Portugal’s rich west African colony of Angola, with a population of about six million, is supposed to get its independence November 11, but no one is prepared to say what kind of freedom will prevail.

Elections had been scheduled before independence day, but three warring parties have prevented the establishment of enough civil order in most places to conduct them. Adding to the instability of the situation is the struggle for power in Portugal, which has ruled the colony for nearly 500 years.

The movements began their fights to “liberate” the country from Portugal about fifteen years ago, but with Portugal now more than anxious to bring its troops home, the three groups have turned to fighting one another. They have received considerable aid from other governments within Africa and elsewhere in the world. All three have also received funds from the World Council of Churches since 1970.

Portugal has reiterated its plan to give up the colony on November 11, and fighting has intensified as the date has drawn closer.

Protestants, estimated at 450,000, have been growing since Portugal announced its plan to leave the colony. Catholicism had always been favored by the colonial governments, and Protestants were often oppressed if not persecuted. The latest estimate of the Catholic population is three million.

One phenomenon in the current state of tangled affairs is that the leader of each of the three warring parties has come from the Protestant minority. Agostinho Neto, leader of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the group that holds Luanda, the capital, comes from a Methodist background. Heading the group in control of a large part of southern Angola is Jonas M. Savimbi, who graduated from a school started by American Congregationalists and United Church of Canada missionaries before he went to Switzerland to earn a doctorate. His organization is known as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The third group, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), is headed by Holden Roberto, a Baptist.

All three have received massive support from abroad. Each of the parties is subsidized and encouraged by different governments in Africa as well as by major powers outside that continent. MPLA, which has gained the upper hand in Luanda as well as in the coastal cities, has received tons of military supplies from the Soviet Union as well as moral support from Portuguese Communists. Much of its support has come through the capital of the Republic of the Congo, Brazzaville. It has received $78,000 from the World Council of Churches, the largest amount earmarked by the WCC for any Angolan group from its Program to Combat Racism.

UNITA, the group tied to southern tribesmen, has received only $37,500 from the World Council. Foreign government support for this group is harder to document, but it is thought that both the United States and Red China have sent aid. Savimbi, the leader, describes his position as “moderate socialist.”

FNLA, which has been strongest in the northern region of Angola, has been identified for years with the neighboring nation of Zaire, and much of its support has come through that country’s capital, Kinshasa. Red Chinese advisers to its troops have trained FNLA men in Kinshasa. Recent disclosures in Washington indicated that this group was the choice of the American intelligence community from as early as the John Kennedy presidency. FNLA has received $60,500 from the Program to Combat Racism, a WCC spokesman told CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

All three parties have sent representatives, including some church leaders, to the United Nations to present their cause. Presentations have also been made to North American and European church leaders by the Angolans.

How the churches would fare if any one of the three groups gets control of the country has been the subject of considerable speculation. One of the unresolved questions is whether the foreign nations and groups that have helped the liberation movements would have influence over their policies concerning churches and missions. Older missions, some of them working in Angola since 1880, have generally turned over leadership in the church to Angolans. Methodist, Baptist, Brethren, and Angolan United Church activity has for the most part been confined to comity areas that followed old tribal boundaries.

The fighting between the groups has cost the lives of thousands of Angolans and Portuguese. Among those recently reported killed was an Angolan Methodist minister.

Over 300,000 Portuguese were expected to be evacuated from the colony before the November 11 deadline. With their departure, the country is losing nearly all its professionals, managers, and technicians. Medical services are virtually non-existent; one report said Luanda did not have a single dentist.

The combination of stepped-up war and the sudden evacuation of Portuguese workers has also brought transportation and communications to a virtual standstill. Among the results has been widespread hunger and, in some areas, starvation. Efforts to move relief goods into the affected areas have been stymied at nearly every turn.

Secular and religious relief agencies tried in vain to ship material aid to Luanda. One missionary packed two suitcases of seeds and checked them onto his flight, but when he reached Luanda the bags could not be found. The only seeds left for him to pass on to believers to plant next season were the few packed in carry-on bags.

Ecumenical forces attempted to mount a coordinated relief program this year, and the National Council of Churches sent $5,000 through Church World Service to get it started. The program failed, however, and the WCC then responded to the need by sending $10,000 each to the Methodist, Baptist, and Central (United Church) communities for material aid.

Church World Service (CWS) sent a staff member to Lisbon to try to book space on the planes going to Angola to pick up European refugees. Before the internationally sponsored shuttles ceased in October it was able to ship two lots of medical supplies to Nova Lisboa. A CWS spokesman emphasized that his agency was trying to send relief to the needy in all three areas. In addition to sending the medicines into the south, it sent funds for the purchase of goods in Luanda, and aid was dispatched to the FNLA area through the Mennonite Central Committee.

The World Council of Churches’ relief arm approved a $400,000 “development program” for Angola in June, but during the first week of October the WCC reported that “recent events in Angola have made it impossible to implement this program.” Two WCC representatives were dispatched to Africa to study the possibility of further action.

Efforts to form a national council of churches have also been thwarted by the chaotic conditions in the country. At least two meetings scheduled by ecumenical leaders for this purpose have been postponed. Up to 40 per cent of the Protestants in the country are included in the bodies that would be expected to take part in such a council.

Participants returning to Angola from the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne led in the organization of an Association of Evangelicals last December. Affiliated bodies claim about 60 per cent of the Angolan Protestants.

While many missionaries left early in the last decade under pressure from the Portuguese, who accused them of aiding the guerrilla groups, others had been admitted in recent years. One expert estimated that earlier this year there were seventy-five Protestants (from Europe and Brazil as well as from North America), compared to about 1,100 Roman Catholics.

Most American citizens were evacuated this August on recommendation of the U. S. consul. A few stayed, notably about twenty with the Africa Evangelical Fellowship (formerly South Africa General Mission). AEF ordered its personnel to evacuate in October, but four involved in operation of a 250-bed hospital at Cavango chose to stay on the job. Three United Church of Canada medical missionaries remained at their posts in the UNIT A area after their colleagues departed. Also able to stay at least until the first of October were sixteen from the Evangelical Missionary Alliance of Switzerland. This is about half of its usual missionary force there. One Brethren couple from America was also reported remaining in mid-October.

MPLA forces jailed one AEF missionary for a week in October, and he was released only after intense diplomatic activity by U.S. and Portuguese officials. Another AEF man who attempted to assist him after he was put into prison was beaten by MPLA partisans and put under house arrest. After both were released they made immediate plans to leave the county.

At least four members of the Southern Baptist mission expected to return to Luanda for a sunrise service planned by Christians of the city for 6 A.M. on independence day.

Refugees have spilled across the borders into all the neighboring countries. The whites returning to Portugal are often penniless, and the Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund of Europe has mounted an aid program for them.

Captive Missionaries: Homeward Bound

When the big Communist offensive began in South Viet Nam’s central highlands last March, seven North American missionaries and a child were left stranded at Ban Me Thuot along with several other foreign civilians (see April 11 issue, page 31). They were interned in a prison camp, and for seven months an international campaign to secure their release got the silent treatment from Communist officials. Finally, Hanoi last month announced that foreign prisoners—including missionaries—would be released shortly, a report confirmed by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Mission officials immediately prepared a center in Bangkok to receive their personnel, who were expected to travel to Thailand’s capital by way of Vientiane, Laos, before proceeding home.

The missionaries taken in March are: Mr. and Mrs. Norman Johnson, both 39, of Hamilton, Ontario (Christian and Missionary Alliance); Richard and Lillian Phillips, 45 and 43, of Bloomington, Minnesota (CMA); Mrs. Betty Mitchell, 54, of Bly, Oregon (CMA); and John and Carolyn Miller and their six-year-old daughter LuAnne, of Allentown, Pennsylvania (Wycliffe Bible Translators).

There was still no word about the fate of three missionaries taken captive during the Tet Offensive in May, 1968, when a party of Viet Cong raided the CMA’s leprosarium at Ban Me Thuot. They are Mrs. Mitchell’s husband Archie, the hospital administrator; Dr. Ardell Vietti, a medical missionary; and Dan Gerber, a Mennonite assisting at the hospital.

Family Life Begins At Home

“I came to this Congress to learn something to improve my ministry; instead I’m learning that I need to improve my own marriage first.” Such sentiments were common among the 2,200 participants who assembled at St. Louis’s Chase-Park Plaza Hotel last month for the five-day Continental Congress on the Family.

The great majority of the conferees were married couples. Most husbands were parish ministers, denominational staffers, or in other forms of Christian work.

The Congress resulted from the initiative of J. Allan Petersen, an Omaha-based Christian and Missionary Alliance minister who has focused on marriage and family for many years through itinerant, non-denominational preaching and in writing and distributing a variety of marriage education materials. His organization is called Family Concern.

Petersen enlisted Gary Collins, author and professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, as program director. Senator Mark Hatfield agreed to serve as honorary chairman and to bring the opening address. A very diverse convening committee (from Calvinist counselor Jay Adams to Pentecostal leader Thomas Zimmerman) forecast the broad denominational representation at the Congress itself.

The announced purpose was to “call to the attention of our country and our Christian community the crucial problems facing the families … [and to] seek to develop the resources and strategies needed to provide positive help to families.” The actual achievement brought together Christians who know that family life, generally speaking, needs bolstering and are looking for ways and means to help.

Some of the best-known evangelical writers on the family were among those who addressed a plenary session (such as Howard Hendricks, Mark Lee, Bruce Narramore, Larry Richards, Letha Scanzoni, and Edith Schaeffer) or else one of the dozen simultaneous seminars held twice each afternoon (such as Larry Christenson, James Dobson, John Drakeford, Anthony Florio, Gladys Hunt, Dwight Small, and Norman Wright). Bill Gothard reportedly declined an invitation to speak because he has a policy against speaking at other people’s meetings. (For excerpts from prepared-in-advance speeches, see October 10 issue, page 43.)

Uncomfortable folding wooden chairs in the main auditorium and last minute room changes for the seminars were cheerfully endured because, said conferees repeatedly, what they heard was so worthwhile. For many the highlights were the interaction groups just before lunch where the same dozen or so people would gather each day to share insights, reactions, and feelings.

Especially noteworthy were two repeated emphasis: First, that pastors and other Christian leaders should spend more time with their families so they can better serve as examples to the flock. Second, that congregations should reexamine their well-developed programs for separate age and sex groups to be sure that equal or greater importance is attached to programs that bring families together.

Little was said by way of improving the family life of non-Christians; a right relationship to God was continually stressed as essential for truly healthy family life.

The role of the single person was duly noted along with the need for churches to be more affirmative and aggressive in their ministries to singles. Methods of counseling those preparing for marriage or with troubled marriages were presented in many of the afternoon seminars.

Petersen has plans for as many as eight regional family-life congresses throughout 1976.

The Congress passed no resolutions nor did it in any way set up a continuing body. Chaired by program director Collins, a small group representing various views prepared a five-page “affirmation on the family” which all participants received on registering, along with an invitation to suggest changes. About 10 per cent did so and the final document shows some modifications from the draft. Apparently the most difficult section concerned abortion. At first it stated that “the intentional killing of any innocent human being at any stage of development represents a violation of the sixth commandment,” but curiously, it also asserted that “abortion … is not to be regarded as an act that should be sanctioned or prohibited by government legislation.” The final statement dropped the reference to the sixth commandment, acknowledged “that Christians differ in their view concerning the time when personhood begins,” and found “no grounds on which Christians … can condone the free and easy practice of abortion”

DONALD TINDER

Locker-Room Religion

As the much-rained-on 1975 World Series squished along last month, sports reporters devoted some of their attention on washout days to the sudden demise of Alvin Dark as manager of the Oakland A’s. In his two years at Oakland Dark piloted the A’s to two successive division flags, an American League pennant, and the 1974 World Series championship. But after the A’s lost three straight to the Boston Red Sox in this year’s divisional playoff’s, temperamental owner Charley Finley in a phone call from Chicago fired Dark.

Some reporters implied that Dark’s Christian faith had gotten him in trouble with the boss. On the Sunday night before the playoffs began, Dark spoke at Redwood Chapel, a large independent church in the Oakland suburb of Castro Valley. In the course of his talk Dark stated that anyone who fails to accept Christ will go to hell. To reinforce his point he declared: “If Charley Finley doesn’t accept Christ, he will go to hell.”

A reporter from a local daily informed Finley of Dark’s remark. Finley said that Dark sounded “awful religious.” He said his own mother didn’t think he was going to hell, “and I respect her opinion on that score a lot more than Alvin Dark’s.” He then ordered three copies of the reporter’s newspaper story on Dark’s church talk to be sent to him air mail special delivery. (Veteran observers nevertheless insist that the playoff losses, not the talk, prompted Finley to axe Dark. Finley had also fired Dark as manager in the 1960s when the team was in Kansas City.)

Dark maintained in press interviews that his comment had been taken out of context and misused. Yet he seemed good-natured about it all, and he said he held no resentment against Finley. “Charley Finley is in charge of the team, and that is his right,” said Dark. “I am not bitter,” he affirmed. “I accept it as God’s will.”

A long-time Baptist, Dark says he recommitted his life to Christ in 1971 “for seven days of every week.” He is on the board of directors of Baseball Chapel, a ministry that promotes Sunday pre-game chapel services among the professional baseball teams. All twenty-four major-league teams held chapel services when they were on the road this year, and about half of them also scheduled chapel meetings during home games. Former sports writer Watson Spoelstra is coordinator. Most meetings are held in stadium locker rooms. They are short, usually consisting of only a twenty-minute message and a brief prayer.

Cumulative chapel attendance this year was 6,550, with Oakland, Cincinnati, and Minnesota consistently getting the best turnouts (mid-thirties and higher). Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati all had chapels during the playoffs, and the entire Cincinnati team turned out for chapel in Boston during the World Series. Evangelist-film producer Billy Zeoli, a favorite among the pros and one of this year’s 142 chapel speakers, talked about discipline in the spiritual life and about the significance of one’s influence. Other favorite speakers include former Yankee star Bobby Richardson, Texas League head Bobby Bragen, Fuller Seminary’s Bill Pannell, and evangelist Tom Skinner, who as chaplain of the Washington Redskins football team is often seen on national television at coach George Allen’s side, cheering his team on.

Enough spiritual activity is going on in the pro leagues these days that the St. Louis-based Sporting News, the bible of the sports world, is planning to publish an in-depth look.

Excluding The Charismatics

Neo-Pentecostalism (the charismatic movement) is shaping up as a national issue in the Southern Baptist Convention. Several city associations of SBC churches last month voted to “disfellowship” some member churches where charismatic teachings on tongues, healing, and the like are being promoted. The action does not oust them from the denomination, but it denies them voice and vote in SBC affairs at the local level.

After an hour of sharp debate more than 1,000 “messengers” (delegates) at the annual meeting of the 232-congregation Dallas Baptist Association, the SBC’s largest, voted two to one to oust the 4,000-member Beverly Hills Baptist Church and the 500-member Shady Grove Baptist Church. The proponents of the action claimed that the two churches have “radically departed from historical Baptist practices,” but they cited “disruption of fellowship” rather than doctrine as the reason for their move.

A conciliatory substitute motion drafted by leaders of seven of the largest churches in the city was rejected 608 to 401. It would have permitted the congregations to retain their membership in the association while warning them to practice their special gifts “humbly and within their own churches.” The motion noted that a “wide difference of opinion” exists about speaking in tongues and healing and that there is “broad disagreement” as to the interpretation of key Scripture passages. Nevertheless, it continued, “we acknowledge that the gifts of tongues and healing are validated by the New Testament as legitimate gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Sponsors of the measure, however, emphasized that their statement was not an endorsement of the contemporary charismatic movement.

The association’s executive committee had worked on the matter for three years. Last year the association passed a strongly worded resolution asking unnamed churches with charismatic ministries to straighten up or “voluntarily withdraw.”

Pastor Olen Griffing of Shady Grove Baptist insisted his church had done nothing “extra-biblical or unscriptural,” and he said he was grieved that his “brethren would vote not to fellowship with us because we choose to practice what the Bible clearly states is valid.”

Pastor Howard Conatser of Beverly Hills Baptist remarked later that the disfellowship vote had brought greater division in the association than had the charismatic movement.

Beverly Hills Baptist is an embarrassment of sorts to anti-charismatics who can’t seem to explain—or match—the church’s success. Conatser, 49, a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, has been pastor at Beverly Hills for sixteen years. In 1970 he underwent the charismatic experience, and he gradually shared his new perspective with his congregation. There was some opposition but the church grew. Early this year Sunday morning attendance doubled to 2,500 in one week when the services were shifted from the sanctuary to a nearby rented auditorium that is larger. More than 3,000 attend now, and membership is growing at the rate of fifty per month. The church gives substantially to the SBC mission program.

At the time of the Dallas action Conatser was speaking at a charismatic conference of Southern Baptists that drew 850 registrants to Claiborne Baptist Church in West Monroe, Louisiana. Because of a scheduling snafu the conference was held at the same time as the annual meeting of the Monroe area association. Thus pastor Julian Brandon of Claiborne Baptist was absent when his church was drummed out of the Monroe association.

Brandon, 43, also a Southwestern graduate, says that he received the baptism of the Spirit four years ago and that his church was “liberated in the Spirit,” less than two years later. There was division in the congregation but not over tongues, says Brandon. He states that the only public tongues utterance in a church service occurred at a midweek meeting some time ago. He insists that his beliefs are in accord with the Bible and with the SBC Faith and Message document, an official statement of belief. Brandon points to the section in it that says the Holy Spirit bestows spiritual gifts by which believers serve God through his Church.

In Ohio, the Cincinnati Baptist Association voted to exclude the 355-member Oak Hills Baptist Church and the 75-member Saylor Park Baptist Church on doctrinal grounds. The ouster measure accused the churches of practicing unknown tongues in worship services, of teaching that the baptism of the Spirit is “a second work of grace” (a charge denied by Oak Hills pastor Allen Falls), and of baptizing (in water) people who did not become members. The association did not question the legitimacy of glossolalia but said it was being practiced unscripturally.

All the pastors involved say they intend to stay in the SBC. Conatser, Brandon, and others meanwhile are laying plans to hold a national charismatic conference for Southern Baptists next year in Dallas.

Report From China

Baptist World Alliance president David Y. K. Wong, an architectural engineer in Hong Kong, returned last month from a three-week visit to Canton, Amoy, and Swatow in southern China. In a report to BWA leaders he indicated that the Chinese government seems to be fairly successful in fighting poverty. Pensions and free health care are provided; food prices are low. Everybody works. He saw thousands of people digging on hillsides to form terraces for farming. Miles of stone viaducts provide irrigation for arid plateaus. Wong said he was especially impressed by the friendliness of the people, especially the children, and the warm welcome he received everywhere.

He found that the government has set a minimum age for marriage: 24 for women, 27 for men (the rule can be bent, providing that a couple’s combined ages total at least 50). Newlyweds are advised to plan for a maximum of two children.

Wong visited a number of former church buildings; all are now used as factories, schools, or people’s assembly halls. He could locate none of the pastors or church leaders he had known formerly, but he did visit with several Christians, including an old friend. From these he learned that a spiritual hunger exists in the land. He was told of a young worker who had undergone a dramatic conversion experience and is now an effective witness for Christ. “One young Christian told me that as [young people] go out to the countryside [to work], so goes the gospel of Jesus Christ,” reported Wong. The same believer told him that in some remote areas there are growing numbers of Christians.

There is a desire for God’s word in China, affirmed Wong. Bibles, however, “are largely unobtainable.”

The Wcc: Day Of Reckoning

New York City and the Geneva-based World Council of Churches have something in common: both are spending more than they receive, and neither can go on doing it much longer.

For some in the WCC the day of reckoning has already arrived. Last month WCC general secretary Philip A. Potter notified the WCC’s 271 member denominations in a special letter that the council’s officers had ordered drastic and immediate cuts in the organization’s general operating budget. The emergency measures were taken to help meet an anticipated income shortage of approximately $1 million next year.

In his letter, Potter had some special advice for delegates to the WCC’s Fifth Assembly, which opens this month in Nairobi. He urged them to give heed to the relation between program policies to be acted upon and their financing.

Already approved are cutbacks amounting to nearly $300,000 in the departments of communication, faith and order, and international affairs. About $300,000 in recommended cuts await executive committee action in Nairobi. These include reducing the number of post-assembly meetings and slashing in half the amount being sent to maintain the WCC’s New York office. Reserves, real estate sales, and a special grant will help make up the remainder of the deficit.

The WCC’s general budget for 1976 was to have been about $3.15 million. Giving from member churches has increased significantly since 1968, says Potter, but inflation and devaluation have had a greater impact.

Board members of the U. S. Conference of the WCC meanwhile are pondering ways to keep the New York office open. Like the city fathers, they’re looking for some extra money to see them through the crisis.

Temple Destroyed

Arson was suspected in last month’s fire that destroyed the Jerusalem Museum at separatist leader Carl McIntire’s Bible conference and condominium complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The museum consisted mainly of a 4,000-square-foot scale model of the city of Jerusalem, highlighted by the Jewish temple. Authorities are investigating the fire and recent vandalism.

Olympic Outreach

With less than a year to go before the 1976 Summer Olympics are held in Montreal, plans for a large-scale Christian witness at the games are well under way.

Eighty-four U.S. and Canadian Christian leaders representing nearly fifty organizations met recently to discuss their common goal of an Olympic witness under an umbrella organization, Aide Olympique Chretienne (455 Craig Street West, Montreal, Canada).

Officially known as AO Chrétienne (Christian Olympic help), the group plans coffeehouses in the downtown area, door-to-door witnessing campaigns throughout Montreal, information booths at major travel centers, round-the-clock distress centers, and a huge witness march from Mount Royal to the downtown core, in addition to outreach efforts at the Olympic site itself. The latter includes evangelistic rallies in the Autostade on July 24 and 25 where Billy Graham will address an estimated 45,000 each day. His appearance is being sponsored by some sixty Montreal Protestant churches, according to AO officials. An interpreter will translate his messages into French.

The cooperating organizations, which include such varied groups as Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Pocket Testament League, Canadian Bible Society, and Campus Crusade for Christ, have laid aside their own initial plans to “go it alone” in favor of a cooperative coordinated outreach, says AO executive director Peter Foggin. It means that literature ministries will concentrate on producing material while groups that normally concentrate on witnessing will handle distribution.

In all, AO expects more than 10,000 young Christians to descend on Montreal during the two weeks of the games, July 17 to August 1. More than 3,000 of them will be fielded by YWAM alone, predicts Ulrich Kortsch, eastern Canada director for YWAM. (Hundreds of European YWAMers will travel to North America by a chartered Boeing 747 jumbo jet.) Kortsch and others attending the Lausanne evangelization congress last year presented the initial thoughts about Olympic outreach to the Canadian delegation. The idea caught on and AO was formed. A similar campaign involving some 2,000 young Christians was mounted by YWAM and other groups at the Munich Olympics in 1972 (see September 29, 1972, issue, page 42).

So far, AO has set up seven commissions to coordinate ministries involving youth, athletes, literature, social service, linguistic and cultural cooperation, discipleship (follow-up), and crusades. A top-priority item is the production of multi-lingual literature, said Foggin. Up to six million visitors from 132 countries and speaking thirty-three languages are expected at the games. The personal-contact groups are seeking to recruit qualified multi-lingual personnel to help evangelize those visitors, he added.

BARRIE DOYLE

What About Women?

To Be a Man, To Be a Woman, by Kenneth and Alice Hamilton (Abingdon, 1975, 159 pp., $2.95 pb), Love, Honor and Be Free, by Maxine Hancock (Moody, 1975, 191 pp., $5.95), Christian Freedom For Women* and Other Human Beings, by Harry N. Hollis et al. (Broadman, 1975, 192 pp., n.p.), The Feminine Principle, by Judith Miles (Broadman, 1975, 154 pp., $3.50 pb), The Fulfilled Woman, by Lou Beardsley and Toni Spry (Harvest House, 1975, 172 pp., $2.95 pb), Jesus According to a Woman, by Rachel Conrad Wahlberg (Paulist, 1975, 106 pp., $1.75 pb), and Women in a Strange Land, edited by Clare B. Fisher, Betsy Brenneman, and Anne M. Bennett (Fortress, 1975, 132 pb), To Have and to Hold, by Jill Renich (Zondervan, 1974, 160 pp., $4.95, $1.95 pb) are reviewed by Carol Prester McFadden, Arlington, Virginia.

The 1970s have already produced scores of secular books on women’s liberation, oppression, fulfillment, servility, and related topics. Marabel Morgan’s best-selling The Total Woman prodded many Christians who were sympathetic, furious, or just mercenary to pull out their typewriters, so that now religious publishers are flooding the market with books on how to be submissive though happy, egalitarian marriage, and how a Christian woman can maintain her home, career, and sanity.

These eight recent books discuss the role of women from a religious stance. Three are very good and three have at least a little value.

Kenneth and Alice Hamilton, husband and wife and professors at the University of Winnipeg, cooperated on a book important for both men and women, To Be a Man, To Be a Woman. Marriage is approached holistically, but man and woman are seen to be significant as individuals. The Hamiltons grapple with the hindrances to being a whole man and woman, a unified couple. Without ignoring the mundane problems of role interchangeability, they search for a biblical perspective on male-female relationships. A teaching-learning section at the end of each chapter precedes discussion questions. The book is ideally suited for a couples’ discussion group.

Love, Honor and Be Free by Maxine Hancock is subtitled “A Christian Woman’s Response to Today’s Call for Liberation.” The author grew up and went to school in Canada, married, and then began to teach. Several years later she left teaching to rear a family. She therefore can speak to the issues of career versus homemaking as one who has done both. Her book reaches an unusual level of maturity and balance, evidencing her security in a role she finds freeing.

Submission, nurture, service, and ministry are tackled head on with humorous insight. Most appealing is her obvious excitement at being a wife and mother. Many readers will be inspired to seek greater freedom and satisfaction.

Christian Freedom For Women* and Other Human Beings is a fortunate pooling of insights by four well-qualified author-lecturers. Thirteen essays trace the history of women’s freedom from Old Testament laws and customs to contemporary attitudes, including a projection of future behavior. In one essay, a Quaker husband and wife, David and Vera Mace, challenge the popular notion that ancient Hebrew women were regarded as chattel. Sarah Frances Anders discusses institutional discrimination against women in another essay, and editor Harry Hollis analyzes what the sexual revolution really means.

Fictitious letters between author Judith Miles and an unbelieving friend are the vehicle for developing The Feminine Principle. What is that principle? Near the beginning of the book in one of the author’s letters we read: “The highest good to which a woman may aspire is to give pleasure.” Even though Miles rightly calls this an “outrageous generalization,” the letters do in fact emphasize a woman’s pleasure-giving function as her key to total fulfillment. The steps of salvation and sanctification are also outlined as the book is intended to be an evangelistic tool.

The Fulfilled Woman could be more accurately titled The Fulfilled Wife or better yet Perhaps the Fulfilled Wife. Growing out of a marriage seminar, it has nothing to say to the single woman, widow, or divorcee, all by implication, therefore, relegated to unfulfillment. The role descriptions are the traditional Western stereotypes in which the husband is away at the office all day while the wife is at home with the kids and the housework. The scenarios with “Wendy Wonderful” and “Dora the Drudge” are generally too simplistic to provide much help.

Doubtless many Christian wives will persevere beyond these drawbacks to find practical help on everything from submission to shopping, from discipline to decorating. The authors, Lou Beardsley and Toni Spry, arranged the book into projects meant to be tackled chronologically. The Fulfilled Woman is not far from The Total Woman.

In Jesus According to a Woman, Rachel Wahlberg says she attempts to “balance out negative attitudes concerning women which pervade major Christian thinkers from Paul and Augustine to the present.” She goes on to reinterpret some of the Scripture passages dealing with women, especially in the Gospels. The story of Jesus and the adulterous woman, the parable of the woman searching for her lost coin, the conflict between Martha and Mary over serving the food—all these are seen from a fresh perspective. Her interpretations are decidedly off-beat and a few inferences are far-fetched, but readers will be refreshed by her main emphasis: that Christ approached women as intellectual/spiritual persons, equal in the resurrection.

To Have and to Hold by Jill Renich, clearly and simply written, covers a lot of familiar territory. Chapters like “Meeting His Needs,” “The Real You,” and “Happy Homemaking” are followed by questions for self-evaluation as well as recommended reading. The author specifies that the book is intended only for wives.

Women in a Strange Land is an esoteric collection of essays by some disenchanted women. Ranging from bitter poetry to a piece entitled “We, as Ministers, Amen!,” the selections are of unequal value and for the most part very subjective. The three editors are either students or staff at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and would not classify themselves as evangelicals. Breaking through the acerbity here and there are courageous proposals for achieving greater freedom for more women. Humility and grace, seemingly virtues of the unliberated, are nowhere evidenced in this book.

If there is a common theme running through these eight books, it is a deep concern by men and women alike that women be encouraged to achieve their full potential. Whether or not we agree with all the particulars, we can be heartened that Christians are admitting there is a problem and making attempts to correct it.

Jesus Christ, Troubadour

The Singer, by Calvin Miller (InterVarsity, 151 pp., $3.95 pb), is reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The publishers of this narrative poem greatly overstate the comparison between Miller and Lewis or Tolkien. Among other things, the allegorical technique is too obvious.

The poem does have some nice stanzas. Miller uses alliteration effectively, and the idea of a singer as Christ intrigues and charms the reader. The miracle scenes show a sensitivity to suffering and a good sense of the words needed to describe it. The ideas introducing each section succinctly and at times cryptically lead the reader into the poetry. One of the best of these is from section XIV: “To God obscenity is not uncovered flesh. It is exposed intention. Nakedness is just a state of heart. Was Adam any more unclothed when he discovered shame? Yes.”

Miller successfully sustains his metaphor of Christ as the Troubadour called to sing freedom to men. But the best things about the book are its layout, design, and typography and the beautiful illustrations by Joe DeValasco.

The Wcc’S Vision For The World

In Search of a Responsible World Society, by Paul Bock (Westminster, 1974, 251 pp., $10), is reviewed by Arthur Johnson, professor of world mission, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

This study of the Life and Work movement reveals the continuing pilgrimage of the missionary movement in the nineteenth century from its original emphasis upon evangelism to the contemporary humanism within the World Council of Churches. Bock has taken the theme of the “responsible society” and shown how since the First Assembly at Amsterdam in 1948 the WCC has continued to develop its doctrine of and program for a responsible world society. By a careful selection of official documents Bock has produced an excellent historical survey of ecumenical social pronouncements and actions. With some repetition he has retraced the historical growth of this ideal as it applies to political and economic orders, war and peace, Communism, racial and ethnic relations, and social development. Each chapter develops the pronouncements on a problem of world society beginning in Stockholm 1925, Jerusalem 1928, or Oxford 1937 and concluding with those of the Geneva World Conference on Church and Society 1966 and the Fourth WCC Assembly at Uppsala 1968. Post-1968 references deal primarily with the application of the Geneva 1966 and Uppsala 1968 proclamations to events such as the Viet Nam war. More concerning Africa and South America could be expected.

At the end of each chapter Bock comments on the papal encyclicals of the Roman Catholic Church as they apply to each subject. He attempts to show the mutual development and convergence of Roman Catholic pronouncements with those of the WCC. In 1968 persistent ecumenical efforts finally produced a new cooperative WCC-Roman Catholic program called SODEPAX, a joint Committee on Society, Development, and Peace.

Bock shows how the earlier world conferences were preoccupied with the problems of Western society, but then how recent decades slowly came to think in global terms. Because of economic development in the northern hemisphere, the former East-West world polarization has now become North-South. The Geneva 1966 conference, however, endeavored to give the Third World a fully equal voice with the northern hemisphere. It also asserted that the widening economic gap would introduce and require revolutionary changes in developed as well as developing countries. Only in this way, Geneva said, could technology be harnessed for the betterment of all mankind.

Thus the concept of a responsible society was enlarged to the concept of a responsible world society, where rich and poor nations have responsibilities within their own societies, to each other, and also to international bodies [p. 221],

Uppsala 1968 urged the churches to make responsible citizens by education so as to meet the demands of development. Theologians are to work with technology in order “to come to grips with the meaning and goal of peoples all over the world who have awakened to a new sense of the human.”

Evangelicals who struggled through the modernist-fundamentalist controversy in the earlier part of this century are rapidly disappearing, and many Christians have difficulty in grasping the basic differences that have created a growing gulf between evangelicals and the WCC, between biblical evangelism and social action. Bock, unfortunately, does not give the first phase that would make the book intelligible for evangelicals, but rather gives the second and succeeding phases of this controversy.

The first phase of the transition took place before and after Edinburgh 1910, when all participants were accepted as “Christians” and their individual theological differences were respected. The participants represented primarily evangelical missions cooperating together in winning individuals to Christ and the fellowship of the Church. A pluralism of theologies, however, became the principle of participation in the post-Edinburgh conferences where those who questioned or rejected the verbal inerrancy of the Scripture predominated. Evangelical Christianity lost its only line of defense, and the non-evangelical denominations of Protestantism took over the movement. Thus the liberal theology of Ritschl and Harnack and the modernism of Rauschenbusch became the dynamic for social action and the damper of historic evangelical evangelism because of the fallible Bible.

Bock picks up the trend at this point and calls it the “international social gospel phase … based on a liberal theology.… The church was to convert men to social responsibility and thus imbue a Christian spirit into all of society, thereby humanizing society.” The ecumenical movement sought through this social gospel to establish the Kingdom of God among men, believing that man can be changed by education and the improvement of his earthly environment:

Many Christians believed that by working with secular institutions—reform movements, governments, labor unions, and the League of Nations—they could bring life on earth close to the Kingdom of God [p. 35].

The next phase reflects the dialectic theology of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner and the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Secularism was seen as the enemy of the Kingdom of God at both the 1928 Jerusalem meeting of the International Missionary Council and the Oxford 1937 Life and Work Conference. Oxford “took a realistic view of man and his sinfulness and did not anticipate a utopian society but rather one in which power had to be used to assure justice.” The Kingdom of God, no longer an earthly possibility, now became an ethical standard to measure man’s social achievements: man is both drawn forward toward its ideal and judged by it.

In the contemporary theological phase, Christian realism has declined in favor of a new humanism or a theology of secularization wherein “the church was asked to take a positive stand toward the world.” Secularism has become a friend. World ideologies such as Marxism “do have something to contribute to humanization and social justice.” Contextual or situation ethics replaced the “middle axioms” of J. H. Oldham and the ethics of principles that applied to all the nations and cultures of the world:

The Christian community needed to find what God was doing in each historical situation and to respond to his actions. It would be difficult to find general principles valid for all parts of the world [p. 50].

When Edinburgh 1910 left the solid foundation of an inerrant text, it embarked on a sea of progressive consensus theology. The evident changes in social ethics and teachings reflect the theologians dominant during a particular decade and ecumenical meeting. The change from the modernist’s optimistic view of the nature of man as good to the Barthian pessimistic view of man’s nature required a total revision of social theology.

The contemporary non-theological era, in deference to the national theologies of the Third World, requires another major revision. The progressive theology of the last seventy-five years is now multiplied to include a potentially different theology (African, Liberation, Black, Water Buffalo, etc.) for every continent and culture! It is difficult to see how the members of a world society built upon this pluralistic foundation and ethic can act responsibly with each other.

Bock’s study revives old and new questions for the evangelical who seriously desires to do God’s will in and for society. The evangelical is troubled by the horizontal emphasis upon society that has also come to dominate the theology of evangelism in the WCC since the merger of the International Missionary Council with the WCC in New Delhi in 1961. His fears that the vertical relationship to God has been almost abandoned were reflected and further confirmed by the subsequent strong objections to horizontalism by Eastern Orthodoxy after Bangkok 1973. The contemporary WCC quest for a responsible world society resembles the social gospel rejected by the fundamentalists at the beginning of this century. The new wrapping of a “responsible world society” does not change the issues initiating that major division in Protestantism.

Reflecting the WCC view, Bock repudiates the individualism and pietism characteristic of contemporary evangelical witness and mission. Ironically, Bock quotes Carl McIntire’s negative view of Amsterdam 1948 concerning the harm the new council would do “in misleading the nations, in opposing the pure gospel, in closing doors to faithful missions, and in advancing socialism and political intrigue with the state.” Many evangelicals who may not care to identify with McIntire today may, nevertheless, find in this book much historical support for that prophecy. Bock documents how the WCC-sponsored Geneva 1966 conference pronouncements left room for violent revolutions “in extreme situations” (Geneva 1966) and how the official Uppsala Assembly in 1968 gave veiled but definite support for certain revolutions that may be violent:

Nations should recognize that the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms has now become a common concern of the whole international community, and should therefore not regard international concern for the implementation of these rights as an unwarranted interference” [Uppsala 1968].

Countries are encouraged to take risks for peace and cession of hostilities, but the pronouncements do not answer the question as to how far peace-seeking nations can go when international agreements are promptly broken. The “domino” principle has now all but emptied much of Southeast Asia of evangelical missions. Has Bock proven McIntire’s prophecy to be right?

Benjamin Franklin,in a speech to the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787.

Mr. President, The small Progress we have made after 4 or 5 Weeks close Attendance & continual Reasonings with each other, our different Sentiments on almost every Question, several of the last producing as many Noes as Ayes is methinks a melancholy Proof of the Imperfection of the Human understanding.

We indeed seem to feel our own Want of political Wisdom, since we have been running all about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient History for Models of Government, and examin’d the different Forms of those Republicks, which, having been originally form’d with the Seeds of their own Dissolution, now no longer exist. And we have view’d modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our Circumstances.

In this Situation of this Assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark, to find Political Truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our Understandings.

In the Beginning of the Contest with Britain, when we were sensible of Danger, we had daily Prayer in this Room for the “Divine Protection.” Our Prayers Sir were heard,—and they were graciously answered. All of us, who were engag’d in the Struggle, must have observ’d frequent Instances of a Superintending Providence in our Favour. To that Kind Providence we owe this happy Opportunity of Consulting in Peace on the Means of establishing our future national Felicity.

And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend—or do we imagine we no longer need its Assistance?

I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth, That God governs in the Affairs of Men!—And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?—We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this;—and I also believe that without his concurring Aid we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our little partial local Interests, our Projects will be confounded and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and a Byeword down to future Ages. And what is worse, Mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate Instance, despair of establishing Government by human Wisdom, and leave it to Chance, War & Conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move, That henceforth Prayers, imploring the Assistance of Heaven, and its Blessing on our Deliberations, be held in this Assembly every Morning before we proceed to Business; and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.

In some respects Iran is a promising Asian base for Christian witness, although recent moves on the ecumenical left and on the independent right are limiting the evangelistic advances that might be expected in the aftermath of the Lausanne evangelization congress.

The Persians are a proud people whose history and cultural roots lie deep in the ancient past. While Iran is officially a Muslim nation, Iranians are first of all Persian, and only then whatever else they profess. Their heritage reaches back beyond the Muslim and the Christian eras to Cyrus the Great, to whom some scholars refer the Old Testament reference in Isaiah 45:1 to “the Lord’s anointed” because after defeating the Babylonians he released the captive Hebrews to return to Jerusalem and to restore their religious traditions.

Early Christianity so effectively challenged Persian Zoroastrianism that before the invasion of Islam at least half of the people were Christian. The Church in the sixth century was nonetheless unable to cope with the Muslim tide because it neglected translating the Bible into the language of the people and suffered from Christological controversies.

Although the nation and its Shah are now officially Muslim, three other religions—Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity—are officially recognized. The Persians are Aryans, not Arabs, and Islam is not their ancient creed; this fact creates a wider opening for religious alternatives.

Iran now has more than a thousand Christian ex-Muslims. They recently commissioned their first evangelist in a thousand years and dispatched him to the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. There are also more than 400 Christian Jews in Iran; some 300 of their children consider themselves “fulfilled Jews.” This represents 1 per cent of the 70,000 Iranian Jews, a remarkable figure since only 2 per cent of the overall Asian population is Christian. There has moreover been a significant increase in distribution of the New Testament in Iran, from 80,000 portions four years ago to almost a half million the past year. Bible correspondence work, allowed by the government, could carry the Gospel to many unreached parts of the land. Religious broadcasting from Cyprus could penetrate all Iran, but its cost would be excessive except on a cooperative basis.

Yet the Muslim tradition is restrictive and prohibitive. Muslim families often evict and disown those who make non-Muslim commitments. Muslim leaders have informers even on university campuses, and Christian Iranian students who witness to Christ are often threatened and sometimes beaten.

Iranian intellectuals and young people—especially those who have been educated in the West—tend to be alienated from their religion, and to discard it as a bundle of archaic traditions. Only 45 per cent of Iranian university students in Teheran attend the mosques. Perhaps no more than 1 per cent of the young Iranian intellectuals are Marxist Muslims, and these are more slogan crusaders than professional disciples because the Marxist analysis of history does not fit Iran.

But a half-century of fascination with the West’s technological superiority and its more democratic forms of government has encouraged a deepening alienation from the Iranian Muslim heritage as well as a distaste for the Communist world and for Western politics. This distaste has been nourished by the hypocrisy of detente between the United States and Russia and China. Aware of Communist brutality and hard experience of eastern European nations, Iran has no intention of exposing its 1,000-mile northern border to Russia. Many intellectuals are staggered by the moral expediency of Western capitalism reflected by the confusing Washington-Peking-Moscow detente, and they hold that neither the military power of the West nor that of the Communists can be relied upon by the Third World.

What is needed, these intellectuals feel, is a world-wide moral revolution in which the Third World may need to strike new ground. On the one hand they tend to see Islam as intellectually inferior in view of Western scientific superiority; they view Marxism, moreover, as the only Western ideology that attacks the status quo earnestly and promises swift change. Yet they are aware of the evident failure of Marxism in many places, and the power of tradition and a recent cultural renaissance have left multitudes of young students in a condition of culture shock and ideological vacuum. It is a time of reevaluation of both Western and Eastern ideas, and Iranian students who travel to the United States for studies not infrequently discard their past heritage for the totally secular.

Modern missionaries came to Iran about 1835 and established churches as independent entities. But in 1935 the Evangelical (Presbyterian) Church in Iran (ECI) was founded as “the one officially recognized” Reformed church. It was a full member of the World Council of Churches. A tiny church in a remote land cherished such ties to a world religious body.

The Anglican bishop of Iran, Hassan Dehqani, himself a convert from Islam, officially represents the ecumenical movement; in Isfahan, Shiraz, and elsewhere, the Anglican church is the recognized umbrella that accredits all so-called legitimate missionary activity. Independent workers were not inclined to cooperate with ecumenical agencies because of theological pluralism and socio-political emphases. More than a dozen independent missionary groups operate in Iran; four have cooperated where conscientiously possible while others are under heavy home board pressure not to do so. Bishop Dehqan expressed shock at ecumenical pronouncements that issued from the WCC Bangkok meeting; he is friendly to evangelical witness although his theology is somewhat broader.

Ecumenical missionary retrenchment has been paralleled by an influx of independents, and reactionary ecumenical pressures are increasingly evident. The Lausanne Covenant is the only document that has brought together evangelical independents and ecumenical workers for a study program, but a post-Lausanne thrust is viewed guardedly because (1) Lausanne challenged the idea of a missionary moratorium and (2) the participants it invited from Iran were not screened by ecumenical leaders. The Presbyterian church has shifted its emphasis away from direct evangelism to the idea of a “Christian presence” in dialogue and education. It has cut the nerve of missions by not replacing retirees and by closing hospitals. A fraternal worker conducts a Bossey-type study center that leaves evangelical perspectives in mid-air, and long-standing privileges are being withdrawn from some evangelical leaders.

Post-Lausanne possibilities are being frustrated by a sorry display of rivalries in a land that, in the distant past of Cyrus the Great, considered religious tolerance of revealed religion a virtue.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Loud protests and screams of “unfair” have been made through the centuries when human beings have spied upon other human beings by uncovering what has been said and done in supposedly hidden places. Now a recent issue of Newsweek tells us that there is no hiding place. The article describes advances in technology that make it possible for anyone who has the right equipment to “pick up” all telegrams sent all over the world, all telephone calls sent by micro-wave. Nation can spy upon nation, dictator, upon individuals, as electronic devices “open” telegrams and “listen in” on phone conversations, recording them to be studied at leisure.

Never before have there been such possibilities of discovering the secrets “hidden” in private communication. Electronic “arms” stick up in the desert, square pieces of what to the uneducated eye look like innocent metal shapes, protrude above buildings, directed to catch the information flying through the atmosphere. Codes can be recorded and unscrambled with amazing rapidity. Satellites circle the globe like gigantic brooms, sweeping up all the dusty bits of information! Added to this is a projection of possible future results of research: the “reading” of brain waves. Terrifying is the thought of sinful men controlling machines that in a sense are being improved to control the men!

Place beside all this the recent account of a photographer standing on a balcony in Helsinki, taking pictures with a telescopic lens so powerful that it could record a note written by the President and handed to someone sitting near him at a table. The camera could zoom down and look over the shoulders of men, opening up to the world that which was meant for the eyes of one person across the table! One shudders to think what could take place if all the technological advances were one day placed in the hands of a world dictator.

The Bible makes it clear that there has never been a hiding place from God. Adam and Eve were the first to discover this. “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:8). Adam and Eve were soon to find how useless that leafy barrier was. God needs no electronic device to see behind the bushes and trees, no satellite to discover what had been said into phone or teletape. He has always been able to read the brain waves, to see into men’s minds and hearts. David knew this well as he wrote in Psalm 69:5, “O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee.” Every foolish and sinful thought and act has always been known to God. This is made strong and clear to us in Psalm 139:

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

Job 34:21 and 22 underlines what has been given us in Psalms: “For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings. There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.”

From Adam and Eve’s time on down through the centuries, no one has been able to hide from God. No one can hide his communications, his acts, or even his thoughts from the living God.

We mustn’t forget that Satan’s temptation to Eve was that if they would eat of the tree, they would become “like gods.” Adam and Eve were tempted to want to be godlike, and the same temptation has driven men through the centuries. Egocentric human beings, self-sufficient human beings, autonomous human beings, rebellious human beings, have always been trying to put themselves at the center of all things. They have tried to “be like gods” in a diverse number of ways. Ezekiel was told by God that Tyrus was trying to sit in the seat of God, to declare that there was no secret that people could hide from him (Ezek 28:1–3). Today men are already “sitting in the seat of God” in peering into men’s secrets and they will be able to do this even more effectively as technology advances.

A warning came to the prince of Tyrus in Ezekiel 28:9—“Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.” The warning is to men who search for power and more power to be able to know all the secrets of other men, and to govern the machines and the men: God is still God! And he alone is God. Even as the magicians of Egypt were able to reproduce some of the miracles that Moses did in God’s power, by the mystical powers Satan had given them, so through the ages, whether by occult powers or by discovering some of the marvels of the universe science has uncovered, men have been able to make a start at doing some of the things God does. But only God is God. Only God is infinite. Only God is unlimited. And only God has power and knowledge that will not “backfire.” Men are often destroyed by their own inventions. The machines come to control the very men who made them. Is there no place to hide from men?

Come to Isaiah 1:10–16. Read it yourself. We are commanded to hear the Word of the Lord. Today we are in a time of Sodom and Gomorrah. Today we have reports in our newspapers of conventions of devil worshipers and occult groups, of members of mystical cults dancing before a huge pre-Columbian statue of the devil. Today this passage applies.

What is God saying? He is sick of sacrifices and offerings. Religious meetings, spiritual happenings, the keeping of holy days—all these things are an abomination. God says, “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” God is declaring that he is not interested in mechanical religion—he will hide his eyes and ears from people’s false worship. Lives lived Sodom and Gomorrah style coupled with outward acts of worship are an abomination to God.

Perfume cannot mask filthy odors. Powder cannot cover up a dirty face. It is an abomination to God when such attempts are made. God has said, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me.” We cannot hide from God—but he can hide from us.

“Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil.” This sixteenth verse is a transition in Isaiah 1—letting us know the compassion of this One True Holy God. Unlike men who are preparing to make the world free from any hiding place, this God, perfect in holiness as well as in love, has prepared one hiding place. We will look at that in the second part of this study.

EDITH SCHAEFFER

Yield Not To Temptation …

… for yielding is sin. Temptation itself is not sinful, however. And this leads to two different schools of Christian behavior, which we may label the “flirt” and the “flee.” The flirt school is popular, especially with young, up-to-date Christians confident of their spiritual agility. Its motto seems to be: “If we are not allowed to sin, at least there’s no harm in being tempted.” There are many rationalizations for this school, such as “We need to learn how our non-Christian friends think, to develop understanding, to become better communicators …” Eutychus cannot, in good conscience, recommend this approach.

The flee school is more traditional. Although membership in it may earn one labels numerous highly uncomplimentary (“wet blanket,” “party pooper,” “dull,” “provincial,” “insipid,” to mention but a few), it does have a higher survival rate. The difficulty is that if one flees all the time, one may forget what the danger really looks like.

The worldly person often does a number of things, more or less as a matter of course, that the Bible designates as wrong and that the average hard-line Christian tries, more or less successfully, to avoid. The temptations to engage in such practices are the ones that flee-school adherents almost always are alert enough to shun.

The point of real difficulty comes with those so well disguised that they are not recognized as a danger. And—in line with Thurber’s warning that it is as easy to fall over forwards as backwards—many of us skirt the reefs only to come to grief on an unrecognized drifting mine.

Space limitations prevent Eutychus from furnishing a complete list of such modern temptations. But there are several that almost always claim their victims. Readers who think they have a good record in standing up to them may feel justified in running the risk again, but at the very least they should not expose others to them. Many well-bred intellectual evangelicals who would never think of going out with the bowling team to a skin flick will fall to the challenge to “observe with critical awareness the new depths of depravity to which the film medium has sunk.” And what about the “duty,” in the name of “public-spiritedness” and “integrity,” to “expose in all honesty” the foibles of a Christian leader about whom one would certainly never stoop to gossip? There are Christians, otherwise abstemious in their personal lives and frugal with their resources, towards whom it is an act of malicious cruelty to expose them to a four-color brochure for another “luxury Holy Land pilgrimage.”

One man’s meat, the proverb says, is another man’s poison. And one Christian’s flirtation is another Christian’s fiasco. “Yield not to temptation” is a command, and “flee temptation” is good advice. Unfortunately, the temptations that are the familiar and classical ones—while not, as well we know, without their dangers—may not be the ones that pose the greatest threat.

EUTYCHUS VI

Clearing Complexities

This is just a word of appreciation of your forthright editorial in the September 26 issue, “America’s Stake in the Middle East.” I am certain that poignant and informative editorials like yours—including the almost biting one, “Islam’s Bid to Recover Its Glory”—make a substantial contribution to clear thinking and realistic understanding regarding such a complex issue as the Middle East.

MICHAEL PRAGAI

Advisor on Church

Relations in North America

Consulate General of Israel in New York

New York, N.Y.

No More “Seems”

“How to Be Properly Poor” by Stanley Lindquist (Sept. 12) was a very weak article in your usually fine magazine. The main problem with it was the lack of an attempt to find out what God’s Word said on the subject, by solid exegesis of the text. The exposition itself consisted of four paragraphs, two of which began with, “it seems to me.” All conclusions were based solely on these shaky premises. No biblical support was given for either the premises, or the conclusions. What a contrast to the superb article of June 20, “Wine Drinking in New Testament Times”! Here we had careful exegesis of the Word of God. Please, give us more of this, and no more “it seems to me.”

RAYMOND HARRISON

Director

Child Evangelism Fellowship of Tarrant County

Fort Worth, Tex.

Pleasure Perspectives

I thoroughly enjoyed Norman Geisler’s treatment of God’s perspective on pleasure in the life of a believer (“The Christian as Pleasure-Seeker,” Sept. 26). His is the only viable conclusion: each pleasure should be enjoyed as a gift from God, who alone is to be enjoyed in himself and for his own sake. Surely the direction toward which we should all be moving is to be able to say, “Lord, whatever else may happen, I still have you.”

However, when it came to the “world,” I detected a common hesitancy in Geisler to let the Bible speak. Surely, evil does lie within the heart. But there is more to be said. When Jesus commanded us not to be “of the world,” he was speaking more concretely. May not “worldliness” (or, worldly pleasures) be produced by the pressures of the world acting upon our indwelling sin? May it not be worthwhile to note these pressures and their results in us, rather than simply to ignore all “external acts and spheres”?

WAYNE A. BRINDLE

Minneapolis, Kans.

Geisler’s history is inaccurate in one point. Bentham did not claim that intellectual pleasures are better than physical pleasures. It was J. S. Mill who attempted to make a qualitative distinction among types of pleasure, while inconsistently continuing to maintain that pleasure is the sole good. It was Mill who contended that a dissatisfied man’s life is preferable to that of a satisfied pig (Utilitarianism, ch. II). Bentham was a strict quantitative hedonistic utilitarian, for whom pinball was as good as poetry, provided the quantities of pleasure in each case were equal (Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. IV).

LOREN R. HAGEN

Marysville, Wash.

Geisler’s article was well written, and the point that the “world,” in its evil sense, emanates from within, is certainly relevant to Christian needs. I do wish, however, that he had stressed more vigorously a point which appears mostly “between the lines” in the article; namely, that some “externals” should be considered inherently evil, because they are outward manifestations of man’s evil nature. While it is undoubtedly true that “nothing is unclean of itself,” Christians all too often do not come up against the “thing itself,” in its pure form, but rather with some snarled, distorted version of it. They must continually attempt to discern between that “external” which has remained relatively unstained by the human heart, and that which has fallen prey to the Adamic nature. By way of example: most Christians would agree that movies, books, and drugs are not evil in themselves; however, some movies, books, and drugs are produced only to cater to the baser elements of man’s nature, or to otherwise be abused. All such externals are natural expressions of man’s fallen nature, and cannot be considered as morally neutral. Insofar as such externals are external images of man’s evil imagination, being shaped in the image of that imagination, I propose that they might as well be called evil, in and of themselves, and be considered part of the “world,” in the evil sense of the word.

THEODORE H. MANN

Oakland Community College

Farmington, Mich.

Too Much Relish

This is in regard to the article by Robert Cleath, “Pornography: Purulent Infection” (The Refirer’s Fire, Oct. 10). Why is it that whenever I read an article that discusses with some relish the pornography problem, that I wonder which is more perverse, the pornography, or those who go into great detail to tell us how sick it is. The sickness of pornography is obvious. But what seems more relevant is a mature Christian approach, than an article that tells me about all the classic skin flicks of the past decade.

I’m disappointed.

JOHN BUTEYN, JR.

Abbe Reformed Church

Clymer, N. Y.

ERRATUM

George Ketchum was erroneously identified in the October 10 obituary box as the head of a large fund-raising organization, a position held instead by his brother Carlton, a well-known United Presbyterian layman. George Ketchum was the chief executive of a prominent advertising firm.

Tradition Or Revolution: The Aura Of Hermann Hesse

Ten million copies of his books have been sold in the United States alone, thirteen million in Japan. The son of a pietistic Protestant family with a missionary background in India, Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) turned away from Christianity. In his Siddhartha: An Indian Tale (first published in 1922), he pointed to the wisdom and religious sense of India as the source of that permanence and tranquility that World War I seemed to shatter irreparably in Europe. Of the thirty-five languages into which his books have been translated, twelve are Indian, a clue to the fact that Indians either recognize the authenticity of his writing or at least see in it a reflection of what they would like their spiritual inheritance to be. His twelve-volume collected works, brought out in 1970 by Suhrkamp, have already sold more than 70,000 sets.

Acccording to an article in the Yale Review, two Germans, Hesse and the somewhat younger Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse (b. 1898) are the authors who have most deeply influenced Americans growing up in the Viet Nam and post-Viet Nam eras. Marcuse, the prophet of the student New Left, is familiar for his ruthless denunciations of the “late industrial capitalism” and “imperialism” of the United States, to which he wrote a paean of praise in Reason and Revolution when he was a refugee from Nazism (1941).

Hesse’s books joined those of Marcuse in the knapsacks of Viet Nam war resisters and dropouts. Yet there is hardly anything more paradoxical in a century of contradictions than the pairing of the rationalistic, materialistic cynic Marcuse with the romantic, idealistic dreamer Hesse. Marcuse is the prophet of a “systematic linguistic rebellion, which smashes the ideological context in which the words are employed and defined” (An Essay on Liberation, p. 35). He gravely discusses the radical critical cleverness and socially transforming power of calling the highest executives “not President X or Governor Y but pig X or pig Y,” and rendering what they say in speeches as “oink, oink.” For Hesse, language is a sacred treasure.

There is in Hesse, as in almost all modern intellectuals, a sharper criticism of Fascism than of Communism. Thus Hesse writes:

The fascist experiment is a reactionary, useless, foolish and crude experiment, but the communist one is one that humanity had to make, and in spite of its sad tendency to become mired in inhumanness, it must be made over and over again, not in order to achieve the stupid “dictatorship of the proletariat,” but something like justice and brotherhood between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. We easily forget this in view of the similarity in the methods with which Fascism and Communism work [Briefe, cited in Lektüre für Minuten, p. 15; available in English as Reflections (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1974)].

Hesse’s suspicions of political authority and institutions by no means spared Communism or the Soviet bloc: “Whether workers kill the factory owners or Russians and Germans shoot at each other, it only means a change of owners” (Demian, 1919). Nevertheless, it is evident that the bulk of Hesse’s political criticism—most of which is indirect, by allusion or innuendo—is directed at the smug, affluent, selfish bourgeois world of the West.

It would be a mistake to see in Hesse a “poet of revolution.” In fact, if Marcuse criticizes capitalistic society because it has not yet achieved the revolution, Hesse despised it because of its repudiation of tradition. German literary history places him, at the outset of his career, among the neo-Romantics. If many of the original Romantics longed for a recovery of the harmony, structure, and sense of belonging of the Middle Ages, which a colder and more factual appraisal of history would doubt ever existed, Hesse’s romantic yearnings were for the East.

The journey to the East is not only the title of one of his stories but a Leitmotif running through several others. Characteristically he uses the archaic and evocative term Morgenland (morning land, land of the sunrise, comparable to English and French Levant) instead of “East” or “Orient.” The expression Morgenlandfahrt, “Journey to the East,” evokes some of the same romantic quest imagery as the imagery of the Grail (which, not accidentally, is also taken up in his Eastern allegories). For him the Morgenland is not only the land of beginning, but also of renewal; the corresponding image of the Abendland (evening land), the west, is one of decline, darkness, and ending.

Hesse’s repudiation of the West, like Karl Barth’s repudiation of liberal theology, stems from the devastating experience of the First World War, which Hesse, although a German, spent in Switzerland. (During World War I, Switzerland, birthplace of Karl Barth [1886–1968], harbored Hesse and Lenin, and gave birth to the nihilistic artistic movement called Dadaism, each of which contributed in a different way to the demolition of the intellectual, social, and political order of Western Christendom.) But his quest for reality and meaning in the East began before the war, in a voyage to India. Those who are acquainted with India may find little correspondence between Hesse’s idealization and reality. But this was also true of his spiritual predecessor, the German romantic poet and mining engineer Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801), who idealized medieval Christendom as Hesse did the East and for whom the quest-motif is also dominant.

Three prominent characteristics of Hermann Hesse’s writing do less to explain to us his appeal to a young, revolutionary, “drop-out” generation than to raise the question of whether Western society has not totally misunderstood that generation and its needs. The direct “revolutionary” element, in the Marxist sense, is absent in Hesse. In fact, what the Marxists have created in Russia, China, and elsewhere is so arbitrary and so violates the fragility of the human spirit and its sensitivity that it is the opposite of what Hesse sought and what he preached in so many of his writings. The characteristics that strike me as significant for any attempt to understand Hesse’s appeal and what it can tell us about those to whom he appeals are: (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 in his writing. I will examine these three elements in Part II.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN

Harold O. J. Brown is the associate editor of the “Human Life Review,” Washington, D.C.

Shakespeare supposed that “if all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.” The modern world may be approaching that point of self-defeating saturation in sports. We still don’t match the Romans in number of holidays, but as leisure time continues to open up, sports more than anything else are expanding to fill the space.

When will our absorption in athletics have gone too far? Some people think it already has. Secular critics often designate sports “the new religion.” Christian thinkers of various stripes have called our sports-mania idolatry.

Until Oral Roberts University came along, evangelical colleges shunned big-time sports without giving much thought to the possible benefits. Now the Christian campus hears persuasive voices on both sides of the question. It is a healthful development: whatever the outcome, the role of athletics deserves sober, intelligent appraisal. Although anti-sport sentiment is now fashionable, and domes are being built atop stadiums rather than cathedrals, not all the arguments from a biblical perspective come down on that side.

Christians have given little thought to the place of sports in human affairs. This is a mistake. We need to examine everything we do in light of good stewardship. Scripture leaves no doubt about the Christian’s obligation to make the best possible use of his body, strength, time, and possessions.

In keeping silent about sports, Christians have neglected a ubiquitous human activity. As one student of sports put it, “There is no society known to man which does not have games of the sort in which individuals set up purely artificial obstacles and get satisfaction from overcoming them.” Fascination with athletics is one thing that is shared by Communists and capitalists and virtually every shade in between. The Chinese Communists have recently begun promoting baseball in a big new way, presumably so as not to be outdone by Americans and Japanese.

Although few will quote Scripture to justify it, Christians have as much interest in sports as anyone else. There are thousands of bowling and softball leagues among both Protestant and Catholic churches. Many a pastor looks wistfully at the zeal with which his parishioners follow their favorite teams. Some undoubtedly wish they could muster up the same enthusiasm for church affairs.

Among evangelicals, sports zeal used to be tempered by little more than an aversion to Sunday play. For better or worse, that reservation has largely dissolved in North America. But a deeper question about the whole role of sports seems likely to come into focus. People will be asking, for example, the extent to which the principle of a “simple life style” advocated by the Lausanne Covenant should affect athletics. Although this covenant, which came out of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization, makes no explicit reference to sports, a simple life style surely rules out large recreational expenditures. Again, to confront the issues is spiritual therapy. We must stop muddling along in mindless assent or dissent.

The most stimulating discussion of the subject is in Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry (Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), a seminal work by the distinguished American philosopher Paul Weiss. He traces the long neglect of serious thinking about sport back to the ancient Greeks, who “tacitly supposed that the popular could not be as philosophically important as the rare, solely because it was popular. What appealed to the many, it was thought, could not contain any significant truths. Following out that idea, one is tempted to conclude with Aristotle that God thinks only of what is noble and pure, and that we ought to try to follow his example.”

Weiss effectively counters this idea by asserting that “we men are all imperfect, living in an impure world; we at least cannot and ought not avoid a study of the finite and the corrupt. It need no more corrupt us than a study of insanity will make us mad.” Moreover, he notes, “the common can be good and desirable. And whether it be so or not, it can be dealt with carefully and thoughtfully, and from a perspective not necessarily known or shared in by its participants.” The inadequate Christian articulation of many sports figures who testify to their faith in Christ does not mean that it cannot be done better.

Most evangelical colleges have carried on a variety of athletic programs, but with a low profile. The general feeling seemed to be that an athletic emphasis would diminish academic respectability. Many a secular educator, of course, has argued along a similar line. It is in part valid, because in the past money invested in athletics reduced the amount available for academic development. But massive federal funding of higher education in recent years has freed more funds for athletics. Many universities that grant highly regarded degrees have outstanding athletic teams as well.

Evangelical schools are usually small, and this limits their potential for sports visibility. Oral Roberts University set a whole new set of precedents when it broke into the Christian higher educational scene a decade ago. Its futuristic campus on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, cost more than $50 million. Edward B. Fiske said in the New York Times that ORU boasts “probably the most sophisticated technology of any liberal-arts college in the country.” Students have access to remarkably advanced electronic data machines to assist study. The school won regional accreditation less than six years after it opened its doors.

ORU’s fine facilities were a great help in the development of its athletic program, and money was available for athletic scholarships and recruitment campaigns. An attempt was made to break into the big time through basketball. It worked. The 1971–72 team won twenty-four of its twenty-six games and set a scoring record among American colleges. Even with tougher schedules in succeeding years the team has been earning national rankings and has played in post-season championship competition. At home games, crowds of more than 10,000 watch from the comfort of theater-style seats in the $11 million Mabee Center. The school is reportedly making a financial profit on its athletic investment already.

ORU’s venture provides a good window for an appraisal of the pros and cons of Christian participation in sports. Spokesmen for the school are reticent about going into the sports rationale in any detail; they want to avoid any suggestion that sports take priority over studies at ORU. But there is no doubt that Roberts, the founder and president, takes great pride in his teams. He tells students that God told him to make athletics an integral part of the university program, “on a par with everything else … just as important as biology or English or history or anything you do here.”

Roberts sees his school’s participation in big-time sports as an evangelistic tool. It “offers one of the greatest opportunities for a Christian witness, without which millions of people might never be reached,” he says. “If we can display a strong witness on the floor or field, take the good with the bad, the victories with the defeats, and keep a dynamic Christian attitude, it’s got to have a positive effect on people’s lives for Christ.” He claims God showed him that “go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” meant going into the sports world, in which so many millions are absorbed. He thinks that TV and press coverage of ORU athletic events serves to draw attention to the Gospel he preaches.

Roberts also believes in athletics for the sake of physical fitness, which, he emphasizes, is more closely allied with the mental and spiritual side of human nature than most people realize. “When your body is sick,” he says, “your mind is slow and your spirit depressed. But when your body is well, your mind can be much more alert and responsive, and your spirit can be much stronger.”

Roberts could claim considerable support at this point from Weiss, who observes, “An adequate characterization of good health would in any case give body, mind, spirit, and position significant roles.” At ORU, all-around fitness is a way of life, and the system of exercise called aerobics is required of students just as certain academic and spiritual practices are.

Jesus concerned himself greatly with the bodily well-being of people. But is athletic competition necessary for physical fitness, especially in view of the ever-present risk of injury? Theoretically, no. But great athletic personalities provide important motivational models. When they lead disciplined lives and perform excellently in competitive sports, their example encourages many of their admirers to do likewise. The urgent need for more self-discipline today is obvious. Perhaps only in some of the performing arts is as much discipline practiced as in athletics.

It is often said that sports help to relieve aggressive feelings. Some experts challenge that notion, especially since such sports as football, hockey, and lacrosse also serve to arouse aggression. These experts would probably agree, however, that sports help people to forget their troubles. Sports also counter boredom, a pervasive problem as leisure time increases but the wise use of leisure lags behind. No doubt there is a “better way to spend an autumn afternoon,” but a lot of football fans might not know what it is.

Weiss argues that “athletes make more vital that harmonization of men which religious men suppose God’s presence in the world entails.” Both the scholar and the athlete, the one through study and knowledge, the other through action, are, says Weiss, dealing with limited versions of the “ultimate finalities”—nature, the ideal Good, and God.

The biggest ethical question in the modern sports enterprise may have to do with recruitment practices and subsidies of college athletes. Inconsistencies and inequities abound; Christian college boards and administrators can hardly be blamed for wanting to steer clear of the whole area. The vast amount of money gambled on the outcome of college games further darkens the picture.

About the only thing that can be said is that Christians are obliged to live in an evil world and that withdrawal serves only to strengthen the forces of error. Politics and business can also be very dirty, but many of today’s Christians are convinced that the challenges in these realms must be confronted. And every once in a while a Mr. Clean makes it to the top in sports. A recent example is UCLA’s John Wooden, who has achieved basketball immortality in everyone’s book.

Christian colleges need to lead the way toward a more mature appreciation of athletics and a more balanced participation. The people in the pew look to the institutions of higher education for guidance in many important aspects of life. Why not sports?

The sports that are given the most attention in schools and colleges—baseball, football, basketball—must be only spectator sports for most people. They require youthful, fit bodies plus extensive organization and equipment. Sports that are much more accessible to the average person, like tennis and ice skating, are not being very thoroughly taught at the high school and college level. Christian colleges could do a great public service by giving more attention to physical activities that can provide exercise and enjoyment throughout most of a person’s lifetime.

Involvement in sports, as in many other realms of human activity, will always have its awkward moments for the Christian. (At least Protestant schools needn’t suffer the headline indignities that befall Catholic schools—such incongruities as “Our Blessed Lady Crushes Sacred Heart,” or “All Angels Pounce on St. Benedict the Moor.”) But there are values there that should not be unthinkingly rejected.

The Apostle Paul uses enough sport-related figures of speech to convince many people that he may have been a sports fan (e.g., 1 Tim. 4:8; 1 Cor. 9:24; Phil. 3:14; Heb. 12:1). His secret was that at some point he subjected his inclinations to the control of the Spirit. We should do no less.

Pastor, can I talk to you about college? I don’t even know whether I should go or not.”

Many young people now question seriously the values of education beyond high school. Even among counselors, the matter is not as clear-cut as it once seemed.

For about a decade—at least in the late sixties and early seventies—there was a general turning away from college in some segments of middle-class America. Some high school graduates just drifted for a year or so. It became acceptable for parents to explain, “Oh, he’s just not sure about college right now,” or “She’s spending a year trying to find herself.”

Among the factors that nourished this drifting were, probably, the unrest of the Viet Nam era, the general affluence of the American people, and changes in life style that were a part of the hippie movement. Today there seems to be a settling down among many young people, apparent on college campuses in the students’ numbers, appearance, and seriousness of purpose.

College and university campuses have generally been in the vanguard of social change. Somewhat in the United States but more so in some other countries, they have been centers of rebellion and radicalism. During the 1960s this pattern was prevalent on the American college scene. Regrettably, much of this influence was not positive—either for the general culture or for colleges as social institutions. Many citizens with reasonably moderate positions on government, morals, economics, and other areas lost much faith in higher education.

College enrollments leaped upward dramatically in the quarter century that began in 1950, and most of these new students came from the middle class. One of the most compelling drives for going to college was materialistic: a diploma was seen as a ticket to more money and “the good life.” But for many the search for the pot of gold at the end of the educational rainbow has ended in failure and frustration.

Another trend in higher education is the dominance of humanism, the belief that man is the center of the universe and that there is nothing higher than man. Cloaked in the robes of academic objectivity, this is a dangerous trend. It eats away at the Christian foundations of faith in a transcendent God, a body of revealed truth that came from God, and absolute values derived from or supported by that revelation. Pastors and Christian parents must be on guard in this crucial area.

Purveyors of everything from soda pop to sermons have been emphasizing that this is the “now” generation. “You only go around once”—grab all you can on this trip. This short-sighted “gusto-grabbing” view of life works against the idea of long, demanding preparation programs.

The educational scene today is made up of a vast number and variety of institutions. In the public sector there are huge state universities, regional universities and colleges, and the fast-growing two-year community colleges, which often stress vocational education. Each of these types is likely to have branch campuses. In the private sector there are many independent liberal arts colleges and universities, schools that formed the basic structure of higher education in the earlier period of our history. (As recently as 1950 half of the college students were enrolled in independent colleges, and over half of the degrees were granted by these private institutions.) Add to this the array of proprietary (profit-making) schools, institutes, and specialized “colleges” and the fog thickens.

As the “golden era” of available students began to wane in the late 1960s, many in the over-built, over-extended category of publicly supported institutions found themselves with a package of problems ranging from unfilled dormitories and overstaffed faculties to struggles with state legislatures for the ever-increasing budget allocations. Since this money is usually tied to enrollment, the public institutions have become locked into a recruiting battle (at the taxpayers’ expense) the likes of which has never been seen before.

Career and occupational education that produces readily marketable skills has been emphasized during our recent past. Figures showing the unemployment rate among college graduates are used as persuasive arguments against going to college. But measuring education solely by the yardstick of economic utility, though it reflects a valid concern, results in a short-sighted, limited view of life. Moreover, our rapidly changing technology tends to shorten the lifetime of many skills previously in demand and to require retraining.

Education beyond high school is available to more students than ever before. Yet the rising costs loom large as decisions are made. The rich can pay their own way and financial assistance programs abound for the poor. It is the middle-income family that suffers most from the high cost of education. More relief is available than many recognize, however. Pastors and parents of college-bound young people should carefully examine the many potential sources of financial help.

Obviously, not every young person should attend college. However, every Christian youth should think about college from the perspective of God’s will for his life. The basic Christian tenet that man is made in the image of God suggests that man’s potential should be developed as highly as possible. The mandate from God to subdue and rule over the rest of creation does not lend much support to a view of limited educational pursuit.

Stalwart Christian citizenship seems to be in short supply today. The many forms of human need, governmental defection, and moral instability in all quarters cry out for young Christians to develop their abilities to the fullest. We need many more Christians in places of leadership in our sick society. Otherwise, leadership will come in increasing degrees from those whose values, orientation, and commitments are likely to lead the society even deeper into confusion and despair.

More college-trained Christians are needed in church jobs also. Growing churches have growing needs for staff members. Many congregations go without adequate staffing in religious education, youth ministries, music, social ministries, and recreation. Others cannot even find pastors. Such needs will not be met unless more and more Christian young people hear and respond to God’s call to prepare for this kind of service.

The following questions are likely to come up when young people seek counsel about their future. “Should I go on to school at all? If so, should it be college or some specific career training in a vocational school? Is a college education really worth the money and work it requires? Will I be able to get a job afterward? What should I study? Should I go at all if I don’t know what I want to do? How can I get the money to go? What about the large college or university as compared to the small college? The community college is close to home and cheaper—isn’t it therefore better? Lots of women marry right after college and never have a career outside the home; isn’t their college training wasted then?” Christian young people have an additional question to decide: “Should I go to a Christian college?”

Without attempting to deal specifically with each of these questions, I would like to suggest some background facts that potential students and their advisors should keep in mind.

The most recent survey of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that when people are grouped by levels of education, those with four or more years of college have by far the lowest rate of unemployment (2.9 per cent). It is true that in a time of recession and job shortage it may be hard for the person with a degree to find work within his field of specialization, but generally he is more likely to be employed with the college degree than without it.

Exploration has its place in education. The general-education phase of most professional and preprofessional programs and the heart of the liberal arts programs provide the chance for exploratory learning and a sampling of numerous fields of study. The teen-ager who does not know what he wants to do should not assume he should bypass college for this reason. Many students who think they have clear goals change these before graduation. Furthermore, many graduates find their life work in areas other than those they took their degrees in. This does not mean their degree work was of no lasting good to them. It may have developed or rounded out the mind or personality in just the right way for the other field later chosen.

As for women who after college marry, have children, and do not work outside the home: Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, the president of Asbury College, often says, “If you must choose between sending me your sons or your daughters, send me your daughters. They will be mothers of the next generation. The values of the Christian college education will be vital in that context.”

Christian young people should be encouraged to consider attending a Christian college. Primarily the Christian colleges are liberal arts institutions that offer professional and preprofessional studies in conjunction with the basic program. Some Christian students are needed to season the campus of the non-Christian school. However many more Christian students can be guided into fields of their greatest usefulness, both church-related and secular, by the influence of a Christian college.

Often the major deterrent to attending a Christian college is the cost. Tax-supported colleges generally cost less. They may, however, be masters of the “hidden cost.” The announced cost may be only tuition; “fees” or the costs of room and board may not be fully explained.

The financial-aid officer at a Christian college will help the needy student try to get aid from a variety of programs, ranging from scholarships and grants to work programs, loans, and deferred-payment options. Although Christian colleges have average costs higher than the average for tax-supported institutions, the difference is less than one might think. Every Christian student should weigh carefully the value system of the educational program he buys against the price tag in dollars.

Every college called Christian has a grave responsibility to its students, their parents and pastors, its supporters, and to Christ, whose name it bears. It’s purposes must be set on a sound theological base with definite teachings about the nature of God, the pre-eminence of Christ, and the nature and destiny of man, and with Christian views of ethics, morality, knowledge, and responsibility. The imperative to evangelize and to teach are at the heart of Christian purpose. At the same time a Christian college must be based on sound educational purposes. If it is not it will disgrace the name “Christian.”

Many years ago an eighteen-year-old asked a kindly old missionary, “How can I know God’s will for my life?” The reply was “Follow the gleam; favor the bent; and watch for the open door.” Good counsel for Christians then, good counsel for Christians now.

CHRISTOGRAPHIA XXIII

the tomato vines

still tied to their rough stakes

in november

sprawl & hang

turn yellow, brown

their leaves shrink to brittle hands

victims

of the year’s vegicide

they await the promise—

“today you will be with me”

today they are uprooted

& piled somewhere out of the way,

a last yellow blossom leaning

to catch the winter sun

faint among its roots

the blossom on the compost

reflects the coming Spring

even as its radial light

declines to dust

EUGENE WARREN