Although there is room for debate, probably the most significant ongoing religion news story of the past decade has been the revolution that is proceeding along several fronts inside the Roman Catholic Church. In the first half of the decade matters of structure got a lot of attention, mostly by reform-minded activists and leadership ranks. But those issues have been all but silenced of late as the revolution has quietly moved ahead on the spiritual front, engulfing hundreds of thousands of grass-roots Catholics.

These people prefer to call it renewal rather than revolution. In a recent cover story. Time called it “a kind of spiritual second wind” for the Catholic Church, evidenced in such developments as the charismatic movement, prayer and Bible-study groups, a “new spirit of voluntarism,” a vigorous resurgence of student piety, and unusually strong support for Catholic education.

Perhaps the most remarkable of these developments is the rise and rapid growth of the charismatic movement, institutionalized somewhat by its leaders as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR). The Renewal began in 1967 among a small group of young adults on the Duquesne University campus in Pittsburgh. Today it encompasses between 600,000 and 750,000 in America and maybe that many more overseas. Indeed, within the next decade or two Latin American Catholicism may become predominantly charismatic.

Unlike some sectors of charismatic Protestantdom, the emphasis within the CCR is not so much on spiritual gifts as on nurturing a personal relationship with Christ and on developing Christian community.

For the most part, America’s Catholic bishops have remained aloof, nervously observing from a distance. A few years ago they established a liaison to keep in touch with the movement, and more recently a study committee gave it a fairly clean bill of health. As a result, a warming trend may be under way. Last year the Pope sort of gave his blessing. In late May, Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin, president of the U. S. Catholic bishops’ conference, was the keynote speaker at the rain-drenched annual conference of the CCR at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. He told the some 30,000 participants (including about 600 priests) that he had come to give both personal and official encouragement to the movement.

Bernardin said he has seen “much good coming from this movement.” The Scriptures, said he, have become for so many what they should be—loving and living words from a loving Father.” He also indicated he was impressed by the place of prayer in the lives of adherents, by the “healing power of God” at work in them, and by the depth of their spiritual life.

While most of his speech was warmly pastoral and commendatory, there were some words of caution and some reminders about observing Catholic doctrine. He acknowledged that the existence of so many different denominations is “a scandal.” But, said he, “serious divisions do exist, and they will not go away by pretending they are not there. Much reconciliation and healing must take place on many levels before authentic unity can be achieved. It will not serve the work of church unity to compromise your own beliefs or to submerge your Catholic identity.”

On the topic of being baptized by the Spirit, he reminded: “Theologically we know that this is not the first time that a person receives the Holy Spirit” (Catholicism teaches that the Holy Spirit is imparted in water baptism). Relatedly, he said that talk of being born again (as is frequently the case in Catholic circles these days) is not correct theologically, because “that [experience] takes place through the sacrament of Baptism.”

The ecumenism caution may have been in order from the bishops’ point of view. On the program at Notre Dame were Anglican priest Michael Harper, Lutheran Larry Christenson, American Baptist Ken Pagard, and independent Bob Mumford, among others. And next year’s CCR conference will be an ecumenical one, to be held July 20–24, 1977, in a Kansas City stadium and expected to attract 60,000 persons.

Unity was one of the recurring themes of the conference, underlined by Protestant and Catholic speakers alike. Father Michael Scanlan, president of Steubenville (Ohio) College and chairman of the chief planning unit of the CCR. declared that there is no such thing as an isolated individual in the kingdom of God. Each is dependent on the others, he asserted. He went on to stress the need for unity, particularly within the Catholic charismatic prayer communities (most Catholic charismatics belong to one). Growth and strength stem from unity, he implied.

It rained all weekend at Notre Dame, marring the plenary sessions in the stadium, but spirits remained high, especially with the spirited singing of “Alabare” (pronounced ah-lah-bah-ray, meaning “I will praise”) by the hundreds of Latin Americans wherever they went.

The participants came from more than forty nations. One of the largest groups came from Puerto Rico. They were led by Father Tom Forrest, pastor of an 18,000-member mostly charismatic parish. Forrest says that almost all Puerto Rican cities have prayer groups (100 priests are in the movement) and that there are fourteen retreat centers providing direction to the Renewal. Numerical growth has been so rapid, however, that leadership and facilities have lagged, he said.

Growth is a characteristic of the Renewal virtually everywhere. A CCR directory lists 2,400 prayer groups in North America and more than 1,600 other ones in about eighty countries. A booklet for those desiring to be baptized in the Spirit is selling at the rate of 12,000 copies a month. As of three or four years ago Auxiliary Bishop Joseph McKinney of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the only bishop in the movement. Now other bishops from North America and bishops from Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Panama. Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Japan, and Fiji are personally involved.

Ralph Martin, a Campus Crusade- and Navigators-trained founder of the movement, told the people at Notre Dame that the charismatics are “the leaven which God has placed in the dough of the church.” The leaven will spread throughout the church, he stated, and will renew it.

That’s revolutionary talk.

Timor Revisited

Although the revival of the mid-sixties touched much of Indonesia, most of the subsequent publicity—including several books—focused on the island of Timor near the eastern end of the archipelago. B. Meroekh, a leader in that revival and a senior pastor and former chairman of the synod of the 650,000-member Timorese Evangelical Church (TEC), said the churches were unprepared to do adequate follow-up. As a result, he said, the revival aftermath largely deteriorated into erroneous emphases by “over-zealous” workers.

Meroekh attended the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization. When he returned home, he convinced church and government leaders that it was once again God’s time for Timor and surrounding islands.

To help get things going, evangelist Stanley Mooneyham of World Vision International and Indonesian Bible-school leader Petrus Octavianus, whose students figured centrally in the revival, were invited to conduct an eight-day crusade in May in Kupang, Timor’s capital city (population: 50,000).

The TEC gave official backing. Synod chairman Max Jacob said the church made follow-up a priority.

While war raged on the border 250 miles away, large crowds attended the crusade meetings, and the stadium was packed to SRO capacity of 50,000 at each of the final two meetings. There were so many responses at every meeting, say crusade officials, that counseling had to be done en masse. Among those attending was provincial governor El Tari. He declined a platform seat. “I want the eyes of the people to be on God, not on some political figure,” he explained.

Jacobs says the TEC has plans for evangelistic efforts on other islands. As for Timor: “The miracles of this crusade have been in the hearts and lives of the people,” remarks Meroekh.

Death In The Street

Don Bolles, 47, the award-winning Phoenix investigative reporter fatally injured last month by a bomb planted in his car, was the son of the late Donald C. Bolles, public relations director for the Federal Council of Churches and its successor, the National Council of Churches, from 1948 until 1959.

Political columnist Bernie Wynn wrote of his fellow staffer at the Arizona Republic. “Despite his cynicism—part of it merely a reporter’s protective coloration—Don has developed a pretty solid spiritual foundation, serving at one point as president of his [United Methodist] church’s board of directors. Another colleague quoted him as saying, “The only things I believe in are God and children.”

Among survivors are his wife, seven children, mother, sister, and a brother who is an Episcopal priest in San Francisco.

The Kgb At Work

A Russian Orthodox priest and a lay colleague who converted from Judaism are said to be targets of the latest discrediting campaign by the KGB, the Soviet secret police. The pair described their trials in an open letter to the Orthodox patriarch in Moscow. A copy of the letter was made public in the West by Michael Bourdeaux, head of the Center for the Study of Religion and Communism in Keston, England.

The priest, Gleb Yakunin, and the layman, Lev Regelson, had detailed the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union in a document reproduced by the African organizers of the 1975 World Council of Churches assembly at Nairobi. Yakunin and Regelson contend that the document embarrassed the Soviet government and that the the KGB is attempting reprisal.

They charged that a priest at Pushkino, near Moscow, tried to collect signatures for a statement that criticized the two, describing them as purveyors of false information who are attempting to stir up discord against the Helsinki Agreement. What use will be made of the document was still unclear last month.

Religion In Transit

By a unanimous vote, the United Methodist Church’s curriculum unit declined to approve as an alternate resource confirmation materials produced by the Good News evangelical caucus. The committee said there are “many points of view within the denomination to which we should be open,” hence only UMC-produced materials are acceptable.

American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks says he will pay back the $10,000 forfeited by United Methodist agencies when he jumped bail while awaiting trial on assault charges in South Dakota. He claims he would have been killed had he gone to jail in that state. Seeking refuge in Oregon, he says proceeds from a movie will be used for repayment. As for religious affiliation, Banks states he is a member of the Sun Dance faith.

Major-league baseball players are turning out in record numbers for Sunday chapel sessions (373 for 21 teams on a recent Sunday; Cincinnati, Montreal, and the Chicago Cubs led with 35, 30, and 28, respectively).

Regardless of church or religious ties, most Americans do not turn to God in times of tragedy, according to a nationwide study by sociologists Andrew Greeley and William McCready of the National Opinion research poll. Only about 22 per cent of respondents said they counted on God to help them with their suffering.

Canadian Keswick Conference has gone bankrupt, and friends of the deeper-life teaching center are making a last-ditch attempt to raise $1 million, a third of it in cash, to reacquire the assets before they are disposed of.

Fire last month destroyed the main administrative building of the Bibletown Community Church and Conference Center, in Boca Raton, Florida. The building housed a Christian school, a church facility, a 400-seat auditorium, a large dining hall, a bookstore, and administrative offices.

A new Census Bureau report indicates that if current trends continue, 17 per cent of America’s population will be 65 or older by the year 2030 (the figure is 10.5 per cent now).

A $5 million privately financed Jewish chapel will be built at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Last term there were thirty-three Jews among the 4,400 cadets. They were joined by seventy Jewish officers, enlisted men, and dependents for Friday-night services in a chemistry lecture hall.

Stockholders of General Motors rejected a church-group sponsored resolution that would have made GM’s “present and future operations in Chile contingent upon that government’s commitment to honor basic workers’ rights throughout the auto industry.” Sponsored by fifteen national religious agencies, the resolution received a vote of 4.3 million shares, about 2 per cent of the total.

Nurse Gertrude Friesen of Swan River, Manitoba, became the first person granted exemption by the provincial labor board from joining a union and paying dues for reasons of conscience. A member of the Evangelical Mennonite Church, Mrs. Friesen said she objects to the union because it accepts the principle of force as a major tactic in negotiating with employers, something she cannot be part of as a Christian.

The movie version of Hugh Schonfield’s The Passover Plot has been causing a stir in Israel, where it was filmed, and it may generate a lot of controversy in the United States, where it is to be released this month. A group of Jerusalem clergymen say the film “direct[ly] attack[s] Jesus Christ … in such a way as to destroy the whole basis of the Christian faith.” They urged Israel to ban the filming. The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem refused to allow filming of trial scenes in its building. The film depicts Jesus as an angry political revolutionary who was unexpectedly killed while trying to feign death.

Korean churches in the Los Angeles area have increased from 5 to 110 in the last ten years, reports correspondent Tom Steers. Most of last year’s crop of 28,000 Korean immigrants settled there, bringing the community total to 100,000.

The Canadian Society of Muslims says it will lodge a complaint to the United Nations’ human-rights commission concerning alleged discrimination against Islam in school textbooks in Ontario.

Marriages in the United States in 1974 totaled 2.2 million, a figure 54,000 lower than the preceding year’s; this was the first decline in marriages in sixteen years, according to a government study. The decline continued in 1975: early reports indicate 2.1 million marriages.

It’s time to debunk dangerous beliefs in astrology, faith healing, UFOs, reincarnation, exorcism, and ghosts, says the American Humanist Association. The AHA has appointed a group of intellectuals to its new Committee to Scientifically Investigate Claims of Paranormal and Other Phenomena to do exactly that.

World Scene

Mitsuo Fuchida, 73, Japanese commander of the air strike against Pearl Harbor in 1941, died of diabetes in a Tokyo hospital. Converted in 1950, Fuchida became a widely known Christian evangelist, sometimes teaming up with Jake DeShazer, an American who bombed Tokyo and who become a Christian in a Japanese POW camp. DeShazer is now a missionary in Japan.

The General Synod of the Church of Ireland (Anglican) by a large majority approved in principle the ordination of women to the priesthood. The Irish Methodist Church and the Irish Presbyterian Church earlier endorsed women’s ordination. Presbyterian Ruth Patterson, an assistant pastor of a church in Larne, was the first woman in her denomination to be ordained.

While Dutch clairvoyant Gerald Croisset 67, was visiting Tokyo for a TV appearance he heard about a seven-year-old girl who had been missing for almost a week. Claiming to possess ESP, Croisset sketched a map and objects that the TV people recognized. A TV crew hurried to a reservoir early the next day and found the girl’s body floating near some rowboats. Police (700 were searching for her) write it all off as a coincidence.

Italy’s Radical Party accused the parish priest in the town of Sora of campaign dirty tricks. Party spokesmen claim he kept his church bells ringing during one of its rallies, drowning out the speakers. They’re pressing criminal charges.

A high-level Catholic-Anglican study commission has recommended that the Catholic Church ease its rules governing marriages between the two faiths. Changes would allow clergy of either church to perform the ceremony, eliminate the requirement of an explicitly Catholic baptism and upbringing of children, and possibly make way for a more liberal stance on divorce and remarriage.

The new chief justice of Japan’s Supreme Court, Ekizo Fujibayashi, 68, is described in news accounts as “an ardent Christian.” He is a member of the 50,000-member “non-church” movement, a body employing non-traditional forms of church life in an attempt to duplicate New Testament patterns. Many influential Japanese Christians are members of this group.

The Buddhist government of Burma has granted permission for the printing of 5,000 copies of a Bible correspondence course, 7,500 copies of material designed to show how to become a Christian, and 30,000 copies of a letter to be used in replying to people who respond to a radio broadcast beamed by the Far East Broadcasting Company, according to a report of the Pennsylvania-based Christian Literature Crusade.

When death occurs in the Japanese underworld, colleagues of the deceased frequently sponsor elaborate funeral services in a Buddhist temple—as a cover for raising funds and rattling the sabers in a show of power. Last month, under police pressure, the 3,000 delegates at the All-Japan Buddhist Conference called for a ban of such temple use by gangsters. The action affects about 7,000 temples throughout the country. Buddhist leaders agreed to do their best but said it will be difficult to keep the bad guys out.

Chile aftermath: The Evangelical Lutheran Church, once 25,000 strong, is down to five congregations and about 1,500 members. Most ELC members departed to form the Lutheran Church of Chile in a row over statements and activities by then ELC bishop Helmut Frenz on behalf of political refugees following the 1973 military coup.

Think of the ideological distance between Muhammad Ali, Sun Moon, and Marabel Morgan. Then give thanks. Not for plurality as such, but for the principle that, in the very existence of such a range of beliefs, shows itself to be alive and well. No aspect of America presents more cause for gratitude than the generous measure of religious liberty enjoyed by its citizenry.

Some of the best minds on the American religious scene spent the better part of a Bicentennial week in Philadelphia in behalf of religious liberty. They found the Bicentennial Conference on Religious Liberty not only a celebratory occasion but a demanding intellectual exercise as well.

How does religious liberty relate to God’s transcendence, natural law, the civil religion, and original sin?

Temple University professor Franklin Littell wisely reminded the 300 conferees that for all our love of liberty, we know that it is not an end in itself. “Liberty is penultimate,” said Littell. “The end is truth.”

Freedom of religion should nonetheless be a basic right in a society in which church and state are constitutionally separate. Unfortunately, this freedom is taken for granted; academicians as well as the general population give relatively little thought to it. Robert Gordis of Jewish Theological Seminary compared the situation to that of an otherwise well-read elderly person who, upon seeing for the first time a performance of Hamlet, commented, “Nothing but a string of old quotations.”

Virtually every American now pays at least lip service to the concept of religious liberty. As an abstract principle it is firmly established and respected in America (and sometimes extended to embrace freedom from religion). As a matter of practice, however, it causes considerable disagreement.

Robert McAfee Brown, en route to a professorship at Union Theological Seminary, readily concedes that there must be limitations to religious freedom: “I may not invoke a Markan passage in defense of snake handling, claiming that the right is inherent in my understanding of revelation, when such an action jeopardizes the life expectancy of those in my immediate vicinity.” Brown also raised the question whether a society should grant religious liberty to a group or person whose point of view would involve denying religious liberty to others if that group or person had the power to do so.

Americans may have to face up to these kinds of issues much more than they have been doing if right of conscience is to continue to play a significant role in their consensus of values.

The conference, an interfaith event, was certainly one of the most worthwhile of the surprisingly few religiously oriented Bicentennial commemorations scheduled this year. It was sponsored jointly by the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia, the Catholic archdiocese, and the local board of rabbis. Influential evangelical spokesmen, for whatever reason, were conspicuously absent from the program. The conference was thus deprived of a major perspective, namely, that which sees a Puritan-related evangelical ethos based on an absolutely trustworthy New Testament undergirding the American cultural tradition.

An evangelical consensus on religious rights appears in the Lausanne Covenant: “It is the God-appointed duty of every government to secure conditions of peace, justice and liberty in which the church may obey God, serve the Lord Christ, and preach the gospel without interference. We therefore pray for the leaders of the nations and call upon them to guarantee freedom of thought and conscience, and freedom to practice and propagate religion in accordance with the will of God and as set forth in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Evangelicals enthusiastically support the democratic process, but many of them now take sharp issue with what they see as a subtle but serious trend toward aligning it with secular humanism as a controlling national outlook. The rise of evolutionary theologies and philosophies that are deemed to be self-authenticating nourishes the trend and undermines the evangelical ethos.

Brown skirted this territory in citing the inadequacies of live-and-let-live attitudes. Such a foundation is precarious, he said, “to the degree that indifferentism is hardly a way of building enduring or significant loyalties. Its atmosphere, moreover, paves the way for the intrusion of fresh idolatries that are willing to capitalize on indifferentism, and impose themselves on unsuspecting peoples and nations before the latter are really aware that they have signed away by default the liberties they sought to espouse.”

Elwyn A. Smith, former Eckerd College provost, had the taxing assignment of analyzing the assortment of phenomena brought together under the rubric of “the civil religion.” As it exists in the popular mind, the theory if not the practice of the civil religion is somewhat discredited. However, a number of respected scholars, led by Richard Neuhaus, are calling for at least something like it as a way of renewing America’s spiritual heritage. It was to these that Smith addressed himself.

Smith identified with the need, but fails to find true transcendence in the various options. “All civil religions are intrinsically flawed because they would make use of God,” he says. Even natural law, which may yet have potential for an overarching national purpose, is seen as far short of the power of the transcendent God. And what happens to religious liberty when the civil religion is embraced?

The positive evangelical ethos that has undergirded American life for two centuries has allowed the exercise of competing influences to a degree that has little or no precedent. Even Neuhaus, who would not call himself a conservative evangelical, senses the strengths of this ethos when he calls for consideration of “the unexamined resources in a tempered Puritanism.”

DAVID KUCHARSKY

This issue is a salute to America on its two hundredth birthday. The essays provide some provocative insights into America’s founding and the part played by Christianity.

The lead editorial looks forward as well as backward. The second most important question has to do with America’s roots; the first, with where it is going and what it will be like a hundred years from now. Every American can and should have a role in determining the future of the nation.

Charismatic talk-show host George Otis of Van Nuys, California, recently interviewed former California governor Ronald Reagan on spiritual and moral issues. Excerpts of Reagan’s views:

The nation. There has been a wave of humanism and hedonism in the land.… However, I am optimistic because I sense in this land a great revolution against that. A feeling of unhappiness, of anchorlessness, I think, is responsible for much of what has happened to our youth. Without guidelines they feel that they are without an anchor.… I think there is a hunger in this land for a spiritual revival, a return to a belief in moral absolutes—the same morals upon which the nation was founded.… When you go out across the country and meet the people you can’t help but pray and remind God of Second Chronicles 7:14, because the people of this country are not beyond redemption. They are good people and believe this nation has a destiny as yet unfulfilled.

Church-state separation. There is a widespread but false interpretation in many areas that separation of church and state means separation from God.… I don’t think he ever should have been expelled [from the schools]. There is a double threat: there is not only the removal of the calling upon God, but … by taking prayer out it appears in the eyes of young people that there has been an official ruling out of God—that he therefore wasn’t of sufficient importance to be in the schools.

Personal spirituality. I certainly know what the meaning of “born again” is today among those who believe in that. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t call upon God.… In my own experience there came a time when there developed a new relationship with God and it grew out of need. So, yes, I have had an experience that could be described as “born again.”

Pornography and sexual vice. The tide has turned … [but] these problems won’t be solved by some sudden sweeping over the land of a warning or something. It is going to come from within the people themselves.… [Regarding the recent legislation legalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults], I would have vetoed it. I know there is a quarrel here with many very fine people who have a libertarian approach to government. They believe in more individual freedom [and some] would carry libertarianism all the way to whatever an individual wants to do. But I have always believed that the body of man-made law must be founded upon the higher natural law. You can make immorality legal but you cannot make it moral.

On legalizing marijuana. I was opposed to it all the time when I was governor. I still am opposed to it. It is a far more dangerous drug than most people are prepared to admit.… I wish in part of this revival that is going on that a generation of young Americans would decide they would be the generation that doesn’t need a crutch.

Abortion. I think it comes down to one simple answer: You cannot interrupt a pregnancy without taking a human life. And the only way we can justify taking a life in our Judeo-Christian tradition is in self-defense.

The Bible. I have never had any doubt about it being of divine origin.… How can you write off the prophecies in the Old Testament that hundreds of years before the birth of Christ predicted every single facet of his life, his death, and that he was the Messiah?… My favorite verses change with my needs. I have to say there have been times over the last few years when one passage alone—“Where two or more gather in my name, there shall I be also”—has been a great comfort to me. [Another favorite passage is] verses 2 through 5 of Psalm 106: “Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord. Who can show forth all his praise? Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times. Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance.”

Prayer. Yes, I do pray.… There have been so many [answers to prayer] and some momentous ones [including some on decisions regarding proposed legislation]. Yes, I did seek God [before making the decision to become a candidate for President].

Promises. I made a promise to myself in the campaign [for governor], and it still holds true. [I promised] that every decision which I would have to make would be based on what was morally right or wrong, not on what was politically advantageous to anyone. I kept that promise.

The Reverend Mrs.

Evelyn Newman, a 49-year-old United Methodist ordained in 1970, was installed as minister for pastoral ministries and services of the interdenominational Riverside Church of New York City. A widow, she is the first female minister of the 3,000-member congregation, which is about two-thirds female. Her sons Peter, a student at Drew Seminary, and David, an American University student, both took part in the installation service, while daughter Beth, 13, sat at her side.

The church, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ, was founded by the late Harry Emerson Fosdick. Its current senior pastor is Ernest Campbell, who views Mrs. Newman’s appointment as an occasion that “calls for thanks to God.”

Left Out

A year ago Episcopal priest L. Peter Beebe was convicted by an ecclesiastical court on charges that had to do with his allowing—over his bishop’s objections—illegally (or irregularly) ordained women to perform priestly duties at Christ Church of Oberlin, Ohio. The church fired him, and a number of members left with him to worship elsewhere. Then an appeals court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. The diocesan judiciary unit, however, decided last month not to retry the case, in effect dropping the charges.

Stopover In Scotland

Only one speaker could have attracted several hundred ministers and church workers from all over Scotland to a lunchtime service in Glasgow. The invitation to hear evangelist Billy Graham had gone out, moreover, from a distinguished sponsoring group that included Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Baptists and Brethren.

As if to set the seal on true ecumenicity, separatist pastor Jack Glass and a few supporters demonstrated outside the church.

From the pulpit from which his friend the late Tom Allan had preached, Graham quoted the Church of Scotland’s new moderator, Dr. T. F. Torrance, who the previous week had called for a return to preaching the simple truths of the Gospel.

This did not involve simplistic solutions, however, for Graham spoke also of the partnership between social action and evangelism, and of how “holy compassion” was part of the communication of the Gospel. He told of his visit to Guatemala, and the help he and his colleagues had been able to organize.

A press conference earlier in the day had followed a familiar pattern, with the evangelist declining to dispense instant wisdom on political themes or turning an answer to make a religious point.

Inevitably the charismatic movement came up, for only the week before the Kirk (Church of Scotland) had disciplined one of its elders who had undergone a second baptism (see June 18 issue, page 31). Graham replied that he thought the movement had brought renewal in certain areas of the world, not least among Roman Catholics. It had, however, proved divisive in other places because of its excesses and because of the growth of counterfeits, he noted.

Graham got good coverage and fair treatment in the land of John Knox (both television networks interviewed him). Twenty-one years have passed since his major crusade in Glasgow, but he has no plans to return to the city. (In a press conference later in London, Graham said he doubted he would hold another crusade there.)

The evangelist was on his way to Germany for a Whitsunday service in Essen Stadium.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Back To Basics

New York Law School, a private institution, will offer a course in Jewish law this fall, according to dean E. Donald Shapiro. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, who also is a professor at City University of New York, will teach the new course. He believes it is the first course in Jewish Law to be taught in a college or university in New York state, possibly in the nation. The course will trace the nature, sources, history, and methodology of Jewish law spanning thousands of years, partly with an eye to its suitability for a Jewish state in the present, says Rackman.

Nearly a thousand religious Bicentennial projects have been registered with the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration (ARBA). Spread out over the entire year, these endeavors range from production of a new hymnal, drama and musical presentations, and a conference on religious liberty to bell-ringing and large-scale outreach efforts. In addition to the officially recognized projects are many by individual churches and other religious groups in just about every city in the land. They all add up to a gigantic religious celebration of the nation’s first two hundred years.

The ARBA wants every bell in America rung on July 4 for two minutes at 2 RM. EDST (11 A.M. Pacific time) when the Liberty Bell will be rung in Philadelphia. The American Bible Society is promoting participation by churches in the bell-ringing observance. In conjunction with it, the ABS is distributing to churches and synagogues a copper-colored bell-shaped pamphlet containing verses from Isaiah 61 and bearing the title “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land.”

One group of evangelicals, most of them identified with the Key 73 witness of three years ago, was trying to arrange for a National Simultaneous Prayer observance at the conclusion of President Ford’s July 4 speech in Philadelphia. Details were still pending in mid-June.

Honor America chairman J. Willard Marriott, a Mormon who is in the hotel and restaurant business, called on Americans to set aside time for meditation during the July 4 weekend “in appreciation for the blessings and strengths of this great democracy, and for continued guidance as we begin the third century.” He also asked that everyone place a lighted candle or battery-powered light in his or her window during the nights of July 2, 3, and 4. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and singer Johnny Cash will participate in a national celebration in Washington on July 4.

Washington and Philadelphia are the main target cities for major religious activities during the two weeks surrounding July 4, a Sunday. Among the events scheduled for Washington are:

• A 6 A.M. interfaith service on July 4 at the Lincoln Memorial.

• An 8 A.M. service at the Jefferson Memorial on the same day on the theme of justice, sponsored by the anti-establishment People’s Bicentennial Commission.

• A four-day Bicentennial New Life Conference for 1,200-plus ending July 2 at Metropolitan Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Among the speakers are prophecy author Hal Lindsey, Southern Baptist pastor W. A. Criswell of Dallas, Campus Crusade’s Bill Bright, and deeper-life lecturer-author Jack Taylor. Afternoons will be devoted to witnessing at parks and monuments led by choral groups and well-known street preachers Arthur Blessitt, Wade Akins, and Sammy Tippit. There were also plans for a Christian parade.

• Ongoing open-air meetings (April to October) at eight locations under the name of Bicentennial Christian Heritage Celebration, led by Washington-based evangelists Dale Crowley and Paul Rader. The meetings include choral concerts, testimonies (top government officials are among those at the podium), and literature distribution.

• A multi-media and Scripture-distribution campaign at the foot of the Washington Monument beginning July 7, sponsored jointly by Child Evangelism Fellowship, Pocket Testament League, Open Air Campaigners, and Washington Bible College.

Thousands of Christians from across America and groups from overseas (including fifty-five Egyptians) will gather in the Philadelphia area July 2 to 9 under the banner of The Spirit in ’76, a vast Bicentennial witness effort sponsored by Youth With A Mission. Coordinated by YWAM’s national director Leland Paris, Spirit will feature such speakers as Bill Bright, Brother Andrew (“God’s Smuggler”), singer Pat Boone, and YWAM founder Loren Cunningham. Spirit will include a week of training at an encampment outside nearby Burlington, New Jersey (witness teams will be bused every day to Philadelphia), outreach at Independence Mall locations July 1, 2, and 3 (public reading of Scripture, singing, Christian drama, literature distribution), and a special effort to reach a coalition of radicals who may attempt to disrupt the national observances.

“If My People,” a musical produced and directed by composer Jimmy Owens of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, will be presented on July 4 in Philadelphia. It was performed on the Capitol steps in Washington on Flag Day (see photo). Another major Bicentennial musical, “Let Freedom Ring,” by Harry Bollback of Word of Life in New York, will be presented in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on July 4. It has already premiered in a number of cities on the East Coast.

Ambassadors in Action, a youth mission arm of the Assemblies of God, will field hundreds of young people in Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston. Other youth groups also have plans for ministry in these cities.

Other events scheduled for Philadelphia include a Bicentennial Congress on Prophecy sponsored in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill. New Jersey, by the American Board of Missions to the Jews (speakers include president John Walvoord of Dallas Seminary, president Earl Rademacher of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, and Hal Lindsey). Fundamentalist evangelist Jack Van Impe will conduct an eight-day crusade in Philadelphia’s Convention Hall that same week, beginning July 4. And fundamentalist Bible Presbyterian minister Carl McIntire will be in the thick of things with rallies and demonstrations in the aftermath of his “Save America” march and meeting last month.

Philadelphia College of Bible will continue the program of Bicentennial outreach—and make its housing facilities available to tourists (including the former Robert Morris Hotel).

A number of historic churches in the major Bicentennial cities have established visitors’ centers and have scheduled special tours, programs, and services. By and large, black churches are stressing black contributions to the nation. One black project is the restoration of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, founded after blacks broke from the Methodist Episcopal Church in the late 1700s over segregated seating. It is believed to be the first black institution of any kind in the United States.

FORWARD ’76 (Freedom of Religion Will Advance Real Democracy) is a two-year-old project of the Interchurch Center of New York City. It involves Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and Jews. Headed by R. H. Edwin Espy, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, it has been providing study guides aimed at developing appreciation for the contribution of religious freedom to the American heritage.

Some groups have been cautioning against civil religion, and some have criticized church involvement in Bicentennial observances for church-state separation reasons. But most religious leaders seem to have a positive spirit. Representative is a statement by Brant Coopersmith of the American Jewish Commitee:

“We’re not going to talk about the sores in America. We’re aware of all the faults. But the religious community is looking to the future rather than the past. We look for a more glorious future. Whether we like it or not, this country was built on religion. We need to return to it in a more sensible way.”

Troubled In Toronto

After the Bible Presbyterian Church of Toronto lost its pastor to an American church, the two dozen or so members decided to become affiliated with Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, making it Paisley’s first congregation in Canada. The new pastor, Frank McClelland, 40, of Tandragee, Northern Ireland, was scheduled to begin work in the city this month. Paisley announced that he will visit Toronto himself in September to formally install McClelland and to conduct a two-week Gospel crusade. The congregation will meet in rented quarters.

The announcement of Paisley’s expansion into Canada has distressed a lot of Toronto ministers who fear there will be more divisiveness than blessing. The clamor increased when Toronto Star religion editor Tom Harpur quoted McClelland as saying: “I will certainly be preaching against Rome and against the modern ecumenical movement in Toronto.”

McClelland worked for aircraft factories in Toronto and Seattle in the 1960s before returning to Ulster to train for the ministry under Paisley.

Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry, describing himself as an Anglo-Irish Protestant “like Mr. Paisley,” joined a number of area clergymen last month in calling on the Canadian government to bar the fiery Paisley from visiting this fall. They accuse the cleric of promoting “destructive bigotry.”

McClelland feels the fears are based more on fiction than fact. The Free Presbyterian Church has been broadcasting sermons on a Toronto radio station for more than two years, says he, and the church has never received a letter accusing it of bigotry or racism.

Admonished

Nearly half of last month’s seven-day meeting of the General Assembly of the 14,000-member Orthodox Presbyterian Church was devoted to a trial of OPC missionary Arnold Kress. The missionary and his wife had been recalled from Japan more than a year ago after confessing to experiences of speaking in tongues. After a study leave Kress was given a year’s probation, during which he has served as pastor of Hope Reformed Church in Clifton, New Jersey. OPC officials hoped he would come to see the error of his ways.

At last month’s meeting in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, the assembly upheld a presbytery’s opposition to two positions held by Kress: that gifts of tongues and prophecy may be operable today, and that Arminianism and denial of infant baptism are insufficient grounds for excluding someone from the OPC.

By a two-thirds majority, the assembly voted to admonish Kress, the mildest form of rebuke. Then a resolution was overwhelmingly adopted acknowledging the value of Kress’s ministry and expressing hope that he will accommodate himself to the OPC’s doctrinal position and continue in the church’s fellowship.

Kress says he sensed a spirit of love throughout the proceedings.

The OPC’s missions committee was to meet later last month to consider whether to return the Kresses to Japan, an unlikely decision. Presumably, their future will not be decided upon until Kress gives a final yes or no to the OPC’s doctrinal mandates.

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS

Primitive Methodists

The 104th annual conference of the Primitive Methodist Church adopted resolutions expressing opposition to “the ecumenical movement” and classifying the charismatic movement’s use of speaking in tongues as “unbiblical.” A press officer pointed out, however, that the delegates “did not deny that God can give the gift of tongues at any time.”

During the meeting, held recently in Grantham, Pennsylvania, clergyman Russell Masartis of Carnegie, Pennsylvania, was elected editor of the Primitive Methodist Journal. It was announced that the new Salem School of Theology will hold its first convocation this fall at Hudson, Pennsylvania.

A report from missionaries in Guatemala told of the destruction of twenty-seven Primitive Methodist churches in the February earthquake. The homes of three Primitive Methodist missionaries and of 3,000 believers were destroyed also, said the missionaries.

The Primitive Methodist Church was founded in England in 1812 as the result of preaching by American evangelist Lorenzo Dow, and the first missionaries arrived in the United States in 1829. The church has some 12,000 members in nearly 100 congregations.

Baptist Business

The following story is based on reports filed by correspondent Barbara A. Fry.

Members describe the 26-year-old Baptist Bible Fellowship International as a movement rather than a denomination. It has between 1.5 and 2 million adherents in 2,500 churches, some of them among America’s largest, and there are 469 BBFI missionaries at work in forty-eight countries. The group meets several times a year for business and inspirational fellowship. Because of its views on autonomy of local congregations, the national body makes few public pronouncements. One such utterance came at the recent main annual meeting at Springfield, Missouri, the BBFl’s headquarters city.

The 511 pastoral and missionary delegates approved a resolution calling on the U. S. government to refrain from using missionaries for intelligence purposes, to protect overseas missionaries “when requested,” and to “protest to foreign governments when our missionaries are in threat of losing their property which is protected by international law.” The BBFI mission committee cited Ethiopia as one of the places where its missionaries are facing special problems.

BBFI president John Rawlings, pastor of Landmark Baptist Temple in Cincinnati, keynoted the four-day meeting. W. E. Dowell was installed as president of the 2,370-student Baptist Bible College of Springfield, succeeding the late G. B. Vick. Dowell, a founder of the college and first president of the BBFI, was pastor of High Street Baptist Church in Springfield for twenty-two years, during which time its average attendance increased from 375 to 2,700.

On the final night of the meeting the college’s graduation exercises were held. Some 6,000 guests joined the BBFI delegates in the college field house to honor the 445 graduates.

Election

General superintendent J. D. Abbott of the Wesleyan Church was elected president of the Christian Holiness Association at the CHA’s recent annual three-day meeting in Rochester, New York. He succeeds general secretary B. Edgar Johnson of the Church of the Nazarene. The 525 registered CHA delegates came from the United States, Canada, and Australia, and represented a number of denominations. A seminar on “How do the Scriptures speak to the homosexual, alcoholic, and materialist?” attracted overflow crowds.

Thirty Years Of Help

Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches, reported that it has shipped more than 400 million pounds of relief supplies worth more than $270 million during its thirty-year existence. An additional 4.5 billion pounds of food has been channeled through the Food for Peace program. Refugee resettlement has also been a priority item over the years; so far, 229,000 refugees have been resettled in the United States through CWS efforts, according to the NCC.

CWS was formed by seventeen denominational relief agencies to aid European reconstruction efforts after World War II on a “temporary” basis.

What Did Jesus Mean?

The Difficult Sayings of Jesus by William Neil (Eerdmans, 1975, 105 pp., $4.95), and The Hard Sayings of Jesus, by Albert McClellan (Broadman, 1975, 135 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by William L. Coleman, author and lecturer, Aurora, Nebraska.

Anyone who has taught the Bible regularly realizes that the “simple truth” is not always so simple. The greatest teacher who ever lived left many of his students scratching their heads and talking to themselves. It was the very complexity that caused many in his audience to stop following him.

The truth that Christ taught was not always in short, unequivocal terms, like “no parking.” While some of his teachings were edicts, others were like a fisherman’s tangled line. They need patience, thought, and humility to untie.

These two volumes grasp at some of the tough things Christ said, and the authors make gallant and often helpful attempts at focusing them. The books total fifty-three chapters but only brush against the surface. The reader should not expect a technical handling of the text such as may be found in Sidlow Baxter’s Problem Texts. William Neil seems capable of such exegesis, but he shows the results of careful study without incorporating the details.

Neil reminds one of Roosevelt. Those who visited with him often felt he completely agreed with them but later discovered his position was the exact opposite. Neil exerts himself so to be fair to all possible positions that the reader often wonders what his solution really is. One cannot help but agree with his interpretation of the divorce issue, since Neil hints at practically every position. He will disappoint some readers by his reasoning denying a six-day creation and yet defending the sanctity of God’s ratio of six to one. We find him saying that Christ believed in the resurrection into eternal life but not the resurrection of the physical body.

This is not to say that the book is not good or to deny its helpfulness. Reading it on a devotional level and possibly one chapter at a time, the stable Christian may feel his heart moved.

The chapter discussing “We have only done our duty” (Luke 17:10) is an excellent example of the book’s moving insight. “But ‘God’s strict bridle,’ do we not also need that? As servants of God we need his discipline as well as his mercy.” In discussing church and state he defends involvement in the government and raises the question of the South African Christian’s response to the state of his nation.

Neil is worth reading because his approach is different enough to jar our minds. McClellan is worth reading because his approach is more likely to stir our hearts. He has served as a pastor, been an editor, and been a director of public relations, all in the Southern Baptist Convention. Some of his material is syrupy, a bit simplistic, and even potentially harmful. Other chapters are beautiful. I would like to hear him preach “King on a Donkey” or “Harlots First.”

Despite his general soft approach, McClellan is not afraid to take difficult subjects by the horns. He discusses the narrow gate and makes excellent applications to the present life and not just eternity. He attempts to unravel the weighty “Let the dead bury the dead.” Likewise he plugs into the problem of people who have little and eventually lose the little they have. He applies this principle to all of life and insists that only the person who attempts to expand what he has will have hope of keeping it, whether it is faith, trust, skill, or spiritual responsibility.

These two volumes are humbling. They remind us how little we know and at the same time help us learn a bit more about Christian discipleship.

Scholarship Based On Unbelief

The Tübingen School, by Horton Harris (Oxford University, 1975, 288 pp., $26.50), is reviewed by W. Ward Gasque, associate professor of New Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada.

No group has had a greater influence on the modern study of the New Testament in academic circles than the small band of scholars who gathered around the personality and theological opinions of Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), professor of theology at the University of Tübingen for thirty-five years. The standard reference works refer to Baur as “the founder of historical criticism”—though this is questionable, unless one has a very narrow definition of the term. Even today, when nearly all his specific conclusions concerning the New Testament writings have been rejected as untenable, critical assumptions that occurred for the first time in the writings of Baur and his school are part and parcel of contemporary criticism as it is practiced in some places.

If it was the tendency of earlier ages to write hagiography instead of biography in dealing with the lives of the early Christian fathers, and of nineteenth-and twentieth-century evangelicals to idealize the lives of their leaders (especially missionaries), so has it been the tendency of liberal theologians to write apologetically slanted accounts of their nineteenth-century predecessors. A case in point is the influential work on Baur by Vanderbilt professor Peter C. Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology (1966), which has been strongly criticized in Germany and which is shown by Harris to be in many ways misleading. In contrast to Hodgson’s portrayal of a very pious theological professor who had a deep love for the truth and only slight tendencies toward heresy (for example, Ebionism, the view that Jesus was more human than divine), Harris makes it clear that Baur started his theological study with a clear rejection of God in the traditionally Christian sense of a transcendent personal Being. From this premise he embarked on a search for an alternative and comprehensive explanation of Christian origins.

In his earlier brilliant and highly acclaimed book, David Friedrich Strauss and his Theology (Cambridge, 1973), Harris offered what will no doubt become the standard introduction in English to the life and thought of Baur’s even more famous student. Strauss was more forthright about his rejection of the historic Christian faith than was Baur, and consequently Strauss lost his right to teach theology. But the basic starting place for the two men was identical. Harris’s earlier study should be read as a companion volume to this one. (He promises a further study of Albert Ritschel, the Tübingen School’s best-known demitter and probably its most important critic.)

The Tübingen School is the first full-scale history of the group and its influence to appear in English. Prime space is given to Baur, of course, but Harris also includes studies of Baur’s son-in-law, Eduard Zeller; the brilliant synthesizer Albert Schwegler; the obscure philosopher Karl Christian Planck (uncle of Max Planck); the shy aesthetician Karl Reinhold Köstlin; the onetime disciple Albrecht Ritschl; the eccentric and erudite biblical critic Adolf Hilgenfeld; and the school’s greatest source of embarrassment, Gustav Volkmar. Next to nothing has been previously written in English about most of these scholars, and in most cases very little information was generally accessible even in German. Harris has done a valuable service to the cause of a general understanding of the history of modern theology.

Three qualities stand out in this fine study. First, Harris makes careful use of the primary sources, many of them unpublished (especially letters); his study is entirely original and in no way dependent on secondary sources. Second, like his earlier work on Strauss, this study is eminently readable; there is no trace of the usual theological jargon or incomprehensible and linguistically indefensible Germanic English that so often marks works heavily dependent on German sources. Third, although he has his own presuppositions and assumptions—indeed, he argues that it is dangerous to think one has none—Harris takes great pains to be fair in representing the views of the various scholars he treats; he therefore gives great space to long extracts from their own writings, allowing them to express their own opinions on various matters. In all these things he presents a worthy model for aspiring younger scholars.

In spite of the aim of Baur and his school to be historical, it was in this area preeminently that their work was a failure. In fact, their reconstruction of early Christian origins was totally unhistorical; rather than being based on a prime study of the original sources, it was a creation of fertile imagination harnessed to the cause of a theological dogmatism as unbending as that of the most fervent traditionalist. Once Baur had formulated his essential conception of Christian origins, no amount of evidence could shake him from his conclusions, and he responded to his critics by accusing them of forsaking critical methods. For, as Ritschl once wrote to his father, Baur had “a strange conception of criticism; he does not mean the methods in historical investigation, but the dogmatized result of his negative opinions, and he is always ready to see apostasy from criticism where one differs from him.…”

However that may be, Baur and his school are extremely important for a proper understanding of the roots of modern theology and, even more, of the roots of modern New Testament criticism. For this reason I warmly commend Harris’s valuable study to all who are concerned, as students or as more advanced scholars, with the academic study of the Bible and theology. Despite its astronomical price—a thing becoming all too common among serious works of theology—The Tübingen School should be in all college and seminary libraries and also in the personal libraries of many students and teachers.

Conservative Resurgence

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George H. Nash (Basic Books, 1976, 463 pp., $20), is reviewed by Erling Jorstad, professor of history and American studies, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.

In his conclusion Professor Nash states that in the early 1970s conservatives had “the greatest opportunity of their lives before them” to influence, even to direct, the nation’s political and intellectual life. The appearance of this book, a doctoral dissertation at Harvard, published by a major scholarly house, is further evidence of that opportunity. It is the first comprehensive study of the intellectual dimension of modern American conservatism. Such a work is greatly needed by our opinion-makers and in our high schools and colleges.

Conceding that the intellectual conservatives criticized each other as much as their adversaries, Nash shows that a definable, cohesive movement does exist. Its major spokesmen have been Russell Kirk, Wilmoore Kendall, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Frank Meyer. Nash summarizes the thought of each in detail. He adds also valuable summations of the work of conservatives such as Walter Berns, James Burnham, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Molnar, Leo Strauss, Stephen Tonsor, Ernest van den Haag, and Richard Weaver.

These plus a few others are pictured on the front dust jacket as the prime contributors to the intellectual development of conservatism. Nash finds three major streams flowing through the work of his group: libertarianism, traditionalism (these two he finds adequately fused by Frank Meyer), and anti-Communism, on which they all agree. Nash traces the origins of the movement, the agonizing conflicts of personalities within it, the common enemies of New Deal liberalism and moral permissivism, and the hostility of academe and most reflective journals to the new conservatism. Nash has firm control of his material and leads the reader through the detail without losing sight of the larger patterns.

The heart of the author’s argument is that the movement has stayed alive by following a “conservative center” rather than its extremes; by 1972 this center has “gained a national audience and had won a chance to exercise national leadership.” The center holds this position because its leaders share “certain fundamental prejudices” (his quotation marks). These are: “a presumption in favor of private property and a free enterprise economy; opposition to Communism, socialism, and utopian schemes of all kinds; support of strong national defense; belief in Christianity or Judaism (or at least the utility of such belief); acceptance of traditional morality and the need for an inelastic moral code; hostility to positivism and relativism; a ‘gut affirmation’ of the goodness of America and the West.”

Nash’s own commitment to the conservative center is everywhere evident. When the movement is criticized, the criticism is that of such adversaries as Dwight Macdonald, not of Nash himself. The long list of persons he interviewed consists only of advocates, not of critics. Generally this bias is not obtrusive.

As to shortcomings, surely L. Brent Bozell deserves a picture on the dust jacket. By comparison, Ralph de Toledano, pictured there, remained more a reporter than an originator of conservative ideas. Nash states that without the journal National Review “there would probably have been no cohesive intellectual force on the Right in the 1960s and 1970s.” That assertion needs much more substantiation than he gives. Russell Kirk is a Roman Catholic. He converted to that faith in 1964, as Nash says, but a self-defined “Puritan.” But such factual errors are very rare in this book, which has ninety-one pages of footnotes and a first-rate index.

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY may be disappointed to find the author giving short shrift to the reawakening of conservative Protestant theology and ethics in the post-1945 era. Someone should make a comparative study between the National Review circle and the authors in CHRISTIANITY TODAY; this would greatly illuminate our understanding of the best of the resurgence of conservatism in our day. Nash offers only brief suggestions about the epistemological and ontological assumptions of his group; my intuition tells me these would be very close to those of the conservative Protestant renaissance of the sixties.

For those seeking to understand the origins, progress, and intellectual dimensions of modern American conservative thought, this book is the standard work. It should hold up for many years as definitive. Its record and its message can also serve to inspire conservatives to continue to “defend enduring truths in a language appealing to America in the 1970s.”

Solzhenitsyn And Christianity

Solzhenitsyn’s Religion, by Niels C. Nielsen, Jr. (Nelson, 164 pp., $6.95. $3.50 pb), and Solzhenitsyn: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Kathryn Fetter (Prentice-Hall, 174 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Christian faith has become well known. His Lenten prayer and his Letter to the Third Council of the Russian Church Abroad are just two reasons. As editor of From Under the Rubble he included a fine essay on the schism between the Church and the world (the Church, it said, is morally bankrupt). And his own essay on repentance in that volume reinforces the fact of his deep commitment to Christianity.

Nielsen plays on this country’s interest in Solzhenitsyn as a religious and moral leader. But there is little specific discussion of Solzhenitsyn’s beliefs; the title promises more than the book provides. Nielsen quotes some passages from the Solzhenitsyn canon pertinent to the novelist’s Christianity but overlooks other important ones (e.g., in Gulag Archipelago II, “The Soul and Barbed Wire”). He pads his book with discussions of political aspects of Solzhenitsyn’s works and with quotations from and references to other critics.

Alexander Schmemann’s essay “On Solzhenitsyn” in much less space than Nielsen’s book systematically outlines the novelist’s Christianity. Schmemann, who was Solzhenitsyn’s confessor-priest when he first left the Soviet Union, explains how and where Solzhenitsyn develops themes of sin, repentance, conversion, and resurrection. For those who want a thorough treatment of the subject, go to Schmemann, not to Nielsen. His essay is in Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, edited by John Dunlop et al. (Nordland, 1973).

Feuer’s helpful introduction to the Prentice-Hall volume also deals with Solzhenitsyn’s deep religious faith and cites the passages where it first was evident. Her footnotes provide information to aid the interested person in further study of Solzhenitsyn. Topics in the book range from meanings of the novelist’s symbolism (much of it Christian) to a technical discussion of the dramatic structure in some of Solzhenitsyn’s books and an evaluation of the English translations available (Solzhenitsyn doesn’t think very highly of them).

One of the most interesting essays, “The Debate over August 1914” by Nikita Struve (a reprint from a previous collection of essays), centers on the pivotal scene in the story, the crisis of General Samsonov. Both theme and symbolism reflect Solzhenitsyn’s Christian perspective. Struve explains that from the first sentence of the novel Solzhenitsyn displays an “unquestionable” Christianity, which culminates in his portrait of Samsonov.

The book also includes a fine, though brief, bibliography and an annotated chronology of important dates. The book is a valuable addition to the growing critical discussions of a great artist.

Unfulfilled Promise

Creating a Successful Christian Marriage, by Cleveland McDonald (Baker 1975, 392 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Terry L. Leckrone, minister, Jerseytown-Eyers Grove Methodist Charge, Millville, Pennsylvania.

Most of the many popular-level books on marriage and sexuality produced during the past decade have been “pop” psychology with a little sex thrown in to keep the reader’s interest. Unfortunately, this author does little better. The scholarship and level of treatment are “popular” in the worst sense: shallow. His attempt to present a Christian alternative to secular opinion falls hopelessly short of the goal.

McDonald wrote the book as a text for Christian colleges and pastoral counselors. His approach to the family unit is functional, “designed as a preparation-for-marriage course” rather than as a theoretical treatment. Herein lies one of the major defects of the book. The author divorces his study of marriage and the family from its social-science origins. The result is a sociological framework—i.e., his use of role theory—filled in with light theologizing and much romanticism.

His treatment of the biblical basis of marriage points out the inadequacy of his hermeneutic. After quoting the masterly Genesis account of Eve’s creation, McDonald lapses into the most blatant kind of sexism. This takes the reader by surprise, since the author is careful to point out that woman was created as “help meet,” not “helpmate,” which he rejects as having a sexist intent. Throughout the rest of the book it is assumed that women are inferior because of original sin.

To further offend our sensitivities, McDonald tells us that the subjugation of women and male supremacy are eternal norms ordained by God. What about Galatians 3:28, “In Christ there is neither male nor female”? Why shouldn’t it be the keystone for a Christian view of male-female relationships? Saying that Paul’s profoundly Christian affirmation to the Galatians refers only to spiritual matters leaves much to be desired.

Another major fault of McDonald’s scholarship is his continual use of stereotypes. Christians who share his views are “Bible-believers.” In opposition to this group are the “liberals,” who are identified with the God-is-dead fiasco of the sixties and with relativity in morals. This is certainly a dubious equation when we consider classical liberals like Rauschenbusch and Fosdick, who combined faith in a living God with the highest ethical standards, not only for themselves but for the whole society.

Such writing not only obscures the real issues of theological ethics and social philosophy but also cuts the holder off from active participation in the larger life of the Church and society. Christians who follow this practice exchange their chance to be prophetic and influential for the security of isolation. And, needless to say, there is a vast spectrum of opinion between the fundamentalism of McDonald and the views of Fletcher and Altizer.

While in its major thrust the book fails to give a significant appraisal of the complex problems of marriage and suggests solutions that are often inadequate, there is a comforting note of nostalgia and simplicity in McDonald’s approach. But maybe that is the siren song that will lure the American church to its demise.

The book fails to achieve the author’s intention of becoming a major Christian text in the field of marriage and the family. It does contain some practical help for newly married or engaged couples.

Misreading Bonhoeffer

A Dissent on Bonhoeffer by David H. Hopper (Westminster, 1975, 184 pp., $8.50) is reviewed by Richard Bube, chairman, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was twelve when the first World War ended. From the age of twenty-seven on, he was involved in some phase of the resistance against Hitler in Germany. His theological writings came out of this historical milieu; his Ethics was fragmentary and unfinished, written while he was essentially in hiding; his Letters and Papers From Prison were the searchings of a man under pressure of prison, bombings, and an uncertain future. Finally his life was terminated by a Nazi hangman when he was thirty-nine. To attempt to understand the impact of Bonhoeffer apart from this historical context is impossible. It is precisely because Bonhoeffer’s concern was with a living Christianity that his theology cannot be traced as a kind of abstract intellectual maturation, but rather must be appreciated as a dynamic product of the interaction between the Word and Spirit and his own life experiences.

David Hopper, professor of religion at Macalester College agrees with this assessment but thinks that it necessitates a dissent against other assessments of Bonhoeffer. Whereas some might argue that it is precisely because Bonhoeffer’s theology and life are so intimately connected that his overall contributions speak to many in an enduring fashion, Hopper argues that this connection provides the basis for questioning the enduring nature of Bonhoeffer’s contributions.

Hopper puts together evidence by which he can challenge both the stature of Bonhoeffer as a theologian and the continuity of his thought. His method is first of all to look at the interpreters of Bonhoeffer and to show that there are deep disagreements among them about Bonhoeffer’s views of ecclesiology, Christology, concreteness, reality, and worldliness. Given the nature of the extant works of Bonhoeffer, and the tendency of interpreters to read into any theologian’s writings their own presuppositions, such disagreement is hardly surprising.

There is abundant evidence of both continuity and discontinuity in Bonhoeffer’s thought; any interpreter wishing to emphasize one or the other has many instances to cite. Hopper presses for a determination, however, of whether shifts in Bonhoeffer’s thinking can be attributed to “the process of intellectual growth and increasing social-historical awareness” or are “related to patterns of Bonhoeffer’s own personal development and personal exigency.” The implication is that only the former can be used to defend Bonhoeffer’s lasting theological contribution, whereas the latter is somehow damaging to that defense. It is not at all clear to me that such a distinction is meaningful. I suspect that Bonhoeffer speaks so urgently so often precisely because his concern is with translating Christian theology into Christian living, rather than with systematic theology per se.

Hopper also seems to press for unnecessary dichotomies in other areas. For example, he asks, “Did he do what he did because of his Christian convictions or because of the inbred and inculcated qualities derived from his unusual family?” Must a choice be made? As in so many other cases emphasized in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, are not “both/and” or “neither/nor” often more useful categories than “either/or”?

I can agree wholly with the author when he says, “these uniquely, personal, existential concerns make Bonhoeffer’s theology something less than systematic,” and “Bonhoeffer’s own deep involvement in the struggle of faith, its constant presence in his life, its anxious character, work against a reasoned and fully coherent theological statement.” But this does not surprise me as much as it seems to surprise the author, nor does it detract, in my opinion, from the enduring ability of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts to stimulate and revitalize Christian faith and life.

Seventh in the Series “Evangelicals in Search of Identity”

One of the chinks in the armor of the contemporary evangelical movement is the defensive and reactionary stance of some of its influential leaders. That was not Billy Graham’s perspective in world evangelism nor was it the founding orientation of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

What will be the result if the evangelical mainline, like the newly aggressive far right, echoes a religious jingoism that merely ignores or rebukes multiplying nuclei of discontent and forfeits their creative potential? It is not unlikely that neoevangelical forces will pursue theologically mediating and then ecumenically concessive relationships and align themselves with a chastened neo-orthodoxy rather than a retrogressive orthodoxy.

Had late nineteenth-century evangelicals more dynamically asserted a truly biblical ecumenism and adequate socio-political interests, had they given guidance to the forces of discontent and been less resigned to a reactionary withdrawal from newly emerging centers of power, the early twentieth-century churches might have followed a sounder ecumenical and socio-political course. Now the critical question before establishment evangelicalism is whether in the late twentieth century it will duplicate the mistakes of a previous era.

Discernible changes in the evangelical arena are already in the making. Evangelism is seen increasingly as the proper burden of the local church or churches and as best effected through the faithful witness of believers at work and at play. New methodologies are already in wide use, many having been shared through Key ’73.

Magazines like Eternity, Reformed Journal, and Christian Herald are openly discussing, even if at times with a debatable emphasis, neglected socio-political concerns, as well as the doctrine of the Church and biblical authority, but in a way that candidly wrestles with contemporary disagreements. The somewhat reactionary elevation of inerrancy as the superbadge of evangelical orthodoxy deploys energies to this controversy that evangelicals might better apply to producing comprehensive theological and philosophical works so desperately needed in a time of national and civilizational crisis. It is important to know, of course, whether a launch missile can be relied upon unerringly or whether it may malfunction unpredictably; it will never reach the moon, however, if all energies are exhausted in pre-launch debate.

The sad fact is that when evangelicals do not engage in challenging alien world-life views they soon fall into battling among themselves; things are even sadder when leaders among them set the pattern for such squandering of vitalities. Already mortgaged to the hilt, some evangelical schools threaten to divide on the inerrancy issue; still others are suffering constituency blues at a time when overarching cooperative evangelical effort might have tellingly confronted the radical secularity of our times.

Unless evangelicals repair their multiplying frictions over social and political engagement in an intelligently spiritual meeting of mind and heart, the situation can result only in still further divisions that forfeit whatever impact might have issued otherwise through strategic cooperation. To be sure, political engagement is no more the hallmark of evangelical orthodoxy than is political disengagement. But evangelicals should be publicly concerned to the limits of their competence and ability; here too “to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (Jas. 4:17).

A restrictive social vision can have only doleful consequences for evangelical conscience and national life. Jesus Christ in his resurrection already displays his sure victory over all the forces of evil and injustice that would have done him to death; if the Risen Lord wishes to extend that victory over unrighteousness in the world through the regenerate community, dare we derail social justice as a marginal concern until he returns to conquer evil and vindicate righteousness?

Even if motivated by a legitimate defense of capitalism and of democratic processes against socialist and totalitarian assaults, the failure of establishment evangelicals to criticize incisively the American politico-cultural context, including secular capitalism and seamy governmental trends, has often dampened the enthusiasm of the younger generation for these structural forms. Uncritical commendation of the status quostimulated hypercritical denunciation of it by the political left. Stirred by socialist criticism of capitalism and of Western political processes, American students were left to learn about the real character of Marxism from Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, who have endured it first-hand; observable failures of socialism in Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and other lands were simply explained away by the concentration of criticism on Western alternatives. It is almost forgotten today that an emphasis on the desirable limits of government does not inevitably commit political conservatives to an atomistic society of windowless monads.

The growing impasse between evangelical groups, each of which deliberately and perhaps stubbornly advances its own approach and emphasis, stimulates misunderstanding and sacrifices gains that might accrue to the whole evangelical front by the solidifying of agreements (a process that need not ignore legitimate differences). New centers of evangelical power and conviction will almost inevitably come into being in the next decade; what is unsure is whether their input into the total evangelical context will be disruptive or constructive.

At present no single leader or agency holds the full enthusiasm and respect of every element within contemporary American evangelicalism. It may already be too late to gather for dialogue because of explicit rivalries or political liaison between the various groups. While pointing at the disintegration of COCU, evangelicals should remember that their own movement seems brighter not because of evangelical cohesion but because of comparison with the tarnished alternatives, which, in fact, are likely to reemerge sooner or later in some other novel form.

Evangelicals today have campus resources far greater than those available in generations previous to the modernist takeover of various institutions. The newly projected $6 million Billy Graham Center at Wheaton will, for example, greatly enhance the missionary influence of that school. But what evangelicals need most amid the present tide of irrationalism and cultural decay is to enlist all the movement’s rational and moral energies for a comprehensive confrontation of the religious, philosophical, and social arenas. By sharing in such a vision, the somewhat lame and halt evangelical forces in all enterprises—from Southern Baptist and Missouri Synod quarters, from ecumenical conciliar quarters, from evangelical establishment sources, from the more radical social activist groups, from among isolated independent spirits who labor with a sense of messianic individualism—could together forge fresh conviction and brilliant truth which the redeemed society proffers a despairing world.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Tall buildings swayed slightly in Geneva, slight tremors were felt in Lausanne. Sensing the sudden instability of the solid earth, people felt a clutch of apprehension in Yugoslavia. It was in northern Italy that several hundreds of people went to bed in their homes for the last time, dying under debris as the earth shifted and buildings fell, while others waited in pain to be released.

For some, exposure to that earthquake in Italy was simply a matter of an interrupted radio program: for a moment the news of tragedy took the place of music. The listener heard about villages unknown to him. Persons who so short a time before had been full of the joy, sorrow, excitement, boredom, weariness, fear, and hope of human life became just a number. “The death toll has risen to 240. More bodies are expected to be found as the search continues.” The news voice fades out. There is music again.

Mountains and rocks, earth and trees, seas and shores—such comfortingly stable surroundings, day in, day out! We walk along our usual paths and find familiar landmarks a reassuring continuity in life. I wonder how often Elijah had stood on “the mount” to think, to pray. When the word of the Lord came to tell him to stand upon that mountain, it must have been a familiar place.

But what a terrifying and awesome sight it must have been to stand there alone and feel and see the great, strong wind, which would have moaned and whistled with terrific force. Elijah must have felt he was going to be blown over as this wind split the mountains and broke rocks as if gigantic sledgehammers were tearing them apart. After this wind Elijah felt the earth shift and move, because he stood there through an earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire swept through the area.

Whatever else was happening, Elijah was seeing the power of the living God in the elements. He had been complaining that he was the only one left in the world who worshiped God, and God was about to speak to him and tell him that there were seven thousand who had not bowed to the false god Baal but were faithful to the true and living God.

We are told that the Lord spoke, not in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire, but in a still, small voice after Elijah had observed these things. However, as I read and heard about the earthquake in Guatemala and the earthquake in northern Italy, my imagination brought Elijah to mind as a picture of a man alone being given a demonstration of the power of God in the earth he had created. O Elijah, I thought, you were being shown that you were not alone. You had the living God, who was able to command wind and fire and earthquake.

Elijah learned that not only he but seven thousand others worshiped this powerful God. Furthermore, he was to be given Elisha, who would be his assistant, his apprentice, and would one day follow in his footsteps. There was to be an unbroken line of God’s children down through the ages.

Other earthquakes in the Old Testament brought destruction. And earthquakes are prophesied as coming “in the time of the end.”

The news of an earthquake should cause a shaking of minds and hearts. It should cause people to consider what is stable, has continuity, changes not. If the mountains can fall apart, if men’s buildings can crumble like a child’s blocks and solid earth turn into a canyon, what is lasting? What is stable?

People want authority when things fall apart. They want something to hold on to when the familiar things disintegrate. Nations look for leadership not only after a physical disaster but also when yawning caverns open up in the solid ground of public behavior. “Who will lead us? Where can we find authority?” Even while these longings are stirring, those who could preach with authority are giving up the very source of authority, and allowing the ground upon which they stand to be split, not by God but by other human beings.

“In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from thedoor, and sat upon it.… and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here for he is risen, as he said” (Matt. 28:1–6). This earthquake preceded the bursting forth of the risen Jesus from the tomb. It announced in a graphic way that the “still, small voice” of God had not been silenced by death on the cross but would speak to many “Elijahs” who would be following one another as his children, his people. All who would die from that time onward too had their resurrection “announced” or “preceded” by this earthquake.

I like to think that the rumble of the earth announced this fantastic event, although Jesus himself was to speak quietly to people one by one, and then to small and larger groups, of all that had taken place. Elijah was not the last one to stand in the midst of unbelieving people. Nor are any of us today the last. The God who is able to shake the earth will do it again.

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed” (Acts 16:25, 26). Here an earthquake shook the prison so that the men of God were released to do more preaching and teaching outside the prison, as well as to lead the prison guard and his family to a knowledge of God and of how to be saved. The earthquake that released Paul and Silas also shook up the guard so that he was ready to listen to the “voice of God” through Paul and Silas. He and his family were released in a permanent way—from bondage to Satan and sin into the freedom of salvation and light! This was a special earthquake indeed, one that made a difference in the eternal history of individual people at that time and has been the means of convincing many others of the truth of the God who sent that earthquake.

We are told in Matthew that earthquakes are among the occurrences that will signify the end days, and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. We should remember that as we hear about earthquakes, which seem to be increasing. However, we should pray for the “release” of many, many people, before Christ returns, release from the variety of bondages and prisons into which Satan thrusts people in this moment of history.

May we earnestly and seriously pray for that with which God comforts us in Haggai 2:5, 6: “Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land: and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”

EDITH SCHAEFFER

Borden Spears is senior editor and editorial ombudsman for the Toronto Star, Toronto, Ontario. In this column in Canada’s largest newspaper, reprinted here by permission, he looked at the secular press’s treatment of religion.

The subject of religion comes off rather poorly in the press, not so much from want of attention as from a failure of comprehension.

Lack of understanding is not confined to the press—the most extreme of published misconceptions come from the people, in the form of letters to the editor—but it is reflected there.

Among press and people alike, religion is a subject as arcane as economics; such terms as atonement and redemption are as little understood as fiscal determinants and multiplying factors in the money flow. It’s a pity, if for no other reason than the impoverishment of dialogue.

Most newspapers are aware that religion is among the important news categories, like health and money.

The Star gave a demonstration one day last week when it assigned the main position on its front page to a nation-wide survey of religious attitudes in Canada. The survey confirmed what everyone had suspected, that in the past generation there has been a massive decline of confidence in organized religion and church leadership.

The heading on this news story ran: “Poll shows public forgetting religion”. And the heading on a second story, in which spokesmen for the churches were interviewed about the survey’s finding, said: “Public’s indifference to religion comes as no surprise to clergy”.

Both headings were wrong. They missed an essential point—that the people have lost confidence not in religion but in its traditionally organized forms. And they contradicted the story itself, which said:

“The opinion poll reveals that Canadians remain very ‘religious’ in the sense that the vast majority still believe in God or some other higher intelligence and are very much concerned about ultimate questions.… Only 3 per cent said they were atheists. More than 75 per cent of those surveyed said they prayed either regularly or from time to time.”

The low esteem in which the old-line churches are held manifests itself in various ways. There is a tendency to regard them as centres of wealth and privilege—a concept strange to the struggling congregations, burdened with debt, which nevertheless devote a major portion of their gifts and efforts to good works.

There is a traditional view, descended from Victorian times, that the early missionaries were advance men for imperialism. This is a misreading of history. It overlooks the radically changed role of the churches abroad. It ignores the fact that the struggle for self-determination, in Africa conspicuously, originated with the native leaders trained in mission schools, and that the churches still support the struggle.

There are popular misconceptions, shared by many journalists in a secular age. They result in some bad reporting (or, more commonly, bad editing) because theological examination is not seen as relevant. Theology, once the queen of the sciences to which all others were answerable, has gone out of fashion. Journalism follows the fashion.

Even in secular terms the place of the church in the world is little recognized. It has always been there; its essential message is unchanging; change is the business of journalism.

When the public are enticed and cajoled and flattered, by way of walkathons and bike-a-thons and telethons, to come to the aid of “worthy causes,” these extravaganzas are enthusiastically promoted in the press.

When a single church congregation in a single effort raises $1 million for Bangladesh and other world aid projects, it rates a single paragraph in The Star.

After the earthquake in Guatemala, The Star published a list of the agencies to which relief funds could be contributed. The list included no mention of the churches, which are in the relief business year in and year out, with a cost efficiency unrivalled by any other agency.

In a Toronto speech Senator Keith Davey had some general praise for the press but also suggested the need for some rigorous self-examination. This process has in fact been going on in recent years, inspired by such critics as Davey. But the examination usually takes the form of asking how the press can do its present job better. It should include some probing into the areas of neglect.

Private Lives, Public Figures

William Muehl is professor of practical theology at Yale Divinity School. The following item, reprinted with permission from the May issue of the Yale quarterly journal“Reflection,” was published before the disclosures about the conduct of Wayne Hays and other politicians, which have made it even more pertinent.

In a valiant effort to combat the nefarious pietism which for so long infected Protestant social thought, I used to write and say that it is a serious mistake to base political judgments on the quality of a person’s private life. I would, I have sometimes declared, rather vote for a drunken adulterer or a house-broken baboon pledged to vote right than for a model of personal virtue who has the wrong attitudes on current social issues. And in practice I have more than lived up to my preachments, even choosing on occasion to waive the toilet training.

I am still willing to defend the major thrust of that argument. God is concerned as much with the objective consequences of human actions as with the character of the actor. Men and women who stand for humane and responsible public policy deserve our support, even if their domestic lives leave something to be desired. (Or nothing to be desired, depending on the way you look at it.)

Over the years, however, I have become less cavalier about neatly separating public and private postures. Or to put it another way, it now seems to me that my original position must be qualified in two significant respects.

First, in a society whose moral compass seems more and more to be fixed upon the life-styles established by prestigious public figures, one ought to have some reservations about raising to high office those whose values are rudely at variance with one’s own. It would be absurd to suggest that recent revelations about the sexual proclivities of some national leaders will in exactly nine months produce a bumper crop of illegitimate babies. But it would be equally foolish to suppose that the moral ethos is not in dramatic ways influenced by such disclosures.

Only the hopelessly naive will argue that personal value judgments are made by pure reason operating in a socio-cultural vacuum. Diverse pressures and permissions flow in upon all of us from every direction. And the difference between inter-personal responsibility and exploitation is often based on nothing more exalted than the laudable desire to avoid public censure. The examples set by those in positions of authority are powerful influences upon the shape of the future.

Second, it is by no means clear to me that there is no connection between faithfulness to a marriage vow, let us say, and fidelity in the discharge of sane foreign policy or the formulation of sound welfare programs. Obviously one cannot demonstrate a connection between political miscalculations and a roving eye. But given what we have begun to learn about the complex interaction of psychological patterns which often seemed unrelated, I am unwilling to compartmentalize the public and private spheres the way I once did.

Responsibility may be a seamless garment. The arrogance which leads one to suppose that he or she can move with blithe insouciance across a field of quite casual relationships flouting the traditions which guide and govern lesser folk is likely to reveal itself in subtle and not so subtle ways in larger arenas, and determine style when more massive issues are at stake. A weakness for the bottle is relatively harmless socially where matters of budget and tariffs are concerned. It can be a nasty business in one who sleeps next to a red telephone and has at least one finger on the ultimate button.