12) “limited to people who believe in God.” The entire proceeds, said the company, would be donated to the Walter Hoving Home in Garrison, New York. The home is described as a non-profit, non-sectarian center for troubled and dope-addicted girls, a place where “after a year’s treatment over 90 per cent are permanently cured by accepting God into their lives.” Forty-two girls can be accommodated at a time.

Walter Hoving, 78, the chairman of Tiffany’s, reports that more than $220,000 has been given to the home so far from retail sales of nearly 30,000 pins and pendants (manufacture and advertising costs are deducted from income). The home gets about $8.50 per sale, estimates Hoving, who attends St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue.

Tiffany’s has also sold 500,000 pieces of the jewelry at cost to other religious groups.

Pruning The Pews

In a rare version of democratic procedures, the 1,500-member Lakeshore Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana, voted to oust from its membership a group allegedly involved in the “shepherding” (or discipleship and submission) movement—and to remove from the rolls anyone voting against the ouster motion. In all, twenty-three were expelled, including six who “voted themselves out of the membership” by voting against the motion to oust the seventeen persons in eight families named, according to Pastor Houston D. Smith. In a letter to members, he threatened to resign if the expulsion action were not taken. He told Shreveport Journal reporter Ed Pettis he had been at the church for three years but “could not pastor a divided church.”

Among those expelled was Morris Smith, “elder” of the group. He was removed as a deacon in January, and he and his wife—members of Lakeshore for fifteen years—were also removed as teachers of a young-adult class. The Smiths say they and others in the church began meeting on Friday nights, first at church, then in homes, for Bible study and prayer because “we were hungry for God’s Word.”

Pastor Smith says that when a group within the church rallies around an elder, a leadership problem is caused, with some following one leader and others following the pastor. A shaky relationship with the group members came apart last year, he said, after he was unable to attend a charismatic shepherding conference with them in Kansas City. “When they returned their attitude was different,” he declared. “They were right and everyone else was wrong.” (Although some in the group practice speaking in tongues, both sides say this was not an issue.)

Mrs. Morris Smith insisted to Baptist Press that no one had ever come to them and told them they had done anything unscriptural.

In a letter to the expelled members following the vote. Pastor Smith explained the action and said “there seemed no other way the harmony could be restored to the fellowship.” He concluded: “We wish you well wherever you may go and do not expect you to return to the Lakeshore Baptist Church.

How To Submit

Several position papers were presented at the recent annual meeting of the General Presbytery of the Assemblies of God, the policy-making body of the almost-six-million-member denomination. Transcendental Meditation was labeled “a treacherous substitute for biblically based experiences in the Holy Spirit.

Approval of a paper on the “discipleship and submission movement” was postponed until October to allow for minor revisions. The paper warns against attaching “unwarranted authority” to the “contemporary spoken word, the rhema,” and giving it equality with the written Word, the logos. A warning was also issued against over-reliance on “undershepherds” and corresponding lack of personal development. The paper sees a lack of democracy and variety and an overemphasis on authority in the movement’s approach to church life. There is too much allegorizing or spiritualizing of Scripture by the movement to support its views of submission to shepherds, the paper alleges.

The statement acknowledges, however, that the movement grew out of real needs for small-group Bible study and fellowship on the part of new believers—needs too often unmet by churches.

Holding Up The Sunday Service

Burglaries of churches and synagogues are on the increase across the nation. Thieves are making off with everything from the contents of poor boxes and literature racks to super-valuable icons and even bronze doors. Since normally there is little cash around churches on week days, some robbers are showing up on Sundays—during the morning service. The thieves hide until everyone leaves, hoping that church officials have left behind the morning offering in a “safe” place. To counter such tactics, a few urban churches post guards, make security checks, and keep doors locked after all the parishioners are in, and many churches insist that the offering be counted and taken to a bank’s after-hours depository immediately after the service.

In a few cases, robbers have come in with the morning-worship crowd, then held up the place, collecting not only the offering but also the wallets and pocket-books of the worshipers.

Such goings on are enough to make any self-respecting, God-fearing clergyman or deacon downright angry. And that’s what happened last month at the Twenty-Fifth Street Church of God in Detroit. A gunman and three accomplices interrupted the sermon of Pastor Stanley Pickard, and they ordered the some sixty parishioners to place their valuables in plastic bags. But Pickard, 40, and several deacons jumped the holdup leader as he approached the pulpit and took away his gun. The 25-year-old robber was so severely beaten by the angry churchmen that the police had to take him to a hospital before booking him. The accomplices, a woman and two youths, escaped with about $385.

After the police took the gunman away Pickard resumed his sermon.

Korea: Cracking Down

Eighteen prominent South Korean religious and political leaders, all Christians, were given stiff prison sentences after being convicted last month of violating a decree banning criticism of President Park Chung Hee and the country’s constitution, revised in 1972 to allow him to be president for life. Thirteen of the eighteen had signed a declaration that was read at a special ecumenical prayer service in Seoul’s Myongdong Catholic cathedral on March 1. It called for the restoration of democracy and for Park’s resignation.

Those jailed included: Presbyterian Yun Po Sun, 79-year-old former president of Korea (eight years in prison); Catholic Kim Dae Jung, 51, opposition leader who narrowly lost to Park in 1972 (eight years); Ham Suk Han, 75, Quaker leader (eight years); clergyman Moon Ik-whan, former professor at Hankuk seminary (eight years); Presbyterian Lee Oo-chung, president of Korean Church Women United (five years); Methodists Lee Tae-yong, the country’s first woman lawyer, and her husband, Chung Il-hyung, 72, a former foreign minister (five years each). Among the others were Catholic priests, former Presbyterian seminary professors, and Protestant pastors. They have been held in solitary confinement since spring, and relatives allege that some have been tortured.

The verdict is “a tragedy, not only for the people involved but for the whole country,” commented Cardinal Stephen Sou Hwan Kim, archbishop of Seoul.

General Secretary Philip A. Potter of the World Council of Churches cabled Park urging him to grant amnesty to the group.

In June, a dozen Christian workers (including several prominent pastors) associated with a Christian self-help organization working in Seoul’s slums were detained in jail, then allegedly beaten before their release a week or so later.

Airplane landings make me as nervous as a rabbit’s nose. I can’t forget one descent into O’Hare Field in Chicago. Apprehension tugged at my stomach muscles as we began an instrument approach toward the nation’s busiest airport. At last the wheels touched down and 130 passengers braced, waiting for the engines to roar into reverse. Instead the plane gathered speed, the front end of the cabin tilted skyward, and the runway disappeared in the swirling mist. Moments later we were back in the stack of jets circling over Lake Michigan. Our captain explained we had touched down too far in and the control tower had ordered us back into the air. Our second landing was perfect, but many passengers were disgruntled at the half-hour delay.

Abortive landings can happen in sermons, too. Listeners get irritated when a speaker reaches a logical stopping point, only to become airborne on a new point or on a repetition of an old one. The speaker who does this can cause listeners to lose not only interest but also their good will toward himself and his subject.

Those who teach the art of public speaking warn that the introduction and conclusion of a message require extra care in preparation. Gerald Kennedy says, “For me the conclusion is the most difficult part of the sermon. If the conclusion is right the most important single thing has been done” (His Word Through Preaching).

The conclusion offers the preacher the opportunity to drive home his central idea one more time. Also, he may impress every listener with the fact that specific action is called for. The conclusion should create the highest emotional level of the message. A dull, apologetic, anti-climactic closing can negate whatever has been accomplished in the body of the sermon.

In his Beecher lectures on preaching, the late Halford Luccock observed, “There is no substitute for a specific conclusion. At the end of the sermon something must be given, something must happen. Otherwise the sermon becomes like an expression of his hotel life given by a character of Ring Lardner’s. He said, ‘Everybody puts on their evening clothes like something was going to happen, but it don’t!’ ” (Communicating the Gospel).

There are several techniques a preacher can use to improve his sermon conclusions. He will do well to vary his style, so that those who hear him week after week will not always be able to guess how the sermon will end. The element of surprise is a valuable ally in preaching.

1. The summary. The recapitulation of major points is an appropriate technique when the goal is to inform or inspire. Don’t let the summary become too detailed; stick to the most important ideas. And beware of introducing new major points that should have been taken up in the body of the sermon.

2. The anecdote. A story that vividly illustrates the theme of the sermon provides a dynamic conclusion. Here is the spot to use the strongest illustration in the message. It should be so pointed the listeners will grasp its meaning in a flash. Here’s a test: if you have to explain the meaning of a story to put it across, it’s too weak for effective use in the conclusion.

3. The quotation. This too should be pointed and strong. A few lines from a hymn or poem may have a powerful emotional impact. So may a Scripture text, particularly if that passage has already been woven throughout the body of the message.

4. The question. An appropriate question or series of questions at the end helps the listener participate in the message. Sometimes this device works well where for the problem being discussed there is no clear line of action to recommend.

Preachers may also use the question as a heart-searching device to prompt immediate action. For example: “He is saying, ‘Come to me and find new life.’ He is saying it right now to some of you. Will you listen? Will you believe he means business? Will you let him know you mean business with him?”

5. The call to action. This is a direct appeal for the listener to take specific action. He is given definite steps that answer the questions, How may I respond? When may I respond? In what areas of my life shall I apply what I hear in the message?

Perhaps the call to action will carry over to the closing prayer. In the prayer the preacher may spell out the response desired, or may actually pray the words he wishes the listener to say. This technique may be especially useful in evangelistic preaching where a speaker phrases the penitent’s prayer and urges listeners to repeat the words from their hearts as he prays.

The call to action is most successful when a preacher offers a sincere, suitable appeal to the emotions as well as to the intellect.

Regardless of what device is employed, let the preacher maintain full power as he brings his sermon to a climax. Many speakers tend to diminish their vocal power little by little and end with a dwindling, dying conclusion in which they appear to have run out of steam. Teachers of public speaking urge that full vocal power be maintained right up to the last word.

Let there be doors in our preaching—not only doors that swing inward for men to worship the Triune God, but doors that swing outward at the conclusion of the message, so that our listeners may depart to serve.—DAVID S. MCCARTHY, pastor, Bethlehem Advent Christian Church, Augusta, Georgia.

Making Prayer

Making prayer

out of the moment—

salami sandwich,

raw cabbage,

black coffee—

the physical edges of lunch:

a child’s health,

the quarrel of persons,

a terror of the holy—

the inner core of appetite;

making of this moment

a prayer of moment

in a moment

shaping words

to the contours of hope & fear,

love & pain

& laying them out on yellow paper,

waiting for the descent

of your burning dove

to touch them to truth

sharp as a nail’s point,

clean as a tomb

swept by dawn.

Eugene Warren

Reports have been leaking out about an archaeological discovery that some scholars think is the most important yet. Whether it will prove to be greater than the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Deluge Tablet or any of a number of other discoveries that have greatly affected the study of the Bible remains to be seen. That it will eclipse the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann, which revolutionized the study of antiquity, seems quite unlikely, but we would do well to keep an open mind.

The new discoveries, which have been coming to light since 1974, are the results of the work of Italian and Syrian archaeologists at Tell Mardikh in northwest Syria, the site of ancient Ebla. The principal archaeologist is Dr. Pado Matthiae of the University of Rome. Because of the complexities of joint publication in the two countries involved in the excavation, no texts have yet appeared in print, and only spotty information has been released.

A large number of tablets have been found, reportedly 15,000 so far, and there is promise of opening the official archives in the next season of excavation. These tablets are dated around the First Dynasty of Akkad (roughly 2300 B.C.), or two to five centuries prior to the time of Abraham. They are written in cuneiform and belong to a language group that may prove to be Northwest Semitic. The significance of this may not be apparent to anyone not working in Semitic studies, so let me try to explain it.

So far, our early written discoveries from the ancient Near East are cuneiform documents in Old Akkadian and Sumerian (unrelated languages) and hieroglyphic inscriptions in Egyptian. These already known materials are, geographically speaking, from the borders of the biblical world. And in linguistic relationship, they are quite remote from biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. The earliest materials we have that are more closely related to the biblical world are Ugaritic tablets from Ras Shamra, dating from around the fifteenth century B.C. However, Ugaritic is written in alphabetic cuneiform, which provides us with the consonants only. Biblical Hebrew was written with the consonants only, and the vowels were added by the Masoretes sometime between the sixth and tenth centuries A.D. We therefore have very little certain evidence of how Hebrew was vocalized in the time of the prophets. Hebrew is quite closely related to Ugaritic in its consonants, and its relation to the Assyrian and Babylonian dialects of Akkadian is more remote but still well established.

The new discoveries, dating from the end of the third millennium B.C., are written in syllabic cuneiform, which provides the vowels as well as the consonants. Sumerian logograms (signs that represent words) are explained in “Eblaic” syllobograms (signs that represent syllables in the newly discovered language), which will provide an important bilingual dictionary for many words. If the language indeed proves to be Northwest Semitic, it will be closely related to Aramaic and Ugaritic and reasonably close to Hebrew—but it will antedate by hundreds of years all remains that we have of these languages. The impetus that this will give to Semitic studies goes beyond our imagination.

A king of Ebla was Ibrum (cf. Eber in Genesis 10:24), who was contemporary with Sargon of Akkad. He seems to have controlled much or all of Palestine, Syria, Sumer, and Akkad, and to have had trade relations with the land of Hattu (Hittites) and Elam. Hundreds of place names are recorded, including Urusalima (Jerusalem), and many personal names, including ab-ra-mu (Abram), is-ra-ilu (Israel), e-sa-um (Esau?) sa-u-lum (Saul), da-udum (David?), and mi-ka-ilu (Michael), as well as mi-ka-ya (Micah). Since –ilu seems to be the word for “god” and it is paralleled by –ya in the two forms, the conclusion that the divine name Yah (or Yahu or Yahweh) was already known is most tempting. If this is established, then the view that the divine name Yahweh was not known until the revelation to Moses in Midian will have to be reconsidered. The name Yahweh is found in Genesis, prior to the time of Moses, but this has often been explained away in the light of Exodus 6:3.

Reportedly, several articles on the Tell Mardikh discoveries are in the process of publication, and we are assured that the text and translation of several tablets will soon be made available. Since the discovery includes economic texts, legal documents (hence the earliest law code), mythological texts, treaties, and probably other literary genres, many scholars eagerly await the publication.

We know that there were various peoples in the region of Syria and Palestine prior to the arrival of Abraham and the Patriarchs, and that these peoples played a significant part in molding the events recorded in the Bible. No longer is it possible to think of Abraham as the creation of post-exilic writers. The Tell Mardikh discoveries, to be sure, do not “prove the Bible.” Nor can any archaeological discovery. The only way to prove the Bible is to take it on faith and apply it in life. It will prove itself to be true. But Tell Mardikh will probably throw a great amount of light on some of the background of the book of Genesis and the events it records.

The sky was cloudless and blue, the sea turquoise and as quiet as a lake. How marvelous to see these islands in the sea, the Florida Keys. “Oh, but you haven’t seen anything yet. Wait till you see what is under the surface.” “Thanks a lot, but I’m very satisfied with what I see. Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t learn to breathe properly under water, and that mask affair might be all right but I can’t trust it.”

A long discussion took place as to the trustworthiness of an air-producing machine. Our good friend kept repeating, “All you have to do is to put on the mask, jump in, swim under a bit, breathe naturally, and look.” We examined the mask and listened to the explanations of how thoroughly the whole combination could be trusted—the mask, the oxygen, the tubes leading to the source of supply. Still we hesitated. Time was going by, and our precious opportunity to see what was being described to us was not unlimited.

Suddenly we decided to take the plunge. We accepted the fact that the source of the oxygen was a trustworthy machine. We had come to realize that the purpose of the mask was to open up wonders we could never otherwise see. The next step was to stop wasting time and to get over the side of the boat, into the water, with the mask on, and to begin to swim and look.

One moment before all we had seen was blue, undisturbed surface water, as far as the eye could see. Now a whole new world opened up, as different from the world above the water as anything anyone could imagine. Suddenly it was impossible to think of anything but the awesome marvel of purple fan-like plants gently waving as if with breeze, light lavender fans with brown markings, pale beige lace leaves on another plant, and frosty mauve-colored “pine trees” that looked like some artist’s design of a purple pine forest. Coral that looked like huge antelope antlers or like bare-branched trees, and fish deftly swimming around the coral with all the grace of birds swooping through branches at twilight. Groups of fish that looked like families out for a time of exploring as they darted and then moved slowly between plants and rocks and coral. Ledges and sudden caverns, the “grand canyon” look of certain areas. Amazing fish of all sizes and shapes and colors, from red and orange to bright yellow, green, blue, grey, and purple.

It all had been going on before we suddenly saw it; our observation, our discovery, our understanding did not make it materialize. We found out the truth of what exists under the surface of the Atlantic Ocean at that place, because we stopped arguing about the reliability of the masks and air supply and trusted them. Had we had to invent our own masks and a way of supplying air, our discovery of the underwater marvels would have never taken place at all, since our visit in that area of the world was to be only three days long.

Laborer or president, queen or peasant-anyone can own the mask and snorkel supplied to us by God. And that equipment provides comfort and hope.

A lifetime is not long enough to make the discoveries that would open up the truth of the universe, the truth about the past, present, and future. As I later reflected upon the experience, I thought of the fantastic marvels opened up to us when we look through God’s “mask” and breathe the “air” he supplies for us. The Bible, God’s Word, is our mask. Through it we are to see the marvel of his creation in the past. “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORDour maker. For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. 95:3–7). “O LORD, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is the great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.… The glory of the LORD shall endure forever: the LORD shall rejoice in his works.… I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD” (Ps. 104:24, 25, 31, 33, 34).

When we look through the Word of God, the Bible, using it as our trustworthy “mask and snorkel,” we also find what we need for the present day-by-day life. As we read in the newspapers of increasingly terrible earthquakes, floods, and disasters, as we hear from friends in troubled parts of the world, we are comforted that our mask is not too expensive to give to others, that they need not have membership in a club to use it. As we read and see what God has provided for the immediate moment, we thank him that it is there for laboring man and president, for queen and peasant, for anyone who will look.

The one who prepared this means of seeing what could otherwise not be seen is the Creator of all things, God himself. So comfort can be found when “fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.… Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved” (Ps. 55:5, 22). And in the same psalm: “As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice” (vv. 16, 17).

When we read in Colossians that we are to pray with continuity for each other as well as ourselves, we know that the One to whom we pray is the Creator, described also in Colossians 1:16 and 17: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, … and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” We can trust his Word, “for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.… So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa. 55:9, 11).

The Creator of the universe has given us a “mask” through which to look with some measure of understanding at the wonders of the past, present, and future, knowing that one day we will find out that which eyes have not yet seen, nor ears heard, nor the heart of man imagined.

EDITH SCHAEFFER

Freedom Of Religion For Extremists

Let Our Children Go!, by Ted Patrick (Dutton, 1976, 285 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Dean M. Kelley, staff associate for religious and civil liberties, National Council of Churches, New York, New York.

Let us recognize, to begin with, that this is a well-written book about an absorbing subject. Ted Patrick comes across clearly as a dedicated crusader, a (black) man on a white horse leading the charge against what he believes to be the hosts of evil. Known to a small but enthusiastic coterie as “Black Lightning,” the “deprogrammer,” he has gained some local notoriety for “liberating” young people who joined religious movements of which their parents disapproved. In less enthusiastic circles, this activity is known as abduction, imprisonment, or kidnapping. If you or I were to do it, we would soon find ourselves in jail. But Ted Patrick seems able to avoid, or at least postpone, that fate.

In this book he tells how he got into the “deprogramming” business, and how he has barely managed to keep up with the myriad demands for his services, scarcely finding time for his family or money to pay their grocery bills. Let us be more gracious to him than he is toward his opponents: I don’t believe he is in this harrowing activity for mercenary reasons, any more than his opponents are. I don’t believe he’s in it for publicity or power per se, any more than his opponents are. I think he really believes he is holding off the hosts of Satan (or, as he puts it, of communism), fighting the fore-battle of Armageddon—or something like that. I only wish he would give his opponents credit for equally principled (ir)rationality.

His targets, in the main, are five: Hare Krishna, the Children of God, Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, and Brother Julius (whoever he is). In Patrick’s view, they (and many other groups) are not really religious; they are simply clever covers for insidious, power-hungry mass movements attempting to gain followers by methods of thought-control, hypnosis, and “brain-washing.” According to his account (and accounts attributed to former members “liberated” by him), these movements simply sweep up unsuspecting adolescents like a demonic vacuum cleaner. One minute they’re walking innocently along the street/beach/airport concourse, and the next—Zappo!—they’re in the movements, never to return to real life unless he “rescues” them. His simple apologia is the noblest there is: he is setting them free from heinous bondage to unscrupulous exploiters using “religion” as a stalking horse. He reports how often law-enforcement officers assist him and support him; he laments how seldom mainline churches and public prosecutors appreciate his selfless service.

It is a tragedy that Ted Patrick and his supporters (and many, many other people) have so shallow an understanding of what religion—in its purest (or strongest) form—is like. It is not neat or gentle or palsy-walsy or meek or mild; it is intense, driving, insistent, all-or-nothing total-demand stuff. No wonder that people encountering the real thing—or at least its intenser forms—are repelled; it is so much more in earnest than most of us care to be about anything.

When you consider that most of us are ignored most of the time by everybody, including our family and “friends,” what an intoxicating experience it is to be the object of attention, of group-sharing, of “togetherness” for hours and days on end, exhausting and disorienting as that may be. Who can resist that kind of injection of the most precious commodity there is—human attention! The only way

Ted Patrick can counteract it is by an equal expenditure of attention. If half that intensive human concentration and energy had previously been devoted to the adolescents in question, their “conversion” might never have happened. But whom could you pay to lavish that much interest on rather uninteresting adolescents? Teachers, pastors, social workers, and other busy adults can hardly see them, far less give them the interest and interaction they crave. How irresistible it is, then, when total strangers seem solicitous of them—and not just for minutes but for hours and days! This is a dimension few have appreciated, but I think it is the key to why “programming”—or “deprogramming”—works.

I would not undertake to refute what Patrick says about the Children of God or the “Moonies” or Hare Krishna—I simply have no personal information about them or acquaintance with them. But I do know personally several of the members of the New Testament Missionary Fellowship described in the book—they form a house-church centered a few blocks from where I work: Hannah Lowe, John McCandlish Phillips, Calvin Burrowes, and Dan Voll. I can testify (and did so in court, along with President McGill of Columbia University) that they are good citizens, reputable people to whom I would entrust my fate, if need be (though I would not care to join their group). They are entitled to the free exercise of their religion without forcible interference by self-appointed deliverers like Ted Patrick. If Patrick is as far off on the other groups as he is on the NTMF, then his allegations are not worth much.

That is really what they are: allegations. If people are being held in captivity against their will by self-styled “religious” groups, that is an actionable offense, the First Amendment notwithstanding. But I know of no complaints filed—far less proved in court by hard evidence—against the Children of God or the Unification “Church” for abduction or false imprisonment. However, Ted Patrick admits to such offenses, justifying them on the ground that they forestall a worse (but unproved) outcome, captivation by a religious group whose evils are asserted but not evidenced. That has been Patrick’s defense thus far: he is saving young people from a Fate Worse than Death. Though the evidence of that “fate” has thus far been mere allegation, the charge has the effect of putting the religious group on trial instead of Patrick: it must prove its right to exist and attract converts, or Patrick goes free! (President McGill and I were so persuasive in defending the NTMF that Patrick was immediately acquitted!). That is the reverse of religious liberty; it is, instead, “open season” on unpopular religious groups as long as Ted Patrick and others like him are free to oppose them.

The National Council of Churches recently adopted a resolution calling for “Religious Liberty for Young People Too,” which concluded: “The Governing Board of the NCC believes that religious liberty is one of the most precious rights of humankind, which is grossly violated by forcible abduction and protracted efforts to change a person’s religious commitments by duress.”

This book makes the best case possible for “deprogramming.” I look forward to the book that will do as well for the other side—the victims of Patrick’s rough stuff and those who live in constant fear of being seized and having their most precious beliefs and commitments ridiculed, distorted, “refuted” for hour after hour until they capitulate and return to the “normal” life of self-gratification, apathy, indolence, cynicism, and greed. There are worse things in this world than being caught up in a high-demand religious movement, and after reading this book I still believe that deprogramming is one of them.

Acts From Calvin To Bruce

A History of the Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles, by W. Ward Gasque, (Eerdmans, 1975, 344 pp., $20), is reviewed by Richard N. Longenecker, professor of New Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario.

New Testament scholarship has been indebted to Albert Schweitzer, Werner Georg Kümmel, Reginald H. Fuller, and Stephen Neill for their histories of various aspects of the discipline. Now to be added to that list, and deserving a similar reception, is the work of W. Ward Gasque, who teaches at Regent College, Vancouver, and is an editor-at-large for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Gasque’s purpose is to provide “a critical history of Actaforschung comparable to Albert Schweitzer’s histories of Gospel criticism and Pauline research.” And this is what, in large measure, he has done, not only in his perception of issues and his chronicling of movements but also in his provocative challenges and his lively literary style. Gasque covers a broader range of scholarship than Schweitzer, however, and seeks to redress the imbalance of treating only radical critics; while unlike Neill, on the other hand, he depends more on original investigation than on secondary reports. “In short,” as the author himself describes his work, “I have attempted a fresh, independent study of the history of the criticism of the Book of Acts. This has led me to emphasize the work of some scholars whose writings have been largely neglected by some of the subsequent schools of critical thought and to attempt to correct many mistaken assumptions concerning the history of criticism.”

By criticism Gasque means what has traditionally been defined as “higher criticism”: questions regarding the purpose of the author in writing, the occasion for his writing, the theological leitmotiv of his work, the historical veracity of the narrative, the historical authenticity of the speeches, the date of composition, and the identity of the author. Source criticism is treated to some extent (largely through the work of J. Dupont) and textual criticism is touched upon, but these are not Gasque’s main interests.

What Gasque is concerned with is chronicling the history of research on the traditional topics of the purpose, occasion, theological stance, historicity, date, and author of Acts. He does this by highlighting the contribution of individual scholars to the discussion, grouping these contributions into movements, isolating the crucial issues involved, and commenting from the perspective of history and exegesis upon these issues during the course of the presentation. Thus he deals in successive chapters with “Pre-critical Study of the Book of Acts,” “F. C. Baur and the Tübingen School,” “The Critics of the Tübingen Reconstruction,” “Radical Descendants of the Tübingen School,” “German Criticism at the End of the Century,” “Nineteenth Century British Work on Acts,” “Luke the Historian Defended” (focusing on William Ramsay, Theodor Zahn, Adolf Harnack, Alfred Wikenhauser, and Eduard Meyer, whose studies are foundational in Gasque’s own approach), “The American Contribution,” “The Influence of Martin Dibelius,” “Luke the Historian and Theologian in Recent Research” (wherein a variety of modern redactional and historical approaches are presented, with the work of F. F. Bruce held in highest esteem). Then in a brief “epilogue” he sets out five observations about the course of scholarly research on the Acts.

Such a recital may at first glance appear to offer rather difficult reading, and indeed there are necessarily many details of biography, history, exegesis, and theology. However, Gasque writes not only with accuracy and precision but also with verve and grace. The result is an account that is not only informative and evaluative but also rather exciting, provocative, and pleasurable.

In effect, Gasque lays out the history of criticism of Acts along three lines of approach: (1) the more radical and speculative treatments of such men as F. C. Baur, Franz Overbeck, Martin Dibelius, and Ernst Haenchen; (2) the more conservative and historical treatments of such men as J. B. Lightfoot, William Ramsay, Theodor Zahn, Adolf Harnack, and F. F. Bruce; and (3) the more mediating approach embodied in the five-volume Beginnings of Christianity, edited by F. J. Foakes-Jackson and K. Lake, and epitomized particularly in the work of Henry J. Cadbury.

His criticism of the first approach is that it bases its understanding of Acts more on certain alien philosophical presuppositions and a history of interpretation than upon solid historical research and unbiased exegesis, and that it has a tendency to work de novo and in vacuo, ignoring much of the most significant work on the subject under a pretext of redefining the issues. His attitude toward the third is much more favorable, particularly with regard to the care with which historical and exegetical matters were treated and the caution with which pronouncements were made. Nonetheless, he faults Foakes-Jackson, Lake, Cadbury, and company for often giving away too much in the desire to mediate and for at times allowing alien presuppositions to determine their reading of the evidence, and he observes that despite their worthy endeavors “critical orthodoxy” has taken little cognizance of their work. As for the second line of approach, Gasque applauds and advances it, updating it somewhat with a moderate use of redaction criticism.

There is much in this history of Actaforschung that is of great value. Of special importance, I believe, is the repeated demonstration of the fact that source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism are literary tools that have been employed by both conservative and radical scholars (though, of course, with widely differing presuppositions and conclusions) and that it is the task of the biblical scholar not just to glory in his tools but also to check his presuppositions and to relate his methods to the wider world of historiography. “Critical Orthodoxy” and “Theological Orthodoxy,” though far apart in other matters, have in common the need for humility and for openness to the evidence from other areas.

There are also, perhaps inevitably, a few blemishes in the work. I could wish, for example, that Gasque had interacted with the contributions of men like Ethelbert Stauffer, Gregory Dix, Leonhard Goppelt, and David Stanley in his survey of treatments up through 1969, and that pages 296–305 had dealt more adequately with the situation in the seventies (including, for example, the work of A. Ehrhardt, R. F. Zehnle, M. Hengel, and J. D. G. Dunn on Acts and the early Church as well). At times Gasque becomes a bit carried away with his own rhetoric, as when he speaks of “the Stygian darkness of source criticism,” which at best is redundant, at worst is unfair. But the blemishes are minor. A History of the Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles is a significant work. It is accurate, perceptive, informative, provocative, and readable. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that it is published not only by Eerdmans in America but also by J. C. B. Mohr in Germany (though in the English language) as Number 17 in the prestigious series Beiträge zur Geschichte der biblischen Exegese.

BRIEFLY NOTED

The New International Commentary series is almost complete on the New Testament, but the Old Testament is just being launched (under the general editorship of R. K. Harrison) with Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah by Leslie Allen (Eerdmans, 427 pp., $9.95), who teaches at London Bible College, and with Deuteronomy by P. C. Craigie (407 pp., $9.95), of the University of Calgary. (The three volumes on Isaiah by Edward Young that were issued 1965–72 originally began the series but are now considered too long for it and will be marketed separately.)

God’s Word and God’s People by Lucien Deiss (Liturgical Press, 347 pp., $9.95) is a refreshingly creative exposition of the highpoints of biblical theology that, as its title indicates, focuses on the close connection between God’s revelation in Scripture and the community he calls into existence. Despite the Roman Catholic orientation of the author, the Word of God clearly takes primacy over church and sacraments. Recommended for Bible teachers and libraries.

The Minor Prophets by Charles L. Feinberg (Moody, 360 pp., $7.95) and Ezekiel by Ralph Alexander (Moody, 160 pp., $1.95 pb) exhibit an admirable combination of learning and devotion in commentaries designed for the general reader. Both are dispensational in orientation, but Bible students of other theological persuasions will find them edifying. Feinberg’s work is a new edition of a series of studies published earlier for a more limited audience.

The latest annual issue of the Wesleyan Theological Journal (Number 11) includes studies by holiness scholars on carnality, perfection in Wesley and Fletcher, the origins of Old Testament ecstasy, and three other topics (96 pp., $1.50 pb; order from Box 2000, Marion, Ind. 46952).

Splendors of Islam by Wilfrid Blunt (Viking, 152 pp., $10.95) and Introduction to Islamic Civilization edited by R. M. Savory (Cambridge, 204 pp., $17.95, $5.95 pb) seek to introduce readers to one of the world’s major civilizations. Blunt’s work lays stress on the art and architecture of Islam and is lavishly illustrated, while the volume edited by Savory is more scholarly and is intended as a handbook for students. A Christian’s Response to Islam by veteran missionary William M. Miller (Presbyterian and Reformed, 178 pp., $3.50 pb) is a needed evangelical counterpart to the other two.

Most books on the person and work of the Holy Spirit fail to offer much solid biblical study. Two recent exceptions are The Holy Spirit; Growth of a Biblical Tradition by George T. Montague (Paulist, 374 pp., $8.50 pb) and The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament by Leon J. Wood (Zondervan, 160 pp., $3.95 pb). Both combine scholarship and devotion, though Montague’s approach, which takes the idea of progressive revelation seriously, seems more satisfactory than Wood’s, which forces the biblical data too much into the categories of later systematic theology.

Shades Of C. S. Lewis

Screwtape Writes Again, by Walter Martin (Vision, 1975, 150 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Michael MacDonald, associate professor of German and philosophy, Seattle Pacific College, Seattle, Washington.

Walter Martin, director of the Christian Research Institute in San Juan Capistrano, California, has long been a student of modern cults and the occult; his book Kingdom of the Cults is now in its twentieth printing. In Screwtape Writes Again he draws upon his considerable knowledge of the satanic, the Bible, and human experience.

Martin deals with a broad spectrum of contemporary topics, ranging from doubt and faith to abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and the modern charismatic movement. His purpose is to categorize “much new data” that has accumulated since C. S. Lewis’s death. As in Lewis’s Screwtape book, published in 1942, these letters from a senior to a junior devil on how to tempt man to sin show humor and introspection, and one can recognize oneself in the young patient who is the central character.

Martin is quite successful in places. Particularly penetrating is chapter six, in which the devil tries to keep the liberals’ emphasis on “social gospel” from being joined with the fundamentalists’ commitment to evangelism. His distinctions between giving thanks in everything and giving thanks/or everything and reading and studying the Word, as well as his remarks on gluttony, are also perceptive and helpful.

I find him less sensitive and too opinionated in the areas of abortion, “Basic Youth Conflicts,” the charismatic movement, and women’s liberation. Martin distinguishes less well than Lewis between God’s truth and his own opinion.

Martin stands firmly against the “new morality,” for as any devil knows, there’s nothing new under the sun. The devil has convinced many that morality “is to be governed not by the lofty pronouncements of the Enemy’s Training Manual [the Bible] but by the particular situation in which they find themselves!” While I agree that we don’t want “to pursue evil under the guise of good,” we may have to make a choice, in certain situations, between the lesser of two evils (see the lead editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 23, 1976).

Moreover, there is a certain tension in Martin that smacks at times of anti-intellectualism. Martin has no kind words for “modern theologians” who thrive because “humans love complexity of thought.” Psychology, sociology, and philosophy have largely become infiltrated by the devil. “There can be no agreement between Athens and Jerusalem.” Yet we do not want to foster the opposition between faith and reason, religion and science, theology and philosophy. There is no need for a polemic against secular learning. No gulf exists between the sacred and the secular; all truth is God’s truth.

Martin uses Screwtape Writes Again to pontificate against the sins of the “now” generation. The book is generally well written and will be of value to persons interested in contemporary issues. However, Martin is more a clever theologian than a first-rate artist. He lacks Lewis’s universality, subtlety, imagination, compassion, and power of language. Lewis’s impact on religious thinking, and indeed on the religious imagination, has been perhaps unequaled by any other twentieth-century writer. Much of Lewis, including The Screwtape Letters, will undoubtedly become a permanent part of our literary and religious heritage. Screwtape Writes Again is worthwhile reading, but measured by the standard of Lewis’s work it falls quite short.

Moral Law And The Founding Fathers

A Nation Built on God, by Edward J. Melvin (Our Sunday Visitor, 1975, 223 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John A. Tinkham, doctoral student, Department of Politics, Catholic University, Washington, D.C.

What would the American founding fathers say about the abortion issue if they were alive today? Edward J. Melvin, a Roman Catholic historian, philosopher, and theologian, believes they would be outraged by the 1973 Supreme Court decisions that permit abortions and by the recommendations of the 1972 Presidential Commission on Population Control in favor of more liberal abortion-control laws. He sees a big contrast between liberal abortion policies and the beliefs expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Abortions not only violate the right of the unborn child to life, argues Melvin, but also remove liberty and the pursuit of happiness from the bounds of moral law so that they become excuses for license and pleasure.

The argument is interesting. It uses the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in place of the Bible to answer a question that has become political and legal as well as moral. Melvin recommends a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to life to all unborn persons. Abortions would thereby be prohibited under all circumstances, without regard to the needs of the mother.

The book is more than an argument against abortion. Melvin delves deeply into just what the founding fathers meant by such expressions—familiar to all but rarely defined—as “unalienable rights,” “endowed by their Creator,” “pursuit of happiness,” and “created equal.” These words were grounded in a faith in God and a belief in natural law. Melvin provides a generous assortment of quotations from the writings and speeches of early Americans to give the reader insight into the attitudes toward their fellow man and government that are expressed in the founding documents. Their religion was a form of deism, which Melvin prefers to call theism. This is a belief in God as Creator and as Providence, who intervenes in the affairs of men and their governments. They accepted the ethical teachings of Jesus but rejected him as the Son of God. Their belief in natural law and natural rights was grounded in their faith in God. God created man along with universal laws of nature that govern his social life and include natural rights to find human fulfillment in life. God enables man to know his laws through the gift of reason. So any government that contradicts these laws and violates human rights is immoral and will fail. One can thus claim the truth of statements about inalienable rights and equality of men on the basis of God’s will and natural law.

Melvin believes that Christians today can and should support the reasoning of the founders because the God of their theism and of Christianity are the same, and because it has provided a Constitution built on Christian ethics. But he argues that arguments for abortion must be rejected because they deny the existence of God and natural rights.

I found this discussion of the thinking of the founding fathers well worth the reading of the book. Some readers may find the description of human nature to be too optimistic; The Federalist Papers, which the author disregards, show a concern about man’s sinful nature and the need to control his “passions” as well as to protect his rights. Nevertheless, it is clear that the concept of human nature shown here does reflect the ideas of a wide cross section of the men whose “faith” brought about a liberal democracy under law that has survived for two hundred years.

Thomas Aquinas Never Washed Socks

I was helping my wife fold the clothes still warm from the dryer. I had piled the socks to one side to sort and match them after the larger stuff was taken care of.

With some diligence I managed to get together seven pairs but was left with five unmatched socks.

“Where’s the rest of the wash?” I asked my wife.

“That’s it,” she replied.

“It can’t be,” I protested. “I’ve got five unmatched socks.”

“Happens all the time,” she responded.

“What’ll I do with them?”

“This,” she said, opening a drawer filled with mateless socks and tossing them in.

“What do you mean it happens all the time?”

“I mean I can put twelve pairs of socks in the washer and get out nine pairs and seven unmatched socks. Happens all the time.”

“That’s physically impossible!” I said. “If that were true it would bring into question the dependability and regularity of the universe.”

“I believe in the regularity of the universe,” she countered. “I regularly put in matched socks and regularly get out unmatched socks.”

“That’s not the kind of regularity I’m talking about. Let me explain it simply.”

“Don’t be patronizing,” she riposted. “If you’re going to become a male chauvinist you can just forget the whole thing. And by the way, what law says that I am charged with the responsibility for the family wash anyhow?”

Refusing to be sidetracked by peripheral matters, I continued, “What I’m trying to say is that the regularity of the universe is one point of the theistic apologetic. If you put in matched socks and get out unmatched socks that means the universe is not dependable, and where does that leave Thomas Aquinas?”

“Thomas Aquinas had his experience and I have mine,” she responded with unassailable accuracy.

“You don’t test theology by experience,” I pointed out. “It’s the other way around.”

“Correct theology doesn’t make matched socks out of unmatched ones,” she said, eyeing me coldly.

Experience, I have concluded, looms large in the formulation of personal belief. And that’s not altogether bad. One fellow, when told that his experience did not conform to orthodox theology, said simply, “One thing I do know: I was blind and now I see.”

EUTYCHUS V

From the December 3, 1971, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Sermon Time

The editorial “Preparing For The Political Plunge” (Aug. 6) was timely and helpful. There came into my hands a copy of the apparent political newsletter you quoted as leaving a false impression about Jimmy Carter. Yesterday I used your information in my sermon. Today I wrote both the person distributing the report and the editor of that publication protesting the bearing of false witness.… Let me also say a word of appreciation for your July 16 issue on the theme of “How Can We Share?” Thank you for your diligence and good stewardship.

BOBBY J. SCOBEY

St. Andrew’s Community Church

Memphis, Tenn.

To Have And To Have Not

I found the cover of your July 16 issue disgusting, and the articles inside appropriately inane, prejudiced, and misguided. The caricature of the bloated American starving the rest of the emaciated planet has no justification economically, statistically, or in any other way. The closest it comes to fact is that our country, through the blessings of God on its phenomenal efforts, does live better than much of the rest of the nations. But to imply that there is a great welfare plan that guarantees equal shares of everything is to perpetuate a basic Communist fallacy that cannot be justified.

Whether our country should continue its unparalleled generosity to the rest of the world is one question.… Your inflammatory writers imply that we not only do not feed the hungry abroad (in fact we somehow “steal” their food) but we also use up more than our “share” of raw materials. Do they not realize that, when we purchase oil from Arabs, bauxite from Jamaica, iron ore from Venezuela, rubber from Indonesia, etc. etc. etc. we are contributing to the economies of those countries, so that many people can earn their daily bread? If we stopped our consumption, those people would starve.… CHRISTIANITY TODAY should … put the worship of God first, and political, economic, and other matters second. Don’t follow the liberals in their tangential journeys away from the faith.

JOHN A. MCKECHNIE

Broomall, Pa.

Your July 16 issue is one of the best I have ever read. Thank you for the terrific series of articles on hunger and the Christian response. The authors not only were very moving, but did a good job of answering the questions and the criticisms of the hunger crisis.

WINSTON H. TAYLOR

Silver Spring, Md.

I am not a regular reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY but thought this issue on hunger was very good. The evangelical perspective on the problem tends to have a lot more guts than the liberal one with which I am more familiar!

SARAH BENTLEY

New York, N.Y.

The Morality Of Hell

I found the article by Edward Fudge, “Putting Hell in Its Place” (Aug. 6), to be personally offensive and unworthy of your journal. It is difficult for many Christians to understand how a loving God could consign any of his creation (we never asked to be born) to an eternal punishment (the punishment should fit the crime). After all, Adolf Hitler only killed the bodies of six million Jews. Are some people still so much in love with the literal reading of the Bible that they have had their moral sensibilities virtually destroyed? Like it or not: the notion of an eternal damnation is the denial of the love of God, and represents the admission of the failure of that love—not to mention his power. I will not believe that God’s love is either perverted or limited.

FRANK L. HOSS

First Christian Church

Fort Dodge, Iowa

• Our moral sensibilities must be checked against biblical revelation. Men may not like the assertion that there is a hell, but Scripture witnesses to its existence. We accept the teaching of Scripture on this as on the other doctrines of the Christian faith.—ED.

On Knowledge Of God

The article by Ronald Nash on philosopher David Hume (Aug. 6) serves as another fine example of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S determination to build up in the evangelical community an informed faith. Both the presentation of what Hume really thought (how seldom Christians seem to be careful at this point in their apologetics) and the assessment of where subjectivism has led us deserve commendation.

There is one thing, though, that I think might have been added as well: why Hume was wrong in denying that there can be knowledge of God. The problem, as may be seen in Nash’s exposition of Hume, is an equivocation on the usage of the term “knowledge.” In the sentence, “Therefore, if man cannot know these things (i.e., causality, or the transcendent) by reason and experience, he cannot know them,” the first “know” refers to having sufficient and compelling demonstration of something, while the second “know” refers simply to having information (which may be stated propositionally) about something which may or may not be provable. Yet Hume thinks that because he has proven the one, the other must also be true. This is not so, but is only a supposition about the bounds of reason—a supposition not ever accepted by God’s people. While our pivotal beliefs may “rest on something other than reason and experience” (such as the inward witness of the Holy Spirit), this does not mean that reason and experience can have no input at all into the things of faith.

KEITH COOPER

Beverly, Mass.

The article by Ronald Nash is one of the most enlightening and discerning I have ever read on a philosophical subject. (Philosophers need not be obscure!) I especially appreciated the last few paragraphs in which he gives examples of “the new anti-intellectualism that threatens evangelicalism.” Thanks for alerting us, Professor Nash! Come again!

HENRY PETERSEN

Second Christian Reformed Church

Pella, Iowa

Ronald Nash carefully defends Hume from misconceptions in the first two sections, but then goes on to confuse philosophy with theology.… Philosophers cannot be heretics, only right or wrong. You can only be a heretic when you profess to teach the theology or inner logic of a religion, and Nash reminds us that Hume did not profess to do that.

The opening statement of section III unfortunately fails to define either “rational knowledge” or “objective religious truth.” Having told us that Hume’s idea of rational knowledge is confined to “areas where knowledge is possible, such as mathematics” (surely we all agree that our revealed Christian faith cannot be proved in that kind of way), Nash tells us that Hume was not a skeptic as regards “common sense” and “natural instincts.” He was as sure that the sun would rise tomorrow as we are, but the point was that this certainty was not a philosophic certainty.

Similarly as regards Hume’s supposed rejection of “objective religious truth”: if Nash means truth that can be proved by means of the techniques of modern science, then surely we all agree with Hume. If however “objective” refers to certainty that comes to us from objective Scriptures rather than a process of inner searching or intuition, then I suspect Hume would have been neutral as to these alternatives.

Our task as evangelicals is to clarify that faith in God is not provable by mathematics or logic, or by the constant conjunctions (Hume’s term) of modern science, but by a certainty given by God alone as a result of hearing and studying the Scriptures. And how could we prove that such certainty can be given before receiving it? Hume cannot be faulted for denying that such certainty could come from other avenues of knowing.

ROBERT BROW

Associate Rector

Little Trinity Anglican Church

Toronto, Ontario

Anonymous Poison

I am writing to protest the poison-pen sarcasm of Eutychus VII in the July 2 issue. Eutychus obviously has not taken the time to sample the ministry of the staff or the laity of Scott Memorial Baptist Church of San Diego and El Cajon, California. Interestingly, neither anonymity nor sarcasm were qualities or characteristics of men of God of the Scriptures. If a Christian brother has a difference of opinion with a brother, he is admonished to go to him in love. Eutychus, hiding behind his pen name and speaking with a barbed, sarcastic tongue, does a disservice to your otherwise fine magazine.

RONALD V. JONES

Consultant

Churches Alive!

San Bernardino, Calif.

Errata

The name listed in the erratum item in the September 10 issue should have been Keith Price, not Brian Price.

Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein spent forty-one years at Stony Brook School, not forty-nine as we said in identifying him in the August 27 issue.

Olaf Stapledon, Neglected Titan

To whom do we owe each of the following concepts in science fiction: (a) galactic empires in whose rise and fall the terrestrial history of man is utterly forgotten; (b) a superhuman race on another planet who cannibalize their beloved dead; (c) a Venus covered by water, with humans dwelling on islands of floating vegetation. Many readers would confidently answer (a) Isaac Asimov, (b) Robert A. Heinlein, and (c) C. S. Lewis. They would do so because they have never read the works of one from whom each of these later authors borrowed and who possessed, according to critic Sam Moskowitz, “the most titanic imagination ever brought to science fiction”: William Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950).

Stapledon, a lecturer in English literature, industrial history, psychology, and philosophy at the University of Liverpool, produced, along with several less distinguished books, five influential science-fiction novels. Christians may read these as they do Nietzsche, reveling in the author’s rare beauty of phrase and brightness of imagery, yet troubled by his anti-Christian metaphysics (in Stapledon’s case, an extremely remote and forbidding deism) and his innovative ethics.

Like Nietzsche, Stapledon has influenced millions who have never read his works. In his first novel alone, Last and First Men (1930), hundreds of striking ideas used by later science-fiction writers appear—ideas on eugenics, on behavior modification, on social structure, on new sources of energy, on sex, on psychology, on population control, on ethics, on art, on telepathic communication. Many of these ideas are now being promoted outside science fiction as if they were something new.

Stapledon predicted an energy shortage and the worldwide search for new energy sources: tidal power, wind power, geothermal power, and atomic power. At the same time he predicted, and partly approved, the current sexual revolution, advocating a view of sexuality nearly identical to that of Robert Rimmer in The Harrad Experiment and other popular recent works. Most significant for this review, he also expounded at length the “evolving God” idea, in which man, in his great spiritual quest, hoped to be the germ of a Cosmic Consciousness that could approach and perhaps achieve the omniscience of the mythical God in the old religions. Process theologians, take note.

We could multiply such examples a hundred times without exhausting the contents of Last and First Men, a book so comprehensive that by comparison even Frank Herbert’s Dune and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy seem trivial in subject, constricted in scope, and parochial in viewpoint. Last and First Men is the chronicle of human evolution, presented by a human descendant living more than two billion years in the future. This superhuman being can inhabit, study, and even influence past minds, imagined as eternally present to minds with the sensitivity to perceive them. Homo sapiens, he tells us, is but the first of eighteen human species inhabiting successively the earth, Venus, and Neptune, where the last and greatest of man’s descendants meet their frightful doom in an inescapable solar storm.

Few individuals appear in this chronicle. The characters are more often whole races or nations, and a lover of the novel of manners may feel alienated beyond any appreciation. Yet for the reader who can accept large and strange generalities as characters, there is a continual fascination in the sweep of the narrative and the eloquence of the style. Amid the final horrors, the Last Man speaks to his dying comrades:

“Great are the stars, and, man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a star kills.… Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars.… It is very good to have been man.”

Stapledon’s other science-fiction novels are Last Men in London (1932), a study of World War I from the perspective of the Last Men on Neptune; Odd John (1935), the tale of a mental superman in the twentieth century who attempts to start a new humanity and is destroyed by the old humanity; Star Maker (1937), an incredibly ambitious “hawk-flight of imagination” through all of space and time, called by Brian Aldiss “the one great grey holy book of science fiction,” never surpassed or even approached by any book before or since; and Sirius (1944), the tragic biography of a dog given more than human intelligence by a scientist’s experiment. For the new reader of Stapledon, Sirius, the most human of his books, is probably the best place to start. Star Maker, as Brian Aldiss warns, is too “huge and frightening” in its imaginative sweep.

Stapledon’s literary output was modest in size, even if we include all his writing. But within the five most popular of his books can be found most of the philosophical and psychological problems plaguing twentieth-century man, together with most of the solutions that have been suggested. While we may deplore his rejection of the Christian solution, we may yet, as C. S. Lewis did, find much to delight our minds, enlarge our sympathies, and give us insight into the attempt of a brilliant mind to find spiritual consolation in a universe where God has not spoken.

WILLIAM A. HOLT

William A. Holt is assistant professor of English and religion, Tarrant County Junior College, Fort Worth, Texas.

Morality Tales

I tried to read Stapledon’s Odd John several years ago. Our then art/production director John Lawing, who wrote CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S last piece on science fiction (February 27), lent me the book. It’s still sitting on my desk at home, half read.

He claimed back in February that religion had little place in science fiction. Perhaps. But several of its major themes are theological. Creation. God. Heaven. Eschatology. Holt’s discussion of Stapledon bears this out in part.

Why are more and more writers today turning to science fiction in dealing with these questions? Where did science fiction get its start? How does it fit in with the rest of Western literature? All good questions, but few of us have time to ferret out the answers.

Those who are fascinated by these questions—and I’m one—will be glad to hear that their work has been done for them: by Franz Rottensteiner in Science Fiction Book (Seabury, $14.95) or James Gunn in Alternate Worlds (Prentice-Hall, $29.95). Both books are illustrated, hence the high prices. Rottensteiner provides information about science fiction outside the English-speaking world, but Gunn’s book is more comprehensive. The appendixes alone make it worth the price.

Gunn tells us where science fiction came from. Plato, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe. Whether he convinces you or not, it makes an interesting chapter.

But the best part of the book comes at the end. “The Shape of Things to Come” gets into the reasons for theological and philosophical themes in the genre. Gunn, quoting Edmund Crispin, says, “Science fiction is the last refuge of the morality tale.” And I think they’re right.

CHERYL FORBES

What started as an evangelistic effort among college students has turned into one of the more ambitious undertakings in church history. The man behind the movement, Dr. William Rohl Bright, traces its origin to a call from God that came to him while he was studying for a Greek examination at Fuller Seminary. His organization, Campus Crusade for Christ International, is marking its twenty-fifth anniversary this fall by developing strategy to help to evangelize the entire world. Political activities surrounding Bright’s evangelistic endeavors and his association with Arizona congressman John Conlan and other conservative political leaders have attracted the attention of the news media in recent weeks. To get a firsthand account of his political interests and evangelistic vision, CHRISTIANITY TODAYeditors interviewed Bright at the “Christian Embassy” in Washington. Here is an edited version of that interview:

Question. Where are we in America? Would you say things have deteriorated in the last twenty-five years?

Answer. I would use a stronger word: disintegrated. Our nation is in grave trouble.

Q. What do you mean?

A. Well, for one thing, many of our leaders say we are in trouble economically. And politically we have more discord than ever. Morally and spiritually, we have reached the point of bankruptcy. Our entire society is becoming increasingly secular, humanistic, and materialistic. Anti-God forces largely control education, the media, entertainment, and government.

Q. Are you saying that it’s all over for America?

A. What happens in this country this year will in my opinion determine whether or not we remain free. I don’t mean that we will lose our freedom this year, but we’ll reach the point of no return. I think that if we don’t meet the conditions set down in Second Chronicles 7:14, we’re in trouble.

Q. What are you doing about it?

A. Working in cooperation with thousands of pastors, we are seeking to disciple and train millions of Christians in the United States to help to saturate our nation with the Gospel through a movement called Here’s Life America. I canceled all my engagements overseas for 1976. Usually, I visit every continent once or twice a year because we have a staff now of more than 5,000 in more than eighty countries. I arranged for others to do the overseas traveling. As it turned out, however, we had an unusual opportunity to launch Here’s Life in Asia with the potential of ultimately training more than 70,000 Chinese. So I did go to Asia to help to set the wheels in motion to train them, in the hope that one day the door will be open and tens of thousands will go into mainland China. I’ve been praying for China for many years. While there we launched Here’s Life Philippines, Here’s Life Malaysia, Here’s Life Singapore, Here’s Life Republic of China, and Here’s Life Hong Kong.

Q. What is “Here’s Life”?

A. It is a movement of discipleship and evangelism that involves thousands of churches, and we trust there will soon be many, many millions of Christians involved. It is a movement committed to share the claims of Christ with every person in America. We have already launched Here’s Life in many of the major American cities with phenomenal results, and we are praying that soon the rest of the 265 major metropolitan areas and 18,000 smaller communities will become involved. Since Here’s Life emphasizes discipleship along with evangelism, we are confident that the movement will gather momentum and explode throughout the world. Our role is one of servant, to the local church, the pastor, and his people.

Q. What kind of training are you giving?

A. We call it “mediated” training. It’s a new word. The program was developed at Michigan State. Research suggests that it enables a person who retains about 5 per cent from a typical lecture to retain about 80 per cent of the content of this mediated training.

Q. Is it an audiovisual approach?

A. It is that and more. It involves a wide range of special techniques, including the use of motion pictures and slides, writing narrations, testing materials. These are put together in a unique way. They add up to the most advanced form of communication yet developed.

Q. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

A. I believe that we’re going to see the greatest spiritual awakening in the history of the world. I believe it’s already begun. I think that the awakening will forestall many undesirable things that would otherwise happen, militarily, economically, politically, and so on. I believe we are going to meet the conditions of Second Chronicles 7:14, humbling ourselves, praying, turning from our wicked ways. I’m very optimistic about that. But I say that from the divine perspective, not on the basis of what I see. I am optimistic on the basis of faith, the integrity of God, the sovereignty of God, the power of God, and my assurance of his love.

Q. When you speak of a loss of freedom unless there is a spiritual awakening, do you envisage large numbers of people becoming Christian and large numbers of Christians becoming better disciples? Or are you referring to such things as changes in the composition of Congress and other branches of government?

A. I am saying that there will be many millions who will become trained disciples, and through their influence many additional millions will receive Christ as personal Saviour. As this awakening spreads, I am confident that Christians will become more sensitive to their responsibility in education, the media, entertainment, government. I see this happening all the time.

Q. Scripture seems to teach that at the end of the age the world situation will get worse, and love among Christians will grow cold. So it appears that if this great awakening you anticipate does happen, then the coming of the Lord may not be imminent.

A. I do not personally believe that the Lord’s return is imminent. I think the current teaching that it is imminent is leading many, many Christians to fold their hands and disobey what Jesus said to do. Jesus said we should work, for the night is coming when no man can work. According to Scripture, he has delayed his return in order that more people might have a chance to hear.

Q. Can anyone in America possibly say that he or she has never heard the story of salvation?

A. Our surveys—we take hundreds of them—show that about half the church members are not sure of their salvation, that 95 per cent do not understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that 98 per cent are not regularly introducing others to Christ. Yet we also find that at least half the people in the free world outside the hard-core Muslim world and the nation of Israel are open to the Gospel and would receive Christ the first time they heard the Gospel presented effectively by a trained disciple who was filled with the Spirit. One of our staff members trained several volunteers who then interviewed 7,400 people on the telephone. Forty-seven per cent of those not already Christians prayed with the caller and received Christ.

Q. Do you think they were really born again?

A. I don’t know. I would not know if they came to the altar of a church and wept for an hour. But at least they said, We want to know the Lord, and our experience through the years would assure us that a good percentage of the decisions were genuine.

Q. When you talk about getting Christians active in government so they can change the situation, what do you have in mind?

A. I really do not say Christians should be in government. I say men and women of God should be elected to public office. There is a difference. You know, frankly, to be a Christian does not guarantee that one is ethical and moral and spiritual. There are people in government who profess faith in Jesus Christ and are just as unscrupulous in some of their dealings as people who are not professing Christians. I am referring to men and women of integrity and principle. For example, the late David Lawrence, who was the editor of U.S. News and World Report, was a Jew. From reading his writings and talking with others who knew him personally, I would say that he was a man who could be trusted in a position of leadership.

Q. Do you think the Church should get involved in politics?

A. No, I am talking about individual Christians. If someone points out that politics is dirty and that Christians open themselves up to temptations and compromises by getting involved in it, I would just reply that Scripture says in Proverbs that when the evil ruled the righteous suffered. Christians should be aggressively involved in politics; their influence should be felt in all parties.

Q. You don’t think that a denomination should endorse a particular candidate?

A. No. Nor do I do it myself. Nor do we in Campus Crusade for Christ endorse a particular person or party.

Q. But you are a Christian leader, and people may be looking to you for guidance. Are you not neglecting your responsibility if you don’t say, Here is someone whom I think we can trust and for whom Christians ought to vote?

A. There are too many unknown factors. There are those who believe that Mr. Nixon is a Christian, though to my knowledge he has never said he is. There are those who believe that Mr. Carter and Mr. Ford are Christians. As far as I know, they are. But as for saying, “I have such confidence in the Christian commitment of this or that candidate that I’m going to recommend your voting for him,” I cannot. I just do not know enough about them. I say, “Learn all you can about the candidates for public office—from the Presidency on down to the school board—and then on your knees ask God whom he would have you support.

Q. Do you think Christians ought to band together for political purposes?

A. I don’t feel this is what God wants me to do. If in local areas there is a reason for doing this, I’d have to defer to the judgment of those involved. God has a right, certainly, to be original with each one of us.

Q. Bill Bright and Campus Crusade have been described as deeply involved in politics. Any truth to that?

A. Those who made the statement have added two and two and come up with one hundred. They have misinterpreted my motives. In twenty-five years we have never spent a penny trying to elect a person or promote a party, and we have no plans to do so. However, I do feel a strong responsibility to encourage Christians to work to elect men and women of God to public office, but I have never encouraged one candidate or party over another.

Q. Social activists in the mainline denominations have said the same thing, at least in recent years. They have declared, perhaps in part for purposes of tax exemption, that they are not pushing a particular candidate or party but are awakening the people to the need for social righteousness. Are you doing basically the same thing?

A. To answer that I would first have to talk to those people. I do not know what their motives are, or how they spend their money. We at Campus Crusade are very transparent in all our financial operations. Our legal staff counsels me on anything that is questionable—even to the wording of a message or article I am writing—because I do not want to violate the rules of our charter. I have operated this way for twenty-five years.

Q. Do you think that those who are truly in touch with God will come out on the same side in an election?

A. I think it is conceivable that the Lord would lead some Spirit-filled people to support one candidate, other Spirit-filled people to support the other. In Campus Crusade policy meetings, one person will make a proposal and someone else will object. But before long everybody is happy over the recommendation that is made. By the time I make the decision I will have had the benefit of the best and most creative thinking of my colleagues, though they might have been at opposite poles to begin with. In Congress, I feel that men of God who differ will be more likely to come to decisions that are in the best interests of our country than if everybody espoused the same view.

Q. If we had, say, 400 people of God in Congress, could we expect things to be any different than they are now?

A. About 1,000 per cent different, because many of the decisions that are made today are not made on the basis of what God would have us to do and what is right for our country.

Q. You are simply saying that with people of God in office there will be more unanimity on issues.

A. That’s right. Communication is the biggest problem. Most people who are part of the ultra-left or the ultra-right don’t listen to what others are saying. With the love relationship we teach each other. We can put our arms around each other and hear each other out.

Q. To turn back to evangelism: many Christians were brought up to think that people reject Christ because they are unwilling to accept the demands of the Gospel, that the cost seems too high.

A. I reject that totally and completely. My experience has been that people do not reject Jesus Christ because they don’t want to surrender control of their life to Christ but because they don’t know what’s involved. I was an agnostic in my youth. The minute I understood who Christ is and what he did, I had no problem responding with my total being. A person would be a fool not to receive Christ if he understood what’s involved.

Q. Now wait a minute. The evidence is all about us that people love to sin. You believe in the fall. Scripture talks about many called and few chosen, the strait gate and narrow way, and so forth. Are you not denying these truths in your estimation of the human hunger for God?

A. I am aware of what you are saying. My answer is that a saving relationship with God is such a wonderful thing that not a single person I have ever talked to regrets his or her decision to come to Christ. People do not reject Christ; they reject a caricature.

Q. When you say your goal is for America to be evangelized by the end of 1976 …

A. Not evangelized but discipled and evangelized.

Q. Okay, but then come January, 1977, when you review the past year to see whether you have reached this goal, what factors will you use as a measurement?

A. Among other things, Jesus Christ should be the topic of interest and concern in the communities of America more than he was at the start of the year. Saturation of the nation is a continuing thing. It does not end in December of 1976. It will accelerate in 1977, and in 1978, and in 1980, because nothing is more exciting than leading another person to Christ and helping him grow and lead others to Christ.

Q. If it does not happen by the end of 1976, will you then conclude that it cannot happen or will not happen?

A. I believe it will happen. But if it does not, I am not going to flagellate myself. I am only doing what God has told me to do. Because we tried, there will be millions of people in the Kingdom who would otherwise not have been in the Kingdom. That makes it worthwhile. I’m only doing what I think God wants me to do.

As recently as 1898, the French dictionary Nouveau Larousse Illustré could say: “Astrology has hardly any adherents other than swindlers who play on public credulity, and even these are fast disappearing.” False hope! Two world wars and economic instability have helped to revive interest in predicting the future. Every day, over 50 million Americans consult readings in 1,200 newspapers. For that day they can find a prediction that is determined solely by the arrangement of planets on the day of their birth. There are now supposed to be 10,000 full-time astrologers in America and 175,000 working part-time.

“Astro-philosophers” claim the stars impel but do not compel. This does not, however, change the fact that astrology propounds a thinly veiled fatalism. People want to know what will happen to them more often to escape responsibility for their behavior—marred as it is with frustration and failure—than to be spurred on to great moral efforts. What will be will be, so let us make the most of it—this is the gospel of astrology.

Prophets forecasting doom and destruction have always abounded. But during the 1960s some were taken seriously and began making the news. In 1965, Ruth Montgomery’s book on seer Jeane Dixon, A Gift of Prophecy, stayed on best-seller lists for months. Mrs. Dixon is most famous for her prediction in 1956 that “a blond Democratic president will be elected in 1960 and will die in office.” Rather unspecific, but not bad as prophecies go. Edgar Cayce, who died in 1945, was another prophet who came to prominence in the 1960s. No fewer than five books were published in that decade on this sleeping prophet, who had been able to diagnose and treat all kinds of illnesses while asleep. His Association for Research and Enlightenment, a hospital and school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, has attracted thousands in recent years. Last but not least, biblical prophets have been given a fresh hearing—and not only by Christians. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970, has sold more than six million copies in six years.

Is pragmatic, hard-headed America turning into a nation of mystics? Can such a practical people give serious attention to prophets? Do we really believe the astrological creed that “certain vibrations inbreathed by a newly born babe endow the tendencies of character it will manifest” (Llewellyn George) and that a decisive influence on the earth is exerted by the stars? Perhaps this is a part of the current interest in Eastern thought. For in Asia, astrology is a natural corollary of the prevailing world view. There is a feeling for the underlying harmony of all things, a harmony all men wish to share. All of this is attractive to Western man as he tries to pull together the fragmented strands of his existence.

But this Eastern influence does not account for the phenomenal recent interest in predicting the future. To understand this we must look into history, and take the time to reflect on some lessons it suggests. There have been two periods of history before our own when this fascination for astrology has been felt: the late Greek or Hellenistic period, and the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The first time this essentially Eastern preoccupation came into our Western tradition was in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece (c. 300 to 200 B.C.). It is instructive to notice the conditions under which this took place. By the time of Plato (d. 347 B.C.), traditional religion in Greece was dying. The people had lost touch with their classical mythology. No longer were there gods to turn to who had struggled and suffered like men and who thereby lent meaning to human striving. Encouraged by the Platonic philosophy, people turned to the worship of heavenly bodies. With the rise of Macedonia, the social structure of the city states disintegrated; and while the empire of Alexander was at its zenith, the social and spiritual vacuum was the most threatening. The Stoics and Epicureans bravely fought against the rise of superstition, but in vain. During the reign of Alexander (336–323 B.C.) the first instruction in astrology took place. Of course, the astral theology of the Platonists had prepared the way, but it was Persian influence that introduced the worship of the seven planets. By the early second century, astrological manuals abounded.

What was happening? As E. R. Dodds explains it, empty thrones were calling out to be filled. Religion in the traditional sense still existed, but, much like Christianity (and Judaism) today, it was routine and without influence on the values of life. And as G. K. Chesterton has said, when a man ceases to believe in God (or gods), he doesn’t believe in nothing—he believes in anything.

Another way of looking at this is to say that the Greeks experienced a failure of nerve, as Gilbert Murray suggests in The Five Stages of Greek Religion. Man saw himself alone in a world in which he had no allies. There were no more gods appreciative of human effort. It was natural that astrology, which is essentially a surrender to chance, should become popular. Murray comments on this in a way relevant to modern America; “It is worth remembering that the best seed-ground for superstition is a society in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically no relation to their merits and efforts.” Such is the feeling of man standing alone, stripped of the comfort of faith. Dodds concludes that the individual turned tail and bolted from his own freedom.

Early Christianity fought this religion of fate. It is possible that Paul’s reference to the stoicheia (elements) in Colossians 2:8 may refer to the mystic signs of the planets. Some early Christians, however, took more interest in the stars than was healthy, though the early Church Fathers inveighed against the practice. Augustine denounced belief in the influence of the stars as inconsistent with the Christian view of God and man, and his view became official in the Church.

The Church in the Middle Ages did not keep itself completely pure, however. As a result of the barbarian invasions, the Teutonic belief in fate penetrated medieval theology. In a celebrated incident occurring in 1108, the archbishop of York was refused Christian burial because a book of astrology had been found under his pillow. Thomas Aquinas and Dante, while preserving human freedom, allowed the stars some influence over man’s activities. Since much of classical antiquity was rediscovered through Arabic sources, a great deal of astrology was imported along with it. Chairs of astrology were established in all the leading universities, and strange and terrifying prophecies abounded.

That the sixteenth century marked the peak of this second great rise of astrology and prophetic speculation is not without significance. Even the most religious men included the influence of the stars in their creed. It was a day of synthesis when neo-Platonism, Greek mythology, and Christian theology were joined in uneasy alliance. Philip Melanchthon, the famous disciple of Luther, occupied the chair of astrology in Wittenberg. How Christians could allow such superstition can be illustrated by a treatise from the period called Astrology Theologized: The Spiritual Hermeneutics of Astrology and Holy Writ. In this treatise, astrology is equated with the light of nature that belongs to our present earthly life, whereas theology is seen as a spiritual understanding, arising from within by the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

But why should this revival of prophetic interest have occurred in the sixteenth century? Wasn’t that the period of the rebirth of learning and scholarship? The Renaissance was that, but it was more. As in ancient Greece and in our own day, the outward splendor merely concealed a deep-seated spiritual crisis.

Medieval man had sought and found a harmonious hierarchical system in which each part of life and the world had meaning in the grand scheme of salvation. His world view, imaginatively captured in Dante’s Divine Comedy, was like a journey in which all the stages reassuringly fit together. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, the unity was broken: strange new factors called for attention, and man’s place in the scheme of things was no longer secure. Violent social upheavals, manifested in peasant wars and the sack of Rome in 1527, threatened the whole social structure. With the rediscovery of classical form, humanists proclaimed a new day for the individual man, but it was a solitary man facing life without the traditional supports. As in our own day, the Christian faith, while still accepted in principle, ceased for many to be a vital principle of living. In the uncertainty many more began to look to the stars.

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century heralded the end of astrological speculation. Man was coming of age, comfortable in this world and unconcerned about the next. Strange, then, that in our own highly sophisticated century we should again wish to believe in the influence of stars. Wars and economic collapses have called into question the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment, and for a third time the question has become insistent: Who am I and what am I to make of myself?

It is the Christian view that history leads somewhere and has an end. The Christian view proposes, moreover, that a personal and loving God directs history’s course, has acted decisively in it in Jesus Christ, and stands at its end. For the believing Christian, then, it is precisely because an all-wise God is directing history that the moral and scientific efforts of man make any sense. Because we live in a moral order that has direction, we can work for truth and goodness. Since Hegel (mediated by Marx and Darwin), our Western view of progress has been secularized. We cannot bring ourselves to believe history is going nowhere (that it is cyclical, for example, as the Greeks believed). Yet, if there is direction, either it must be implicit in the whole process (determined) or it must be provided by ourselves.

Alvin Toffler has predicted a future of ever-increasing change and transience, assuring us with the certainty that only a prophet with credentials would claim: “The nature of what can and will be done exceeds anything that man is yet psychologically and morally prepared to live with.” Whatever the exact shape of the future, it is coming. And Toffler, in true prophetic style, writes to help create the consciousness man will need to guide his evolution. Charles Reich sees the dawning of “consciousness three” as the next (final?) level. George Leonard, in The Transformation, sees man advancing into a state of higher being, of oneness with all existence. The keynote of all these excursions into the future is inevitability. One may join the march or not, but that it has direction is sure. Leonard’s book is significantly subtitled “A Guide to the Inevitable Changes in Mankind.”

It was precisely this point that bothered poet Archibald MacLeish at the beginning of World War II. He felt himself living in a generation of prophets. They were all prophets of doom. But this bothered him far less than their fatalism. “Our generation fled to fate,” he explains, “not by opposing it … but by searching it out in order that we might yield to it … not only our responsibilities but our will.” Then with a perception that recalls the decline of faith in ancient Greece and our own secularism: “We fled to fate—we invented a fate of our own—to escape a world which had grown too large for us, a world too complicated to understand, too huge to know.” No science or education has equipped us to deal with the world’s complexities, and real faith has become inoperative.

Against this background, the revival of interest in biblical prophecy is to be seen. As MacLeish was writing, many Christians were busy identifying Mussolini with the Antichrist of Revelation and the Axis powers with the revived Roman Empire. Charts of biblical events were prepared to show how God was working out his program. It is, of course, a great comfort for the believer to trust in God’s direction. But great comfort can easily become a crutch or even an escape. If it is true that prophecy is concerned only with the actions of God, it can easily follow in our thinking that what we do does not really matter. The biblical view is that what God does is always vitally related to what man does. Prophecy is not merely prediction; it is judgment and it is promise.

We have noticed that the rise of astrology and prophetic speculation has its origin in the feeling of helplessness. Events that occur around the individual seem to bear no relation to his efforts. Astrology offers the perfect ritual for such a “theology.” But the danger is that Christians, experiencing this same sense of helplessness in the face of world events, may replace astrology with biblical prophecy. Unknowingly, they may simply be giving fatalism a Christian veneer.

In 1958, when the current interest in prophecy was growing, a prominent popular magazine ran a series on biblical prophecy written by theologians of different persuasions. The evangelical contribution concluded with this paragraph: “The study of Bible prophecy is difficult but rewarding. God has revealed many facets of His plan. How thrilling it is to watch events as they unfold, and see the working of His mighty hand.” “Watch it coming”—an admonition very different from that of the Apostle Paul: “But as to times and seasons, brethren, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:1–2).

It is no coincidence that the publication of Hal Lindsey’s first book on prophecy coincided with the greatest revival of astrology in three hundred years. (It is interesting to note how often his book appears in bookstores alongside astrology manuals.) Man can escape as easily into prophecy as into astrology. In either case, he is a pawn and thus relieved of moral responsibility. That this was no part of Lindsey’s purpose is clear from the final pages of his book. Certainly God has used his treatment to lead many to a commitment to Christ, and for this God is to be praised. But we must be careful that our longing for Christ’s return is not motivated by a desire to escape responsibility.

One writer, in castigating all prophetic, optimistic views of the future, makes a statement that Christians would do well to ponder: “Those with a vested interest in … Armageddon, like any devout fundamentalist, find comfort in the thought of an approaching dies irae (day of wrath) on which the faithful will at last be recognized when and where it really counts.” How often one hears: “Praise God, the end is coming soon” with just such an implication.

Once I was approached after a service at which I had preached by a member of the congregation who exclaimed: “What a joy to think Christ is coming soon and the last battle will take place!” “Can you really say that gladly,” I answered, “when you know that battle will send thousands or millions to a Christless eternity?” “Well,” he responded, “it’s inevitable, isn’t it?”

That, I believe, is fatalism and not Christian truth. Indeed the end is certain, and we yearn to see Christ, but we do not long for his judgment. Nor is judgment “inevitable”; one has only to recall the story of Jonah and Nineveh. Above all, the thought of Christ’s coming should motivate us to compassion, to a more diligent gospel proclamation, and to greater righteousness.

It is important to remember that the New Testament was written at a time when belief in fate was widespread. The geocentric view of the world led to a common acceptance of the belief that events were governed by the stars. Ralph P. Martin believes that the great passage Philippians 2:5–11 was addressed to people living in just such an atmosphere. He writes: “It assures us that the character of the God whose will controls the universe is to be spelled out in terms of Jesus Christ. He is no arbitrary power, no capricious force, no pitiless indifferent fate. His nature is love. His title to Lordship can be interpreted only in terms of self-denying service for others.”

This Person is the same today as when Paul wrote these words, and his continued Lordship provides meaning not only for our evangelism but also for our moral, educational, and scientific endeavors, for all of these reflect his glory.

Clearly, the escape into prophecy and astrology reflects the identity crisis brought about by a spiritual vacuum. Never has this vacuum been more evident than today. The proper response is not to offer an escape—even if it is into a quasi-Christian view of the future—but rather to proclaim the Christian view of man. Here, Christianity provides for a vital present relationship with the living Christ, and a day-to-day dependence on him. Only in this context can we sincerely pray the prayer of Revelation: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” For the Person who offers personal fulfillment is the Lord of the future.