As children we have played “hide and seek” and known the nervous stillness of hiding in silence, almost afraid to breathe lest we be found. If we have lived through the terror of war and search parties of enemies or bandits, we have known the breathless silence of hoping our hiding place would not be discovered. The hiding place has to be very hidden indeed, from sight and sound! But God, who sees all we do, knows all we think, hears all we say, and from whom we cannot hide, has prepared a hiding place that is so safe we need not keep quiet when there—we can sing and shout! We are safe from the enemy even when we are singing loudly, “Here I am.”

Psalm 32:6 and 7 speaks to us, and for us, even as it expresses the truth David understood in his time of need. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.” The one from whom we cannot hide has made it possible for us to hide in him. He himself is our hiding place. How fantastic: impossible to hide from him, unless we hide in him.

In Psalm 17, prayer is on David’s lips as he cries, “O LORD, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer,” and he pleads in verse thirteen that Satan will be disappointed. As we read and also pray with this eighth verse, “Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,” indeed Satan will be disappointed at the results. Satan will be furious when we who cannot hide from God take our place under His wings, a secure, prepared hiding place.

“Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee,”: we sing. How wonderful that it is not just romantic poetry, a fanciful song, but Truth with meaning that is applicable to each one of us. It is possible to find our hiding place in God. The Second Person of the Trinity made it possible by dying on the cross. The “splitting” of the Rock opened up the “cleft place” in which to hide.

Think of it another way for a moment. Come to Psalm 27:5—“For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.” This is certainty. God has for us a hiding place.

In order to provide the hiding place, the Second Person of the Trinity had to let himself be without a hiding place. As Jesus hung on the cross, naked, taunted, and reviled, he was exposed to everyone who looked. In Psalm 27:9 David cries out, “Hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger: thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.” What is the basis upon which we can find a hiding place, and upon which we can know that God will not hide his face from us? The basis of an exchange. Jesus was exposed, with no hiding place, when he was on the cross, so that we might have the absolute assurance of having a hiding place. He became sin for us, he who knew no sin, but also he was exposed for us, he who had always throughout all eternity been one with the hiding place. They mocked him, those who were able to gaze upon him in agony and shame, and he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He was willing to be without a hiding place so that he could become our hiding place.

We are told in Colossians 1:26 and 27 that for ages the full understanding of all this wonder was not known. After Christ came to fulfill all the prophecies, to be the Lamb of God who died and also became our High Priest, then the full understanding was no longer “hidden” from anyone who would listen with “ears of understanding.” Paul says he was made a minister “to fulfill the Word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

No longer is the wonder of Truth to be hidden in any way. Now Gentiles as well as Jews are to see the pieces fitting together. Paul goes on in verse 28 to say we are to “warn every man” as well as to teach people in “all wisdom.” By warning, by teaching, by preaching, and by discussing, we are to make the Truth clear, so that people can first find their need of a hiding place and then find the one hiding place.

We are not to settle back passively into the hiding place, as if we had nothing to do but hide! In Colossians 3:2 and 3 we are prodded to do certain things: “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” How is your life “hid”? It seems to me that this is explained to us in Romans 6: we are to have changed lives. We are not to continue in the sin Christ died to free us from. Do we become perfect? No. There is a struggle to the very end. We are told that we are to keep confessing our sin, and that he will forgive us and cleanse us. But there is to be a change. And part of that change involves another kind of “hiding,” hiding under the ground, in a kind of death.

We need to be buried, as a seed, a kernel of corn, before we can bring forth the desired result. The seed is sown in us, and we ourselves are the ground, good ground or thorny ground. But then again we are to be the seed, “buried in the ground,” dead to self, dead to pride, dead to a desire to be thought of as humble, dead to ambition to succed, dead to desire to be a failure as a self inflicted punishment, dead to everything that would hinder us from God’s plan to use us.

In Revelation 6:14–17, a strong, important prophecy is given. We are not to hide our eyes and thoughts from this truth:

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”

In that coming day there will be only two divisions of people: those who will be loudly verbalizing their belief in God’s existence by crying out for the rocks to hide them from him whom they did not acknowledge and accept before, and those who did hide in him during their lifetime and are secure in their everlasting hiding place. We are to pray for each other that a “door of utterance” may be given, so that the Hiding Place will not remain hidden to men.

EDITH SCHAFFER

I Never Preached At The White House

The other day the local papers carried a picture of President Ford stooping to get under a rope barrier in Lafayette Park, on his way to Sunday-morning worship at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Of course as President he didn’t have to stoop. He could have walked around it, been driven, or had the National Park Service cut the rope. But somehow—accidental though it was—the President’s plight is symbolic of all that has happened since Watergate. He has to stoop to attend Sunday worship. In an earlier day, celebrated preachers would gladly have wrestled with one another in Lafayette Park for the chance to bring the Word to the East Room, converted into a sanctuary for presidential services.

During the 1969–74 era, President Nixon broke with precedent, and while the courts and other agencies were driving religion from public life, brought the church back into the White House. Celebrated pulpiteers, ranging all the way from Billy Graham through Norman Vincent Peale to Rabbi Louis Finkel-stein, filled the modest but imposing special pulpit in the East Room.

But what were the theologians doing? As usual, they were criticizing anything they hadn’t thought of themselves. If the President wants to worship, well and good. But why can’t he go to church like anyone else (as though he does anything like anyone else!)? And there is a certain spiritual rightness about having the Chief Executive occupy a pew with the humble and powerless (not all that many of them go to St. John’s, but the principle is right, in any case). After all, as Paul says, there is no respect of persons with God (Rom. 2:11). Why shouldn’t the President simply go to the church (or synagogue) of his choice?

Well, that’s what many of us said, in those days, not realizing the opportunity we were throwing away. Instead of saying that he should be like everyone else, we should have encouraged a good thing. It is certainly theologically defensible to suggest that the President go to church (instead of bring the church to him). But it would have been even better to say that he should worship regularly. Perhaps some of us were secretly vexed at his choice of spiritual mentors. But there are fifty-two Sundays in the year, and only a limited number of Grahams, Peales, and Finkelsteins. What a chance we were missing, all because of our pettiness!

It’s too late now. President Ford may be a serious Christian, and there’s no doubt that he is a brave man, but it would be too much to expect him to go back to the practice of White House services. And religious leaders helped to destroy it. Now we will all have to admit—except for the very few who were in on the ground floor—“I never preached at the White House.”

EUTYCHUS VI

No Limits

I greatly enjoyed your article, “ ‘Witness Art’: A Contemporary Expression” (Refiner’s Fire, Oct. 10). Martha Pollie mentioned two areas where she felt Witness Art could be strengthened. These were in making stronger use of color in a wider variety of styles, and not limiting sales to only the Christian community. Happily, for the past four months we have been doing both. For example, the fourth release—titled “Living Waters”—is a water color in a realistic style featuring an African plains scene with several different biblical animals. Other potential new releases are in process now, and are being done in a wide variety of styles and media. Also, we have been offering Witness Art in a variety of ways to many markets through catalogs, mailorder brochures, and sales through gift and furniture stores. We exhibited at the New York and Boston national gift shows and have been calling on all types of possible outlets. We never planned to limit sales through only Christian emporiums or only to Christians, but these have proven to be the most receptive.

WAYNE W. ADAMS

President

Witness Art

Alexandria, Va.

Pietistic Pragmatism

In CHRISTIANITY TODAY I so often see a mixed bag—a contradiction between its basic Judaeo-Christian perspective and the superficially Christian perspectives of many of its advertisers. It seems that anything goes as long as there is a Christian tag of some sort. The latest is the full-page ad appearing on the inside cover of the September 12 issue in which a renewed slant to an old heresy is touted, complete with distinguished endorsement. I refer to so-called Witness Art. Without going into detail concerning the unbiblical confusion of beauty and truth implicit in such goings on, I simply want to say that the best witness in art is its excellence, not in hidden, quasi-didactic, spiritualized symbolisms.

If I want to witness, I don’t need an art work to prod me. On the other hand, if I do have one, it jolly well better be of such artistic integrity that I can say one of two things to a prospective Christian: (a) the artist, because he is Christian, believes that excellence is the norm of stewardship; (b) if the artist is not Christian, the excellence of the art is an indication of God’s gracious provision in allowing men at cross purposes with him to do beautiful things. In either case I am kept from using art as a false intermediary. I am kept from the age-old error of pietistic pragmatism, whereby a thing becomes good if it works. I am placed in a position of direct, living epistle, one-to-one witness, with truth, not beauty as my reference point.… I am totally convinced of the sincerity of those who founded Witness Art, but I believe them to be in error. How good it would be to know that a magazine with the perspective you claim to have, along with an informed staff, could actually guide, even teach, a customer. This could indeed lead you from Witness Art to the art of witness.

HAROLD M. BEST

Director

Wheaton Conservatory of Music

Wheaton, Ill.

Some Savings

There were four advertisements in the September 26 issue that were risible or offensive, notably “Soul winning ways. Complete instructions and materials, Sample kit $2.95 postpaid. Satisfaction guaranteed” How many souls will the $2.95 sample save? Any discount for quantity? Any saving on jumbo size?

St. Andrews, Scotland J.

D. DOUGLAS

A Degree From Pike’S Peak

The news story by Joseph M. Hopkins, “The Word and The Way According to Victor Wierwille” (Sept. 26) was quite informative and interesting. However, the reader is left with the erroneous impression that Dr. Victor Wierwille, founder and head of The Way, received his “doctorate in theology” from Princeton Seminary, which granted him a master’s degree. He obtained the doctorate from Pikes Peak Bible Seminary in Manitou Springs, Colorado, in 1948, according to The Way’s press spokesman.

In a letter from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, a state official says that Pikes Peak seminary had no resident instruction, no published list of faculty, and no accreditation, and no agency of government supervised it. It offered its degree programs by “extramural” methods, involving the sending of book reviews and papers by mail. The degrees, the official says, have no status except with the institution that conferred them.

The institution itself, say state authorities, consisted only of a single residence that doubled as the headquarters of the operation. Pikes Peak changed its name several times after its incorporation in 1927. Following the death of its president, Fred E. Stemme, in 1965, it became Colorado Bible College and Seminary. In 1969 it was moved to Chicago under a new name, Evangelical Bible College and Seminary.

HERBERT DIAMOND

New York, N. Y.

What Makes Marriage?

Though M. N. Beck’s “The Bed Undefiled” (Oct. 10) takes a much-needed “high” view of sexuality, it is, I believe, thoroughly wrong in suggesting that sexual intercourse makes a marriage.… The basis for marriage is, as Beck asserts, Genesis 2:24, a verse repeated by Jesus and Paul. Beck’s eyes jump over a rather important phrase—a man shall “leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife.” This precedes “and the two shall become one flesh.” What does it mean to “leave father and mother” to “cleave to a wife”? In a primitive society leaving home is a public act recognized by society; it asserts legal and emotional independence from the past, and a commitment to a new family.… Cleaving, I think, implies consistent, permanent love (though not necessarily romantic).… That sex is transcendent, and not simply an appetite, is something we ought to affirm. But to suggest that it is the sole basis of an eternally binding relationship is highly questionable. If the Church preaches this to the millions of young people who have had sexual intercourse with one or more partners (a third to a half of all fifteen-year-olds, according to the Sorensen Report), we will reap mass confusion.

TIM STAFFORD

Senior Editor

Campus Life

Wheaton, Ill.

Charismatic Cleavage

I have been a reasonably faithful reader and strong advocate of CHRISTIANITY TODAY for over ten years, since seminary days when due to someone’s generosity we received it free. Particularly, with scarce exception, have I enjoyed the “News” section. The 1972 Munich report of the unified Christian witness at the Olympic Games was a masterpiece.

Thus I find it hard to accept that the same magazine and the same reporter could be responsible for the lead news article in the October 10 issue: “The Deepening Rift in the Charismatic Movement.”

I am disappointed for several reasons. I believe that the title itself is exaggerated. It suggests a cleavage far greater than actually exists. Whole areas of the charismatic movement don’t even know a problem exists. Secondly, while to ignore a problem is spiritually and journalistically foolish, it doesn’t have to be couched in such negative language (both the title and the article). And thirdly, to take a negative, exaggerated title, and run it as a lead item on the front cover leaves a very unfavorable impression I question making such a heavy emphasis on Mumford. If there is any one truth heard loud and clear from Fort Lauderdale it is plurality of eldership.

Having heard and read the teachings of the men associated with Christian Growth ministries, I am even inclined to question the accuracy of some of the statements made in the article.

ROBERT T. WILBUR

Bushnell Presbyterian Church

Bushnell, Fla.

Force For The State

Those of us who come from the Anabaptist heritage are happy to see an article on Anabaptism appear in your excellent [periodical, CHRISTIANITY TODAY], Lester DeKoster’s article entitled “Anabaptism at 450: A Challenge, A Warning” (Oct. 24) is well written and enlightening at several places.… The author seems, however, to fail to distinguish between “pacifism” and “non-resistance” when he says, “It is imperative for the modern world to perceive that the alternative to violence is not pacifism but the legitimate exercise of force. Until, for example, terrorism becomes a capital offense, terrorists will force the release.…” The Anabaptists have always admitted that the state must use force to maintain order in an unregenerate society, but what the Anabaptist insisted upon was that the follower of Christ did not resist evil, for his Master admonishes that he turn the other cheek. The Anabaptist recognized that the representative of the state “beareth not the sword in vain,” but in Anabaptist thought there is a strict separation of church and state, and the church cannot participate in violence.

HAROLD S. MARTIN

York, Pa.

The Aura Of Hermann Hesse

In Part I the author named three elements in the writing of Hesse (1877–1962) that are “significant for any attempt to understand Hesse’s appeal and what it can tell us about those to whom he appeals: (1) a repudiation of religious particularity while exalting “the religious”; (2) an idealization of authority, tradition, and the elite; (3) a virtually total lack of credible, meaningful women”

1. Hesse, as the child of a pietistic house, grew up in the the Swabian-Swiss-Allemannic milieu that fostered the Basel Mission but also the skepticism of von Orelli and the nihilism of Nietzsche. His comments on religion are typical of the enlightened, tolerant, mundane European intellectual who has “progressed” beyond hostility:

One religion is about as good as another. There is not one in which one could not become wise, and not one which could not also be practiced as the stupidest idol-worship. But almost all the real knowledge of mankind is gathered in the religions, particularly in mythologies. Every mythology is “false” if we consider it in any other way than piously; but each is a key to the heart of the world. Each one knows ways to make the idolatry of the self over into the worship of God [Lekture, 1952, p. 93].

The wisdom of all peoples is one and the same; there are not two or more, there is only one. The only thing that I have to criticize in religions and churches is their tendency to intolerance: neither the Christian nor the Mohammedan would be willing to concede that his faith is only good and holy, and not privileged and patented, but rather a brother to all of the other forms of faith in which truth tries to make itself visible. [Letters, (posthumous).]

“I do not think it most important what faith a man has, as that he have one,” he said elsewhere. Characteristic of Hesse, then, is an emphasis on form and attitude apart from specific content. He admires the spirit of all religion but not the doctrine of any one. And insofar as biblical Christianity is based on a unique and essential series of once-for-all events in history, and is communicated by the presentation of these as true history, Hesse’s attitude, like the tolerance of Hinduism, is for all its apparent mildness a ferocious attack on the Gospel and its proclamation. Even his Siddhartha removes the specific content from Buddhism.

Some years ago, when science and a kind of uncritical veneration of science seemed to dominate the Western intellectual world, Francis Schaeffer predicted that the last third of the twentieth century would be an age of “contentless mysticism.” Hesse, whose tremendous posthumous rise in mass popularity falls in this period, is a perfect illustration of the truth of Schaeffer’s prophecy.

2. The idealization of authority, tradition, and a highly disciplined, intellectually rigorous, arbitrarily selected elite is so characteristic of Hesse’s writing that it is extremely difficult to understand his appeal to a generation that appears to go beyond its immediate predecessor in repudiating all these things.

Hesse is in this respect the absolute opposite of Marcuse and revolutionary radicalism. This emphasis is the most important message of his work as a whole. Perhaps the first of his works to achieve wide popularity in the United States, Steppenwolf (1927), chronicles the disintegration of the inner values of bourgeois, individualistic man, despair over his loss of faith and the cult of individualism that repudiates the things of the spirit and takes refuge in the sensual. The possibility that the chaos it portrays can be overcome by a recovery of contact with underlying spiritual and cosmic being is only suggested.

Steppenwolf seems rather anachronistically placed in Hesse’s work between Siddhartha and Journey to the East (1932). It is as though Siddhartha had been received as a lovely but irrelevant legend, and Hesse reacted in Steppenwolf by showing the bankruptcy and inner disintegration of bourgeois individualism. Then, in Journey, with its pilgrimage motif, he proposes a physical as well as a spiritual journey to recover in the Morning Land what has been lost in “the decline of the West.” The Morgenlandfahrt is thus one attempt to answer Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlands (Decline of the West, 1918).

Hesse, who became a Swiss citizen in 1924, repudiated the national-racist-militaristic elitism of a segment of the German literary world (e.g., Stefan George, 1868–1933), later taken over and perverted by the Nazis. But nevertheless his own writing contains a “militaristic” strain; the “order” of both the Journey and the Glass Bead Game (1943) is more reminiscent of a crusading knightly order than of a contemplative one. Significantly, the “Ordensgedanke,” the concept of the “order,” is never justified, as the establishment of the actual monastic and military orders was, with reference to a specific content of faith: it is, one might say, mission without message. (The German word. Sendung, one translation of which is “mission,” carries with it the concept of high purpose and authorization, but lacks the association or the proclamation of a message, i.e., the Gospel, that is associated with the more specifically Christian term Mission in German.)

The order and the journey of the Morgenlandfahrt are placed in a kind of timeless setting that could be the Middle Ages. (There is virtually no reference to modern technology or its products in Hesse.) Yet explicit mention is made of “Wilson’s betrayal of the democratic world vision.”

The themes of order, self-discipline, and the quest for wisdom, ending in momentary failure but with the promise of a continuation of the quest in Morgenlandfahrt (1932), are taken up again in Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game, also published as Magister Ludi in English, 1943). Here we have the themes of an order with a system of elite schools existing parallel to ordinary society and having very few contacts with it. The “elite pupils,” some of whom will later become players in the glass bead game, are chosen by an unnamed authority that determines virtually every detail of their future life.

In one respect, this parallels the dreadful vision of Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), with the significant exception that in The Glass Bead Game, the authority, while unquestionable, is benevolent. The reason for the existence of the order and the game is to preserve a kind of intellectual heritage in the “age of the mass media” (Hesse used another expression, as this was not yet in vogue, but it seems to represent exactly what he detested), and he explicitly compares it to the work of the “Roman church in its mightiest epochs.” But from Catholicism he takes only the form, the discipline, and the idea of a militant, obedient order, not the content—in the same paragraph he mentions the Chinese and Socrates as models.

While some of the intellectual elite of The Glass Bead Game devote an entire life to one or another question of history or philology that, while obscure, might seem to have some recognizable value, the glass bead game itself, never explained or defined, is a kind of higher degree of abstract intellectual knowledge, discipline, and skill for its own sake—the art of preservation, transmission and improvisation carried to an incredibly high pitch.

The Glass Bead Game is seen as an attack on the degradation of values, tradition, and authority represented by Nazism. Yet many of its institutions parallel those of Nazism—the S.S. was an “order,” and the Nazis established Napolis (Nationalsozialistische Politische Erziehungsinstitute, National Socialist Political Education Institutes, of which Hesse’s elite schools might seem a transfiguration). Hesse seems to be telling us, “Yes, but not thus!” And this may be the message of his popularity among the modern generation: not a repudiation of authority, tradition, and discipline, but a repudiation of that which exists in favor of an ideal drawn from chivalry or the East.

The difficulty is that Hesse has only tried to change the tone, or at most the total attitude of institutions, but has not gotten to the spiritual source from which this authority, tradition, and discipline are to be drawn. Perhaps as a child of the nineteenth century he felt the medieval European Christian heritage so strongly that he did not recognize that his appeal would strike a later generation as the call to rebuild empty forms and windowless buildings. One can no longer appeal to “tradition” beacause all content is lost: today there must be an explicit definition of the content of “tradition,” just as the Gospel needed to be preached clearly and in some detail in the Roman Empire’s melting-pot of races, religions, cultures, and philosophies.

Hesse detested Hitler’s perversion of his elite ideal (and so did Stefan George, whose work provided more models for the Nazis). But he does not offer us, with his appeal to preserve form, any greater hope than Marcuse with his frenzy for the destruction of form. Form is important to preserve meaning, but form without content is a mockery of meaning.

3. The absence of real women in Hesse is striking both in itself and in the light of his popularity in our own age, supposedly an era of the rediscovery of the personhood of women. According to Hans Schwerte, Hesse is characterized by the “tension between the spirit of the father and the realm of the mother.” Schwerte goes on to say:

The guideword for the “new man” is: Man’s true calling is to come to himself! But in coming to himself he “descends into a primeval interwovenness.” It is the discovery of the protective primitive-maternal nature of all creaturely being, a return to early mysteries of light and darkness, spirit and nature [Der Weg ins zwanzigste Jahrhundert,” in Annalen der deutschen Literatur, 808].

The (male) pilgrims find their way to certain unspecified order and meaningfulness, and en route are helped by female figures who are symbols of the womanly rather than real persons (in Demian, the woman is named Eve). Even the males, though portrayed in much more detail, are drawn so simply and with such unnatural singleness of character that they too must strike us as symbols rather than as people.

No doubt many different conclusions could be drawn from the lack of real women in Hesse. I suspect that it is not that he did not encounter individual women or think of them as persons (after all, he was married thrice), but because his whole literary work is a repudiation of the historical, particular, individual, in the direction of forms, symbols, and types. Not the particular Gospel, but “religion”; not Dominicans, Franciscans, or even the Knights of the Cross, but “the order”; not real women, but symbolic figures; not even real men, but types.

Hesse’s “solution” to the disintegration of values in the modern world, to the extent that he offers one, is milder than Marcuse’s, and it does not involve compulsion, repression, and terror. But it is really only the image of a solution: he shows the forms that could preserve values, but not the values to be cherished and preserved. Even his people are only symbols. If we were to attempt to draw a political method from his art, we would perpetuate the same type of problem that is characteristic of Marxism: forcing individual human beings into conformity with inhuman abstractions. In the case of Marxism, the abstractions are starkly inhuman; in the case of Hesse, they are rich, traditional, familiar symbols, but still abstractions.

From Hesse’s popularity, then, we may draw the conclusion that much of the rejection of “traditional values” in society today is precisely not a rejection of the idea of authority, tradition, or form, but of their alienation. And the social answer to this form of criticism will lie neither in further dismantling the institutions and values that still exist, nor in reinforcing the forms, but in rediscovering the content.

Nothing substantial can be built on Hesse’s vision, but perhaps the persistent, nostalgic appeal of his quest motif to modern Americans will encourage us to a clearer, more distinct, and harmonious presentation of the Gospel, of the truth of which all Hesse’s fond mythologies are at best distorted memories or pale reflections.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN

Harold O. J. Brown is the associate editor of the Human Life Review, Washington, DC.

Newly Pressed

Hidden Manna, Merv and Merla (Catacombs Productions Ltd. [Box 236, Don Mills, p.o., Ontario, Canada, m3c 2s2]; CPL 1002). All the songs in this fine album were written by this talented husband-and-wife team. Although both are Gentiles, they write music with an authentic Hebrew sound. Most of the lyrics come from the Old Testament, primarily the Psalms. Merla plays, among other instruments, violin, viola, and piano, Merv classical guitar, accordion, and percussion. Both have pleasing, well-trained voices. The color of Merla’s voice in particular is well suited to the haunting, lyrical quality of Jewish music. “Hidden Manna” and “Unto the Hills” show the two at their best. From the cover, a banner, “Miriam,” in purple, red, and gold, to the sensitive performances on the record, the album reflects artistry coupled with spiritual reality.

Chuck Girard (Good News Records [8319 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, Calif. 91605; distributed by Myrrh Records]; GNR-8102). This is the first solo album from a former Love Song member, and a good effort. But if I were to choose between Hidden Manna and Chuck Girard, the former would get my money. Much of Girard’s music is standard pop rock. “Tinagera,” for example, sounds no different from half a dozen love ballads popular during the sixties. “Galilee” is the best cut on the album.

CHERYL FORBES

One of the very few modern writers who have discussed in English the Protestant religious history of Strasbourg was struck by its anti-ecumenicity. Franklin L. Ford contrasts the “broad humanity” of the first-generation Reformers there (Martin Bucer in particular, who attempted an amalgam of Luther and Calvin) with “the tightlipped orthodoxy” of the Strasbourg religious establishment in the later sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth century: “the population remaining in the city, once the Judentor was closed for the night, was all Christian and overwhelmingly Lutheran” (Strasbourg in Transition, Harvard University Press, 1958, p. 18).

But the capital city of the Alsace, on the French-German Rhenish border, was too centrally located to remain uninfluenced by diversity. Today Strasbourg, the seat of the Council of Europe, the Common Market, and the European Court of Human Rights, seems an inevitable choice for ecumenical activity. The Lutheran World Federation maintains there its Institute for Ecumenical Research, under the direction of Vilmos Vajta, a transplanted Scandinavian who knows little French but who energetically uses his German and English to promote ecumenical endeavor. Vajta has personally displayed admirable Reformation scholarship; his book, Luther on Worship, is the finest modern treatment of the Reformer’s liturgical convictions. But in more recent years he has edited a number of Augsburg and Fortress Press volumes of theological essays whose loose views of the consistency and reliability of Holy Writ would have caused Luther to throw his proverbial inkwell (The Gospel and Unity; The Gospel and Human Destiny; The Gospel and the Ambiguity of the Church; The Gospel as History).

In July, the LWF’s Ecumenical Institute brought together some fifty theologians and pastors—from as far as South America, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia—for its Ninth International Ecumenical Seminar, under the significant but hardly fetching title, “New Transdenominational Movements: Their Ecclesiological and Ecumenical Significance.” Normally I would have found it difficult to pry myself loose from the glories of the Alsatian countryside for such a conference, but this one was unique: by “transdenominational movements” Vajta meant the broad theological trends in the present church picture—more especially, the evangelical movement and the social-actionists. Here, finally, was recognition on the continent that evangelical vs. non-evangelical belief could be of greater ecumenical significance than ecclesiastical structures and denominational barriers.

The opening essay was devoted expressly to the evangelical position. Gordon Landreth delivered it in his capacity as general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance (London). Inevitably the paper began with personal testimony, but (fortunately) it soon proceeded to set forth a clear and winning statement of what evangelicals stand for: the Gospel, the Scriptures, and personal commitment to Christ. “We see ourselves,” emphasized Landreth, “as in the line of Augustine, of Luther and Calvin, of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley in the English Reformation, of the Puritans, of Wesley and Whitefield.” Landreth noted the impact of evangelical witness both on foreign missions and on social concern, reminding his audience of the dynamic influence of Billy Graham, the Berlin Congress on Evangelism in 1966, and last year’s Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne (Landreth saw to it that the Lausanne Covenant was distributed to each of the participants at Strasbourg).

As a survey of what the evangelical position is, Landreth’s paper could not be faulted. Unhappily, as is usually the case in our circles, the essay was essentially a testimony, not a theological justification or an apologia for the evangelical stand. Landreth could not speak as a trained theologian (before serving the Evangelical Alliance he was with the English Inter-Varsity; before that, he was a British Colonial Service officer in Africa); and the result was that his contribution seemed less sophisticated and compelling than it might have been.

Fortunately, other contributors who shared Landreth’s biblical perspective were able to supplement his efforts. Andre Birmele of the Ecumenical Institute staff did a superlative critique of “action-centered Christianity”—the secular, political, revolutionary theology that “no longer bases its faith and actions fundamentally in the completed act of salvation by God in the world but expects salvation as a result of the actions of men, which represent the dead, absent, or non-existent God.” Birmelé struck powerfully at the loss of the reality of sin and of any serious Christology in such a viewpoint: “Would it not be more correct to talk simply of ‘Jesuology’?” He observed that in action-centered theologians like D. Solle the Scriptures are reduced to “giving pointers for building another world”: they are demythologized—not on a Heideggerian, existential basis as with Bultmann but on a Marxist, political, revolutionary model. In this endeavor to “demythologize them from the standpoint of modern history, so that their political intentions can be more clearly set out,” biblical reality is “bypassed” and theology “misses its goal.”

Johannes Hempel, an East German Lutheran pastor from Dresden, contributed a paper on “The Role and Function of the Ministry in a Changing Church and Society”; it well demonstrated that persecution and difficulty can act as a refiner’s fire. Against the backdrop of the lofty biblical conception of the ministry set forth in the Augsburg Confession, Hempel noted “the simply impossible diversity and multiplicity of the pastor’s duties today and the expectations made of him”; in light of this, the confessions should establish for the pastor “a catalog of priorities,” so that he will not waste his ministry on unscriptural goals. “The pastor as the ultimately responsible person [in the parish] is the last man who can exempt himself from his work on behalf of the credibility of the Gospel and Christian existence; his personal welfare should come second to this.”

At least one of the concluding discussion-group reports betrayed discomfort at the high standard of biblical orthodoxy in an impressive number of the conference contributions. The report rang the changes on the theme which (in my judgment) is the most fundamental fallacy in non-evangelical biblical scholarship and church life: “The New Testament testifies of diverse christologies and diverse types of primitive Christian communities at the heart of the Church itself.… The Churches have for their essential mission to offer a place of dialog … whereby one can avoid absolutizing the choices.” But the absolute need to confess the biblical Christ came through loud and clear at Strasbourg anyway—praise to the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

To help those who want to consider attending an evangelical college, we have compiled a partial list of such colleges together with some information that they supplied. The chart can serve as a starting point. More information on the particular schools that interest you is essential. For a convenient way to get it, see page 27. Don’t hesitate to ask all sorts of questions of colleges you are considering. For example, if you’re interested in a pre-med program it is not enough to know that a particular college has one. Ask questions like, How many recent grads have been accepted for medical school?

All the liberal-arts colleges require Bible courses and offer majors in that field. In the chart we have listed some of the other majors to indicate the range. Combinations of majors and majors in subdivisions of a field are almost always available. Cooperative programs with secular schools, especially in technical fields, are increasing rapidly.

Beware! The costs of college include not only the fixed charges listed in the chart but such variables as travel. Find out about the availability of scholarships, loans, and part-time jobs.

We have omitted the liberal-arts colleges associated with Seventh-day Adventists, non-instrumental Churches of Christ, Church of the Brethren, Lutherans, and Southern Baptists. These groups are conservative Protestants. However, many of their colleges are so oriented toward denominational distinctives that others would feel uncomfortable. Some of them are no longer sectarian but have become too pervaded, in our judgment, by non-evangelical views of the Bible, theology, and ethics. Others of them are, however, as evangelical as those that are listed.

We have also omitted evangelical colleges that are neither regionally accredited nor recognized candidates, and we have omitted two-year colleges. There was no charge fm a college to be listed.

The Bible-colleges chart includes all full members and candidates (but not applicants) of the American Association of Bible Colleges, the only properly recognized agency in the field. Note that many Bible colleges offer two years of transferrable liberal-arts courses. Many have special one-year Bible-study programs. In addition to general Bible, most offer special emphases in pastoring, Christian education, and missions. Other emphases, if any, are indicated.

By the time this issue arrives in subscribers’ mailboxes I’ll be on the Mediterranean. My wife and I will revisit some of the cities where Paul preached and the sites of the seven churches of the Apocalypse.

I never fail to thrill at the ruins of Ephesus. I can see Paul engaged in spiritual battle with Demetrius, a silversmith, whose statues of Artemis brought him great gain. I can almost see the huge multitudes gathered in the theater shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” But greater was Jesus Christ, the crucified one, for here in Ephesus a church was formed.

I hear the final obituary penned by John in the Revelation as he spoke the words of Jesus: “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:4). Judgment fell. The church and the city disappeared. All remains are the ruins—an abiding testimony that God removes the lampstand even of churches if they refuse to repent.

The silver was mostly on paper as the National Council of Churches celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary last month.

The low-key birthday observance took the form of a governing-board meeting that was generally business as usual except for passage of a food pronouncement favored by its new president. The New York City sessions were unusual in that the board performed for the first time some of the functions formerly handled by a large general assembly, including the election of officers. The council’s assembly was eliminated in constitutional changes effected three years ago.

Heading the triennial 1976–78 slate is the new president, William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, a leader in the council since he left his law practice for the UPC post. Reelected general secretary was Claire Randall, also a United Presbyterian.

Only 168 of the nearly 300 eligible members of the board were on hand for the streamlined business meeting. The nominating committee’s slate of officers was unopposed, so the group was elected unanimously. Only one vote was counted during the three-day sessions, and the total number recorded was only 110.

Under the NCC formula that determines the size of denominational delegations on the board (using such factors as communicant strength and financial contributions to the council), an even smaller number of people will be eligible to attend during the next three years.

Thompson has no intention of presiding over the last rites of the body, however. He is optimistic that the member churches consider it an integral part of their work as well as a leader for them.

Thompson told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that he looks upon his election to the presidency as a sign of that interest among denominational leaders. In council terminology he is a “chief executive of communion,” and he is the first such top officer of a denomination to be president since 1963–66, when the post was held by Reuben H. Mueller, then senior bishop of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. Thompson disclosed that before accepting the nomination he consulted with several other “heads of communions” and was encouraged by them to take the post.

In his inaugural address at a closing worship service, Thompson pointed to a council that will take an increasingly active role in national affairs. He said, “I suggest to you that the churches of America, as the inheritors of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, have a contribution to make in this Bicentennial year. Taken together, the members of these churches are the citizens most likely to be sensitive to the demands of moral principle. What is needed today is for these members of the churches to hear a clear voice calling them to practice that ethic in public and in private.” He specified that the council should provide the leadership.

While speaking out strongly on the prophetic role, Thompson told an interviewer that he also thinks the council should be prepared to “undertake what the denominations want.” His predecessor in the top NCC post, Sterling Cary, a United Church of Christ regional executive, had been emphatic in his call for continued council activism. Cary, the council’s first black president, said in a keynote speech, “Our NCC instrument must never exclusively see its role as a facilitator for denominational programming. We dare not become slaves of denominations. We are called to be prophetic, constantly urging constituencies to be faithful servants of Him who seeks to liberate humanity from the powers and principalities of darkness.”

Thompson indicated no disagreement with Cary’s position and added that the council had always worked with the tension of both leading and following the churches.

Asked about council emphases in the area of evangelism, he suggested that at this point the NCC would probably follow the churches. If member denominations increase the appropriations for work in this field, then the council will increase its program and staff, he said. Likewise, he added, if there is any shift in doctrinal emphasis on evangelism in member churches, it will be reflected in what the council does in this area.

Thompson said he believes the council must also have “its own life” so that it can function in some situations without awaiting denominational impetus. This would apply in the area of program as well as in public pronouncements, he explained.

Only one document with the status of a policy statement was passed, and it was on hunger. Ordinarily a policy statement must be given a first reading at one board meeting and then passed six months later at a second. The period between is designed to give member churches an opportunity to study and comment on the proposal. The first reading was eliminated for “Human Hunger and the World Food Crisis,” and an extraordinary procedure was adopted that requires only that it be mailed ahead of time to members of the board. The eighteen-page document calls for transformation of the means of production and distribution without an outright condemnation of the capitalistic system. The board heard, but was not asked to approve at this meeting, the frankly anti-capitalistic statement on hunger adopted at a Wisconsin consultation in September. There was practically no debate on the substantive issues when the longer document reached the board floor, and the vote for it was 108 in favor, one opposed, and one abstaining.

Thompson told a reporter that he thought the ordinary procedure for requiring the second reading on policy statements should not be “collapsed” except in urgent matters, but he indicated that he considered the hunger statement urgent.

Resolutions on several current topics were passed. Among other things, the resolutions: asked the United States to negotiate a new Panama Canal treaty with Panama; asked the Senate not to ratify the June Marianas Islands commonwealth referendum; called for a study of U.S. “complicity” in torture worldwide; urged leaders of the United States and the United Nations to seek the Kremlin’s release of two dissidents; and appealed to Chile to readmit activist Lutheran bishop Helmut Frenz from Europe.

The board approved a 1976 budget of $18.7 million, reflecting an anticipated income drop of about $1 million from the 1975 figure.

Climaxing the weekend meeting was a banquet honoring former presidents and former general secretaries. Among the six former presidents attending was the first, Henry Knox Sherrill. He was the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church when the council was organized in 1950.

During the anniversary meeting, little was said of the Federal Council of Churches or other predecessor organizations, but they were mentioned in a 128-page “unofficial history” bound in silver-colored paper and distributed at the banquet.

Commercial Cleanser Down The Drain

An attempt by the United Presbyterian Church to change the image of women in Proctor & Gamble advertising was swamped by an overwhelming “tide” of opposition last month at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Cincinnati, home of the giant corporation.

The church leaders, who had charged P & G with depicting women as “housekeepers, mothers, and sex objects” in TV commercials and magazine ads, left town with little to “cheer” about. Their resolution calling for a detailed report on ways in which P & G advertising “portrays and utilizes” women received 2.3 per cent (1.3 million) of the total shares voted. The UPC owns 70,594 shares of P & G stock.

The action by the national church agitated many local Presbyterians. The session (board of elders) of the prestigious Seventh Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati in a special meeting denounced the national body’s “intrusion” into P & G affairs. The session resolution called the action “a deplorable abuse of trust.” Lauding P & G for its contributions to the city “and to our own church,” the elders instructed their own treasurer to vote shares owned by Seventh Presbyterian against the resolution supported by UPC headquarters.

More than 300 persons attended the shareholders’ meeting in Proctor and Gamble’s soap-shaped building downtown while fifty persons from the National Organization for Women picketed in support of the Presbyterian resolution.

Arguments in support of the resolution were countered by “salvo” after salvo from many of the older Presbyterian stockholders. They accused the resolution backers of trying to destroy the Presbyterian Church, P & G, and American industry.

One woman stockholder questioned why any woman would be “ashamed of being depicted as a homemaker,” and she suggested that “if we had more good homemakers in their homes we might cut down on some of this crime that is going on.”

Denominational spokesman Robert C. Lamar said his church “in no way devalues the role of housewife or homemaker, but vast numbers of women are neither mothers nor housewives, and millions of women who are know that [these] roles … do not limit or give primary definition to their lives.”

Howard Riegler, a member of Silver-wood Presbyterian Church in suburban Kenwood, commended P & G for “an outstanding job” and said he “would like to see our people do as good a job in the religious field.”

The founders of Proctor and Gamble were churchmen and philanthropists. Harley Proctor was sitting in his pew in Cincinnati’s Episcopal Church of our Saviour on a Sunday in 1879 mulling over what to name a new soap that floated. The minister was reading a passage from the Psalms that included the phrase “out of the ivory palaces.” That, so the story goes, is how Ivory soap got its name from “on high” and it has been floating ever since.

JAMES L. ADAMS

Religion In Transit

Contrary to some rumors, elimination of tax-deductible contributions to churches is not on the agenda of the present Congress. That is the word from Chairman Al Ullman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Committee member James C. Corman adds that proposed tax reforms will not alter current laws allowing gifts of appreciated property to charitable institutions to be deducted at their appreciated value. Also to remain unchanged, he says, is the provision allowing ordained ministers tax-free use of church-owned parsonages.

A group of actors and producers intends to file suit challenging the legality of the so-called “family viewing hour” under which the three major networks and their affiliates reserve the hours from 7 to 9 P.M. for programs suitable for general family viewing. The group maintains that the family hour idea originated with the Federal Communications Commission and is thus a form of government-imposed censorship. The family rule has “drastically curtailed the free flow of ideas and expressions on television and is stifling the creativity of many artists,” the critics argue.

More than 800 women were expected to attend a conference in Detroit this month on the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood, a cause gaining in popularity in Catholic circles. Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati, the president of the U. S. Catholic bishops, cited the duty of church leaders “not to seem to encourage unreasonable hopes and expectations, even by their silence.” Therefore, said he, “I am obliged to restate the church’s teaching that women are not to be ordained to the priesthood.” A serious theological obstacle stands in the way, he stated.

President Dallin H. Oaks of 23,000-student Brigham Young University says the Mormon school will not follow some of the new federal regulations regarding equal opportunity for men and women in the nation’s schools because they are unconstitutional or illegal. For example, he asserts, BYU will continue to enforce dress and grooming codes that differ for the sexes. And it will oppose a regulation prohibiting inquiries into the sexual behavior (including abortions) of students and employees. “Where [such] an inquiry or action … may be necessary to create or enforce the moral climate we desire at BYU,” asserts Oaks, “we will disregard any contrary requirements of the regulations.”

James P. Wesberry, 69, pastor emeritus of Morningside Baptist Church in Atlanta, was named to succeed the retiring Marion G. Bradwell, an Atlanta Presbyterian, as executive director of the Lord’s Day Alliance. The interdenominational Alliance was organized in 1888 to support “the institution of the Lord’s Day as a day of unique religious significance.”

Geologists at the University of Miami believe they have found evidence of a rise in the worldwide sea level some 10,500 years ago that would account for widespread stories of a prehistoric flood. Their conclusions were published in a recent issue of Science magazine. They think a huge ice cap suddenly melted, raising the ocean level between fifteen and thirty feet.

Personalia

Episcopal clergyman Edward I. Swanson is the new executive secretary of the General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel, the principal interchurch agency involved in military-related ministries. The commission’s former communications director, Swanson replaces A. Ray Appelquist, who has joined the staff of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches.

K. Duane Hurley was appointed executive secretary of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, which has some sixty churches with a total membership of 5,200. A former president of Salem College in West Virginia, Hurley succeeds Alton L. Wheeler, who has returned to a California pastorate.

Ruth Bell Graham, wife of the famed evangelist, was elected trustee of Wheaton College, the first woman board member in the school’s 115-year history.

President Lyle Hillegas of Westmont College resigned on the eve of the October meeting of the college board.

World Scene

Officials of the World Council of Churches say their $5 million goal for reconstruction and reconciliation efforts in Indochina has been fully subscribed during the last three years along with a special $500,000 appeal. Hospitals and schools have been rebuilt, slum health ministries have been provided, and fields have been replanted. Some $2 million is now on hand, and it will be spent according to “the priorities set by the people in the area,” say the WCC officers. The WCC program has the approval of the governments of Laos and North and South Viet Nam.

The inauguration of the Church of Sri Lanka on November 16 concludes thirty years of union negotiations involving the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches, the Church of Lanka (Anglican), and the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India. The bishops of the new church are the three Anglican bishops plus the presidents of the Methodist and Baptist churches.

Two left-of-center Catholic organizations in Colombia called on the Colombian government and the Catholic Church to expel Jesuit sociologist Roger Vekemens for allegedly being involved with CIA endeavors in Latin America and for blocking development of liberation theology on the continent. Vekemens, an advisor to the Bogota-based Latin America bishops’ conference and director of a conservative research center in Bogota, was linked in recent news accounts to CIA funded activity against Salvador Allende, the late Marxist president of Chile (see October 10 issue, page 62). Vekemens denies the links.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Korea issued a major statement that opposes Communism, refuses to “dichotomize … individual salvation and social salvation,” denounces Korean church leaders who accuse the World Council of Churches of being Communist, and serves notice that any oppressive leader or system will be resisted.

News from Romania: church leaders are appealing for funds to repair or rebuild scores of churches damaged by summer floods; the government has approved a program of cooperation in religious affairs between Israel and Jewish communities in Romania, the first such agreement with a Communist nation; authorities have launched an all-out campaign against alcoholism, will close 2,000 establishments by next year; Jehovah’s Witnesses are the objects of intense religious persecution; and Pentecostal worker Vasile Rascol reportedly has been released from prison after serving fifteen months for distributing Bibles (See November 22, 1974, issue, page 52).

The Uruguayan government has banned publication of a national pastoral letter issued by Uruguay’s Catholic bishops. The letter makes a strong plea for amnesty for political prisoners and a halt to repression of civil and human rights. A military coup in 1973 resulted in the dissolution of the national congress and the banning of leftist political parties. Since then, some church leaders and Catholic publications have been harassed.

The Arabs are pushing religion. A group of Muslim broadcasters recently launched a global broadcasting campaign to spread the Islamic faith. And in Libya, a tax-supported Islamic center with a $20 million budget is directing propagation of the faith in thirty-five other countries.

Church authorities in North East India say that a wave of religious persecution against Christians has subsided and that many refugees have returned to their homes in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

DEATHS

GRANVILLE GAYLORD BENNETT, 92, retired Episcopal bishop; in Barrington, Rhode Island.

PHILIP CARRINGTON, 83, New Zealand-born former Anglican archbishop of Quebec; in Little Somerford, England.

G. BEAUCHAMP VICK, 74, president of Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, former pastor of the large Temple Baptist Church of Detroit; in Springfield, of a heart attack.