Few voices have been raised in defense of consistency since Emerson published his essay “Self Reliance.” The well known quotation from this is, of course, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But “foolish” is often overlooked. Emerson personally ran a tight ship intellectually and seemed to have held in question only the do-or-die defense of positions taken hastily and later shown to be unwise.

Human beings continue to seek to make sense of their world, and to demand of their fellows some kind of patterned, logical thought and behavior. And Christians, professing devotion to the Word and to the Lord of Truth, are justified in demanding consistency on the part of those who lead them and profess to speak in their behalf.

We are accustomed “at this point in time” to an absence of coherence and even-handedness in secular organizations as they relate to perplexing issues and problem groups. The United Nations is a case in point. The inability of such a large and diverse organization to speak with a coherent voice about such a clear-cut issue of criminality as the hijacking of passenger aircraft has become “acceptable.”

It is a commonplace that today’s world, far from being a “global village” or community, is becoming clearly divisible and divided into three “worlds,” the West, the “socialist” states, and the Third World of developing nations. Each of these has a charasteristic ethos, a characteristic way of meeting issues and of evaluating the others.

Obviously, anything like consistency of pronouncement or of action can scarcely be expected of such a conglomerate of powers, great and small. The Christian mind, recognizing such realities as this, does however grade the organizations he observes in action, and tends to expect more of those that claim to follow the cadence of a more exalted drummer.

In this complex situation the Christian Church ought certainly to manifest an ethos that transcends in consistency and justice that employed by any of the “worlds” with which it interacts. It goes without saying that those who speak for the Church should, in the name of its Lord, sit in judgment upon whatever secular systems act in violation of clearly just principles, and that oppress persons through the application of a perverse ethos.

The pronouncements of ecumenical bodies have, it seems to me, been fairly even-handed about such matters as racial discrimination practiced by lands in the West, including the United States. One would hope that such groups as the NCC and WCC would be equally sensitive to the suppression of human rights by nations of the East Bloc and of the Third World.

But it is increasingly evident that both the so-called socialist lands and the developing nations expect—and receive—preferential treatment in the councils of ecumenism. East Bloc nations claim for themselves a higher form of morality, and demand their right to be recognized as “moral” when operating on the basis of it. The nations of the Third World, more excusably perhaps, insist upon being dealt with on the basis of special ethical exemptions, because of their inexperience and their economic and cultural handicaps.

Secular agencies of the West seem generally willing to accept those claims to moral exemption, and to keep silent over abuse from the other two “worlds.” Our nation, especially, is willing to remain silent in the face of false or biased accusations. The Church ecumenical is willing to acquiesce in this, in the name of “turning the other cheek.” Well and good.

The real issue, however, is whether ecumenical Christian bodies should, in the interest of unity, stand in silence while delegates from lands clearly oppressive of their own citizens castigate only the West. Ecumenism’s problems multiply as its leaders attempt to equate Christian salvation with Third World movements for political independence.

At this point the NCC and the WCC seem to be involved in an almost hopeless dilemma. As they take their stand squarely with the peoples of the Third World in their quest for political freedom (certainly a laudable quest), they are confronted by the flagrant denials of these same freedoms by the East Bloc governments.

A report on the August meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC in Geneva (The Christian Century, Sept. 26, 1973, pp. 932 ff.) contains an interesting and informative section. After the showing of a film depicting scenes of brutality in Birmingham and Selma, delegates from Scandinavia “proposed a statement which included some unnamed socialist countries of eastern Europe where human rights are violated and people deprived of basic liberties.” A flurry of East Bloc delegates rose to point out that “the council could not treat in an undifferentiated way the problems of Prague and Pretoria, or Minsk and Memphis.”

This is, of course, shorthand for a declaration that human rights and basic liberties are one thing within the Soviet Bloc and quite another in lands outside this area. The council apparently settled for unity, even with groups that disdain pleas for human rights, rather than maintain a clear opposition to racism and injustice.

Much is made of “the high road” that protesters to the Viet Nam war assertedly traveled. In cases where this was absent, some religious journalists have felt compelled to erect an elevated highway, complete with overpasses, for them. As Daniel Berrigan went underground, taunting the officers of the law for four months, he was built up to the stature of a folk-hero, being compared with Robin Hood and in one religious journal with Puck and Ariel. One wonders whether the chuckling would have been as audible if a member of the John Birch Society, wanted on a federal charge, had found a nation-wide rightist underground ready to assist him in evading the authorities.

An even greater lack of consistency is found in an article by Milton Mayer of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. In the early part of “Disownment: The Quakers and Their President” (The Christian Century, Oct. 10, 1973), Mayer sharply criticizes President Nixon for supposedly using his religious connections for political purposes.

In the light of this, it is far from edifying to read, in the same article, the suggestion that the East Whittier Friends Meeting, of which the President is a member, disown him and expel him from membership. Mayer adds that such action “might conceivably topple Friend Nixon from the presidency.” In the name of common fairness, one is inclined to question the objectivity, not only of the author of the piece, but of the editorial board that accepted it.

Perhaps it is small wonder that liberal Protestantism has been so hospitable to a situational or contextual ethic, and so hostile to an ethic that insists upon principles. But the rejection of the principial does strange things to the jewel of consistency.

In the rather spartan surroundings of Chicago’s Wabash YMCA, fifty influential evangelicals at a landmark weekend meeting last month hammered out a 473-word social-action statement, “A Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern” (see reprint, this page). The group, sharing a common commitment “to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the Word of God” but representing a divergence of backgrounds and other viewpoints, hopes to arouse America’s millions of evangelicals to a greater degree of social concern—and action.

The statement confesses the failure of evangelicals to demonstrate “the love of God to those suffering social abuses” and to proclaim God’s justice to “an unjust American society.” It strikes out at racism in the Church. “Fellow evangelical Christians” are urged to “demonstrate repentance in a Christian discipleship that confronts the social and political injustice of our nation.” There must be an attack on materialism and the “maldistribution of the nation’s wealth and services.” Militarism and civil religion must be shunned. No “new gospel” is proclaimed and no political ideology or party is endorsed: the declaration is to be seen simply as a call for “total discipleship” and national righteousness.

Participants who signed the declaration included such disparate personalities as editor Sharon Gallagher of Right On, published by the Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley; President William Bentley of the National Black (formerly Negro) Evangelical Association; Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship Canadian director Samuel Escobar; theologian Carl F. H. Henry, former editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; Carl Thomas McIntire of Toronto’s Institute of Christian Studies (he parted years ago with the politics of his famous radio-preacher father); Editor William Petersen of Eternity; California Baptist Seminary professor Bernard Ramm; Southern Baptist social-concerns executive Foy Valentine; and author-editor Joseph Bayly.

Those familiar with the social-concerns statements and resolutions issued by many denominations over the past seven or eight years will find little in the declaration that has not already been said. Perhaps its most remarkable aspect is that so much could be agreed upon by so many with such a broad range of viewpoints (from Anabaptists who repudiate all war to Calvinists who allow for aggressive use of the political system to seek justice—and even some whose socio-economic philosophy approximates neo-Marxist economics).

There were a few hassles before the finishing touches were applied. Some wanted to condemn Nixon’s alleged “lust for and abuse of power” in a proposed resolution on Watergate and to voice suspicions of U. S. involvement in the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile. Several cautioned against issuing resolutions that might blunt the public impact of the main declaration—and possibly turn off evangelicals back home. This reasoning prevailed, but a few participants, including President John H. Yoder of Goshen Seminary, declined to sign the final statement (a 1,000-word document was scrapped in favor of the shorter one) because they believed it didn’t say enough.

The idea for the meeting arose initially at Campus Crusade’s Explo ’72 in Dallas last year—and, in a sense, in reaction to it. After Explo officials turned down suggestions that more social emphasis be injected into the program, seminarian Jim Wallis of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and a small group of young adults mounted a brief anti-war demonstration in the Cotton Bowl stands behind the platform. But they were shushed and otherwise cold-shouldered by the majority of the 85,000 in the stadium. Wallis, editor of a controversial tabloid, The Post American, assisted by Wes Michaelson, aide to Senator Mark Hatfield, and a few others, then pushed for an evangelical forum on social concerns. A committee soon took shape, with Dr. Ronald J. Sider of Messiah College, a pacifist-oriented Brethren in Christ school in southeastern Pennsylvania, as coordinator.

The Chicago Declaration

A Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern

As evangelical Christians committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the Word of God. we affirm that God lays total claim upon the lives of his people. We cannot, therefore, separate our lives in Christ from the situation in which God has placed us in the United States and the world.

We confess that we have not acknowledged the complete claims of God on our lives.

We acknowledge that God requires love. But we have not demonstrated the love of God to those suffering social abuses.

We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and the oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system.

We affirm that God abounds in mercy and that he forgives all who repent and turn from their sins. So we call our fellow evangelical Christians to demonstrate repentance in a Christian discipleship that confronts the social and political injustice of our nation.

We must attack the materialism of our culture and the maldistribution of the nation’s wealth and services. We recognize that as a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote more just acquisition and distribution of the world’s resources.

We acknowledge our Christian responsibilities of citizenship. Therefore, we must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might—a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty.

We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship.

We proclaim no new gospel, but the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who. through the power of the Holy Spirit, frees people from sin so that they might praise God through works of righteousness.

By this declaration, we endorse no political ideology or party, but call our nation’s leaders and people to that righteousness which exalts a nation.

We make this declaration in the biblical hope that Christ is coming to consummate the Kingdom and we accept his claim on our total discipleship till He comes.

In addition to Sider, who directs Messiah’s extension campus in Philadelphia, and Wallis, the planning committee included: Editor John Alexander of The Other Side; President Myron Augsburger of Eastern Mennonite College; political-science professor Paul B. Henry of Calvin College; evangelist William Pannell of Tom Skinner Associates; former Stony Brook School headmaster Frank Gaebelein; Conservative Baptist home missions executive Rufus Jones; sociologist David O. Moberg of Marquette University; historian Richard Pierard of Indiana State University; and Fuller Seminary theologian Lewis B. Smedes.

In opening remarks Pannell challenged evangelicals to emphasize social sins and institutionalized evils as vigorously as they do personal sins.

The conference closed with a “celebration of salt.” Each participant was given a pinch of the substance as a reminder of what amounts to another “Great Commission” when the disciples of Jesus were sent forth as “salt of the earth.”

Ruibal In Colombia

Bolivian youth evangelist Julio César Ruibal, who sparked a revival earlier this year in his land (see March 16 issue, page 40), arrived in Colombia last month. The 21-year-old former medical student, converted last year at a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting in southern California, has been preaching in several Latin American countries, identifying himself as a Roman Catholic.

Virtually without pre-publicity, Ruibal began modestly in the Colombian capital of Bogotá, preaching to 50 people in a home meeting, to 100 university students, to a crowd in a Presbyterian church, then to 3,000 people in a public square. Padre Rafael García-Herrero, a leader in the Catholic charismatic movement in Colombia, introduced Ruibal to the public in his daily 240-second “Minute of God” television program, along with a child who had been healed of paralysis at one of his meetings.

Ruibal’s next appearance was in an aristocratic section of Medellín, Colombia’s second city. Speaking by invitation from the steps of a Catholic church, he made a straightforward presentation of salvation and invited his 10,000 hearers to raise their hands and pray to accept Christ. Then he asked them to pray with him for the healing of the sick. A 32-year-old man who had been paralyzed for seven years stood up, took two steps, and abandoned his wheelchair. Persons who knew José Martínez said they were astounded, and one who had long professed to believe in nothing said he was now convinced of the reality of God.

Relatives of 19-year-old José Ferroso fled in panic when he began to shout, “Jesus! Jesus!”—he had been mute from birth. Magazine reporter Henry Holquin, who had repeatedly reaffirmed his disbelief in miracles before covering the event, claims to have seen fifty verified cures during that Sunday-afternoon meeting. The only response from the newspapers was a short item promising to “investigate the reality of what happened … in order to dispel doubt, and prevent people from being victims of false facts.”

Two days later, some 70,000 people came to the soccer stadium of Medellín to hear Ruibal; this was reportedly the largest crowd ever in this city of 1.4 million (see December 7 issue, page 46). The crowd was orderly throughout the meeting, which lasted over three hours, except that whenever someone experienced healing those around him wept with emotion, shouted jubilantly “Miracle! Miracle!,” and propelled the person toward the speaker’s stand to give his testimony. Many professed a new conviction of the supreme importance of God in their lives.

One young man threw away his crutches and climbed over a six-foot fence to testify. Montoya Piedad recovered the vision she had lost seven years ago. Gustavo Gonzalez, who had been deaf for fifty-six years, claimed to hear perfectly. A woman whose arm had been paralyzed for four years after a stroke waved for reporters (see photo).

The newspaper that had promised to investigate Ruibal ran a two-page report, including interviews, pictures of people who claimed to be healed, and some case histories, including names of doctors who had been treating the persons. For balance the paper included interviews with a psychologist and a doctor, who did not deny the healings, but attributed them to mass suggestion, hypnosis, or parapsychology.

Ruibal himself insisted, “It is God, not I, who does the miracles,” and emphasized the supreme importance of spiritual conversion. “I always call for repentance, commitment to God, a profound conversion. That, for me, is the greatest miracle,” he said.

Each meeting in Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali resulted in numerous healings; yet many others went away without being healed (as at Kuhlman meetings). Interestingly, the reaction of those not healed was usually increased hope because of what they had seen rather than disillusionment or bitterness.

Ruibal drew crowds of 12,000 in Cali, a city the size of Medellín. In La Ceja, hyperbolically reputed to have as many seminaries as houses, he met until 4 A.M. with 200 Catholic seminarians, addressed a gathering of priests, and spent two hours with the archbishop. He returned to Bogotá, where the sports stadium filled to hear him, and he was to share the platform with the president of the republic at a $250-a-plate banquet sponsored by García-Herrero for the benefit of slum dwellers.

There has not been the official Catholic opposition to Ruibal in Colombia that there was in Bolivia. The minority of priests associated with the Catholic charismatic movement are enthusiastic supporters while other priests are cautious and rather critical. The archbishop of Medellín, who gave prior approval to Ruibal’s appearances, said cautiously, “The religious aspect is a reality which, apparently, has no reason to be criticized. Phenomena which accompany religious events, supposed miracles, do need discernment and investigation of science, which can give much light and a little explanation.”

Reaction from Protestant evangelicals has generally been enthusiasm that the Gospel is being preached to so many people and an acceptance of the validity of the healings. However, some are uneasy about Ruibal’s identification of himself as a Catholic; they fear that the Roman Catholic Church might capitalize on the miracles to strengthen faith in itself rather than in the Gospel. Many evangelicals have attended Ruibal’s meetings, but they have not mobilized to follow up those who make professions of faith, nor to identify themselves with Ruibal’s message. Partly because there was very little previous knowledge of the time or place of the meetings and partly because of the novelty of the situation, evangelical response to the opportunity has been individual rather than organized.

LEROY BIRNEY

Birth Of A Denomination

Southern Presbyterians created a major new evangelical denomination this month. An initiating general assembly, held in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, brought together several hundred churchmen whose congregations have recently separated from the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). They voted to call the new denomination “National Presbyterian Church.” Alleged theologically liberal trends in the PCUS were the main reasons for the shift.

A fifty-year-old Reformed scholar, Dr. Morton H. Smith, was elected first stated clerk of the assembly and a lawyer, W. Jack Williamson, moderator.

The new denomination was reported to embrace some 273 local congregations with a combined membership of about 60,000. Fifteen presbyteries have already been organized.

The solemn constituting assembly took place in the luxuriously modern Briarwood Presbyterian Church just south of Birmingham. It opened on Tuesday evening, December 4, with an hour-long address by Williamson, who had been chosen convener by a provisional committee. Following his speech Williamson declared the assembly formally in session—at 8:40 P.M. (CST).

Within two minutes, the first complaint was voiced: a commissioner took the floor to ask if it were necessary “to have these blinding lights shining at us all night.” The lights, brought in to accommodate television newsmen, were promptly doused, and the session thereafter was a model of quiet efficiency. Williamson took the assembly through a long list of procedural orders and appointments without objection or debate.

Except for some exhuberant congregational singing, the commissioners showed little emotion. About the only laugh all evening came with the introduction of proposed names for the new church: among some one hundred suggestions was “Dixie National.”

The first debate on a theological point was over whether miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased. The question was finally referred to a committee for a year-long study.

Smith, the stated clerk, has been the theoretician of the PCUS separatists. He is the author of How Is the Gold Become Dim, a catalog of the denomination’s theological decline. A native of Virginia, Smith is professor of systematic theology at Reformed Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Columbia Seminary and earned a doctorate under G. C. Berkouwer at the Free University of Amsterdam. He taught at Belhaven College before joining the founding faculty at the Jackson seminary in 1964.

Williamson is a ruling elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Greenville, Alabama. He served for a time as a PCUS member of the joint committee drafting union with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. In his address to the assembly he charged that the group had broken faith with PCUS separatists by abandoning a plan of union that included an “escape clause.” This had been projected, he said, as an agreed-upon method of “peaceful realignment.”

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Religion In Transit

Should courses on the occult be taught in public schools? A course on the supernatural in literature at the 1,300-student Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire, is getting national attention as church people press for its removal, mostly because of fears of Satanic influence on the students—one of whom reportedly now identifies herself as a witch.

There may be one Lutheran denomination instead of three in Canada if plans work out. Twenty-eight leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada, Lutheran Church in America-Canada Section, and Lutheran Church-Canada (Missouri Synod branch) agreed that an indigenous church should be established. They also agreed to a seven-part statement on Scripture.

Thomas Spitz, 52, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod clergyman, resigned as general secretary of the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., a post he had held since its founding six years ago. He will serve as pastor of an LCMS church on Long Island and will thus be able to become more involved in “the painful struggle” going on in the LCMS.

With Southern Baptist deacon William R. Pogue in Skylab are Edward G. Gibson, a member of House of Prayer Lutheran Church in suburban Houston, a Lutheran Church in America congregation pastored by his older brother, and Gerald P. Carr, who attends Webster (Texas) Presbyterian Church.

The State Council of Greece, the nation’s supreme court, rejected the suit of eight bishop friends of Archbishop Ieronymos to unseat the ten-member Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece. The Holy Synod then announced that Ieronymos, primate of the church, whose own hand-picked synod was ousted earlier this year by the council, will resign soon. His successor will probably be Metropolitan Seraphim of Ioannina, who swore in the new military government—a snub Ieronymos protested in vain.

Those mass baptisms of South Korean troops are still going on. Recently, groups of 3,300 and 1,300 soldiers were baptized. The 3,300 were baptized by chaplains and pastors of the church associated with OMS (formerly Oriental Missionary Society).

Many businessmen, government leaders, and energy experts are predicting dire times as a result of the energy crisis. Most of the nation’s pastors and church leaders meanwhile are looking for the silver lining in those oil-black clouds.

In a survey conducted by CHRISTIANITY TODAY a number of church spokesmen acknowledged that the winter may bring some degree of bleakness into their churches, but most also said it might bring some blessing. For example, they cited, President Nixon’s ban on Sunday gasoline sales may boost attendance (and offerings) by ending the weekend “exodus” to cottages, resorts, and distant relatives.

“We estimate that 25 per cent of our faithful are absent at [second] homes, sailing on the Pacific, or basking on Catalina Island on any given weekend,” said Robert Schuller, pastor of the nation’s largest drive-in church, the 6,400-member Garden Grove Community Church in Garden Grove, California.

Says National Council of Churches president W. Sterling Cary: “Lacking the opportunity for vacation weekends, people may find again their local church, get to know their neighbors, and have time to search again for the values which once made this nation one of hope and trust.”

The crisis may also force churches to rethink their ministries, asserts Paul Benjamin, professor of church growth at Lincoln Christian Seminary in Lincoln, Illinois. “Churches may have to ask themselves what caused people to drift away on weekends in the first place.” Further, the crisis “might stimulate the church to more creative thinking,” concludes Garden Grove’s Schuller.

Among the possibilities facing the church, they say, are rescheduling of services and meetings to other times and maybe even days, consolidation of activities to one or two nights and keeping lights and heat off in buildings as much as possible, car pools, formation of church groups in neighborhood homes, and making greater use of broadcasting.

First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, California, already has an energy conservation committee. It is headed by church transportation minister Terry Spahr. Spahr’s church—like all those surveyed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY—is following President Nixon’s recommendations by cutting thermostats below seventy degrees, imposing speed limits on church vehicles, and turning off unused lights. The crisis hits three areas of the church, Spahr believes: the people, the bus ministry, and church utilities. Congregation members are urged to use public transportation where possible, or—with an assist from the church’s computer—form car pools. “We already have church-giving records on computer, so forming car pools shouldn’t be difficult,” said Spahr. Should a Sunday driving ban come about—something all the ministers interviewed feel won’t happen—First Baptist’s members will be asked to form neighborhood Sunday schools and chapels and then tune in the church’s televised morning service.

In Dallas, the 18,000-member First Baptist Church—spread out over five city blocks—is promoting Sunday car pools and instituting conservation measures in use of buildings.

Home churches and cell groups may be a distinct possibility, said several ministers. Norman Foss, pastor of a 150-member Missoula, Montana, Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation, said his church has home Bible studies operating and will settle for them should necessity force curtailment of some services. Foss meanwhile is buying a bike to save gas—“and expend a little of my own energy.”

Another Alliance minister, James A. Davey of Arlington Memorial Church in Arlington, Virginia, is convinced the crisis may propel churches into new ministry forms. Evening services may be dropped, and the sermon changed to a cassette-taped Bible study for use in neighborhood cell groups, he said. The churches must rethink their “hyperthyroid programming which says ‘more is better,’ ” Davey added.

WEATHERING THE WINTER

The Houston Chronicle, in a recent article on its religion page, listed ten ways churches can respond to the energy crisis:

• Churches can encourage members living nearby to walk or ride bicycles to church services.

• They can encourage or actually work out car pools for members to get to church.

• Churches can limit, consolidate, or dovetail their services, to cut down on the number of trips to church.

• They can be sure the cars they buy for their ministers to drive are the smaller, gas-saving models.

• They can encourage members who drive great distances to attend church to visit churches closer to their homes until the crisis is over.

• Churches located on bus routes can offer their parking lots on weekdays to people who would otherwise use the excuse that they have to walk too far to the bus.

• Churches can work out carpools for their members who work in the same areas of town.

• They can talk about biblical stewardship of the earth, including the wise use of natural resources.

• They can lower their theromstats, switch off lights, and urge members to do likewise at home.

Hardest hit by the oil shortages are the super churches operating extensive bus ministries and drawing crowds from surrounding areas.

The dealer who supplies the fastgrowing 13,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, announced a 28 per cent reduction in the church’s gasoline allocation (to 10,000 gallons per month, down 4,000 gallons) and said further cutbacks can be expected within weeks, according to assistant pastor James Soward, who heads up the church’s energy strategy. Anti-freeze and lubricating oil are also in short supply, he says. Contingencies are under discussion, adds Soward, but for now the church is doubling up some of the bus routes (they extend as far as fifty miles beyond Lynchburg), and social outings—including youth activities requiring buses—will be curtailed.

Also hit hard was First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, boasting the nation’s largest Sunday school at 10,000-plus—most of them brought in by the church’s fleet of 150 buses that operate on 170 routes. Pastor Jack Hyles says the church’s fuel supply has been cut “by about a third.” The remainder will be kept solely for Sunday use. Other bus users—choirs, youth groups, adult fellowships—will have to pay cash at the nearest gas station that will accommodate them.

Van Nuys First Baptist, which operates fourteen buses, will cut bus use by 20 per cent, giving priority to Sunday use. Outreach ministries, such as choir trips, will be severely curtailed and social activities chopped completely. One ministry hurt by the cutbacks, Spahr said, will be an annual fifteen-weekend teen outreach at mountain ski resorts. The church is looking for ski resorts closer to home, although the whole program is in jeopardy.

But at Temple Baptist in Detroit, Michigan, curtailment of bus operations is out, Pastor G. B. Vick told reporter Hiley Ward of the Detroit Free Press. Besides, he implied, it makes better sense to keep the buses running; their elimination would result in increased numbers of private cars on the road on Sundays.

The shortages will also lead to sermons on ethics, say some pastors. “We’ll be preaching on obeying the spirit—not just the letter of the law,” remarked Spahr. Churches must lead Americans in a cutback of waste, adds Schuller. “I truly believe America is shot full of waste. We’re an undisciplined and prolifigate people. We waste gas, money, and time.” First Baptist Church in Dallas has already sent conservation guidelines to its members, reports associate pastor James Draper. Pastor Warren Wiersbe of Moody Church in Chicago said a committee is issuing a “manifesto” to the congregation asking for priorities in energy conservation.

THE MINISTER HAD A BABY

For the first time, a Lutheran Church in America minister has given birth. It was a baby girl—and the minister is LCA staffer Margaret Krych of Hights-town, New Jersey. Mrs. Krych was the first woman ordained into the Methodist church of Australia, and she was ordained again last year in the Hights-town LCA church her husband serves as pastor. She is one of eight ordained women in the LCA.

The heating oil shortage is a major headache for many churches. At Pipestone, Minnesota, where temperatures can drop to 40 degrees below zero, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church is faced with oil cutbacks and few ways to conserve it. Church offices and non-used classroom space are all on the same thermostat and therefore can’t be lowered sufficiently to save without making extensive system changes, says pastor Willard E. Koch.

Wheaton College, with more than fifty buildings, beat the fuel oil shortage more than a year ago by converting to natural gas for heating. Even so, said physical plant director Ralph Swanson, thermostats this winter will be set at 70 degrees maximum, with some low-use areas kept at 65 degrees, and use of heating and electricity will be severely restricted during holiday periods (even the outdoor decorations, including the school’s Christmas tree, remained unlit for Christmas—a negligible but visible savings in energy and only a dent in this year’s utilities bill of more than $300,000.)

Preachers might receive an unexpected bonus from the energy cutback, however. Cooler churches will keep people wider awake and more alert. Church-scene commentator Martin Marty suggests half in jest that church services might even become livelier (clapping hands and the like) as members seek to stay warm.

Rationing, if and when it comes, is something the churches have had to face in the past. Under the World War II system, most drivers were issued three gallons per week with instructions to cut unnecessary driving. But the government included church-going as a necessary function, and ministers received unlimited gasoline supplies because clergymen’s jobs were held to be necessary for the national morale.

The fuel crisis is worse overseas. Churches in at least five European nations have had to contend with Sunday driving bans. Planners of next summer’s International Congress on Evangelization at Lausanne, Switzerland, are keeping an uneasy eye on problems. Atleast three charters were planned from North America, says Wanda Snyder of Wheaton Travel Service, main stateside agency for the conference. Now, however, there may be only one. Its projected price is now $375 with a fuel increase rider attached, meaning the price can go up again—and again—before it finally leaves. The only alternative is regularly scheduled service, she said. “People will be able to get to Lausanne as long as they’re willing to pay the higher non-charter fares,” she said.

THE MASTER’s CHARGE

Above the organ strains of the Sunday morning offertory there’s a steady click-clack of credit-card imprinters as the ushers move from pew to pew.

That’s a farfetched prediction about future church services, perhaps, but credit-card use is already here. Some churches have made arrangements for members to charge their contributions in connection with special fund-raising campaigns. One of them is the Coronation of the 950-family Blessed Virgin Catholic parish in Buffalo, New York, which used Master Charge, Bankamericard, and the local Empire card for a debt-reduction drive. Rector Eugene Radon credits the credit for an increase over last year’s drive, and now the banks are helping the church plan for possible use of the cards in weekly giving. With an increasingly credit-oriented society, credit giving may well keep the church of the future afloat, Radon believes.

Whether or not his prediction holds up, his members seem satisfied with the credit idea, and other dioceses have requested information.

BARRIE DOYLE

With bus use curtailed, church-related driving restricted to fifty miles per hour or less, electric lighting dimmed, and thermostats turned down, churches may want to take a long look at the Amish Mennonites of Pennsylvania. Not seriously bothered by an energy crisis—they use no cars and they shun electricity and other modern conveniences—the Amish seem more concerned about the cost of oats to keep old Dobbin trotting to church. And unless coal, wood, and propane (the Amish’s major concession to modern heating is the propane stove) are in short supply, the Old Order folk are in for a relatively comfortable winter at home and in church.

One thing is certain. For American churches the winter will be one of consolidation, self-examination, and perhaps new mobilization of the congregations. That cloud may or may not be so black after all.

Managua: Year Of Reconstruction

Almost one year after the December 23 earthquake that leveled Managua, the signs of one of the worst disasters ever to hit the Western Hemisphere are all too evident. For the most part, a 280-block fenced-off area that was once the Nicaraguan capital’s downtown still lies in ruin. No one will ever know how many of the estimated 10,000 dead still lie beneath the piles of rubble.

But the massive international relief effort and the determination and courage of the Nicaraguan people are also evident. Even though plans for rebuilding the city are uncertain, construction—under much stiffer building codes—is booming all around the edges of Managua. Shopping centers, something new, are springing up all over. Most businesses have relocated outside of downtown, and life goes on.

It is impossible to calculate the total amount of relief funds and supplies given through church agencies. In addition to efforts by such groups as the World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals, World Vision, Food For the Hungry, the Mennonite Central Committee, The Evangelical Alliance Relief (TEAR), Fund of Britain, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, and church groups all over the world, most of the missions working in Nicaragua mounted programs of their own. The aid enabled the local churches to get back on their feet remarkably quickly. Pastors report attendance and giving are generally back up to or above pre-quake levels, despite continuing dislocation of people and high unemployment.

Almost all the churches destroyed or damaged in the quake have been or are being rebuilt, some with temporary structures. The Central American Mission bookstore, which lost its rented building and more than $10,000 in stock and equipment, reports sales are double pre-quake levels. The large Baptist School has split its operations between the nearby town of Masaya and undamaged portions of its old building—one of two schools allowed to operate within the fenced-off downtown area. The American Baptist hospital has continued to function, despite major damage to some buildings, with limited in-patient care.

The earthquake has apparently had a profound spiritual impact on Nicaragua. The Central American Mission, which included a strong evangelistic effort in its $100,000 relief program, reported more than 500 decisions in a ten-week, nation-wide campaign early this year, with over 850 people enrolled in Bible correspondence courses. CAM missionary Ward Johnson believes the next five years will be “a time of unprecedented opportunity for spreading the Gospel.”

One apparently permanent result of the quake is CEPAD, an alliance organized four days after the catastrophe as the Evangelical Committee to Help Earthquake Victims. Its aim is to coordinate evangelical relief efforts and provide a mechanism for receiving and distributing supplies. Made up of representatives from thirty-one church groups and missions and headed by Dr. Gustavo Parejón of the Baptist Hospital, CEPAD provided government recognition for Protestants within the country and foreign evangelical relief agencies. As the first phase of immediate food distribution and medical care passed, the name was changed to Evangelical Committee for Development, and emphasis shifted to long-range programs.

Now operating pretty much as an independent agency, CEPAD provides a variety of social services. Over 200 temporary housing units have been built in cooperation with the Mennonite Central Committee. A permanent housing project sponsored by World Vision, using the “stack-sack” method (bags filled with a dirt-and-cement mixture and reinforced with steel rods) widely applied in Peru after the earthquake there, is going slowly because of red tape and higher-than-anticipated costs. About thirteen houses of this type have been built.

A hot-breakfast program operated by CEPAD, with food provided by the government, serves some 20,000 children and expectant and nursing mothers in forty-two centers, down from a peak of eighty-two centers and more than 85,000 breakfasts daily. Other CEPAD activities include a revolving fund that has provided almost $12,000 in loans to fifty-one small businesses, vocational training and recreation programs, the Roberto Clemente Temporary Children’s Home, and—in cooperation with the literary agency ALFALIT, a literacy and basic education program that by October reported that some 4,600 people had learned to read.

Advisory personnel and the bulk of operating expenses for CEPAD are provided by Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches. For the evangelical church in Nicaragua, the slogan adopted by the government after the earthquake seems to have come true: “1973—Year of Hope and Reconstruction.”

STEPHEN R. SYWULKA

Regent College: Moving Up

A new development in graduate theological studies conducted by evangelicals is under way in Vancouver, Canada’s third-largest city, where Regent College was voted into affiliation with the prestigious University of British Columbia.¹The faculty senate vote is subject to ratification by the university’s ruling board. Regent began with summer sessions in 1969 and launched its full-year operation in the fall of 1970 with only four full-time students; this year it has sixty-three, plus forty-five part-timers.

Unlike Bible schools, Regent is for college graduates, but unlike seminaries, it is aimed for the student who is not presently planning on the professional ministry. The head of the school, James Houston, previously taught geography at Oxford University. The school’s four full-time professors have both seminary degrees and university doctorates (two in Old Testament, one in New Testament, and one in history of Christianity). Their aim is to help college graduates who will be participating in the lives of local congregations to make a start at bringing their knowledge of the Bible and its implications for today up to the level of their competence in secular professions.

Women and men, Canadians and Americans, are attracted to the program in about equal numbers. Most come for a one-year diploma; some remain for a two-year Master of Christian Studies degree. Among the alumni there are diplomats, civil servants, school teachers, and journalists. Some graduates have gone on to traditional seminaries to finish preparing for professional ministry.

Regent College was initiated by members of the Plymouth Brethren, but since its beginning the trustees, teachers, and students have come from many denominations. The school rents a facility on the university campus from the Vancouver School of Theology, a traditional seminary with an enrollment of sixty, including forty-four full-timers. The seminary serves Canada’s two largest Protestant denominations, the United Church and the Anglicans.

Affiliation with the university will ease transferring of credits and foreign-government recognition and, without compromising its autonomy, better enable Regent to show the academic world that genuine scholarship and Christian commitment can go hand in hand.

DONALD TINDER

Southern Baptists: A Vote For Autonomy

Political immorality and housekeeping details were the predominant topics of discussion at a bevy of state-level conferences of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The major household item of national significance concerned “alien baptism” and the practice by eleven SBC churches in North Carolina of accepting into membership non-immersed persons. After facing the question for three straight years, the North Carolina Baptists turned down a resolution which would have barred “messengers” or voting delegates from churches that accept alien baptism. Convention spokesmen said the vote was a victory for local church autonomy, and was not to be construed as a vote for change in Baptist policy. As one delegate declared: “A convention is a convention and a church is a church, and a convention should not tell a church what to do.” (Southern California SBCers voted similarly on the issue.)

Resolutions calling for new commitment to Christ, prayer support for all government leaders, and renewed efforts at rooting out political corruption were among those passed during the conferences. Baptists in Maryland, the home state of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, called for “redemptive involvement” of the church in the affairs of government and in “personal relationships wherever possible” with “fallen” politicians.

Stormy Weather—Or Showers Of Blessing?

Behind a severe weather system last month in Oklahoma came the National Missionary Convention (NMC) of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental), the first religious group to use Oklahoma City’s new Myriad convention facility. While the platform climate was mild enough, there was stormy weather in the corridors over the spread of the charismatic movement among the faithful. On hand were more than 200 missionaries and 6,000 members. (Basically congregational and indigenously American, the denomination—members prefer “movement”—includes some 6,000 congregations with about one million members. Until a few years ago, most of the movement was nominally associated with a smaller but better-known, ecumenically oriented, and more organized branch, the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]. The two groups, plus the largest branch, the Churches of Christ [non-instrumental], comprise the self-styled “Restoration movement.”)

Convention sessions featured Fuller Seminary School of World Mission professor Donald McGavran speaking on world-wide church growth. Other meetings and workshop discussions centered on mission procedures and problems, especially matters of missionary responsibility and authority.

Prior to the meeting, concern was expressed over the alleged involvement of some convention personnel in the charismatic movement. A lengthy letter raising the issue was published in Horizons, the unofficial NMC missions publication. The writer said he would be unwilling to support the NMC if the allegations he had heard about charismatic leadership could not be disproved. He also said that his church was preparing to write all the missionaries it supported for a statement of doctrine and position on this matter. Richard Bourne, editor of Horizons and a member of the Continuation Committee of the NMC, said that he too was quite concerned but wanted more information on “how widespread this movement is among our missionaries. I just don’t know.”

The controversy was not directly mentioned but was alluded to in some of the main sessions. Outside the main sessions it was rather pronounced, and it is now simmering in many of the churches. The debate is not over the charismatic movement per se as much as it is over the place of opinion. The Restoration movement theoretically functions on the principle, “In Essentials, Unity; In Non-Essentials, Liberty; and in All Things, Love.” But what is essential and what is non-essential? No final decision can be made because the NMC is not a delegate convention nor one that attempts to force doctrine upon its participants. An unwritten code or creed, however, which is expanded as needed, is used as a standard of judgment. If enough missionaries or preachers can be rallied on a particular issue, then a private censure can be made against troublesome elements. This is the system that brought about the differences between the non-instrumental and instrumental wings of the Restoration movement. Next came the dispute over theology and organized missions. Now tongues is at issue.

Four basic variations can be distinguished in the controversy: (1) One aggressive segment strongly believes in the present-day existence of the charismatic gifts, especially glossolalia, seeing them as latter-day showers of blessing for the Church. A group of this type was busy passing out literature defending the tongues position, similar to that held by Pentecostals. (2) A second group practices the use of glossolalia in private prayer sessions but does not make an issue of it. (3) Another group does not practice tongues but does respect the charismatics, and sees the issue as a matter of opinion rather than a test of fellowship. (4) A very conservative group sees the charismatic movement as intolerable, some going so far as to say it is a work of the devil. This group politely “disfellowships” members found to be charismatics.

There is no way to know the extent of the controversy or just how serious it could become. Level heads are pleading with both factions to seek the unity of the church.

WESLEY PADDOCK

Hineni: God In The Garden

A hand-clapping overflow crowd of 10,000 mostly young Jews in the Felt Forum at New York’s Madison Square Garden sang, danced, wept, and listened intently to Esther Jungreis call for a return to God. A reporter for the Jewish Press called it the “first Jewish revival meeting in history.”

Well, perhaps in modern history. At any rate, it was the biggest audience yet for Esther Jungreis’s Hineni organization (hineni is Hebrew for “here am I”), which is shaping up as the Jewish answer to the Jews-for-Jesus movement. “Open the book once more and learn who you are!” she implored. Education and knowledge, she asserted, are meaningless without belief in God.

Mrs. Jungreis, wife of New York rabbi Theodore Jungreis, founded Hineni in response, she says, to an inner call to serve God with every ounce of her being—by winning back the multitudes of Jewish young people who have strayed from the path of Torah.

Are Jesus’ Teachings Normative?

The Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder (Eerdmans, 1973, 260 pp., $3.45 pb), is reviewed by Donald W. Dayton, director of Mellander Library, North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago.

The Politics of Jesus could prove to be one of the most significant studies published among evangelicals in quite some time. The book was barely off the press before it was being analyzed in graduate courses in Christian ethics at the University of Chicago and was seized upon by circles of evangelical “radical” Christians to support their activism. Its impact on Roman Catholics at Notre Dame is indicated in an essay in Worldview (June, 1973).

Yoder is president of Goshen Biblical Seminary and today’s most articulate Mennonite theologian. Author of a number of books on the Anabaptist heritage, he is one of the most instructive examples available of how a theologian can reshape and revitalize a tradition in fidelity to both Scripture and history.

Much of Yoder’s work is in frank defense of pacifism. His Nevertheless (Herald, 1971) distinguishes nearly a score of “types” of pacifism and criticizes most of them as severely as non-pacifists. Yoder’s own “Messianic Pacifism” is spelled out in The Original Revolution (Herald, 1971). From one perspective The Politics of Jesus develops the exegetical foundations of these other two books.

But this book is much more than a defense of pacifism. It is an extended essay in social ethics arguing the unpopular thesis that the life and teachings of Jesus have direct social and political implications. Herein lies the importance of this book for evangelicals. From dispensationalists to Pentecostals, evangelicals have, like most Christian traditions, found ways to avoid the normativeness of Jesus. Evangelicals speak much of Christ as Saviour, less, and then in a somewhat truncated manner, of him as Lord, but hardly at all of Jesus as teacher and model who calls us to radical discipleship. I have often been reminded of a young girl who said that her evangelical background had conditioned her to assume that any minister who preached from the Gospels had to be a “liberal.”

Yoder’s case is based primarily on a detailed exegesis of the Gospel of Luke that will for most readers open up an entirely new world within the Scriptures. Years of spiritualized interpretation of this Gospel have blinded us to the literal meaning of its basic statement of Christ’s mission:

He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor;

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives;

And recovery of sight to the blind;

To set at liberty those who are oppressed,

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Yahweh.

We have forgotten that Jesus addressed the Beatitudes to the “poor” and the “hungry.” These are only the most obvious examples of the closely reasoned and coherent case Yoder makes for a new reading of this Gospel.

Marshalling an amazing amount of biblical scholarship in several languages, Yoder argues that what he finds in Luke permeates the whole New Testament. Building on the work of André Trocmé, he finds echoes of the economic leveling of the “Year of Jubilee” throughout the Gospels. Yoder develops the biblical basis of the theme of “imitation of Christ” and analyzes the meaning of the “principalities and powers” in terms of social forces. Attacking scholarly consensus, he argues for the originality of the Haustafeln ethical passages in the epistles that call for “subordination” within the family and the state. But Yoder’s development is in terms of a “revolutionary subordination” modeled on Jesus’ submission to the cross. Building on the work of Markus Barth and others, Yoder argues for the social character of justification by faith.

There are, of course, criticisms to be brought against the book. Despite his claims to the contrary, one suspects that Yoder’s concentration on Luke makes his argument easier. His statement is also somewhat one-sided, and he occasionally resorts to special pleading to close the gaps in his argument. His effort to show the direct relevance of the biblical material to the modern world slights the real cultural differences between the first and twentieth centuries. But these flaws should not become the excuse for avoiding close interaction with his argument. In the words of Markus Barth, this is “a book of supreme importance.” And its importance lies precisely in moving questions of social ethics firmly into the realm of exegesis where every truly biblical Christian must face them head on.

Slick Hatchet Job

The Preachers, by James Morris (St. Martin’s Press, 1973, 418 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Erling Jorstad, professor of history and American studies, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.

James Morris chooses as “the preachers” Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Carl McIntire, A. A. Allen, Billy James Hargis, C. W. Burpo, the Armstrongs, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Reverend Ike. He explains that these are “generally the most representative of the independent preachers, the ones who have had the greatest social, political and religious impact on grass roots America.” A straightforward explanation of this American phenomenon would be welcome.

But Morris offers little help in this long series of personal impressions. He concentrates on the subject’s public appearance instead of uncovering the theology involved in each ministry.

Morris spent considerable time collecting the periodicals, attending meetings, and making tapes of the radio programs of these preachers. He tries to see an overall pattern. But in doing this he fails to differentiate among the subjects. Seeing them as a whole, he believes they represent “a movement that for too long has been ignored or dismissed, one that now threatens to become part of the new religious and political ‘mainstream’ of America.”

What audience Morris had in mind is hard to determine. By sidestepping theology, he denies himself the chance to dissuade any followers of a leader he regards as unworthy. If he is writing for those who enjoy ridiculing “radio preachers,” he adds no new information to feed this attitude. By avoiding extensive documentation, he removes the book from serious attention by the informed reader.

Morris’s method depends upon innuendo, inference, and selectivity. The author culls from his subjects’ lives events and statements that suit his purposes. He gives us only snatches of biography, and then large amounts of information about the subject during the years Morris observed him. This selectivity helps advance the author’s “threat” thesis, but it is unconvincing to those wanting the full picture.

Morris says that Roberts used “faith-healing” better than any other practitioner in the past 2,500 years for “personal aggrandizement.” These and similar statements are supported by references to unidentified “critics” and “observers.” He refers to the title of Mrs. Roberts’s autobiography as “suitable for the rural gingham-dress circuit.” Such snide digs leaves the reader more suspicious of the author than of Roberts.

In Morris’s judgment Reverend Ike “seems destined to become the most controversial and famous black preacher in the history of American religion.” The author would do well to read Charles Hamilton on the black American preacher.

Morris errs in stating that McIntire currently broadcasts over 600 stations; that figure might have been correct a decade ago but is definitely wrong now. On Hargis, Morris does a good job of showing the gradual disenchantment of the Tulsa crusader with Nixon after 1969. But then he leaves us in a state of disbelief with the statement that Hargis is “the most powerful speaker of the far right and perhaps in all of America.”

In his use of evidence, Morris refers to the excellent critique by John H. Redekop but then ignores the material Redekop provides. He also fails to interact with the influential 1964 book by Forster and Epstein entitled Danger on the Right, though he shows he has looked at it.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Eerdmans’ Handbook to the Bible, edited by David Alexander et al. (Eerdmans, 680 pp., $12.95). By any measure, an outstanding volume. The full-color photographs, charts, and maps on almost every page are unique in this kind of work. Dozens of short articles by leading evangelical scholars plus a succinct chapter-by-chapter commentary on the whole Bible make this the rare book of which it can honestly be said that every home should have one.

Victory Over Violence, by Martin Hengel (Fortress, 67 pp., $2.50 pb). Examines the stance of Jesus and of the early Christians toward violent political revolution, finds non-violence and love for enemies taught, and suggests contemporary applications.

The Bible in Human Transformation, by Walter Wink (Fortress, 90 pp., $2.95 pb). A Union Seminary professor rejects historical biblical criticism and proposes a new method of Bible study, using psychological insights and personal interaction. Provocative.

A Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions, by Geoffrey Parrinder (Westminster, 320 pp., $10.95). Hundreds of brief descriptions of deities, beliefs, practices, writings, objects, places, and persons. Includes living as well as dead religions. Value is enhanced by numerous illustrations. Author is a leading authority.

Free to Do Right, by David Field (Inter-Varsity, 111 pp., $1.25 pb). Down-to-earth look at the position of morality in the Christian’s life. Looks at the God-centered view of morality, contrasted with the “new morality.” Well written, clearly presented.

German Pietism During the Eighteenth Century, by F. Ernest Stoeffler (E. J. Brill [Leiden, the Netherlands], 281 pp., 64 guilders). Detailed study of the movement as it relates to the quest for religious reality and to the lives of the people. Francke. Spener, Zinzendorf, and others played key roles in the history of evangelicalism. Their influence spread far beyond German-speaking lands.

The Church Library, by Gladys Scheer (Bethany [Box 179, St. Louis, Mo. 63166], 80 pp., $2.50 pb). Practical tips on organizing and developing local church facilities. Helpful resource material.

Heaven Help the Home, by Howard Hendricks (Victor [Wheaton, Ill. 60187], 143 pp., $1.45 pb). Biblically based discussion of the contemporary problems in Christian homes and means of dealing with them. Warmly written, personally illustrated, enjoyable to read. Handles everyday situations with insight and humor, based on Christ’s teachings. Beneficial for all parents.

All You Lonely People, All You Lovely People, by John Killinger (Word, 153 pp., $4.95). The captivating story of an encounter group that met for six months in Nashville, as told in a weekly journal kept at the time. Offers insights into the lonely, isolated, out-of-communication people who made up the group. Could be of value to those currently meeting in similar groups. Warm and interesting.

Christianity For the Tough Minded, edited by John Warwick Montgomery (Bethany Fellowship, 296 pp., $3.95 pb). Twenty-four essays, written by students and recent graduates of Trinity seminary aimed primarily at those antagonistic to Christianity. Topics range from an impressive scrutiny of Bertrand Russell’s religious position to a study of weakness in Buddhism. Aggressive scholarship distinguishes this excellent volume.

Anticlericalism: A Brief History, by Jose Sanchez (University of Notre Dame, 244 pp., $8.95). Study of movements, usually successful, against the Catholic clergy in Europe and Latin America from the Middle Ages to the present. While the old fight is dying out, the emergence of social-activist priests may provoke new conflicts.

Sexual Intimacy, by Andrew Greeley (Thomas More, 199 pp., $6.95). Candid look at the human personality in the sexual relationship. Shows great insight into the human emotions in sex.

World Directory of Religious Radio and Television Broadcasting, compiled by International Christian Broadcasters (William Carey Library, 808 pp., $8.95). A country-by-country survey in chart form indicating the actual and potential status of religious programming station by station, including typical costs of air-time. (The United States, with its enormous number of stations, is not included.)

Pre-Christian Gnosticism, by Edwin Yamauchi (Eerdmans, 208 pp., $7.95). Was the great “heresy” that the Church combated in its first few centuries a deviation from apostolic doctrine or an earlier religion that adopted selected Christian concepts? Yamauchi examines the available evidence and concludes that Gnosticism is essentially post-Christian.

Salvation Is Forever, by Robert C. Gromacki (Moody, 188 pp., $2.50 pb). Good exegetical and theological defense of eternal security for the believer.

The Base Church: Creating Community Multiple Forms, by Charles M. Olsen (Forum House [1610 LaVista Road N.E., Atlanta, Ga. 30329], 167 pp., $4.95). As alternatives to large and impersonal congregations, the author describes various kinds of small-group movements. He favors alterations within existing organizations rather than an anti-institutional posture.

The Roots of Ritual, edited by James D. Shaughnessy (Eerdmans, 251 pp., $3.95 pb). This collection of essays by nine noted scholars argues for the respectability and utility of both civil and religious ritual. Covers its role in liturgy and in church architecture and other aspects. Eloquent treatment.

Beyond the Classics?, edited by Charles Y. Glock and Phillip E. Hammond (Harper & Row, 422 pp., $9, $4.95 pb). Eight essays on the scientific study of religion, each focusing on a pioneering figure in the field (e.g., Weber, Freud, William James) and suggesting implications and new directions. Well researched, detailed bibliographies.

Everybody Can Know, by Francis and Edith Schaeffer (Tyndale, 345 pp., n.p.). Study of the Book of Luke, designed to be read aloud for group participation and discussion. Written on the level that a discerning child could understand and yet meaty enough for an adult. Basic and sound explanation of biblical truth. Imaginatively different book; especially for use with non-Christians and new Christians.

Hansi, the Girl Who Loved the Swastika, by Maria Anne Hirschmann (Tyndale, 243 pp., $1.95). Moving autobiography of a Czech girl who struggles to reconcile Nazi training and Christian teachings.

The Brethren Movement in the World Today, by Donald Tinder, and The Humanity of Jesus Christ, by F. F. Bruce, H. D. McDonald, and D. J. A. Clives (Christian Brethren Research Fellowship [Regent College, 5990 Iona St., Vancouver 8, B.C., Canada], 48 pp. and 40 pp., $2 each pb). The first title looks at the ideals of the so-called Plymouth Brethren in the light of church history and present needs. Thirteen men, including ex- and non-Brethren, then offer responses. Appended is a comparatively accurate description of the various groups of Brethren by a Lutheran scholar. The second title contains evangelicals (Bruce is the world’s best-known scholar from the Brethren movement) emphasizing that the true humanity of our Lord must be proclaimed every bit as much as his deity.

Presbyterians in the South, volumes two and three, by Ernest T. Thompson (John Knox, 544 pp. each, $15 each). Volume one appeared ten years ago. These volumes complete the narrative from 1861 to 1972. The definitive history of a major segment of Presbyterianism, the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Design for Discipleship (The Navigators [Box 1659, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80901], 275 pp., $5 pb). A new series of six study booklets to assist the new convert as he starts on the road of discipleship. The same organization has many other useful evangelistic and follow-up aids.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, four volumes, edited by Paul Edwards (Macmillan, 4,300 pp., $99.50). Originally published in 1967 in eight volumes at more than twice the cost (yes, some prices have gone down!). More than 1,400 articles by some 500 men make this a very thorough reference work that is also quite interesting. Libraries for secondary schools and up should have it, and many individuals can now afford it as well.

Time to Negotiate, by Hilbert Berger (Friendship, 56 pp., $2.95 pb), and Personal Finances for Ministers, by John Banker (Westminster, 127 pp., $1.65 pb). The first sets down very practical guidelines for clergy to follow when discussing specific terms with the church finance committee. The second offers suggestions on many aspects of money management. Both hold helpful suggestions.

By the Power of the Holy Spirit, by David M. Howard (InterVarsity, 172 pp., $1.95 pb). Exegetical look at Scriptures pertaining to the Holy Spirit. Treats the charismatic movement sympathetically but asserts that baptism of the Spirit takes place at conversion and speaking in tongues is not a necessary evidence of that baptism.

The Challenge of Modern Church-Public Relations, edited by Michael Reagan and Doris Chertow (Library of Continuing Education [150 Marshall St., Syracuse, N. Y. 13210], 67 pp., $3 pb). Several essays applying techniques of public relations to various aspects of communicating the Church’s message to the world.

The Simple Life, by Vernard Eller (Eerdmans, 122 pp., $2.25 pb). An examination of the place of possessions in the Christian’s life, based on some passages from the New Testament and from Soren Kierkegaard’s writings. Does not present specifics but rather philosophical principles.

The Ethics of Jonathan Edwards, by Clyde A. Holbrook (University of Michigan, 227 pp., $10). A religion professor at Oberlin presents his revised doctoral dissertation, which provides a good overview of the subject.

The chapter on Graham is so different from the others that one suspects it was put there at the publisher’s request. My thirteen-year-old daughter, who shares my enthusiasm for radio preachers, rightly commented, without fatherly prompting, that the book is “too critical of Roberts and too fawning over Graham.”

Morris does not use any primary material such as Graham’s Decision magazine or his printed radio sermons. In this chapter alone he draws on the evaluations of outside observers. He includes criticism of Graham by sources such as the Christian Century but makes none of his own.

He errs in saying that it was the conversion of Stuart Hamblen in the 1949 Los Angeles revival that led William Randolph Hearst to order his papers to “Puff Graham.” Hearst became interested after one of the maids in his home told him of Graham, and then after Graham at a crusade rally predicted the dropping of A-bombs on America.

Morris often lapses into snideness and sarcasm, as well as into mistakes. A critical reexamination of religious leaders is always in order. But this book does not provide that kind of evaluation. It makes hardly any reference to the major religious trends of the era. Morris apparently assumes the reader knows about such specialized topics as the Latter Rain movement, which he mentions but does not explain.

One needn’t be a supporter of any one or more of these preachers to recognize a slick hatchet job.

A Provocative Treatise

The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition, by George A. Mendenhall (Johns Hopkins, 1973, 249 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Carl Armerding, assistant professor of Old Testament, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The previous major work of professor Mendenhall of the University of Michigan remains a foundational study of covenant forms, both within Israel and in the Ancient Near East, particularly among the Hittites of the second millennium B.C. His work, together with researches of scholars like Dennis J. McCarthy, Delbert R. Hillers, and Meredith G. Kline, and others, has established the covenant as perhaps the most basic form of interpersonal, intertribal, and international relationship. Such covenants, based on Hittite models, have now been discovered in various parts of the Old and New Testament, as form-critical scholars have carried on their researches through the past two decades.

In 1972 Meredith Kline’s work, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Eerdmans), moved from a consideration of covenant form to that of covenant function, with the resulting conclusion that immediate canonicity (in the modern sense of that word) accompanied the promulgation of an ancient covenant, such as Deuteronomy. Now George Mendenhall, in a series of essays loosely grouped around a central theme, has taken up the question of covenant function again, and he concludes that the covenant was the basic element in the creation of a totally new political and ethical synthesis in Israel at the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200 B.C.).

His hypothesis is easy to discover, though like much in the book difficult to comprehend in all of its ramifications. Professor Mendenhall is arguing that proper historical methodology will lead to the conclusion that at the close of the Late Bronze Age there arose a new synthesis amongest a grouping of originally disparate peoples, in which the legal, political, and ethical unity later called Israel was created. In this new synthesis, it was the function of Yahweh as Covenant-King that overshadowed all else, and this period, for Mendenhall, is the Golden Age to which all subsequent history of Israel must be compared. Israel is not, according to Mendenhall, the result of a semi-nomadic invasion from the desert (archaeology will not support a sharp break between Canaanite and invader!) but grew rather from a realization that allegiance to a Covenant-God in a new religious-ethical appreciation transcended the values held in the Late Bronze Age. The author sharply rejects the idea that the covenant-forms, as contained in biblical records, are mythological (myth serves merely to legitimize what already is); rather, the covenant must be seen as that instrument through which the religious unity of Israel was brought about. This is a concern of the historian rather than the literary critic.

This Golden Age of the Kingdom of God in Israel seems to have functioned in a pure way only through the period of the Judges. The end of the period with its heroic values signalled a return to Late Bronze Age ways of looking at the world, and both David and Solomon, like Constantine in his readaptation of Christianity, rejected the simple rule of God in favor of an essentially political solution to religious problems. Whenever this point arises in the discussion, the author’s wrath over much current theology (whether it be the political theology of Harvey Cox or the existentialist currents in a critic like Susan Sontag) is trumpeted loud and clear. That the editorial framework of the book of Judges sees in Israel’s simple, fragmented, and fragile unity something less than the ideal is apparently no problem for Mendenhall, for he holds that many of the biblical traditions represent values politicized by Baal-worship (i.e., kingly values under David and Solomon) rather than the original Yahwistic religion of simple ethics. The prophets are seen as calling for a return to the original values, not so much as a rejection of cult, but more as a rejection of politics as a way of life.

The remainder of the book (after an introduction and opening chapter in which the hypothesis is outlined) consists of seven valuable historical essays that Mendenhall feels support his basic thesis. Whether each one does or not, it will easily be seen that the primary research and historical synthesis is of utmost value. Many another ancient historian would have buried these articles in learned journals. Mendenhall’s conviction that the real task of the historian is synthesis rather than a mere collecting of facts has brought the articles together in support of a main point.

Chapter 2, “The Mask of Yahweh,” examines evidence for the “winged disk” motif in Egypt, Mesopotamia. Syria, and Hatti, finally concluding that the symbol as presented in Israel through the ’anan or cloud-theophany of Yahweh marked the presence of the Covenant-Lord in the new religion under Moses. Consistent with the major thesis, Mendenhall argues that the reduction of Yahweh to a mere symbol in the later monarchy, with the transfer of real glory to the king, set up the basic conflict between prophetic (ethical) and political religion that caused the death of Josiah and the persecution of Jeremiah.

If the mask is the manifestation of Yahweh, his wrath or vengeance is the necessary exercise of his divine sovereignty (Chapter 3). Mendenhall rejects the assumption that Yahweh was a primitive god characterized by tribal notions of wrath that stand in contrast to the more enlightened concept of deity in the later prophets and the New Testament. A study of the Semitic roots NQM and SPT shows that Yahweh’s vindictive role was merely the exercise of his legitimate power in an early Israel that had rejected kingship and empire with its resort to human force as the solution of human problems. The New Testament rejection of human vindication is simply a return to the truth of the Old Testament “Imperium of God,” created by Moses and reaffirmed by the prophets.

Mendenhall’s critical methodology is clearly seen in Chapter 4, “The Incident at Beth Baal Peor.” Rejecting both literary and form-critical methods as inadequate, the author turns to ancient historical records as providing a necessary context in which to reconstruct the biblical narrative of Numbers 25. His conclusions, though perhaps less subjective than many, are hardly congenial to the thinking of those who would find in Numbers a consistent Word from God with reference to the conflict at Beth Baal Peor. The reconstructed context is the outbreak of an epidemic disease, and the strange patterns of response (a feast followed by ritual sex acts) are seen (possibly quite rightly) as standard pagan ritual from the Late Bronze Age. Various levels of tradition are incorporated into the text, represented by (1) the instructions of Yahweh, (2) the instructions of Moses, and (3) the reaction of Phineas. Summing up the conclusion of a somewhat tortuous line of reasoning, we find in the account a basic confrontation between tried and true pagan methods of handling a disaster and the newer conviction that only subordination to Yahweh’s own covenant method of vindication is sufficient. The action of Phineas (though commended in the text!) represents the transference of enforcement powers from Yahweh to society, or from covenant to law.

A stimulating discussion of the Apiru/Habiru references in the fourteenth century B.C. Amarna correspondence concludes that these troublesome raiders were in no sense of the word a group of ethnically related outsiders invading Canaan. Rather, they represent an internal grouping of those who had lost the politico-legal status they had formerly possessed and therefore are no longer bound to the traditional legitimate authority. The term “Hebrew” comes from this background, but in Israel the shift from politico-legal to ethnic distinctions (all Israelites become known as “Sons of Israel”) ultimately changes the term to an ethnic one.

Subsequent chapters proceed apace, and will certainly call forth much additional research into the implications of political and ethnic movements in. the Late Bronze Age. Mendenhall’s conclusion that the basic problem of the age was ideological rather than political or economic and that biblical faith is the ideological response to this problem should provoke much discussion and provide stimulus for new direction in the study of Old Testament origins.

Much detailed criticism of this book will have to await the work of technical scholarship and belongs in the learned journals rather than in these pages. Nevertheless, a few remarks may be offered. First, and perhaps most important, is the question of whether Mendenhall is not himself substituting for the old critical methods a subjectively conceived idealistic construction of the Israel which emerged under Moses. Certainly the biblical sources themselves paint no such unified or favorable picture, and it is significant that the Michigan historian has to reject much of the editorial framework of the biblical traditions themselves. In addition, the biblical ideal of divine kingship seems to me so closely related to the institution of kingship in Israel that to claim, as does Mendenhall, that kingship under David is the rejection of the covenant-kingship of Yahweh seems highly questionable.

On the positive side, I am intrigued by the new respect shown for some aspects of Israel’s early traditions, and can only applaud the insistence upon objective rather than subjective criteria for determining what is fact and what is literary invention. The book will make for its author more enemies than friends, and I suspect he will find that the role of prophet and evangelist is not always a popular one. However, because he is a noted historian and biblical scholar, his preaching cannot be ignored, and his anger must be noted. The book is an example of both the dangers and the possibilities when an historian ceases merely to be a “stamp collector” (his reference, p. 215) and launches into the task of producing from his research a real synthesis that takes seriously the question of relationships and dynamics within a society.

As i sit at my desk writing this article, the din from two motorbikes being ridden in a nearby vacant lot is doing its best to shatter my concentration. Each of us knows from experience that a certain degree of quietness is indispensable for the intellectual and spiritual life. We are bodily creatures very much influenced by our surroundings, and so the quality of our environment helps to determine the quality of our inner life. Even St. Francis would find it difficult to feel God’s presence with pneumatic hammers banging half a block away!

One of the great historical streams of Christian piety, medieval mysticism, clearly recognized the connection between a man’s material surroundings and his devotional life. Saints like Francis, Bernard, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, and many others in the mystical tradition agreed that renunciation of material wealth was essential for reaching the heights of the spiritual life.

This point of view poses a challenge for Christian piety in modern, affluent America. Measured by a global scale, the typical American Christian lives in the lap of luxury. We are quick to say, of course, that it’s not wealth per se that matters but our attitude toward it. But might that not be just a rationalization? It seems almost unfair that we could have it both ways—a profound inner life with God and a luxurious living standard—when much of the New Testament and Christian tradition warns us about such cozy arrangements. At the very least, we Christians in America would do well to conduct a little self-examination.

Turning aside from the matter of personal affluence, let’s consider the larger environmental context. Imagine a Sunday-morning worship service in a church a stone’s throw from the shores of Lake Erie. The congregation sings “For the beauty of the earth.…” In the pastoral prayer the minister thanks God for the beauty of his creation. What could be more pious and worshipful?

But wait a minute! This is piety and worship out of touch with some basic realities. The present state of Lake Erie cannot be excluded as a Christian concern, either in worship or in service to the world. The environmental context in which Psalm 19 and the hymn are heard has been changed by our technocratic, pollution-producing society, and this reality must be reflected in liturgy and personal devotion, if piety and life are to remain vitally related. Praise is always in order for the beauty of God’s work in creation, but all too often man’s work in creation calls for repentance and judgment. Our liturgical and devotional life should reflect both aspects of the environmental reality.

This matter of the environmental context of piety offers us yet another way of moving beyond the old polarization of “social action versus evangelism.” There can be no absolute dualism between a social action that ostensibly affects only institutions and the physical environment, and an evangelism that reaches only man’s inner soul; neither social action nor evangelism can be so neatly compartmentalized. Soul and society, soul and surroundings are not neatly separable. Evangelicals concerned for soul-winning in an incarnational, in-depth sense must be concerned for man’s environment, because that environment conditions our souls in more ways than we can consciously know.

For too long evangelicals have tended to overlook the intimate connection between the inner world of the soul and the external world of the physical environment and of society. The two are mutually dependent. Ignoring the dependence has yielded a dualism of souls without an environment and a society with little soul or spirit.

It is high time for evangelicals to move beyond such dualisms to an incarnational unity of soul, society, and environment like that affirmed in Scripture. Man and society in modern America desperately need such a unified approach to evangelism, and evangelicals need such a unified approach to piety.—JACK DAVIS, doctoral student in systematic theology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

This article by the late Executive Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYis reprinted from the December 4, 1964, issue.

The celebration of the coming of Christ has been starkly transformed into a gimmick for bigger business, both in the United States and abroad. The wonder of Christmas, its eternal implications, the mystery of the Incarnation, are ignored.

That Christmas has become for so many merely a pagan holiday, dedicated to the flesh and lacking in spiritual significance, is a sign of the moral and spiritual blindness of this generation. That there was no room for Jesus in the inn was prophetic of our own generation, where, among millions, he is neither wanted nor welcomed. That he was born in a stable was prophetic of those who in every generation welcome him with humble hearts.

There was no ceremony or show on that first Christmas. There were only a guiding star, a few wise men with prophetic vision, and a few shepherds who heard a message from heaven and who went, saw, and worshiped. There were others, too, who recognized in this babe the long-promised Redeemer. All these things remind us that the supernatural significance of Christmas was revealed by the Holy Spirit then, as it is now.

One can imagine the smug complacency of those fortunate enough to have secured shelter in the inn. Their physical wants taken care of, they were oblivious that the Son of God lay close by. They were satisfied with food and entertainment, while on the plains east of the city the heavenly host sang to shepherds, those unremarkable men to whom was revealed the message of the Saviour’s advent.

Was there not a prophetic note in this complacency—a warning to a sophisticated twentieth century that God still reveals himself to the humble of heart while rejecting the proud?

God’s meaning of Christmas can never be understood until Christ is given priority in our hearts and lives. When the transcending significance of Christ’s coming into the world breaks through by the illumination of his Spirit, Christmas is no longer just a holiday; it becomes a holy day.

The Incarnation is a mystery too deep for the human mind to comprehend; but we can believe. And when we believe, the enormity of sin and its consequences become the background for the awareness of something of God’s redeeming love and mercy. Christmas can never be rightly understood apart from the blood and death on Calvary a few years later; or from the joy of the empty tomb and the wondering gaze of disciples as they looked at his retreating form in the clouds of heaven; or from the promise, “This same Jesus … shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

Christmas brings to remembrance one event in God’s redemptive schedule. We are told, “But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son …” (Gal. 4:4). Therefore for Christians this is a season of great joy, while for others it involves nothing more lasting than excitement, pleasure, and profits in the market place.

Even the Church may share in distorting the meaning of Christmas, thereby adding to the heart-hunger and confusion of a lost and groping world. In our troubled times, uncertainties of every kind continually add to a sense of futility and need. How urgent, then, that we who bear the names of Christ interpret the meaning of Christmas to those who do not know him, to those who so desperately need the peace, joy, and hope to be found in the Saviour!

This birth was not a trivial event in history; it was the mysterious entry of God into human flesh, Immanuel—God with us—by whom man’s fellowship with God may be restored. What a tragedy that for so many who “celebrate” Christmas, its spiritual significance is obscure! What an opportunity for Christian witness—through a spoken word, a friendly smile, an act of compassion, a helpful hand, heart-felt love for those about us. Such witnessing is at the very heart of the Christmas spirit and can glorify God.

Years after the first Christmas the aged Apostle John heard the risen Lord say: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). He continues to stand at the door of men’s hearts. This Christmas he would use us in speaking a word for the divine guest.

The writer recently had an extended conversation with one of the nation’s leading munitions manufacturers who has shared in the making of some of our nation’s more sophisticated weapons. He is desperately afraid. His intimate knowledge of weaponry and his worldwide contacts have brought him face to face with the possibility of world destruction by the triggering of already available bombs. Although not a Christian, he seemed acquainted with many biblical references having to do with destruction. He even quoted extensively from Daniel, our Lord’s predictions, Second Peter, and the Revelation.

What has this to do with Chrismas? Very much, if the true meaning of our Lord’s advent is grasped. He came to bring healing to the spirit and hope to the heart.

Christmas means that a Way has been opened into God’s presence—a way for forgiven sinners. Christmas means that Truth has been revealed, so that a world in spiritual ignorance can know Him and be free. Christmas means light out of darkness, sight for the blind, deliverance from the power of Satan. Christmas means that the love of Christ can be shed abroad in our hearts and reflected in our attitudes toward others. Christmas means that we can be born into the Kingdom of God, no longer aliens and outcasts but children of the King because he has redeemed us to himself.

How the Church and individual Christians need to recapture the awesome radiance and grandeur of the meaning of Christmas! How we all need to accept humbly what God has revealed to us about the person and work of the one who was born in the Bethlehem manger!

In the meaning of Christmas, man is called to see sin in its true light. “And thou shalt call his name JESUS; for he shall save his people from their sins.” This was not a figure of speech; it was God’s way of telling us that only his Son could solve the problem of sin in the human heart.

“Merry Christmas” takes on full meaning only after we have received the Christ of Christmas in our hearts. Then, and only then, the radiance of Christmas becomes real—a joy to be experienced and a glory to be reflected.

That’S All, Folks!

If I had fulfilled my youthful fantasy of being the world’s greatest soft-shoe dancer, this is the point at which the band would belt out the melody with its most rowdy razz-ma-tazz while the drummer pounded out the two-beat rhythm with a cracking rim shot. And I would exit stage left, shaking my straw hat and twirling my cane amidst a crescendo of whistling and applause.

In other words, this is the last of these columns I shall write. The categories of entertainment and sermonizing share a common maxim: If you have a strong beginning and a strong finish you can get away with almost anything in between.

I’m not sure which category this effort belongs in, but I need a strong finish to make you all forget and forgive some of the things that have happened in this space during the past three years.

Someone—I think it was Hemingway—once said that the way to start writing is to sit down and write the truest thing you know. That’s probably the best way to stop writing, too.

So here it is, the truest thing I know: Jesus is Lord.

The second truest thing I know is that Lordship is accepted only through worship.

Evangelicals have always seemed to say that what a man believes determines who and what he is. Not so!

It’s what a man bows his knee to that determines who he is. It’s who or what he acknowledges as Lord that decides it all. That’s why the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” is not a call to belief but a call to worship.

I’ve worshiped and served Christ poorly, sometimes being dragged into the truth kicking and screaming. But I commend him to you. His yoke is good, his load is light, and his worship is joy.

So with that I pass my straw hat and cane on to my worthy successor, looking forward to his terpsichorean efforts.

JOHN V. LAWING, JR.

Simpler Verse?

Editor-at-Large Calvin D. Linton deserves commendation for his article on C. S. Lewis and his editorial on W. H. Auden (Nov. 9). I feel, however, that he should have identified the concluding poetry quoted from Auden as the final portion (a part of it) of “For the Time Being,” subtitled “A Christmas Oratorio,” and in the light of this larger context, I doubt if this portion would be called some of his “simpler verse.”

HARRY T. ROWE

First Baptist Church

Grafton, W. Va.

Insight Vs. Insipidity

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S November 9 issue seems to have been devoted to the sublime and the insipid in the arts. Two excellent articles and a fine editorial gave a proper commemoration to the tenth anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s death. Meanwhile, “The Refiner’s Fire” had an overview of soap operas, which would have been more appropriate in a secular woman’s magazine. “The Refiner’s Fire” has been providing excellent Christian commentary on an important area generally neglected by Christians. I hope that CHRISTIANITY TODAY will continue with an insightful review of the arts.

M. VENEY

Washington, D. C.

Timely Transcendence

This is an expression of special appreciation for the fine article entitled “Transcendent Sexuality as C. S. Lewis Saw It” by Joan Lloyd in the November 9 issue. The time is appropriate for publication and discussion in this area of life which is given such large treatment in many secular disciplines. It is easiest for believers to remain silent or simply negative to any movement that seems to run contrary to the traditional viewpoint as understood from Scripture. Instead, deeper study and real grappling with the issues being raised these days would be more courageous and productive lines of action to take.

Miss Lloyd has distilled from portions of the writings of C. S. Lewis her statement in the sentence “It is in this demand for obedience that the masculine nature is grounded—the feminine is grounded in obedience.” This statement does not seek to deal in any way with the moral nature of the one demanding obedience.… Even when the right to demand obedience may be present, the will to obey is tremendously affected by what perception the person-under-authority has of the character of the authority. Two words sum it up: “Worthy Authority”.… God himself is the unique totally Worthy Authority. And we might say the reason why he is the Worthy Authority begins in the fact that he is unselfish outgoing Love.

MRS. PAUL W. JAMISON

South Burlington, Vt.

Thank you so much for focusing on C. S. Lewis. [Ms. Lloyd’s article] is particularly timely and helpful.

H. GUDGER NICHOLOS, JR.

Richmond, Va.

I think this is a very timely article and I hope you will do a reprint on it.… With the rebirth of feminism in our day and the extreme confusion on what is the Christian view of sexuality, I think this article should be widely read. The Church is in danger of becoming a matriarchal society within a matriarchal North American society.

JOHN DOWLER

Toronto, Ontario

New Vs. Old

I am concerned about the article (News, “For Sale, Quick”) relative to the American Baptist Seminary of the West (Nov. 23). The article is not only highly biased but contains several inaccuracies.

As a new ABSW board member present at the meeting where the recent decision was made—and also an adjunct faculty member—I cannot understand the basis for your reporting, most of all your quoting Dr. Adrian Heaton as saying that faculty members and trustees “will continue to be required to sign an evangelical statement of faith.” Such is not the case. In the recent decision the trustees clearly recognized the historic principle of freedom of individual conscience, long sacred to Baptists and the reason that Baptists almost overwhelmingly reject creedal statements.

The board of ABSW voted, and the two member boards (Covina and Berkeley) ratified a decision, to have “one school, located at Berkeley, California, the professional school of which will be a confessional school in terms of the doctrinal statement now at the Covina school.” This action was clearly interpreted by a further vote, unanimously approved, which reads (and I quote the minutes of the board):

That it be understood that “confessional school” means that there will be no requirement of the physical signature of that statement for ABSW (although that requirement may be maintained for CBTS) but that the statement shall be periodically reaffirmed, and that the possibility of modification of the statement is present.

Thus, while the possibility of retaining a signed creedal statement for CBTS faculty and trustees is recognized, the requirement does not apply to the American Baptist Seminary itself. Plans also call for full merger of the Covina and Berkeley schools and boards, which leaves the question of how CBTS and Berkeley faculty will be distinguished in the future. It has already been determined that there will be a single faculty for ABSW.

The implication in your article that the Berkeley school has been closed is also misleading. In fact, this year the Berkeley campus graduated more M.Div. students than did the Covina school and at present the Berkeley school has as many M.Div. students enrolled as does CBTS.

Your statement that the Berkeley school experienced “mortal financial wounds, forcing a merger with the Covina school” is also gravely misleading. The financial records of the two schools show that, in fact, it has been the Berkeley assets which have carried the ABSW through the very difficult period of the past five years. Had the schools not federated (they have not yet “merged”) the evidence is that Covina would have folded and Berkeley would still be here.

The recent decision and the anticipated full merger of the two schools marks a new beginning for American Baptist Seminary education on the West Coast. There was no “winner” or “loser” in the action. Both schools made sacrifices and have committed themselves to a new approach to quality theological education for the ABC on the West Coast. Articles such as yours will not help the new spirit of cooperation but will, I fear, keep old differences alive.

RAYMOND P. JENNINGS

Berkeley First Baptist Church

Berkeley, Calif.

A Bit More

Recently I read an article by Cheryl Forbes in CHRISTIANITY TODAY entitled “Evangelical Episcopalians: United and Moving” (Nov. 9).… As an Anglican (and thus in America an Episcopalian) and as a Catholic priest (which may surprise you, for we are nothing else but and nothing less than and nothing more than that) I am always interested a great deal when our 64-million-member communion gets a bit of publicity in your magazine, which I am told reaches a great many Protestant fundamentalists and their allies. I am interested because first of all I always wonder how we will be treated by those who diametrically disagree with our adherence to orthodox Catholic Christianity which gives equal credence to both tradition and the biblical writings and holds that the cornerstone of our religion is the Christly institution of apostolic order (bishop, priest, and deacon). In short, what I am trying to say is tantamount to this: I don’t think most of you understand much about us at all and so are at a loss to explain why we function in the unique way we do.

I think Miss Forbes’s style is not bad at all and I think that she has a good potential, but I think she should learn quite a bit more about us before she writes for a mass-media publication. I know that there are several Anglican personalities listed on your masthead but somehow I suspect that they are not used very much if at all. In any case three of them are known to me, and I cannot say for example that anything like adherence to the theological positions of the Anglo-Catholic party is held by any of them. I say that on the basis that two out of the three have been instructors of mine along the way.

The “evangelical Episcopalians” are looked upon by many of us as certainly without the mainstream of Reformed Catholicism. It goes without saying that they can have their little conventicles, but they represent a very small minority of people. I received the Holy Ghost at Baptism and was strengthened by that same Spirit on the day I received the Sacrament of Confirmation. I, and the vast majority of Anglicans, just do not need or want to go through the emotional catharsis or whatever it is that these charismatics seem to require. One is reminded of the early demands of the Church for the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism and thus through that vehicle to the Church. The first council ended that. I would suggest frequent reception of the Blessed Sacrament and use of Confession as the means of grace which in the long run will do the most good. If these are not available to others they are available to all Anglicans who will request them.

G. D. WIEBE

Trinity Episcopal Church

San Francisco, Calif.

A Way To Grind

I have just finished reading the review of God, Man and Church Growth, edited by A. R. Tippett (Books in Review, Nov. 23).… You have selected a reviewer with an axe to grind. Professor Ricker faults the church-growth advocates for improper generalizations.… I wish that Ricker had taken the time to support his claim that “McGavran is weakest in those areas in which he has engaged in polemics: namely, his understanding of the concepts of mission, evangelism, salvation, Church, and Gospel.” This is truly a sweeping assertion.… The only real attempt Ricker makes to analyze critically some of the book’s contents is in the contribution by David Barrett. Apparently Ricker has some first-hand knowledge of Nigeria, and he displays this quite forcefully.

WILLIAM W. CONLEY

Assoc. Prof. of Missions and Anthropology

St. Paul Bible College

St. Paul, Minn.