Clergy salaries in the Church of England averaged only $4,000 last year. Inflation is running at 26 per cent a year for the country, but the denomination has asked its parishioners to increase weekly donations by 40 per cent. Church leaders hope with increased giving to raise clergy stipends by $800. Many clergymen must supplement their income by teaching or taking in lodgers.

And the Church of England is losing membership—it dropped one million communicants in twenty years—and is trying to reduce costs by closing parishes and schools. In recent years the church has closed 500 parishes, and there are 2,500 fewer parish priests than in 1969. Leaders predict a loss of 3,000 more ministers by 1980. The 130-year-old Anglican Church of All Saints and St. Barnabas, a 13,000-member parish, averages about twenty persons per Sunday service.

Controversial Donald Coggan, 66, who a year ago became the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, has launched what may become known as the “Coggan Quadrilateral,” a campaign to get Britons back to the basics: “Each man and woman matters; the family matters; good work matters; the other fellow matters.”

On radio and television interviews, telephone talk shows, and press conferences Coggan has claimed that Britons are drifting anchorless: “The tide of stark materialism, envy, and selfishness” must stop. “Guzzling doesn’t satisfy. Grabbing and getting is a poor creed.” Coggan himself has voluntarily reduced his salary from $21,600 a year to an undisclosed figure. Many of the church’s forty-two diocesan bishops, following Coggan’s lead, have refused their $690 salary increases voted last spring.

Coggan has called for small groups of people—Christians and non-Christians—across the country to get together to discuss two questions: “What sort of society are we looking for?” and “What kind of people are needed for the creation of this society?” From now on, he urged, God must come first.

Reaction to Coggan’s appeal has been widespread. He has received more than 20,000 letters supporting the idea. The Roman Catholic Church, the National (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, and some Baptist groups have stated their approval publicly. Fourteen members of Parliament have requested a motion supporting the archbishop’s appeal. And Queen Elizabeth during the ceremony opening the General Synod of the Church of England also voiced approval.

Others, both liberals and conservatives, have criticized Coggan for concerning himself with affairs outside the church’s supposed boundaries. The archbishop counters by claiming that the church has a role in society. A trade-union official described Coggan’s statement as a “series of very smug establishment platitudes,” and socialist bishop Mervyn Stockwood attacked Coggan (see following story) for stopping short of the real social problems—hunger, unemployment, inadequate housing.

Even the Church Times, voice of the Anglican establishment, criticized the archbishop for raising questions without providing answers. The paper also reported that several of Coggan’s fellow bishops were “deeply disappointed.”

Whatever else Coggan’s proposal has done, it has at least provoked discussion about the place and role of the church in today’s society. Last month hundreds of workers packed the Church of St. Maryle-Bow in London to hear Coggan debate the colorful journalist and Christian convert Malcolm Muggeridge on the subject of Great Britain’s moral disintegration, a favorite topic of Muggeridge.

Says Coggan, “Religion is being talked about all over Britain in a way it wasn’t before—and that is good.”

TOKYO TUSSLE

Wearing yellow robes draped over one shoulder, pigtailed Hare Krishna missionaries caused a rash of complaints in Japan last summer by selling pamphlets and asking for donations on the streets. (Hare Krishna, which originated in India as a sect of Hinduism, is now based in the United States and claims sixty-two chapters worldwide.) The Japan chapter is located in Hachioji City, a Tokyo suburb.

Thus far five devotees have been arrested on a variety of charges, and two others were charged with robbery. Reports of street harassment have also been registered.

The Japanese police agency ordered the nation’s prefectural police to increase vigilance over the yellow-robed group’s activities. At the same time the agency asked the Justice Ministry to refuse an extension of stay for the young men, all on tourist visas, on grounds that sales activities by tourists are not allowed.

NELL L. KENNEDY

Bishop And Morning Star

“The spiritual state of the diocese of Southwark is a matter of disgrace,” said an influential member of the church assembly at Westminster on one memorable occasion in the 1960s. Certainly under the leadership of Mervyn Stockwood the London South Bank diocese has continually hit the headlines. Stockwood’s associate, Bishop John Robinson, had scandalized the country with Honest to God; the cathedral’s vice provost had called the Resurrection “absolute nonsense” (“were they practicing rocketry on the Mount of Olives in those days?”); and Stockwood himself had fathered a number of controversies, not least when he said he would like to pull down half the churches in his diocese.

The 62-year-old bachelor bishop was only running true to form last month when he made some critical remarks about the archbishop of Canterbury’s call for moral renewal—and did so in the Morning Star, Britain’s Communist daily. After making some complimentary noises about society in Communist lands, he added: “I have no intention of shoring up a society which, because of its basic injustices, is at last crumbling in ruins.”

This allusion to the homeland provoked a storm that passed even Mervyn Stockwood’s expectations. There were demands in parliament for his resignation (in England diocesan bishops are crown-appointed), and his references to the superior morality to be found in Eastern European countries were fiercely challenged. In Moscow, one Labour member of parliament pointed out, “drunkenness is a most acute problem,” and increasing to such an extent that “it makes Glasgow seem like Salt Lake City by comparison.” A Conservative spokesman for once agreed with the opposite side, calling Stockwood’s comments “the biggest load of rubbish since the Red Dean of Canterbury.”

Still true to form, Stockwood claimed to have been misunderstood. His Morning Star article, he said, had “neither approved nor disapproved the communist regime.” He pointed out that his criticism of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had led to his no longer being invited to receptions at the Russian embassy.

Ironically, just before the controversy began, Stockwood had announced the appointment as his chaplain of the Reverend Paul Oestreicher. By an odd coincidence, Oestreicher had been among the press corps at the 1968 Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches. He was reporting for—the Morning Star.

J.D. DOUGLAS

Episcopal Evangelicals: School Bell Rings

American members of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion will start a seminary in the Pittsburgh area next September. Chosen to head the school is Alfred Stanway, an Australian bishop who headed the missionary diocese of Central Tanganyika from 1951 to 1971 and who has been deputy principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, since then. He began his epsicopal duties in Africa after his consecration by the archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey.

Evangelical Episcopalians have been increasingly vocal in recent years, and they have set up a number of organizations to translate their words into actions. One of the groups, the Fellowship of Witness, is the American branch of the worldwide Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion.

The American organization announced plans for “Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry” in the fall edition of its quarterly, Christian Foundations. Seven of the board members of the seminary are also on the board of the fellowship, which is headquartered in the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley. Board members of both live in various parts of the nation, however.

Plans call for: the new institution to begin classes in 1976 and to grant degrees by 1979. Besides providing academic preparation for Episcopal clergymen, it is intended to offer evangelical theological training to the laity.

Bishop Stanway said the initial announcement has created a good deal of interest and brought many student applications. He said only those already committed to Christ will be accepted. Full-time faculty for the first term will number four, including him. Negotiations to acquire property have begun.

Sponsors say they are beginning the institution in the same pattern followed by many other Episcopal seminaries even though it is not operated by the national church hierarchy. The announcement in the quarterly magazine said “the way was cleared” ecclesiastically after board members consulted with the presiding bishop of the national church, John M. Allin, and the Pittsburgh bishop, Robert B. Appleyard.

Weir For Irish Presbyterians

Fifty-five-year-old Jack Weir, one of the Protestant clergymen whose secret talks with the Irish Republican Army a year ago paved the way for the IRA ceasefire that began earlier this year, is the new moderator-elect of the 400,000-member Irish Presbyterian Church, which is the largest Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland.

Since 1964 Weir has been the clerk of the church’s General Assembly, and he was expected to win the nomination with over half the twenty-two votes cast. But he scraped in by only one vote. After the election Weir said, “The surprise was not that I was elected but that I was elected with such a narrow majority over the seven other candidates.… It shows the feeling of conservatism in the church, and that mood of uncertainty is mirrored in the society of Northern Ireland.”

Weir, seven other Protestant ministers, and a layman met IRA staff chief David O’Connell and other leaders at Feakle in the Irish Republic in December, 1974, to explain the Protestant position to the largely Catholic terrorist group. Sections of his church were suspicious of his actions with the IRA, though a general resolution by the denomination later backed him.

Weir takes over as moderator next June under difficult circumstances despite the IRA ceasefire. Eight soldiers, seven policemen, and 176 civilians have died in Ulster since February 10, the official beginning of the truce.

Born of missionary parents in Manchuria and himself a missionary in China until he came to Ireland in 1950, Weir is a determined man: “I’m an activist. I believe in doing things. I have not been a negative clerk of the General Assembly. People know from the Feakle talks with the IRA that I am a man who is prepared to act on my own initiative.”

ALF MCCREARY

Aligning Alliances

Leaders of the European Evangelical Alliance expect more Christians in more nations than ever to join in the Alliance Week of Prayer during the first week of January, 1976. Their optimism is based partly on the addition of groups from two more nations to the alliance and partly on what they see as a deepening interest in the evangelical cause.

At its annual meeting, held in Copenhagen in September, the council of the alliance accepted into membership the Evangelical Alliance of Italy and the Evangelical Alliance in the (East) German Democratic Republic. Representing the German organization, Pastor Karl Wohlegemuth of Plauen said at least 2,000 local groups observe the week of prayer each January. From these and other groups, he added, up to 5,000 persons attend the annual Evangelical Alliance meeting in Bad Blankenburg. An invitation to the European Alliance, to meet in 1977, was accepted.

The time of the annual week of prayer was thought to be a problem for some, since it was close to the “ecumenical” week of prayer for Christian unity in the third week of the same month. Alliance representatives who had discussed the matter with a representative of the World Council of Churches reported that there should be no difficulty, since material for the ecumenical prayer week is not dated and some churches do in fact use it at other than the January date.

The Council of the alliance issued a statement directed to “the leaders of the churches on the one hand, and of the parachurch groups on the other.” It urged them to accept the principle that each “has a God-given task, even if different in form and method, provided that there is a biblical foundation, and suggested that advance notice be given before new projects are started. A special concern of the statement was the parachurch groups “of foreign origin.”

The council took note of the formation of a theological faculty in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, bringing together personnel from Lutheran and other evangelical groups. Its theological basis is the Lausanne Covenant.

The council reviewed its relations with both the World Evangelical Fellowship and the Lausanne Continuation Committee. Representatives of both were on hand, and the council noted with approval that both were willing to work with and through the alliance in Europe.

Church Growth In Troubled Thailand

Rioting police protesters last month ransacked the prime minister’s house in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. The next day 5,000 vocational students hijacked thirty-two buses and attacked Thammasart University with plastic bombs, Molotov cocktails, and grenades.

In September, 150 Communist guerrillas ambushed a Thai armored patrol in South Thailand. Four soldiers were killed and sixteen seriously wounded as mines and grenades exploded and automatic rifle fire rattled for more than an hour.

Thai government intelligence reports reveal massive Communist infiltration into northeast Thailand.

In the midst of such political turmoil, which reportedly has worsened since the Communist takeover of Viet Nam last spring, more than 700 missionaries work with Thailand’s 37 million people. In Bangkok alone there are headquarters of about twenty evangelical and other mission groups.

The first missionaries to Thailand arrived in 1828 from American Presbyterian churches. The work they began is now a part of the Churches of Christian Thailand, with 174 congregations and 28,000 members. The Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand (EFT) is the largest evangelical body in Thailand recognized by the government’s religious affairs department. Among the twenty organizations that support it are the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, and Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

Missionaries and ministers report that many areas are unsafe for travel and this hampers evangelistic efforts. A CMA minister says the church in his area, northeast Thailand, is “going underground” and has asked for no more missionary visits. He predicts that within five months that area will be controlled by the Communists.

Despite this, cassette evangelism and Bible training is flourishing, say CMA and World Vision representatives. In Chiengmai, 450 miles north of Bangkok, an experimental cassette Bible school run by Voice of Peace, radio arm of WEC and the Danish Covenant Mission, currently has 200 students enrolled. In addition Voice of Peace broadcasts about thirty Bible programs daily. The Southern Baptists air gospel films each Saturday night on national television.

In Chiengrai province the Farm church has 1,000 members. The Communists have a base camp in the mountains only ten miles away reports the pastor, and they predict they will take over the province in six months and Thailand in two years. Even so, Thai churches in the area are growing. An entire village, for example, recently turned from the Buddhist temple to Christ. And OMF has a thriving Bible school at Phayao, fifty miles south of Chiengrai. One hundred miles south of Bangkok at Pattaya, an indigenous group called “Young Christians” held a Bible camp for students and young people last spring; over 250 attended. In north Thailand CCT sponsored another youth camp about the same time and had a couple of hundred people attending.

While the churches grow, so does the refugee problem. Fifty-three thousand refugees now live in Thailand—38,000 from Laos, 12,000 from Cambodia and 3,000 from South Viet Nam. The Thai government has asked the United Nations for $40 million to feed and clothe them. And three missionary organizations are currently helping: CMA, Southern Baptists, and Scandinavian Pentecostals. Also, WEC is sending a couple to begin work among the Thai people and refugees.

JIM MITCHELL

Adjusting The Methodology

Canadian Anglican evangelist Marney Patterson’s last two community-wide crusades were held in Catholic churches. Patterson says he is receiving full Catholic support and participation in future scheduled crusades.

His eight-day September crusade held in St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in the northern Alberta community of Fort McMurray was supported by all the town’s churches. Forty-nine of the 163 counseled made first-time decisions for Christ, and 40 per cent of those who made professions of faith were Catholics.

Trained counselors dealt personally with all who responded and provided them with follow-up materials published by the Navigators and Scripture Union, both evangelical organizations.

Patterson, who is the only full-time Anglican evangelist in North America, spoke at Sunday-morning mass in the Catholic church. The parish priest asked Patterson’s songleader to teach gospel songs to his congregation.

An October crusade in the town of Chateauguay in Quebec was held in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church. Sponsored by the local ministerial association, it was aimed at the 40 per cent who speak English in the predominantly French community. Eighty-four of the 153 making first-time decisions were Catholics.

Patterson once more spoke at Sunday mass. Asked about the priests’ understanding of the meaning of the mass, Patterson was candid: “They haven’t moved away from transubstantiation, but for us to expect that of them at this point is to expect too much.”

The Canadian evangelist states that Protestant evangelicals’ response to his crusades involving Catholics is mixed. In some, they provide most of the counselors; in others, they refuse to participate. “We’re living in changing times,” says Patterson, “and we need to adjust our methodology in presenting the unchanging Gospel.”

LESLIE K. TARR

Happiness In Hong Kong

Hong Kong, the British crown colony on the China coast, is known for its pursuit of happiness. Architect David Y. K. Wong decided to make that theme work for the Christian cause last month when Billy Graham came to preach a five-day crusade. Wong, who is president of the Baptist World Alliance, designed the platform, including railings made in the shape of the Chinese character for happiness.

When the five-day campaign was over, Graham, Wong, and other leaders of the evangelistic effort were more than happy with the response. Team members reported that 20,400 persons left their seats to seek counseling about spiritual happiness. Crowds attending the five-day event set attendance records, with a cumulative estimated attendance of 217,000. The 68,500 at the closing meeting broke all records for a single event in Hong Kong.

Daniel Tse, president of Hong Kong Baptist College, said the crusade wiped away any doubt that the city was interested in spiritual revival. Tse, who translated the evangelist’s messages into Cantonese each night, explained that the colony’s proximity to mainland China, “which is not known to be friendly toward any form of religion,” results in a cautious attitude toward religious rallies and toward the future. He added, “Philosophically, Hong Kong’s people are known to have adopted the attitude of making money as quickly as possible and enjoying themselves while they still have time.”

The citizens of the future were most prominent in their participation and attendance. Crusade leaders estimated that 85 per cent of those at each meeting were between sixteen and twenty-one. While Graham has had a high degree of youth interest at his crusades in recent years, none has drawn more youth than the Hong Kong event.

Young people and others attending from Hong Kong as well as from nearby Macao and the New Territories, were serious in their pursuit of the happiness offered at the meetings. Graham observed many taking notes on his sermons, and he said the audiences were the most attentive in all his ministry. A veteran policeman at the stadium described the crowds as “the most orderly I have ever witnessed.”

Two facilities were needed to accommodate the turnout. The evangelist preached in Government Stadium, and the overflow crowd saw him via television in South China Stadium. The latter became available belatedly through postponement of two football games.

As usual with a Graham crusade, the large response did not happen without a large preparatory effort. Some 500 churches (90 per cent of those in the colony) were involved in the preparation. They fielded about 10,000 Christians weeks in advance to call at half a million homes and leave invitations to the stadium meetings and Christian literature.

Anglican bishop Gilbert Baker described the effort as a “tremendous demonstration of solidarity and cooperation.” He was echoed by Daniel Y. K. Cheung, pastor of the world’s largest Chinese church and crusade chairman. “Hong Kong has never known anything like this,” Cheung said. “We now have a great trained. I believe it is just the beginning of spiritual revival in our churches.”

Taking an active part in campaign meetings was Ruth Graham, the evangelist’s wife, who was born of missionary parents in China. “I feel this is the most important meeting we have ever held,” she told a reporter.

Graham’s next major crusade is in Seattle, Washington, next May. On the way back to the United States he scheduled appointments in Israel, Egypt, and England. Also on his itinerary was Kenya, where he planned to observe parts of the World Council of Churches assembly.

Religion In Transit

Claiming extortion and permanent damages to life, family, and employment, William B. Hinson, former minister of the Worldwide Church of God, last month served a $5 million lawsuit on Garner Ted Armstrong in Nashville, Tennessee. (Armstrong represents his father, founder Herbert W. Armstrong.) Hinson, a member of the sect since 1961, plans to write a book about his “experiences and traumas” and is interested in interviewing others with similar experiences.

The thirty-fifth interfaith National Bible Week will be observed November 23–30. It has been sponsored since 1941 by the Laymen’s National Bible Committee to stimulate interest in the Bible as a contemporary moral resource.

Ontario Bible College in Toronto, has purchased Regis College property, a nine-acre campus complex operated by the Jesuit order. This is at least the third time evangelical schools have bought a Catholic campus in Canada; Winnipeg Bible College and Berean Christian School in Brockville, Ontario, did so previously.

Wycliffe Bible Translators has been invited by the northern Cheyenne churches in southeastern Montana to assist the Cheyenne Indians in making a new translation of the New Testament in their language. Wycliffe workers found that about 65 per cent of adults over forty on the reservation speak the language and that in kindergarten through third grade, 15 per cent of the children speak the language.

In a recent decision, the Federal Trade Commission has ordered four West Coast travel agencies to stop promoting psychic surgery tours to the Philippines and to warn anyone who asks that they are a hoax. Not only must the tour promotions stop, but tour members must be notified in case they have discontinued vital medical treatment.

World Scene

A Jewish source alleges that in the past sixty years authorities have closed 99 per cent of the synagogues in the Soviet Union. “Over 3,000 have been boarded up, knocked down, or desecrated,” he says. “Today there are only fifty left.”

Little news has come from Bangladesh with the change in regimes. Foreign correspondents have been banned. One of the world’s poorest nations, Bangladesh has a population of 75 million, the vast majority Muslim. There are ten million Hindus, some 400,000 Buddhists, and a sprinkling of Christians. Coup leaders have proclaimed it an Islamic state, a switch from its former neutral stance toward religion.

General Secretary Alexsi Bichkov of the main Soviet Baptist body was elected president of the European Baptist Federation. German Baptist executive Gerhard Claas will become general secretary of the federation when incumbent C. Ronald Goulding moves to a Baptist World Alliance post in Washington, D. C., next year.

Construction of a Mormon temple in Tokyo is scheduled to begin within a few months. It will be the world’s eighteenth Mormon temple and the first in Asia. Some 20,000 mostly short-term Mormon missionaries baptized more than 70,000 converts around the world last year, according to Mormon officials.

Every Home Crusade plans to distribute Bible portions and evangelistic literature to all of Thailand by the end of 1976. The group is also training four groups of twenty-five workers to carry out pioneer evangelistic work in the Amazon district of Brazil from the beginning of 1976. Four motor boats and fifty canoes will be used in this effort to reach the 3.6 million people of the area.

DEATHS

PAUL BECKWITH, 70, Inter-Varsity staff worker, best known as editor of IV hymnals; in Birmingham, Alabama, of a brain tumor.

LARRY M. HOYT, 40, executive secretary of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns; in Oakland, California, in an aviation accident.

NORMAN L. TROTT, 74, president emeritus of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C.; in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

By the time this issue arrives in your home I’ll be in Nairobi covering the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches. I hope to have an interpretive overview of the assembly in the January 2 issue.

Our readers will want to hear Billy Graham’s address to the nation via TV on New Year’s Eve, as the Bicentennial year commences.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has a subscription fund used to send the magazine to some poeple who could not get it any other way. Among these are some prisoners who have become Christians and who want to read CT regularly. If you’d like to help, please send us a contribution marked Subscription Fund (our address is on page 3).

My last lecture mission to Asia—a round-the-world mission involving seventy-five meetings in ten countries in ten weeks—brought me once again in touch with the evangelical vanguard on many twentieth-century frontiers. One noteworthy impression is that almost everywhere today conservative evangelicals, committed to personal evangelism and the missionary cause, are also probing a larger role in socio-political concerns.

The remarkable response of New Zealanders and Australians to the challenge of World Vision International, with its accelerated interest both short-and long-range for the famine areas of the globe, indicates the appeal of an agency that combines evangelical witness and social compassion. A work supported by voluntary gifts, World Vision is active in thirty countries. In a few countries—notably Cambodia and South Viet Nam—where U.S.I.A. funds intended for relief of urgent human needs were bottled up by political middlemen, the American government channeled certain programs through established and trusted voluntary agencies like World Vision so funds would swiftly reach their proper destination. It is lamentable that a spokesman for the World Council of Churches then used the Asian press to malign World Vision as an arm of Western imperialism and of U. S. government policy.

Mounting concern for participation in public affairs expresses itself in other ways as well. In Melbourne, Australia, for example, I met with a group of evangelicals who, though aligned with different parties and causes, all shared a strong Christian motivation toward political involvement and dedication to biblical perspectives.

Sharing in this stimulating dialogue—arranged by Dirk Bakker of Mission Enterprises—were Kenneth Mason, insurance executive and precinct president of the Liberal party; Ken Gregg, a medical doctor and leader in the Australian Labor party; Hugh Jeffrey, music teacher and state convenor of the Australia party; Cliff Wilson, lecturer in psycholinguistics at Monash University; Leon Dale, senior lecturer in geography on the same campus; Principal Jim Ridgway of the Wesleyan Methodist Bible College; Tony Webster, marketing director of Cadbury-Schweppes; and John Smith, of Truth and Liberation. The entire conversation concentrated on how Christian conviction is authentically and properly expressed in public affairs.

In South Korea, as we know, the matter of human rights has been thrust upon the Christian community through the restrictive measures of the present regime, whose concern to reinforce national solidarity in the face of the North Korean menace expresses itself at times in ways that seem oppressive. As the Christian community uncompromisingly champions the justice God requires, along with its energetic program of evangelism, it finds itself faced with the delicate task of avoiding commitments that are hostile to the government. If the regime’s present abolition of the right of dissent is not lifted, there will probably be no sure indication until President Park’s current term expires of whether the restrictions are intended as much to guarantee self-perpetuation in office as to ready the country for any military contingency.

In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi used emergency powers—granted by parliament for very different reasons—to choke democratic processes that might have unseated her after conviction for campaign violations. This turn of events affects economic and social burdens that were already heavily straining India’s twenty-eight-year-old democracy, and labels all demonstration and protest as subversive.

In Bombay, this development-came at a particularly unfortunate moment, for it slapped down a rising sense of social concern among numbers of evangelical young people. During a short stay in that teeming city, I was asked to address 125 persons, gathered by the Association for Christian Thoughtfulness, on reconciling the tensions between personal evangelism and social concern. Many of these Christians are perturbed by the callousness of Bombay authorities who plan to evict some 70,000 residents of the Janata Colony and usurp the land for recreational facilities for nuclear scientists and administrators of the nearby atomic research center.

Janata Colony was established in 1951 when city officials razed a slum area and trucked its residents forcibly to their present location to survive as best they could on a barren space of less than sixty acres. The thousands of homes and 250 sweat shops “serviced” by open stagnant wells into which water seeps from nearby latrine sheds are only a small part of unbelievable exploitation and deprivation.

Once again these hapless masses face eviction, this time to an even smaller piece of land. A champion of their cause is Mary Matthew, a twenty-two-year-old psychiatric social worker identified with the Mar Thoma Church, and graduate of the oldest social-science institute in Asia, the Tata School of Social Science. That the 70,000 inhabitants of Janata Colony with evangelical Christians at their side might march on Bombay to dramatize their plight seems unlikely now because of the restrictions imposed by Mrs. Gandhi.

A socialist government in Sri Lanka has altered the opportunities for humanitarian effort by taking over various agencies. Christians and churches there are probing their role in nationbuilding. While the New Testament underwrites patriotism, it supplies no basis for nationalism, and in any land Christians have a duty to help identify and contribute what is for the national good. For three days, eight hours each day, we met in the attractive new Anglican Cathedral with 140 Christian leaders gathered by the Bible Society of Ceylon to consider church revival and reform, home life, and nation-building.

Many countries are discovering that persons are a nation’s most important and valuable resource and that the place God occupies in the lives of citizens decides both individual and national values and life-styles. Sri Lanka has no delusions of grandeur, no aspirations to join or top the world powers. But Christians envision it nonetheless as a gem among the nations and hope to show to the world an interracial church that at one and the same time is devoted to personal evangelism and concern for man’s physical needs.

CARL F. H. HENRY

What’S Behind The Manson Cult?

Our Savage God, by R. C. Zaehner (Sheed and Ward, 1975, 319 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Donald Bloesch, professor of theology, Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

In this provocative book R. C. Zaehner, for many years professor of comparative religion at Oxford University, investigates the pseudo-mysticism that lay behind the Charles Manson murders. Manson is the California sex and violence cultist who is now in prison because of his role in the murders of Sharon Tate and others. He is back in the news because one of his followers, Lynette Fromme, apparently attempted to kill President Ford in Sacramento. What intrigues the author is that Manson not only used drugs in his quest for reality but also sought an experience of enlightenment as in the mysticism of the East. Zaehner also discusses A Clockwork Orange in attempting to explain the malaise that afflicts so many young and not-so-young people today.

Zaehner sees the speculation of the pre-Socratics, Platonists, and Oriental mystics behind much of the metaphysical confusion today. He recognizes that the great philosophers of classical antiquity as well as of Hinduism and Buddhism were not without some wisdom; yet certain of their presuppositions when not seen in the right context can give rise to a moral nihilism that undercuts the very fabric of society.

The view that in God there is both good and evil, implicit in Heraclitus and explicit in the Upanishads, can be devastating for those who seek to forge an ethical and meaningful life. In the mysticism of high Hinduism, God is the sole agent, and any responsibility for good and evil is his. Like many of the Eastern mystics, Manson sought to attain a position beyond good and evil. By becoming one with the Absolute he arrived at a “total experience” in which there is neither right nor wrong. According to Zaehner, the “holy indifference” cultivated by certain strands of mysticism can lead to a “diabolic insensitivity” as in the Crowley and Manson cults.

Zaehner definitely prefers the God of Aristotle to that of Plato, Plotinus, and the Upanishads; yet he takes pains not to identify this with the God of revelation. What is to be appreciated in Aristotle is that he distinguishes between God and the world and also insists that there is no strife or evil in God. If philosophy had remained on the path marked out by Aristotle, much of the current confusion in intellectual and student circles would have been avoided.

He is especially critical of Teilhard de Chardin’s “dynamic mysticism of progress.” He shows how Teilhard in his view of God’s organizing the chaos is much closer to the Greek than to the biblical vision. He reminds us that the distinctive imperatives of the faith are abysmally lacking in Teilhard; after the collapse of France, Teilhard extolled the Nazis for possessing “an internal flame” and incorporating “spirit in Force.” Teilhard transformed Christianity from its roots in atoning self-sacrifice “into a Platonic mishmash in which ‘holy matter’ is alternatively worshipped and spurned.” Such a position creates an intellectual climate in which the positive beliefs of a religion of historical revelation are dissipated.

Perhaps Zaehner can be accused of not doing justice to the ethical dimensions in Eastern mysticism. Yet his position is that certain truths in the scriptures of the Eastern faiths when not balanced with other truths in these same scriptures can give rise to an ideology that effectively denies the reality of good and evil. This can be seen in the popular mysticism that appeals to the youth culture and upper-middle-class society today. “The result,” he fears, “may well be the realization not of a God that is beyond good and evil but of an Evil that degrades us to a level far below that of brute beasts because we have chosen it of our own free will.”

What is significant for the ecumenical discussion today is that Zaehner, a Roman Catholic, solidly aligns himself with the faith of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures against the perennial philosophy of monistic mysticism. He unquestionably sides with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the prophets and Pascal, over the God of the philosophers—Aristotle, Buddha, Plotinus, Teilhard, Krishnamurti, Suzuki. He complains; “In these days of ecumenical ‘dialogue,’ it is no longer possible to speak of the God of revelation, meaning the God of the Christian revelation alone.”

Consonant with his Catholic heritage he upholds a true mysticism in which there is a personal relationship of wonder and mystery with a living, mighty God who upholds the world by his omnipotent will. He contrasts this with a pagan mysticism in which there is absorption into an immanental ground of being or an all-inclusive Absolute that transcends good and evil. Interestingly enough, he points to affinities between this so-called mysticism of being and the drug mysticism of the counter-culture.

By labeling the God of Christian faith the Savage God, he unwittingly tends to blur the distinctions between Christianity and Islam, since the latter is noted for its God of arbitrary will and omnipotent power. At the same time he is adamant that the mercy of God precedes his wrath and judgment, and that the Savage God is at the same time the God of incomparable love and grace, the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. The Savage God condemns and judges evil as well as uses it, but he does not contain evil with himself.

This book is a welcome sign that the evangelical and biblical note is still present in Roman Catholicism despite the current preoccupation in Catholic circles with philosophical theology, especially of a naturalistic, mystical variety.

New Testament Survey

The Apostles, by Donald Guthrie (Zondervan, 1975, 422 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Richard Niessen, Ph.D. candidate, Aquinas Institute of Theology, Dubuque, Iowa.

This is a companion volume to the author’s Jesus the Messiah (reviewed May 25, 1973, p. 36), which is a survey of the Gospels and a chronological study of the life of Christ. The new book is not a biography of the Apostles but a chronological survey of the New Testament. Acts is used as a framework for New Testament history, through the first imprisonment of Paul, and the Epistles are studied as they relate to events in Acts. Thus Guthrie begins his discussion of Acts with the resurrection of Christ and continues to the Jerusalem Council in chapter 15, then surveys Galatians and James, then Acts 16 and 17, then Thessalonians, and so on. In this way Acts and the Epistles are seen as integrated units rather than as a disjointed collection of books.

The beginning student will welcome the fact that the book is not cluttered with literary criticism. The author assumes, for the purposes of his study, that the New Testament documents are reliable. He has shown his competence in dealing with the various theories to the contrary in his scholarly and conservative New Testament Introduction (Inter Varsity). But the book is swept too clean of introductory matters; it should have included such essentials as the dating of the various Epistles and their corresponding settings in Acts.

The author hopes to inspire many to make a more diligent study of the New Testament. Accordingly, the book, like Jesus the Messiah, is arranged in sections to provide a basis for daily studies over a period of six months. It is therefore suitable both as a textbook for New Testament survey courses and for use in adult Bible studies.

Catholic Double Standard

Morality Anyone?, by William Lester (Arlington, 1975, 143 pp., $7.95), and Moral Questions, by James Gaffney (Paulist, 1975, 147 pp., $1.65 pb), are reviewed by Norman L. Geisler, professor of philosophy of religion, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Bannockburn, Illinois.

These two books illustrate the increasing diversity within Roman Catholicism, in this case concerning ethical standards. Lester’s book is a compilation of questions and answers that appeared in his nationally syndicated column “The Moral Angle” during 1973. The articles are arranged in twelve chapters, ranging through such areas as the new morality, human engineering, crime and punishment, privacy, freedom of speech, nudity, and school rights. Lester tackles everything from insemination to Watergate.

The ethical viewpoint is decidedly traditional with its stress on natural law. No attempt is made to give biblical or revelatory answers to moral questions. Rather, the author reasons in an Aristotelian way about moral issues, using general principles of justice and and often appealing strongly to individual natural rights and the common social good.

The author, a Jesuit, takes the expected position against contraceptives and extends it to artificial insemination as well. Likewise, despite warnings of overpopulation, Lester argues that each couple has a right to have as many children as it wants. Even voluntary sterilization for birth control is morally wrong because it is a mutilation of the human body.

In the area of human engineering, Lester opposes cloning, deep-freeze death, transvestite operations, and test-tube babies. Surprisingly, he advocates psychosurgery as a punishment of criminals, and castration and even capital punishment for rapists.

Lester is strongly in favor of corporal punishment and capital punishment. He opposes strikes in favor of binding arbitration. He rejects the payment of ransom to kidnappers. He favors using facts illegally obtained for prosecution, adding that those who obtained them should be prosecuted as well.

In the realm of medical ethics he opposes euthanasia in either the active or the passive sense. He holds Aquinas’s view that the soul is directly created in the womb by God and therefore considers abortion to be murder. Death is determined by the absence of brain waves, since man is a rational animal; hence “pulling out the plug” on someone whose brain is no longer functioning is permissible.

Lester strongly favors the rights of privacy but justifies the Ellsberg break-in on grounds that “plans for doing unjust harm do not fall within the legitimate bounds of secrecy.” Likewise, newsmen can be morally wrong for withholding information under similar circumstances.

Not surprisingly, the author favors laws against pornography, arguing for an objectively determinable element in this evil. Likewise, communal bathing is morally bad. But surprisingly Lester favors nudity in Olympic swimming on the grounds that the participants could swim faster and the audience would not be adversely affected morally in this context.

X-rated movies should be banned in order to prevent evil, but sometimes legalizing prostitution is the greatest good in order to prevent worse evil. Lester opposes socialized medicine. He favors helping the oppressed escape from tyrannical governments. He argues that a state must not be neutral toward religion lest it thereby encourage atheism, and that the state should honor the religious holy days of the major religion of its participants. On the crucial question of individual vs. community rights he favors the community over the individual providing that the community is basically for the welfare of the individual.

The reader may not agree with all the answers Lester gives but will nonetheless be impressed that he treats all the main questions.

A markedly different approach to ethics is offered by the other author, James Gaffney, who is a theologically trained layman. Gaffney presents the “new morality” in Catholic ethics. Lester is writing for non-Catholics from a presumed basis in natural law, but interestingly Gaffney makes a more direct appeal to a biblical base.

Gaffney begins by disavowing the belief that there is any distinctly Catholic or even Christian point of view in ethics. Indeed, he contends that there are no irreformable moral definitions. He agrees with the satirical play Nothing But the Truth that there are many exceptions to truth-telling, and adds that there are no “air-tight” ethical systems. Of the three approaches to ethics, traditional absolutism, definable exceptionalism, and contextualism, Gaffney opts for the latter. He cautiously entitles it the “new morality” but demands that its love principle be understood as the Christian love principle exemplified in Christ.

Gaffney argues for applying consistently to sexual ethics what moralists have acknowledged with regard to lying, that is, that there are in certain contexts exceptions to the commands against extra-marital sexual activity. Just as a lie is justifiable if done kindly without harm to others, likewise not all extra-marital sexual activity need be harmful or unkind. Sex need not be lust outside marriage, but Gaffney does feel that it would be lying unless one’s love promises are permanent.

Because the Church has not spoken unequivocally on contraception, Gaffney leaves it to individual conscience but implies it is thereby morally permissible. He strongly opposes abortion on demand but makes a strong case for therapeutic abortion to save the mother’s life on the parallel with the Catholic principle of protecting the innocent against attack by the immature or insane.

On the subject of divorce Gaffney interprets Paul as permitting divorce in the context of our “contemporary social dilemma.” He shows both sympathy for and approval of some homosexual activity, rejecting the traditional Catholic concept of “nature” as naive. One is homosexual by nature—not by his own acts—through no fault of his own, and homosexuality is no worse than greed, pride, or envy. But total abstinence is not demanded for the homosexual, any more than, supposedly, it would be for a person who drinks alcoholic beverages.

Some of Gaffney’s theological statements are as startling as are some of his moral conclusions. The doctrine of pennance is based on the teaching in Matthew 16 about “binding” and on Jesus’ statement about “retaining” in John 20. The substitutionary atonement implies “a rather primitive ethical mentality in God himself,” and the doctrine of original sin implies “a less than admirable divine complacency and complicity in causing the innocent to suffer what only the guilty deserve.”

Gaffney refers approvingly to Charles Curran’s attack on absolutes in A New Look at Christian Morality. And there is no doubt that Gaffney himself is a one-norm absolutist, relegating even the Ten Commandments to merely general rules that admit of many exceptions for love’s sake. To be sure, Gaffney’s Catholic tradition enables him to read more Christian content into what is meant by love than does, say, Joseph Fletcher, but in principle their views are the same. That Gaffney’s book was published by the religious order founded to convert Americans to Catholicism should not pass without notice.

Briefly Noted

A History of the Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles, by W. Ward Gasque (Eerdmans, 360 pp., $20). This work has been described as “the definitive survey and critique” of the scholarly study of Acts during the past two centuries and will be of interest to all who study Luke-Acts. A useful appendix, translating all foreign-language quotations, makes the American edition more widely useful. Originally a doctoral dissertation written under F. F. Bruce at Manchester University, England.

The Horizontal Line Synopsis of the Gospels, by Reuben Swanson (Western North Carolina Press [Box 29, Dillsboro, N. C. 28725], 597 pp., $23.95). The usual synopsis has three or four parallel columns and no one gospel appears with its verses in consecutive order. This synopsis is in four parts, one for each gospel, always printed consecutively. Underneath (instead of alongside) the lines of each gospel are the primary and secondary parallels from the others, if any. The text is the RSV. Because it does not call for nearly so much editorial judgment, this may revolutionize the way synopses are laid out. (When did you last see an old-style airlines time-table?)

Your Church Is News, by Raymond Mecca (Judson, 94 pp., $3.50 pb), and Let the People Know: A Media Handbook For Churches, by Charles Austin (Augsburg, 91 pp., $2.95 pb). Two practical, easy-to-use promotional helps. Mecca is mostly on getting church news into secular media. Austin deals with that more briefly and talks also about church newsletters, bulletins, brochures, and the like.

Who’s Who in Religion (Marquis Who’s Who, 616 pp., $52.50). See editorial, page 31.

The Story of Chrismas, by Felix Hoffmann (Atheneum, 30 pp., $6.95). A beautifully executed book. Type, paper, color, and illustrations match the well-chosen words to narrate effectively and simply the story of Jesus’ birth. A fine gift book for children and adults.

The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), by Jaroslav Pelikan (University of Chicago, 394 pp., $4.95 pb). Kudos to the publisher for issuing a paperback reprint of volume one of a widely acclaimed projected five-volume history of doctrine.

Baker’s Pocket Dictionary of Religious Terms, by Donald Kauffman (Baker, 445 pp., $2.95 pb). Often one just wants to know a little bit about something (When is Whitsunday? Who was Wilberforce? Where was the Westminster Confession produced? What’s a Wat? How did the Wailing Wall get such a name?). Here’s a handy answer book with thousands of brief entries. (Reprint of a 1967 original.)

The Gospel of John and Judaism, by C. K. Barrett (Fortress, 99 pp., $5.95). Here the well known British commentator reflects on what some scholars have regarded as a neglected aspect of his commentary on the Fourth Gospel, which was substantially completed before the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls had made its impact on the world of New Testament scholarship. It is a pity that the book is so expensive.

New Periodicals

Themelios (Greek for “foundation”) begins a new series with the Autumn, 1975, issue. Featured articles in volume 1, number 1, are on hermeneutics, inerrancy and exegesis, and preaching from the patriarchs. To be published three times yearly at $2.50/ year. Order from International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, 10 College Rd., Harrow HA1 1BE, Middlesex, England. Deserves wide circulation among seminarians and ministers.

The Council on the Study of Religion, a federation of several major scholarly societies, has launched Religious Studies Review as a quarterly journal of long and shorter reviews of books in its field. Should be in all theological and many personal libraries. Subscriptions are $6 for members, $10 for institutions and non-members. Office at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3C5.

Presbyterion is the twice-yearly journal of Covenant Seminary (Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod). The first issue (Spring, 1975) contains studies of the fall of man, the quest for the historical Jesus, and Charles Hodge’s social ethics (12330 Conway Rd., St. Louis, Mo. 63141; $4/year)

After being suspended since October, 1972, Pastoral Psychology has now reappeared as a quarterly with volume 24, number 228 (Fall, 1975). The sponsor is Princeton Seminary, the editor is Liston Mills of Vanderbilt, and the publisher is Human Sciences Press (72 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. 10011). Subscriptions are $9.95 for individuals, $30 for institutions. The current issue features five articles. The journal is aimed at parish ministers with an active counseling ministry and will appeal to a wide theological spectrum.

It was still dark, and the city was silent with the deep sleep of the predawn hour. An occasional swish of tires and roar of a motor were the only noises except for the barking of a dog. We were waiting for dawn, for the first grey light in which to see the Berlin Wall. Guards in the watch towers were wide awake, scanning the strip of dirt filled with barbed-wire traps and sharp spikes at any likely spot for jumping. Police dogs kept noses and ears alert as they paced in the strip like lions in cages. As the sky suddenly lightened and shapes emerged from the darkness, we saw a milk wagon with a tired-looking woman delivering her morning burden, and a man riding off on a bicycle. Lights appeared in first one window and then another—on the other side of the wall.

A wall? A wall in name and in fact, but one strange in construction. Pathetic remains of houses, only the first floor now, and uninhabited because of the many who jumped out of windows trying to escape, and pathetic remains of stores with bricked-up or boarded-up windows—these houses and stores are the wall. They had been inhabited for a time, their inhabitants walled in and walled out by what had been their own precious walls. Crosses and placards marked spots on the sidewalk of the West side where people had died. One eighty-seven-year-old woman had jumped in desperation to get out—out to the other side of the wall, out of her home that had suddenly become a prison. Curtains still fluttered in the windows of what had been her house.

The Berlin Wall. What a constant demonstration of man’s inability in all his pride and power to bring about freedom and justice in what people so long have spoken of as “the civilized world.” Man cannot even tear down a wall of feeble bricks and mortar, once certain choices have made it permanent! Walled in and walled out, and incapable of doing anything about it. Years go by.

Isaiah speaks with prophetic wonder of a time ahead about which we need to tell the “walled-in” people, whatever their walls may consist of, wherever in the world they may be:

Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall no more be thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sum shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy morning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified [Isa. 60:18–21].

There is coming a time, and a place, where we need not wait for dawn, because the Lord will be the everlasting light of that place. There is coming a time and a place where there will be no more violence or destruction, whether by armies or by volcanoes. There will be walls—marvelous walls called “Salvation,” a word that itself speaks of everlasting freedom. The walls will have gates—exciting gates that are open, called “praise.” At this time all mourning, all weeping, all desire to jump out a window, will be over.

For whom? Who will inherit a place in this land of freedom and wonder? John 10:1 and 2 speaks of the need to come in by the door, rather than try to climb the wall and get over some other way. There is a door, a way to get in, and in verse 9 it is given. “I am the door,” says Jesus clearly. “By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

The Door himself is the One who has gone to prepare a place for us. He himself is our way into the place he has gone to prepare. When he lets John have a glimpse of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, it is not given as a figure of speech, a way of making a truth clear in picture language. It is a comforting, exciting pulling back of a curtain to give us a small glimpse of a tiny part of what is ahead of us, if we have understood something of what Jesus did for us to become The Door and have accepted what he did in our place.

Read Revelation 21 and rejoice for what is ahead, if you are a believer, and pray for people caught behind walls of men’s or Satan’s designs, that they may find the eternal “way out.” As you read, notice the very different kind of wall described—“a wall great and high, and … twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel; … and the wall of the city had twelve foundations and in them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Here is a wall that has gates, three on each side, gates through which one passes to behold the wonder of all that the city contains. A wall to protect and yet to be opened. No prisoners here, only people who have believed the truth, and who have become free indeed.

In verse 27 we read that the walls are to keep out anything that would defile the city, but that all who are written in the Lamb’s book of life may enter. Am I not one who would defile the place if I had to come in my own goodness? Yes; my tattered and torn garments of “self” can’t be mended. But I can come cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, and dressed in the white linen of his righteousness. So I can know I will be there, safe inside, but also with the gates open in both directions!

What a wall! This wall is not of ugly broken brick, mortar, and barbed wire; “the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.” Beauty in every detail is here, prepared for us. Beauty that cannot be described so that we can take it in, but that leaves us breathless in the limited amount of information we are given. Here are gorgeous walls, on firm foundations garnished with precious stones. Behind these walls gush forth crystal-clear waters, and hanging on trees are fruits of variety and flavor we look forward to but cannot yet experience.

What glorious walls! How different from any walls of men’s making. As we stand by the Berlin Wall in grey daybreak, in imagination or in reality, let us consider very soberly whether we are looking forward to the literal wonder of what God has given us in his Word. We need to be sure we are “walled in” and not “walled out” of all that is ahead for the children of the living God.

But we need also to be extremely conscious of the building of Satan’s walls, going on in our own period of history-physical walls and intellectual walls. We need to be careful that we are not by any of our choices adding a little mortar between Satan’s stones and bricks, keeping other people away from truth and freedom. Is there any decision of ours—to do or not to do—that will help to wall in or wall out other people from the hearing of that fantastic future wall, and how to get in? Some persons in the West who have enjoyed freedom themselves made political choices that have kept other human beings behind the Berlin Wall a lifetime. What choices are we in danger of making that will not affect our own eternal freedom but may affect that of others?

EDITH SCHAEFFER

Personally Opposed …

As observant readers of this column may occasionally have noted, the current Eutychus has a deep interest in the ethical and political significance of the abortion controversy. This is not unusual in a Christian theologian; indeed, he shares this interest with acknowledged luminaries such as Tertullian, Augustine, and John Calvin, as well as with modern figures in epistemological, existentialist, or revolutionary theological inquiry such as Heinrich v. Schlunk, T. V. Set, and Enrique Cabeza de Vaca.

In the course of his ethical, socio-political, and epistemological inquiries, Eutychus VI has noted a number of factors often (although not universally) observed among persons of prominence questioned about their stand on abortion. Although this particular Fragenkomplex may not loom so large in the eyes of all faithful readers of this column, it is not inappropriate to comment on these common factors, inasmuch as they may be observed not only in connection with the admittedly thorny abortion issue but also whenever the high and mighty of Church and State are asked to take a stand that requires both a certain ethical discrimination and more than a modest measure of moral courage.

The most common politician’s answer on the abortion question is: “Of course, I am personally opposed, but I would never think of imposing my moral convictions upon others.” (Unfortunate that the same politicians frequently and effectively think of imposing upon us their convictions with regard to taxes, busing, compulsory military service, and a host of other matters—or are we to consider all such questions amoral, if not positively immoral, and hence perfectly proper areas for the imposition of opinions?)

But the most interesting development of the “personally opposed” syndrome was provided by a noted politician of fervent Lutheran convictions, who, on query, announced that he was opposed to abortion on philosophical and religious grounds and also that he found Roe v. Wade (the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a wide freedom of abortion in America) a bad decision. However, he continued, he was uneasy about a constitutional amendment to change the situation because he is also “personally opposed” to amending the Constitution.

Instead of finding fault with all those moral leaders who seem unable to combine the most heartfelt “personal opposition” to a particular practice with any constructive action to limit it, let us think positively about the merits of this approach. It certainly could prove useful in other perplexing situations. For example, “Of course I am personally opposed to the invasion of Canada, but I would not want to impose my views on the President.” Or: “Of course, I am personally opposed to the assassination of presidents, but I would not want to impose my views on friends of Charles Manson.” Even: “Of course, I am personally opposed to the collection of confiscatory inheritance taxes, but I would not wish to impose my views on the IRS.” And finally, “Of course, I am personally opposed to the carrying of loaded guns, but I would not wish to impose my views …” To which the only appropriate answer, no doubt, is: “Bang! You’re dead.”

EUTYCHUS VI

Thank You

For the past two years I have had a deep appreciation for CHRISTIANITY TODAYS news reporting and current, hardhitting articles. Your news section affords a comprehensive view (not limited to North America) of the activity in evangelical Christianity. Often the featured articles deal with issues which face today’s concerned Christian, and those on controversial subjects are presented in a gracious manner. Thank you for an evangelical periodical which is committed to professional journalism and a universal scope.

MARK D. CAMPBELL

Wheaton, Ill.

Analyzing Anabaptists

Being a modern Anabaptist, I read with interest Lester Dekoster’s article, “Anabaptism at 450: A Challenge, A Warning” (Oct. 24). It seems to me that Dekoster came to the wrong conclusion when he wrote, “… that pacifist communities survive to this day is but testimony to the value of the legitimate exercise of force by the state.” That wars continue and have not been able to bring us a lasting peace should remind us, rather, that what an Israeli carpenter said nearly 2,000 years ago is still true, “They that live by the sword shall perish by it” (Matt. 26:52).

LAVERNAE J. DICK

Dallas, Ore.

Is Calvin’s oft-quoted stereotyping fair to the Anabaptists? Did Mr. DeKoster in his study go to the sources and actually read the testimonies of the Anabaptists? Now after 450 years it is time that contemporary critics of the Anabaptists begin to listen to the Grebels, Sattlers, and Mennos and stop getting their cues from sixteenth-century opponents of the movement who may have had a way of distorting the beliefs of Anabaptists in order to put them down.

ROBERT KREIDER

Mennonite Library and Archives

North Newton, Kans.

For Physical Activity

It was refreshing for me to read the article by David Kucharsky entitled, “It’s Time to Think Seriously About Sports. (Nov. 7).” In an age when athletics have, in many circumstances, become tainted, I definitely feel that the Christian institutions of higher learning should promote a well balanced program of physical activity and athletic competition integrating many phases of the academic curriculum. With the increased amount of leisure time becoming available in our society, physical activity should be an integral part of our educational experience.

PAUL R. FRYKHOLM

Assistant Professor of Physical Education

Trinity College

Deerfield, Ill.

Kucharsky does not sufficiently distinguish between intercollegiate athletics (essentially an activity for limited numbers of participants) and physical education which emphasizes the development of lifetime physical skills. Christian colleges have long been concerned about the physical development of all students, although they have indeed moved reluctantly into full-scale intercollegiate athletics. The discussion of the role of sports takes on different dimensions when it shifts from the former to the latter topic.… Although he offers several rationales for Christian-college involvement in intercollegiate sports, Kucharsky does not observe that such involvement is first of all educational, both for professional preparation of students (e.g., for physical education, coaching, recreational leadership, etc.) and for the avocational preparation of persons who will continue these interests while working in some other career. Certainly sports provide publicity, but for the same amount of money a college could buy a lot of good publicity. Clearly, sports provide an occasion for Christian witness; but we should be witnessing, through diligence and excellence and integrity, in all we do. Sports are neither an exception to nor a more significant application of this general rule. In other words, in my view a Christian college should see both the physical development of all its students and the participation of some in intercollegiate sports as elements of its educational mission. No other rationale will serve satisfactorily.

GERALD G. WINKLEMAN

Dean

Huntington College,

Huntington, Ind.

Cover Thanks

Thanks for the cover of the November 7 issue on “rock ’em sock ’em football for Jesus.” Analytical. Incisive. Indicting. Tremendous.

I had a similar observation. We overdo the procedure of finding glamorous athletes, beauty queens, and other people of worldly note to appear on our programs and speak a word for “poor little Jesus.”

FRANKLIN OWEN

Executive Secretary-Treasurer

Kentucky Baptist Convention

Middletown, Ky.

Raised Brows

The news that the Grand Rapids chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State had filed suit in Michigan to enjoin two school districts from purchasing and distributing Bibles to graduating seniors (Religion in Transit, Oct. 24) caused a few eyebrows to be raised. It should be noted that the plaintiff in the case is a clergyman, Jay Wabeke, and that the suit is intended to bar government intrusion into religious affairs and excessive entanglements between church and state. God does not need, and the church should not need, Caesar’s help or gold. And, of course, the public schools are quite free to have Bibles in their libraries and to offer suitably objective and neutral instruction about the scriptures of all faiths.

EDD DOERR

Educational Relations Director

Americans United For Separation of Church and State

Silver Spring, Md.

ERRATUM

Dr. Richard Phillips was incorrectly identified in the November 21 news story, “Return of the Captives,” as a medical doctor. His doctorate is in linguistics.