The Big, Big D

Bad language or abuse

I never never use,

Whatever the emergency;

Though “Bother it” I may

Occasionally say

I never use a big, big D.

W. S. Gilbert, H. M. S. Pinafore

In the recent past I have used two profane expletives in this column—in quoting others, of course—and have received a couple of negative responses.

Christians differ about this. One Christian friend of mine who teaches at a secular university says he regrets the casual and indiscriminate use of profane and four-letter words among college students today because it leaves them with no reserve ammunition when they need a strong expletive—as Shakespeare said, “a good mouth-filling oath.”

Another Christian I know who formerly taught in a Bible college feels that all expletives are forbidden to the Christian. He even extends his prohibition to such a seemingly innocuous expression as “for Pete’s sake” on the ground that it is a reference to the Apostle Peter and is therefore a profane use of Scripture.

A few years ago Elisabeth Elliot caused a minor shock wave with her novel No Graven Image: upon breaking her fingernail the heroine utters the word damn.

My own feelings and practice are somewhat mixed. Under trying circumstances when I resort to the use of an expletive it is considerably more embroidered than simply damn.

On one occasion I was visiting in a nearby church. The minister, whom we entertain occasionally, had launched into a condemnation of the heresy of original sin and was exalting the doctrine of original goodness.

Filled with hearty disagreement I muttered an eight-letter scatological expletive. My teen-age son, who isn’t keen on theological debate, declared, “Boy, I’ll never sit next to you in church again.”

One strange thing about our society is that profane expressions are more readily tolerated than earthy four-letter words. Christians seem to share this cultural oddity.

There are certain principles, it seems to me, on which all Christians would have to agree. The law given through Moses makes it perfectly clear that we are not to use the name of God in vain whether it be in prayer or profanity. James makes it clear that the Christian is not to curse another human being, because he is made in the image of God.

The question I’m asking is not whether some Christian brother will be offended if I use a profane or earthy expletive. The question is, Should every Christian brother be offended by it? To put it another way: If no one were offended, would it still be wrong? Frankly, I don’t know.

This much I do know: the attitude often reflected by our expletives is wrong. If a missionary uses a profane word because she breaks her fingernail, the real problem is not the word she uses but the fact that for that moment she is denying that all things work together for good to those who love God.

As Jesus put it, “What comes out of the mouth has its origins in the heart.”

EUTYCHUS V

FOR ANY SKEPTICS

I appreciated very much your article in your March 16 issue by Peter Wagner (“Revival in Bolivia: The New Healing Art”).… I just want to agree with all that was written, and in case there were any readers that looked skeptically at it I want to add that my own mother went to a prayer meeting held by Julio Cesar Ruibal in the city of Quito and was miraculously healed by God. She is of Jewish descent and was in a German concentration camp at the age of fourteen. She contracted rheumatoid arthritis there, and her back has been in horrible condition ever since then. Only a couple weeks ago after attending Ruibal’s meeting she recovered complete health, to the amazement to many doctors and the massagist that used to attempt an alleviation of pain through various scientific methods.

Even though 100 people were healed in Ecuador, the Catholic populace of my country did not have much appreciation for Ruibal, and he was asked to leave. Many stories, however, were published in the first pages of the newspapers, spreading amazement and interest in the things of God in the whole country.

GEORGINO KLODENSKY

Wheaton, Ill.

A ROCKY RESPONSE

I am calling attention to an error which appears in the first item under “Religion in Transit” (March 2). The item begins “The American Baptist homemission unit paid $20,000 to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.…” The item should read that the property was purchased by the American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains. The Board of National Ministries of the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., to which I assume you have reference, was in no way involved in the transaction. A loan was secured from the American Baptist Extension Corporation just as loans are secured for many transactions, but in no way was our national office involved in the process.

JAMES HAVENS

American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains

Denver, Colo.

TO OUR READERS

It has been brought to my attention that my name was listed in a paid ad in one of your fall issues. The ad referred to a World Bible Conference in Jerusalem March 6–14, 1973. The ad carried a Key 73 emblem. In that I never agreed to speak at the conference nor gave permission for my name to be used in connection with this Key 73 project, I would appreciate your mentioning this to your readers. In my opinion Key 73 is a compromise program in which a true Bible believer could not possibly participate without being a part of that compromise.

GREG DIXON

Indianapolis Baptist Temple

Indianapolis, Ind.

THE NAME OF SIN

I was delighted to note Cheryl Forbes’s review of Elva McAllaster’s Strettam (Books in Review, March 30), a fine work which I understand is now to be translated into German.… Strettam is not a delightful book, if taken seriously. But it is wonderfully well done, with a few irregular passages. Realizing the author’s breadth of understanding of modern literature, both secular and sacred, I imagine it was the publisher’s wish to dignify its trade book line which led to the designation of “novel.” … Dr. McAllaster probably conceived of the book as a fictional tract in the great—and much neglected today—tradition of tracts.

Modern literature treats sin—usually refusing to call it that—as a cataclysmic affront to man and God. Strettam sees through this egotistical ploy and puts sin in its proper place, our daily lives. As love is a moment-to-moment transformation of human lives, sin is the moment-to-moment degradation which we have tried to dramatize out of existence.

ED ZAHNISER

Greenbelt, Md.

Reading Cheryl Forbes’s review prompts me to say that I sincerely hope it may stimulate readers who have not yet done so to read this probing and keenly perceptive book.… The term “novel” to designate this fictional study of the town of Strettam, its inhabitants, and all of us may be mildly misleading. But whatever one may expect to find, if he reads the book with the thoughtful attention it warrants he can scarcely avoid finding himself—his “own mirrored image”—somewhere along the way and emerging with, at the very least, a new self-knowledge. He may even be surprised to discover he has been perceptibly changed in some small or larger way, or—as happened to me—that the foundation for a new inner life has unexpectedly been laid. Whether or not he chooses to permit further building to take place upon this foundation is, of course, the essence of the problems of facing up to and overcoming one’s shortcomings—and what the book is all about.

ALLISON W. BREIBY

Annapolis, Md.

TO HILLS AND BEYOND

I liked very much the poem “Sing the Lord, Wisely” (March 30).… With the present public emphasis on nature, ecology, and environment, we live in a time when there is a great opportunity for preaching, using, as did our Master, the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, or owls in emerald and mice in the corncrib as illustrative material. A great opportunity, that is, if we can do it and remember to sing the Lord. I am amazed and appalled at the number of people who share with me my love of nature and the out of doors, but who lift their eyes to the hills and believe their help comes from the hills, rather than from the “Lord who made heaven and earth.”

DON IAN SMITH

Hillview Methodist Church

Boise, Idaho

I so enjoy the good poetry that appears in your pages.

WILMA BURTON

Wheaton, Ill.

I especially liked the poems on “Three Prophets” by Nancy Thomas in your April 13 issue. They were good!

MRS. H. C. WENDLER

Effingham, Ill.

In response to recent criticism of the poetry printed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY I would like to make the following points:

Because any true poem stands on its own—a unique experiment in communication—to arbitrarily impose any given form on a poem is to rob it of the freedom and spontaneity out of which it grows.

In good poetry, brilliant and original images (analogies) spark from the paper to our eyes and brains to ignite a new view of truth or life for us. The form, be it couplets or free verse, is at that point incidental so long as it does not impede the flow of ideas. Form is nearly always the tool of idea. To get upset over the use of free form poetry in CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to miss the essence of the poetic process. Much great poetry has adhered to strict forms. But in good free verse form is present—inward rhythms and/or rhymes governed more by breath stops, the weight of the words, and the rounding off of ideas than by an externally imposed structure.

Please keep your CHRISTIANITY TODAY poetry editor. And give him (her?) a raise. Your poetry is superb.

Wheaton, Ill.

LUCI SHAW

HEALING IN THE VINEYARD

Your report in the April 13 issue concerning both the spirit and content of my action is not true (News, “Backing Their Man”). I did not order another meeting of Grace congregation in a fit of anger over our parish’s nomination of Jacob Preus for the presidency of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The request for a special meeting to rescind this action came from members who were distressed over the immediate campaign to exploit the action of our Voters Assembly. After careful, prayerful deliberation with our Board of Elders, I personally asked them not to go ahead with a special meeting and then asked the petitioning members to lay aside their request. My purpose was to try to put into practice in our small corner of the vineyard what we are asking for in the Missouri Synod at large these days—healing, reconciliation, and a brotherly spirit of mutual ministry instead of the opposite. We’re far from perfect here at Grace, but we’re growing!

F. DEAN LUEKING

Grace Lutheran Church

River Forest, Ill.

GREAT REVIEWING

Great! “Is Prophecy a Jigsaw Puzzle?” (Books in Review, April 13) is just the kind of book reviewing that is needed. Bob Ross should also be asked to do some more writing of his own on this theme. I would enjoy reading his efforts to deal with the problem he stated so well—the need for evangelicals to interpret the prophetic passages of Scripture. Ross states, “the biblical prophetic critique spoke to the sins of the Gentile nations, to be sure. But the prophet as a man of God speaking within the covenant community was always concerned primarily about the spiritual life of the people within the covenant community.”

RICHARD APPLEGATE

Christian Church

Tonganoxie, Kans.

DUES AND CLUES

Thanks for “Why Don’t They Respond Like Whites?” (April 13). Obviously, Joseph Ryan has “paid his dues” in order to write so perceptively about communicating with blacks. My own experiences in cross-cultural communication validate his observations. Now that some clues are available, let more of us white folks swallow our fear and go to our black brothers and sisters to learn. God is waiting to enrich our lives through them … at least that is what happened to me.

LOIS M. OTTAWAY

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

I am a black graduate of Southern Bible Training School and Dallas Bible College.… From 1967 until 1972 I ministered in a Bible church in Dallas, Texas. Now I am senior pastor in Portland, Oregon, for a Conservative Baptist church. I have a burden for missions, especially for blacks in North America.

Joseph A. Ryan … [failed] to make certain distinctions. The groups he used as examples are real, I am sure, but do they in fact represent what black Christians are actually like? My experience says not so at all. In all honesty, identical white groups could be found. We would not dare consider them the norm for white evangelicals.

I suggest three things which I feel will help remove the problem of interracial communications.

First: Biblical standards must be applied to black Christians. The high standard of the Word of God determines the rule of life for all the saints of all times. Nothing more or less should be required or accepted.

Second: The sound principles used in evangelism on foreign fields should be used to turn people on foreign fields from their religion to biblical Christianity. Should we not recognize what is not Christian in a black church in America? The failure to separate blacks by “theology and practice” accounts for the easy expression “they.”

Third: I call attention to a very good editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 5, 1973, “The Making of a Revolutionary?” The article tells how white political liberals supported Angela Davis. In conclusion it is suggested that efforts be made to giving evangelical training to this country’s young blacks.…

The Word of God is the key to unlocking black culture barriers just as it will in any culture. The barriers of communications will fall when the Word of God is allowed to link black Christians with white Christians. We are one in body of Christ—Christ is our one head.

WILLIE O. PETERSON

Berean Baptist Church

Portland, Ore.

WORTH THE PRICE

Lawing’s cartoon “What If …” (April 13) with Paul’s imagined but unthinkable statement, “Men of Athens, we have come not to impose new religious concepts on you but to hear your insights into the unknown god,” was the funniest cartoon I have seen in years and was, in itself, worth the year’s subscription to CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

HARRY H. WIGGINS

Cleveland, Ohio

OVERLOOKING THE CARDINALS

I am astounded to see the listing in the opening paragraphs of John V. Lawing, Jr.’s “Sleeping Saviours and Apollonian Christs” (The Refiner’s Fire, April 13). He is illustrating the great religious activity of the centuries from 1700 to 1900. He notes that “midway in this period the American early missionary enterprise began,” and then says that Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians founded missionary boards. He overlooks the fact that the earliest and principal missionary boards in this period were founded primarily by New England Congregationalists, the great home-missionary societies of the New England states, and the pioneer of all American foreign missionary societies, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Lawing writes well and his page is interesting. But he surely needs to be reminded of some of the cardinal landmarks in American church history!

DAVID M. STOWE

Executive Vice President

United Church Board for World Ministries

New York, N. Y.

“The Refiner’s Fire” is potentially a great contribution to American thought. May one hope for a clearer flame than burns in the April 13 essay on art? The paragraphs about painter Edward Hicks reflect an incomprehensible (and, to the thinking Christian, surely an intolerable) attitude from an art critic: to see painting as “trifling, insignificant” is “in the right perspective”? Incredible. Unthinkable. Yes, and insufferable, if I may venture to say so.… Christians have been commanded to love God with all their minds. For human beings with minds that are capable of producing paintings, surely to love God with one’s mind is to produce paintings. For human beings with minds that are capable of responding to sculpture, painting, drawing, and the other arts, surely to love God with all one’s mind is to use the capabilities of one’s responding mind. Will the Christian who closes his mind to line and texture and color and design (as maker or as viewer) stand under judgment for letting his God-given mind be more stunted than it was intended to be?

Another query: In what sense are we to understand that a viewer is “puzzled, and afraid of such reality” as Tanner’s annunciation presents? Is this a condemnation of Tanner or of the viewer?… More crucially, the essay seems to carry a self-limiting twentieth-century provincialism and a regrettable religious provincialism in going to art asking only for documentation of religious history and for a strengthening of one’s faith. May we hope for future essays on art that will understand more of what art is really all about?

ELVA MCALLASTER

Professor of English

Greenville College

Greenville, Ill.

ON ALLEGATIONS

In your articles about Underground Evangelism (News, April 13, 27) you mention several times my name, repeating allegations of this organization which are not true.

1. I am not an Underground Evangelism “foe.” I have no other foes than Satan. I love every man, even the Communist torturers. I love the leaders of this organization. Love obliges sometimes to critical attitudes to the beloved.

2. I don’t have a mission to Eastern Europe but to the whole Communist world, which is wider than Europe.

3. Underground Evangelism says that it is contemplating legal action against me. They spread Bibles in Communist countries; they would do well also to apply the Bible’s teaching. It forbids Christians to bring other Christians before court.…

Brother Bass speaks about a Wurmbrand rumor mill. He forgets that he and all his directors have signed a declaration in which they say that they have revised their former attitude of adversity against me in light of Ephesians 4:31, which forbids bitterness, clamor, evil-speaking, and malice. If they would not have been guilty of these things, they would not have had to revise their position in the light of this verse. I have forgiven them.

(The Rev.) RICHARD WURMBRAND

Jesus to the Communist World

Glendale, Calif.

STRONG SONGS

The editors of The Hymn—quarterly publication of the Hymn Society of America—appreciate the excellent article “Songs of the People” by Alec Wyton (April 13). We would very much like to pass this statement on to the society’s 2,000-plus members—it strengthens the society’s philosophy and purpose.

WILLIAM W. REID Editor

The Hymn

New York, N. Y.

Dialogue is a popular concept in religious and theological circles today. Everyone is supposed to be in dialogue. Sermons and lectures must yield to it. Above all, divergent theological and ecclesiastical groups are expected to be in dialogue. Refusal to engage in it is regarded as churlish, obscurantist, and arrogant. Evangelicals who are lukewarm in dialogical venture incur particular displeasure.

Now, dialogue has much to be said for it. Christian mission demands that others be addressed and that we take account of what they say. The more direct and personal this dialogue is, the better will the ends of communication and community be served. Defectiveness in dialogue is regrettable.

Yet dialogue is no panacea. In and by itself it solves little. Although unavoidable, it can be frustrating and futile. Certain difficulties exist that can make the ideal of free and fruitful interchange unattainable unless steps are taken to overcome them. In the dialogue between orthodox and liberal theology, these difficulties are both principial and personal.

Principial Difficulties

1. The first principial difficulty is the difference in basic presupposition. The believer in the full deity of Christ and the man who accepts Christ only as a genius of religion are up against a fundamental problem that will affect almost all the subjects they may meet to discuss. Whether we believe in the self-revealed God of Scripture or God as known in some other way is another example. This kind of difference restricts the possibilities of dialogue in many fields, since apparently peripheral disagreements are often implications of the fundamental divergence. Dialogue, then, will either be shallow and valueless or will have to keep coming back to the underlying problem, which obviously calls for broad and prolonged discussion and holds out little hope of easy solution.

2. The second difficulty of principle, which is very clear in modern theology, is the related difference in approach, which can make all dialogue both confused and confusing. Helmut Thielicke has analyzed this difference in the first volume of his Evangelical Faith. He sees today a confrontation between what he calls Cartesian and non-Cartesian theology. Cartesian theology, beginning with man, adopts an anthropocentric and subjective approach, whereas non-Cartesian theology, beginning with God, adopts one that is objective and theocentric. Now, even as a difference in method this can cause endless confusion in statement, and thus condemn dialogue to futility, unless the difference is perceived and allowed for. More serious, however, are the material implications of the difference in method, as may be seen from a comparison of Tillich and Calvin, for example. In this case dialogue cannot begin even on secondary matters until the question of approach has been thrashed out. This will call for continuous discussion over a broad area of activity rather than a few brief encounters.

3. The third principial difficulty is the difference in theological norm. All theologies have norms or standards, and when these differ dialogue is perpetually frustrated. Thus the appeal to Scripture as the supreme rule clashes with the appeal to tradition or the papacy or reason. Clarification of norms must be achieved if dialogue is to be possible at all.

But clarification is not enough, since it eliminates neither the difference nor its implications. The liberal may well perceive that reason or relativity is subject to Scripture in orthodox theology, but this will not alter the fact that for him Scripture is subject to reason or relativity. Occasionally the same results may be achieved irrespective of the norm, but this cannot be taken for granted and is indeed unlikely in most topics. And so dialogue is constantly pressed back once again to a fundamental issue for which there is no prospect of easy or immediate resolution.

Personal Difficulties

1. Personal difficulties are hardly less serious than those of principle. Since these are usually ascribed predominantly to the orthodox, it might be helpful to focus here on the obstacle they pose to dialogue on the liberal side. The first difficulty here is failure to give serious consideration to what is being said by the opposite partner in the discussion. Evidence has mounted in recent decades that, for example, evangelical books are not widely bought in liberal circles, evangelical scholars are seldom invited as guest lecturers to liberal schools or platforms, and evangelical positions are neither properly studied nor understood by the liberal establishment. This obscurantism, as one might easily describe it, makes dialogue futile. Obviously I cannot talk to a man who will not even listen to what I say and who seems to have dismissed my position in advance. I certainly cannot talk with him if he will not even give me a chance to speak. Patter about dialogue is empty in such circumstances.

2. The second personal difficulty is the setting up of stereotypes in place of realities. We all tend to do this, making straw men out of those with whom we disagree and then flattening them without difficulty. One common stereotype in the liberal world is that a serious view of inspiration means mechanical dictation. The matter has been explained a thousand times, but the stereotype remains. In many cases extremist forms of a belief are equated with the belief itself to create the stereotype. Or supposedly logical inferences are drawn and these are presented, criticized, or summarily rejected as though they were the teaching itself. Now obviously dialogue is brought to a standstill when the stereotype is substituted for the reality and there is unwillingness to do the little work that is needed to correct the picture. Authentic dialogue presupposes an honest grappling with what is actually held by others rather than an unscholarly and complacent fixation on what we think they think.

3. The third personal difficulty is the manipulation of dialogue in advance so that it can never get going as a real discussion. This may be done by establishing the terms of the parley so that undesired issues can be ruled out of order or squeezed out for lack of time; in these circumstances even a chance to speak is no guarantee of authentic dialogue. Or again, it may be done by steering the dialogue to a fixed end. This is the problem in a conference with an assured majority. Free and frank discussion may indeed take place here, but it has little bearing on the findings, so that the invitation to dialogue is bound to have a hollow sound. All that happens is that another view is stated and perhaps a few concessions are made to it to give a happy appearance of fair play. But from the very first there is no real chance that this other view will be given such serious consideration that it might affect the outcome. When the issue is an open one, and the rules are not weighted, then a measure of dialogue can indeed be achieved. When the issue is not open, and the rules are weighted, honest and effective dialogue is eliminated before it is even attempted. What, then, is the point of attempting it except as a form of witness?

Possibilities Of Dialogue

1. In view of all these difficulties, are there any possibilities of dialogue at all? A first possibility, of course, is that of the general and continuous discussion in which the differences of presupposition, approach, and norm are the subject. This is a discussion that can and will and must go on, although whether it will be dialogue in an authentic sense depends on the attention that the parties pay to one another. The prospect of easy or early resolution of the issues is in any case slight.

2. A second and more promising possibility is that a true understanding of opposing positions might emerge from discussion, so that respect will be shown even if agreement is not reached. This again, however, requires a willingness to do some honest study and to break away from stereotypes and caricatures. If this is done, then light will be shed on the reason for disagreement on many modern issues such as abortion or the role of women in the ministry. This does not mean, of course, that the disagreement will go away. But certainly mutual understanding and respect will produce saner and sounder discussion, which is an achievement of sorts.

3. An even more promising possibility is that agreement may result in some areas even though the approaches differ. In England, evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics could combine in opposing the proposal for Methodist union even though their doctrinal reasons were diametrically opposite. A danger of reductionism arises here. One might put out a common statement on monotheism with Unitarians, but without qualification this would be of little worth. One might agree that salvation includes more than eternal bliss, but this is a far cry from focusing Christian ministry on political action. All the same, so long as reductionism is avoided, limited agreement can certainly be reached in some areas through intelligent and sympathetic dialogue.

4. A final possibility of dialogue is that it may produce a better personal understanding, especially when it takes the form of living encounter. Much hostility and misrepresentation arise out of controversy at a distance. Personal meeting can often lead at least to better relations. It can do, so, however, only if the principial and personal difficulties are faced and both parties work to overcome them. Mere encounter is no guarantee of sympathy or respect. In other words, dialogue is not a magic password. One has to work at it seriously and honestly to fulfill even the modest possibilities that it offers. An example from its warmest advocates would be welcome.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Modern American Protestantism has now become so wonderfully open to so many different points of view that there may even be hope that its leaders will pay a little attention to the evangelicals in their midst. Along these lines, I would like to suggest that in every denomination control of at least one seminary be turned over to the evangelicals. For years evangelicals have contributed to denominational causes they have failed to understand, have suspected, or have even loathed. Wouldn’t it be nice for once to give them a cause they liked? Just think how many people could be made happy and generous again merely by being given an ecclesiastical institution (such as a seminary) that they could love and support without embarrassment!

It is of course true that many denominational leaders feel ill at ease with evangelicals, but as these leaders have been saying for years in other contexts, it is the mark of a Christian to love the unlovable. They should also be pleased at the prospect of being open to yet another point of view. Moreover, rising to the support of another significant but oppressed minority would nurture their sense of justice and fair play. Finally, they have more seminaries than they can afford or fill anyway.

From the evangelical side, there is some urgency about the request in view of all the talk about quotas for seminary admission. Perhaps God will now have to take quota systems into account as he calls people into the ministry. At any rate, in the future it may be far more difficult for evangelicals to be accepted. Liberal and ecumenical schools want to relate to the real world. Since so much of the real world today is Chinese and Indian one could reasonably argue that 50 per cent of Protestant seminary enrollment (as well as teachers, trustees, and administrators) should be from these two countries. After all, you really can’t learn in a vacuum! In a Methodist seminary, for instance, very few Methodists (if any) should be admitted because there are so few Methodists in the real world. They are even outnumbered by Shintoists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and Marxists, although there is some overlapping.

In our own country, on the other hand, there are many groups that have been shamefully abused and persecuted in the past. Would it not be sporting to compensate for past wrongs by admitting these people to Protestant seminaries in far larger numbers than their percentage of the population or their interest in Protestantism would indicate? Under these conditions (if you could convince such people to enroll), it might be rather difficult for evangelicals to be accepted in some of our great centers of religious learning. Of course, these places may not survive anyway, and even if they did, it is not clear why an evangelical would want to go there to prepare for the Christian ministry. One usually goes to the mission field after one is trained.

In order to survive evangelicals do need places where Christianity is taught as a living religion. These schools would have the advantage of being comparatively inexpensive to operate in that they would not have to offer countless courses to satisfy students who had no interest in Christianity anyway; such students would not be likely to enroll, or at least they would not be allowed to dominate the curriculum and change it monthly in accordance with the latest nonchristian developments in the counterculture. Nor would one need to retain professors with no particular interest in or commitment to Christianity. These people could find happy homes in many non-evangelical seminaries, in the church-related colleges that are ashamed of their heritage, or in the campus ministry. Evangelicals would still be able to have dialogue with nonchristians in the university, in many Protestant churches, and in the world. But they would not need to allow nonchristians to dominate their Christian seminary.

An evangelical seminary would also have the advantage of enormous savings in the publicity budget, for unlike other schools, it would not have the difficulty of trying to decide and to explain to its constituency and the world at large just what it was trying to do. It is highly likely that a denominational evangelical seminary would know, and it would therefore not have to spend enormous sums of money on slick publicity brochures trying to explain what is almost unexplainable.

Obviously, past and current experience gives evangelicals little reason to find hope in seminaries other than their own. Evangelicals have learned that most Protestants are fully capable of selling out everything (including God) to almost any aspect of the culture or counterculture. (The code words for this, I believe, are “being relevant, issue oriented, and fully ecumenical.”) For instance, now that America has become fascinated by the occult, one can only assume that Protestantism will want to relate to this in an open and positive way. (Note recent Roman Catholic attempts at appropriation of the occult and Zen Buddhism!) Although there are difficulties for many Protestants in relating to any religion, soon, no doubt, there will be more courses offered on Satanism and witchcraft than on the New Testament. Evangelicals, of course, will continue to have problems with Satan, but liberal and ecumenical Protestants are so open and fair-minded that they will surely want to continue to give the Devil his due.

If you think this is farfetched, consider this: who would ever have dreamed that beginning in the nineteenth century Reformed churches would embrace the Gothic Revival? But they did! Even Baptists built medieval cathedrals and seminaries! Calvin would surely have several well-chosen words for his spiritual descendants who prance about in outlandish costumes while facing empty coffin altars with their equally empty theology. I suppose that honoring heroes of the Reformed Church in a Gothic stained-glass atmosphere is something like honoring Moses with a golden calf.

At any rate, it is easy enough to see that anything is possible within American Protestantism. In the future, then, instead of going to Germany to study with great Protestant theologians, seminarians will probably take psychic tours to England on astrologically favorable days to visit haunted houses, Druid centers and evidences of early Anglican worship at Stonehenge and Oxford. Small-group sessions will become covens, and ecclesiastical buildings will receive new names such as The Satanic Presbyterian Church, The Cloven Hoof Baptist Temple, and Orgies By The Sea Episcopal Parish. (This may mean that contemporary Protestant worship will have to become somewhat less bizarre than it is now.)

As evangelicals have noted, Protestantism’s great and heroic attempt to encounter the culture and shape it can be summarized as follows: The world won. Not only that, the world counterattacked and captured most of the seminaries. It may be time for some seminaries to withdraw a bit in accordance with the biblical model. Besides avoiding many dangers in this way, we might also discover a positive advantage, an advantage so radical that I hesitate to mention it, but will.

Perhaps by withdrawing some from the world and stressing the Christian heritage, evangelicals might be able to develop within Protestant denominational theological education a sense of Christian community. You will surely think now that I have gone too far. Of course, in fairness it should be pointed out that there are brief moments when liberal and ecumenical seminaries coalesce around some issue. Unfortunately, there are not as many of these as in the past. In another era, liberal seminarians could always unite in hysterical hatred of Roman Catholicism, for instance. But now Roman Catholics are even more confused than liberal Protestants, presumably because they have so much more to be confused about.

Liberal seminarians can, however, still join together in hostility toward committed Protestant Christians and the Church. Moreover, they can rally around fleeting ethical issues. Conceivably a school could close in protest for several days upon receiving word that some yaks had been treated in an unchristian manner in Nepal. And messianic visions always return every time a radical Democrat runs for the presidency. Then you see him riding on the symbol of his party to the New Jerusalem, now known as Camelot. (This political reference leads me to point out that in Protestant theological circles those least sure of God’s existence are most certain of his will for every situation. I cannot attempt to explain this amazing fact. Perhaps the implication is that Protestant seminaries should give degrees only in political science.) But mere hatred of Christianity and the constant and intense listening to a diverse and continually changing counterculture cannot really be expected to provide the proper context for the development of Christian community.

PRIMORDIAL PATTERN

And if I pulled

The red and crimson threads of sin

Out of the fabric of my life,

Would what was left

Be dull as winter rain

And fog at sea?

Be limp like faded flags

And seaweed beached?

O Lord, I should have known!

The red and crimson added to thy robe,

My tapestry revealed in green and gold

The boughs of Eden, and the songs

Of birds of paradise.

JOHANNA PATTERSON

Christian community is dependent upon some common identity, some common memory that has something to do with Christian faith. This the evangelicals can provide. Unlike many others, evangelicals believe that Christianity has a subject matter, and they would require seminary students to take courses that would give them competence in the Bible and the Christian heritage. They would see no point in encouraging students to express their theological illiteracy by choosing all their own courses or, as students do in many instances, by designing and teaching them. Rather, a great deal of exegesis would be demanded of everyone. And this requirement could not be fully satisfied by courses on such interesting topics as What Jesus and I Think of the World Situation, Why I Hate the Resurrection, or How Process Theology Judges the Bible.

Moreover, before students would be allowed to reject the Protestant heritage totally, they would have to find out what it is. Thus they would all have something in common and would actually be able to talk with one another. Indeed, they could even celebrate a common heritage. Since the seminary would be openly Christian, the entire community would actually want to worship together, and students would want to be taught how to preach and lead worship. One could then dispense with the time-consuming, expensive, and usually fruitless efforts to encourage attendance by performing rites so eccentric and esoteric that no one could participate in them even if he wanted to.

Finally, evangelical seminaries could revitalize the Church. They could, for instance, provide help in dealing with the question of what to do with the pathetic and dying Protestant Sunday school. It is difficult to know what to teach Sunday-school children if you don’t know what you believe or what Protestantism is. Some churches have tried to resolve the issue through busing. They seem to think that if the only identity modern Protestantism has is openness, Protestant children should be bused every Sunday to other churches, synagogues, temples, museums, parks, or zoos. This is easier than finding something of one’s own to teach, and maybe in this way Protestant children will be able to find a living faith in some other religion or in nature. One could also argue for the busing of helpless little children on the grounds of achieving religious balance. But interesting as other religions and zoos are, evangelical seminaries would teach their students how to run Sunday schools in which the Gospel would be stressed. Think what this radical new approach could do for the churches!

It is surely not too much to ask Protestant denominational leaders, who have tried so hard to be open to practically everything under the sun, to be open now to something really different: the Christian faith. There are “acres of diamonds” buried in our own backyard that an evangelical seminary could bring to light and life again. The results could be radical, exciting, and, if I dare use the word, relevant.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Leading off this issue is a provocative article by Charles Nielsen, whose “modest proposal” could change the shape of the churches in years to come. But don’t rush off to engage in a dialogue about this proposal before reading Geoffrey Bromiley’s forthright discussion of the difficulties—and possibilities—of dialogue.

Also in this issue is a panel discussion moderated by one of our editors-at-large, former editor Carl F. H. Henry. The panelists discuss scientific concerns in relation to Christian faith.

Rounding out the lineup, Terri Williams presents a case for a forgotten alternative among Christians: celibacy. I know of a world-acclaimed clergyman who is celibate because he feels God has called him to that estate so that he can give himself fully to the ministry of the Gospel. But few Christians, this author says, consider celibacy an option today.

Bishop Arthur J. Moore, one of our contributing editors, has been honored by having a chair of evangelism named for him at Emory University.

Our unceasingly active executive editor, L. Nelson Bell, delivered the inaugural address for the installation of President Vaughn of Montreat-Anderson College (Montreat, North Carolina) on May 5.

Here and there in Paul’s epistles are some great listings of sins. One is forced to raise interesting questions as to relative harmfulness, whether some sins are less heinous than others. Yet Paul makes no distinctions as he lists such strange bedfellows (to our way of thinking) as murder and backbiting, sodomy and covetousness.

I make no judgments here—after long consideration I feel helpless to judge—but I will say that I have lived a long time with that classic list of sins in the first chapter of Romans where the signs of decay in the pagan world are ticked off and we are almost overwhelmed with the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Hidden among them is that surprise one again. It seems so mild and inoffensive: “without natural affection.” I gather that this means those assumed and expected relationships of home and fireside, family relationships, ties of blood and kinship. Whereas it may be difficult to love one’s neighbor, it can at least be assumed that one will love those of his own household. Or can it? It may be that in our society these affections cannot be easily assumed, and that we have therefore a clear indicator of the decay and paganism of our Western civilization. “Natural affection” is no longer all that “natural.”

All this leads me to consider an Old Testament hero by the name of Samson. You remember him in the Book of Judges, flailing the Philistines with all that muscle and usually with little sense. I was brought up to believe that the big lesson in Samson is that getting revenge is a waste of time and energy, and that may well be the lesson of his life. Now I think of another one. It is his last act of revenge, when crowds of the Philistines were in the temple of Dagon, making merry and making sport of Samson. Samson got his hands on the two middle pillars of the temple—there were about three thousand men and women on the roof—and pulled the building down.

The big trouble was that it came down on his own head. He got his revenge, sure enough, and it landed on him. Sometimes you lose by winning.

We used to have the expression “bite off your nose to spite your face.” I always liked the story of the man who while being led off to be hanged was chuckling away to himself. When someone asked him what was so funny he replied, “This is a good joke on the judge; I never even killed the man.” The ancients knew what was meant by a Pyhrric victory.

Now to get Samson and “natural affection” together. It is all clear enough. You would think it sensible, would you not, that we Christians and others would find ways of expressing the natural affection we have for our children by stopping that process or that series of processes by which we seem to be pulling the roof down on our own heads—and theirs. But “without natural affection” we seem bent on courses of action, for whatever selfish reasons, that can only hurt those we love best. And we don’t even have Samson’s motivation of revenge. What is our motivation? Money? Power? Sloth?

Take something as homey and down to earth as the food we eat. You are aware, surely, of the outcries in press and radio and TV over what is happening to our food. I watched a TV ad for bread the other night that dwelt on two things: softness and freshness. Neither of these has anything to do with nutritional value.

Adelle Davis is queen of the sciences when it comes to nutrition, and her books are selling (if you’ll pardon the expression) like hot cakes. One need not believe and follow her at every point to accept these two basic points: food processors are taking food value away from us in the processing, and they are putting in additives that are detrimental to us. When the doctor tells you that you will get plenty of vitamins in a balanced diet, he is correct; what Adelle Davis is saying is that it is impossible to get that diet in the foods generally available.

My purpose here is not to push Adelle Davis’s books but to make this point: if it is true that people are tampering with our food to our detriment, don’t they have “natural affection”? Don’t they suspect that their own children can be inheritors of the diseases attendant on poor nutrition? And what about natural affection toward their fellow citizens? Are they pulling the roof down on themselves in their show of strength or pursuit of profits?

There are supposed to be twelve million new cars on the roads in the United States in 1973. Is there no end to this? And where will these cars all end up anyway? Are the junk heaps big enough to contain them? Don’t be fooled by a little publicity here and there about high schoolers engaging in recycling schemes. That’s sentimental eyewash. And the efforts to reduce the poisons coming out of our cars are being threatened by cries of crippling the auto industry or of widespread unemployment. We are being frightened away from reform.

Plastics go along with this sort of thing. Plastics will never return to the soil; biologically they can’t do it—ever! And all that wheat we ship all over the world will never come back in anything but money; the topsoil represented by a shipload of wheat is gone forever. In expending our marvelous efforts, do we keep pulling the building down on our own heads—and on those bound to us by natural affection?

A good many years ago I sat in a service club meeting listening to efforts by a committee to stir up ways of getting more industry into our town. Industry brings new payrolls, increases the circulation of money, sells real estate, makes more people rich. To what end? So that those who have made money out of the industry can go to some other place that has not taken on new industry and is therefore worth going to. The old home town is now a place to get away from. One man at the same club defended strip mining: “You can have money or scenery but you can’t have both; make money here and go to Canada for your scenery.”

Where is Christianity in all this? Try unselfishness for a starter. A government that is the choice of the governed requires that everyone give up some freedom in order to enjoy freedom at all—the basketball referee principle. Business expansion has controls but will need more controls. In Christian terms this could and ought to mean self-controls. There are places for cross-bearing, losing once in a while in order to win, not always being the biggest, and so on. The GNP is not God; it sounds more like the service of mammon, and unless God keep, the watchman will cry in vain. If this acceleration keeps us, we will all be permanently residually inert. And that’s no way to treat the kids.

Test Of Faith—Or Sanity?

At the Holiness Church of God in Jesus’ Name in Carson Springs, Tennessee, snake-handling and poison-drinking services are continuing despite the deaths last month of two church leaders. The pair—Jimmy Ray Williams, 34, assistant pastor, and Buford Pack, 30, a lay leader—gulped down large doses of strychnine poison as a “demonstration of faith” in Jesus Christ.

The sect bases its faith on a verse in Mark (16:18) in which Jesus promises that those with faith will survive deadly snake bites and poisonous drinks. Snake-handling sects are generally found in parts of Tennessee, West Virginia, Georgia, and Kentucky. Rattlesnakes and copperheads are used. Medical aid is rejected.

Church members say both Williams and Pack had drunk strychnine (a bottle of the powdered poison was kept at the pulpit and mixed with water for demonstrations) at other services, sometimes in larger quantities than the doses that killed them on April 7.

Total membership of the Carson Springs church is estimated at 100. Liston Pack, pastor of the church and Buford’s brother, said the bizarre services will go on.

Snake-handling is illegal in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia but not in West Virginia. Enforcement of the laws, however, is spotty. And the laws prohibit passing a poisonous snake to another person, but do not proscribe voluntary handling by one person.

Journalistic Juxtaposition

Two more major religious magazines are fading out of the picture because of too much red ink, and another is being pushed in the same direction. The United Methodist magazines Together and Christian Advocate will be replaced by a single magazine beginning next January. The Episcopalian is reported to be facing the possible loss of an annual subsidy of half a million dollars or more.

A spokesman for Time, Incorporated, confirms, meanwhile, that Time has undertaken studies on the marketability of a new, presumably interdenominational religious monthly.

The developments underscore the fact that religious journalism is in the midst of a shaking-down process: some kinds of periodicals are doing better than ever while others fall by the wayside. The leading evangelical publications are generally enjoying a boom. So are some occult journals. Theologically liberal magazines are for the most part experiencing hard times.

Together is a family monthly dating back to 1956. It approached the million mark in circulation in the late fifties (a special 1959 issue with bulk sales went over one million) but has been declining ever since, and now has only 229,000 subscribers. Christian Advocate is a bi-weekly for ministers. Their merger into a new magazine with a new name (likely to be United Methodists Today) and format was approved last month by the United Methodist Board of Publication. Today’s Ministry will assume Advocate’s role as a supplement-like insert.

Evangelicals in the United Methodist Church (UMC) attribute declining circulation primarily to grass-roots disappointment at not getting a more scriptural content. But Together editor Curtis Chambers says the blame lies elsewhere. He cites the rise of dozens of specialized magazines and papers within the denomination, corresponding to special-interest trends in secular journalism. (The latest UMC entry in the revamped print field is Newscope, a four-page weekly newsletter.) Chambers also asserts that Methodists are simply reading less, in line with national patterns, and for that reason the UMC will soon market magazine material in audio cassette form. He maintains there has been no marked shift in biblical content between Together’s early and latter days.

Good News, an independent evangelical publication for United Methodists, has grown steadily and now has more than 11,500 subscribers, of whom approximately 5,000 are clergymen. It is edited by clergyman Charles Keysor, a journalism instructor at Asbury College and former managing editor of Together.

The Living Church, a conservative Episcopal weekly, reported that the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church eliminated support for the Episcopalian in the preliminary 1974 budget. The board of the church’s official publication has asked for $495,000 for 1974, $650,000 for 1975, and $716,000 for 1976.

A number of periodicals of mainline denominations have suffered curtailments. Last year Presbyterian Life and United Church Herald combined operations; they now have a joint publication, A.D., with separate denominational editors.

Time, Incorporated, has sounded out churchmen and theologians about the feasibility of the new religious publication it has in mind, although Otto Fuerbringer, editor in charge of magazine development, says such a thing is still “a very embryonic idea.” “We have done some work on a magazine of this kind,” he acknowledged, commenting on a published report in the newsletter Overview that the company is thinking about a journal focusing on religion and ethics. But, he added, the firm is a long way from formulating specifics.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Spirit Surgery

Place: Baguio, Philippines. Date: January 4, 1971. Friedrich W. Trost of Wiesbaden, Germany, describes his “operation” for prostate difficulties: “I lay down on the operating table and waited.… Without making any special preparations, Tony sprinkled some water on my bare abdomen, rubbed it with a damp cloth, and immediately opened up the skin with his little, brown hands, dug deeper into my body, and showed my astonished wife my bladder. He called this trifle a ‘prostate operation.’ … It is spooky to think how fast such an operation takes place … all told, two or three minutes.”

Dr. Alfred Selter, a chemist from Dortmund, Germany, describes how a month later the “spirit surgeon” Tony Agpaoa removed a walnut-sized growth from a frontal sinus with his fingers. A woman patient reports how he opened varicose veins in her leg and removed dark, stagnant blood. “As soon as Tony took his hand away, the wound immediately closed up,” she reports.

Tony Agpaoa, about thirty years old, is the son of a farmer. Reports such as these, telling of his parapsychological or spiritual ability to operate and heal with his bare hands, have attracted a constant stream of visitors seeking healing—or an explanation.

Tony himself claims he has been called by God to this healing work, and therefore he refuses to perform cosmetic surgery. Like other “spirit doctors” in the Philippines and elsewhere, he has spiritualist connections; some spiritualists have tried to explain his operations as “materialization and dematerialization” phenomena.

According to the Medical Peace Circle of Berlin, one of their spirit contacts, Elias, compared Agpaoa with Jesus Christ but revised his opinion a month later, when Agpaoa was charged with quackery in the German press. During 1971, a German travel agency planned weekly departures for the Philippines, round-trip fare over $1,000, to visit Agpaoa, but none have been scheduled since August, 1971. However, Agpaoa’s supposed gift is still the subject of controversy and fascination in Europe. President Naegeli-Osjord of the Swiss Parapsychological Society, a Swiss psychiatrist and Agpaoa enthusiast, wants to bring Agpaoa to Europe this year.

Several prominent German and Swiss magazines have published reports on Agpaoa. Stern sent Professor Peter Wartenburg (internal medicine, Hamburg) and Professor Hans Bender (psychological fringe areas, Friburg) to Baguio; both doctors claimed that Agpaoa is a fraud, operating by sleight of hand and psychic suggestion. However, Stern admitted that Agpaoa easily extracted a Filipino’s tooth after Dr. Wartenberg had examined him and said that it would be difficult to get the tooth out.

Austrian, German, Russian, and American scientists are trying to develop a parapsychological explanation for the “operations.” But until Agpaoa comes to the West and repeats them under controlled conditions, it appears there will be no definitive evaluation of what it’s all about.

Packaged In Canada

Much of the religious television viewed by Americans is produced by a Canadian firm based in Toronto. In its ten years of operation, Glen-Warren Productions (GWP), an arm of CFTO-TV channel 9, part of the Canadian Television network, has gradually garnered some of the major evangelical television shows.

Even those “Day of Discovery” balmy scenes from Florida’s Cyprus Gardens are filmed by winterized Canadians. GWP simply sends a crew to Florida to film segments for several months ahead. After editing in Toronto, the programs are shipped to stations across the continent, with nary a hint of the sometimes frosty touch.

Two years ago, Stephen Olford switched production of his “Encounter” program from New York City to Toronto. The reasons, says Olford, are simple: “Better production, better service, and better price.” Reportedly, there are no strong evangelical contacts within GWP, and the firm is unionized. But GWP does insist on “respectable appearances” on the part of its staff in contrast to the shaggy bohemian look often found elsewhere. Olford impresses the GWP people. The New York City television preacher, formerly pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, flies up, completing thirteen programs in three days of intensive work. He begins each day’s work in a prayer meeting with the entire CFTO-TV staff.

GWP also produces a number of American specials, including the Billy Graham crusade specials (beginning in 1967) that are shown in Canada and the United States.

Probably its biggest remote production was filming of Explo ’72, the Campus Crusade for Christ spectacular last year in Dallas. After on-spot filming, the miles of tape were edited to produce three specials viewed by millions. Months of work were involved, says GWP executive Allan Chapman. His crews have traveled to Australia, Europe, and Israel to film specials for Billy Graham and Rex Humbard.

When Toronto’s Peoples Church launched its television ministry, the church purchased its own cameras at a cost of $100,000 but added a thousand dollars weekly to its budget for productions by GWP.

Other religious television shows come to GWP for occasional productions, including the Lutheran broadcast, “This Is the Life.” Canadian David Mainse turned to GWP for help with his widely shown Grey Cup special.

So far, the evangelical clients seem happy with GWP, and, says Chapman, he and his crews are pleased with them. Citing Explo ’72, he recalls, “Those kids pitched in to make possible an impossible job of moving our equipment from the stadium to the distant outdoor location for the final meeting. By dawn, we were in place, but we never could have done it without their help.”

Canadians are complaining a great deal today about American domination of their country’s industry, but in the area of television production, GWP is changing the image.

LESLIE K. TARR

Revival Afterglow

A British Columbia church that helped to spawn the Canadian revival has split over revival methodology and separatism, which is more and more an issue in other areas the revival has touched.

Almost one-third of the approximately 600 members and adherents of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church at Abbotsford, British Columbia, followed the church’s former minister, Milton Johnson, into a new group called the Community Bible Church.

It was under Johnson’s leadership that the Sutera twins visited the church about three years ago in what had been planned as a one-week evangelistic crusade. The series turned into a five-week event attracting as many as 1,500 nightly. The pattern of “afterglow” meetings, confession sessions, and life-changing spiritual experiences was repeated a year later when the Suteras visited Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in October, 1971. From Saskatoon the revival spread like wildfire through many parts of Canada, going on to touch a number of U. S. and European churches.

Johnson resigned from the Abbotsford church last November. He said his decision was brought on by pressure from some staff and board members to stop giving invitations at the end of his Sunday worship services—a practice begun during the revival.

On a deeper level, the split represents a disagreement over whether the revival spirit is best reflected in a fundamentalist or an evangelical stance.

Johnson’s new group is affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship, a denomination that he said has grown because it refused to cooperate with “modernists.” He said he expects his former congregation to continue to function effectively as an evangelical church, but he added he personally expected to see God’s continued blessing only if he steered clear of cooperative efforts like Billy Graham crusades and maintained a fundamentalist-separatist position.

Johnson said his new church will make heavy use of Baptist Bible Fellowship church-building techniques, including an aggressive program of Sunday-school busing. His newspaper ads urge readers to “watch for our big gold and white buses.” He expects to have the largest church in the area.

He indicated that his followers, with their continued revival spirit, will have the vigor to carry out the program, where the more “compromising” evangelicals might not.

Meanwhile, at the Alliance Church, the remaining members say little about the issue. And in a sense, the split is a microcosm of the Alliance’s own growth patterns in Abbotsford and other parts of the Fraser Valley.

The valley is heavily populated with Mennonites. Throughout the past quarter-century, much of the growth of Alliance churches in the area has come through the addition of Mennonites who for various reasons had left their own churches. Those reasons have included impatience with the slow Mennonite move from use of the German language in worship, unhappiness with fixed membership levies, and disagreement with the traditional Mennonite pacifist stance.

Alliance ministers have cultivated these Mennonites, knowing that their strong biblical background would be beneficial to the new congregations. The former Mennonites have also seemed to appreciate the informality and evangelistic thrust of the Alliance denomination.

LLOYD MACKEY

Religion In Transit

In the middle of pastor Donald L. Tucker’s morning sermon, fire broke out in historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. The congregation barely had time for an orderly exit before flames engulfed the whole sanctuary, a $300,000 loss.

The Norfolk, Virginia, Journal and Guide, one of the nation’s oldest black newspapers, was bought for an undisclosed sum by Bishop L. E. Willis of the Church of God in Christ. The bishop is also a bank executive and owner of a chain of funeral homes.

A gift of $50,000, believed to be the largest donation by a black congregation to a college, was given to Virginia Union University by Ebenezer Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia.

Mississippi’s legislature wants Congress to try to get a constitutional amendment insuring the right to participate in voluntary prayer in any public building.

Now that the Supreme Court has legalized abortion, most health insurance companies are paying for abortionsthrough the first twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy and sometimes longer under the normal maternity coverage provisions.

A U. S. State Department release says the United States gave more than $3 million in 1971 and 1972 to assist Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union: $984,000 for care and maintenance, $2.09 million for transportation loans. A committee quietly handled it all.

Simpson Bible College in San Francisco, a Christian and Missionary Alliance school, has applied for federal approval to sell its radio station license to the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco.

Personalia

“Lutheran Hour” radio preacher Oswald C. J. Hoffmann declined nomination for the presidency of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He says he refuses to be a party to the “politically and theologically divisive atmosphere” in the LCMS. Six candidates, including incumbent J. A. O. Preus, are on the official list. Foes of Preus speak of a possible draft-Hoffmann movement.

Bible smuggler David Hathaway of England was released from prison in Czechoslovakia and returned home in the company of British political leader Harold Wilson, who took credit for his release—to the consternation of the British Foreign Ministry, which had worked on the case for months.

Controversial religion columnist Lester Kinsolving, who has moved to the right in the past year or so, will leave the San Francisco Examiner to report politics from Washington for a newspaper group. He plans to keep cutting away with his nationally syndicated religion column on the side, to the probable outrage of scores of liberal and conservative church leaders alike whom he has eviscerated.

Richard F. Schubert, 36, nominated by President Nixon to be under-secretary of Labor (he will be the administration’s youngest sub-cabinet member), is a 1958 graduate of Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was formerly a lawyer and a steel-company labor-relations executive.

Now it’s official: anti-Communist crusader-evangelist Billy James Hargis, supported by the National Council of Churches, has asked the Supreme Court to restore his tax-exempt status. An appeals court that ruled against him had ignored, he said, the long history of religious involvement in social issues.

World Scene

There is increasing liberalization inside Red China, say veteran observers, but they discount as unauthoritative reports of reopened churches and visibly circulating Bibles.

Moscow News, a Soviet English-language weekly, issued a report that only 2 per cent or so of the Soviet Union’s 14- to 30-year-olds are religious believers, most of them rural residents. Many Soviet-language papers, however, act editorially as though the percentage were much greater.

Some 500 young Baptists from all over Sweden rendezvoused in Orebro for a “Jesus conference” and march, attracting 1,300 to an evening rally in a state-church building that seats 600. Baptist officials, citing the impact of the Jesus and charismatic movements, plan to open a Bible institute in Orebro.

Wide press and television coverage was given a two-week Baptist evangelistic crusade in Medellin, Colombia. Teams distributed thousands of pieces of literature throughout the city. Many Catholics—including some local priests—attended the services as decades-old barriers fell, say spokesmen.

In a bombshell overture for dialogue with Peking, the Vatican said some of the thoughts and directives of Chairman Mao Tse-tung “find authentic and complete expression in modern social Christian teaching.”

Non-Muslim religious minorities have been given seven of 495 seats in four provincial assemblies under Pakistan’s new constitution, which specifies that both the president and prime minister must be Muslim.

A statistical yearbook published recently by the Vatican lists 659 million Roman Catholics in the world. They form 18.4 per cent of the world’s population.

The movement toward Christ among the tribes in Sind, Pakistan, is reportedly still going on, with 500 added to the church recently.

India has suffered one of its worst droughts in 100 years, and now there are critical water, power, and food shortages, according to many field reports. Church World Service director James MacCracken is appealing to the churches for help.

A Catholic Bible was published in Lithuania, the first new edition in fifty years—an apparent Soviet nod toward the Vatican.

Amid hearty amens and exhibitions of spiritual exuberance smacking of the bygone days of the holiness movement, the Inter-church Holiness Convention (IHC) convened its twenty-first annual convention last month with a full house at the 2,500-seat city auditorium of Huntington, West Virginia.

At a time when the holiness movement is experiencing a general realignment along conservative-progressive lines, the IHC serves as the unofficial rallying-point for the recent “counter-nucleation” of radical holiness groups. Its relation to the Christian Holiness Association (CHA), formerly the National Holiness Association, may be compared with that of the American Council of Christian Churches to the National Association of Evangelicals. However, in the latter case the tension is over degrees of separation, and denominations line up accordingly. But in the case of the IHC and the CHA, the tensions exist within the various denominations themselves.

While the CHA last year broadened its statement of faith and increasingly models itself along the lines of the NAE, the IHC continues as the spokesman for the thirty-five or more splinter-denominations and other adherents (total constituency: more than 100,000) seeking to maintain all the traditional spiritual and doctrinal distinctives of the holiness groups.

The IHC originated in a January, 1952, meeting in Salem, Ohio. Leaders were its founder, H. Robb French, then a general evangelist of the Wesleyan Methodist Church; Foreign Missionary Secretary R. G. Flexon of the Pilgrim Holiness Church; and Wesleyan Methodist minister H. E. Schmul, the present IHC executive secretary. Its stated purpose was to encourage the “old-fashioned crowd” to hold to their convictions and to foster “Bible holiness with standards,” and emphasis was placed on fasting, prayer, revival, confession, separation, and “heart holiness.”

For fourteen years the IHC annual conventions were held on the campus of God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. The school dates from the beginning of the century and still maintains close ties with the IHC.

In the late fifties and through the sixties, increasing pressure was put on the loosely constituted IHC to form a new denomination in order to champion the dissident minorities within such old-line holiness groups as the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church (formed in 1968 by merger of the Wesleyan Methodist and Pilgrim Holiness Churches), and the Free Methodists. While Schmul consistently refused to take such a step, it was not long before small denominations began to spring up—many of which eventually found their way into the fellowship of the IHC.

The dissidents allege that in the old-line groups there is now too much emphasis on education and not enough on revivalism, that worship services are less free and spontaneous, that preaching has become intellectualized at the expense of exuberance, that biblical criticism is increasingly tolerated, that the doctrine of holiness is discussed but experientially played down, and that there is more of a conciliatory attitude toward traditional ethical standards. The old-line holiness churches for their part tend to ignore the development of the hard-line movement or lampoon it as pharisaical and legalistic.

Surprisingly, there was a total absence of comment at the recent convention about Key 73. IHC and the affiliated radical holiness groups have stood unanimously against the ecumenicity implied in Key 73. They have used the participation of old-line holiness groups in it, as well as the gradual affinity of certain old-line groups with the charismatic movement, to point up the conservative-progressive tensions.

The convention underscored the numerous growing pains plaguing the IHC. While the conventions have always emphasized preaching and praise services (all necessary business is handled by a fifteen-member Convention Committee and a short business session), program planners got headaches trying to fit all the platform participants into the three-day meeting. (There were choirs from eleven Bible schools and Christian day schools, as well as a host of other musicians.) Additionally, the IHC is still fighting to be accepted among certain of the radical holiness groups. Although it enjoys broad grassroots support, speaks for 1,500 independent and denominational ministers, and claims to champion the “little people” in the holiness movement, it has received only token and unofficial support from four of the five hard-line groups that split from the Nazarenes. Also, though Schmul was a prime opponent of the merger that formed the Wesleyan Church, and though he has maintained membership in one of the Wesleyan Methodist conferences that refused to accept that merger, some in his own groups view him with mistrust and apprehension. His impassioned plea at the opening of the convention for the IHC constituents to “fall in love with each other again” revealed his concern over tensions in the IHC fellowship.

Yet the IHC seems to have a bright future. In recent years there has been a very large influx of youthful supporters. The preponderance of youth is seen not only in the Youth Congress that meets at IHC headquarters in Salem, Ohio, each December but also in the vigorous ministry of a youth organization known as the Overcomers. Though fairly new, it has formed campus chapters, has held holiness rallies on more than a score of college campuses across the country, and now supports full-time “missionaries” at two universities. The IHC also operates the interdenominational Aldersgate School of Religion in Salem (enrollment: three), which attempts to draw students from among the graduates of several radical holiness Bible schools. The Convention Herald, official monthly periodical of the IHC with an American circulation of 6,000, now has a Korean edition that boasts more than 10,000 subscribers. And more than twenty-five area conventions serve to keep the IHC fellowship alive throughout the year.

CHANGING TIMES

In Switzerland’s Geneva canton (state), the ruling body of the Reformed Church (the denomination organized by John Calvin) has reportedly recommended that infants be “presented” to congregations and that baptism be postponed to a later age. But those who wish to continue the practice of infant baptism will not-be hindered, according to the press report. (Calvin was a leading sixteenth-century proponent of the idea that believers’ children should be baptized as early as possible.)

Tough Talk

Did President Nixon take the Easter sermon personally?

That’s what Watergate-conditioned reporters asked the man who preached it: Pastor John A. Huffman, Jr., of Florida’s Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church. “I cannot say,” he replied.

With the Nixon family in the congregation, Huffman had delivered what he described as a “tough talk” on sin and the need for transformation, basing it on a study of Festus and Agrippa during the trial of Paul.

People hesitate to change, he declared at one point, because it hurts and may be embarrassing. “You’ll notice the business dealings you’ll have to stay out of. There’ll be some friendships that you have to break off. And there’ll be some courageous statements that are going to be tough to make, to your friends, to your enemies, and to the society around you.”

The President appeared attentive throughout the sermon, afterward shook hands with Huffman during a congenial exchange, then departed for the Bahamas. (In a January sermon Huffman praised Nixon—who was present—for the Viet Nam cease-fire.)

Did the sermon have any connection with the Watergate mess at the White House?

“You can draw any implication you want to,” Huffman, an evangelical, told reporters. “Whatever the President wishes to make of it was between him and the Lord.”

VICTORY

Radio preacher Carl McIntire led nearly 2,000 advocates of various conservative causes in another “victory march” in Washington, D. C. For a change the weather was good, but it was McIntire’s smallest turnout in the series. He didn’t mention attendance afterward in his newspaper but stated that there were 150,000 “tourists and the like” in the area and that the march had backed up traffic almost to Richmond, nearly 100 miles away. He lashed out at President Nixon for not visiting him at the post-march rally, but he could claim victory on at least one front. After thousands of futile airline miles to present a plaque to visiting President Thieu of South Viet Nam, McIntire finally caught up with Thieu—at a cocktail reception.

Cutting Where It Hurts

President Nixon isn’t the only one cutting back on social-action spending. The National Council of Churches has given pink slips to the entire sixteen-member executive staff of its controversy-generating Church and Society division. The move is in line with a general NCC reorganization (the sixteen can apply for seven redefined posts), but money was the main dictating factor. The department had a 1970 budget of $2.6 million but entered this year with prospects for no more than $400,000—and a holdover deficit of $100,000. It founded and funded many civil-rights, anti-war, and investment-pressure projects over the past decade—resulting in backlash and the NCC’s present predicament.

Record Run

Time to Run, the latest motion picture released by World Wide Pictures (film arm of the Billy Graham organization), is setting box-office records, thanks in large part to effective advance promotion among church members. World Wide says that more than 1.3 million have paid to see the movie since its release in January. In the second week of March, more than 150,000 saw it in Los Angeles, a record attendance for any show in town that week, according to World Wide. About 265,000 saw it during a week in the Philadelphia area. The manager of a small Minnesota theater reportedly remarked to a Graham executive that Time to Run “had a $2,000 day; with The Godfather we didn’t even have a $2,000 week.”

The key to the large turnouts is a well-greased advance campaign in which thousands of church members are organized into volunteer promotion committees (they also handle follow-up). At the local-church level, members are urged to buy tickets for themselves and for non-Christian friends. Youth groups are challenged to pack out the theater for special youth showings. Occasionally an advance man makes a connection that results in a publicity windfall. For example, the Texas state legislature, Governor Dolph Briscoe, and Austin Mayor Roy Butler officially endorsed a film crusade in the state capital last month as Time to Run Week.

Part of the proceeds are used for theater rental (some theaters work on a percentage basis). The remainder goes to World Wide for expenses and production costs. Surplus income, if any, is invested in new films. (Time to Run has already paid for itself.)

Time to Run concludes with an invitation to receive Christ, and to date nearly 100,000 have signed decision cards in the theaters and are enrolled in follow-up, says World Wide.

So far, most reviews of the film have been favorable, including a laudatory one in the Los Angeles Times and one in the Wittenberg Door, a Christian publication in San Diego that specializes in satire and considers virtually nothing sacred.

Meanwhile, World Wide is pushing ahead with preparations for filming The Hiding Place, a film about Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who sheltered Jews in World War II. His Land, another World Wide production, is being dubbed into Korean to be shown across Korea in conjunction with Graham’s visit there this month. The firm recently produced It Happened at Shiokari Pass, a Japanese dramatic film for use in the Orient.

Legislating Education

When evolution is taught in science courses in Georgia’s public schools, the creation account of origins must be presented as an alternate theory, the state legislature decreed by a 29–22 vote. It is said to be the first such legislation in modern times. Later, the Tennessee Senate voted 28–1 to restrict evolution to theory status in textbooks. The measure said that books dealing with human origins should give “commensurate attention” to creationism. Speedy approval of the bill was expected in the House.

To See Or Not To See

Citing bomb scares and assassination threats, WPIX-TV in New York City and WTAF-TV in Philadelphia cancelled with short notice a Jews for Jesus interview show sponsored by the American Board of Missions to the Jews (ABMJ). Except for the sheer exposure value, the ABMJ was presumably out the $25,000 it spent on advertisements.

Other factors muddy the picture somewhat. Nine hours before the show was to be aired, WPIX-TV’s management apparently decided it was not “in the public interest” (a vague Federal Communications Commission requirement), and axed it. Numerous Jewish individuals and organizations had protested the scheduled program (a number of station executives are Jewish), and there was an unconfirmed report that two congressmen had applied pressure.

But Terryl Delaney, the ABMJ’s media man, insisted that both stations had earlier previewed the program and judged it to be acceptable. The ABMJ was contemplating legal action on grounds of unlawful discrimination and abridgement of rights. (Last year a number of stations acceded to Jewish demands and cancelled an ABMJ documentary on the Passover.)

Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee, in a special commentary on WINS radio, commended WPIX-TV for its action and declared that despite all the protests “there were absolutely no Jewish efforts at censorship of the telecast.” But, asserted ABMJ head Daniel Fuchs, “the cancellation has perpetuated a serious trend that affects basic constitutional freedoms.”

The program, filmed on a college campus, features popular radio and TV talk-show host Les Crane—a non-Jesus Jew—interviewing Jewish followers of Jesus.

Scheduled airings of the show went on apparently without much fuss in Baltimore, Atlanta, and San Diego.

Brothers, North And South

United Presbyterian missions executive Archie Crouch, writing in A.D. 1973, assesses the Vietnamese religious situation. He quotes a Vietnamese Catholic priest who says there are about one million Catholics in North Viet Nam, served by 350 priests and twelve bishops, with twenty Catholics among the nation’s 420 legislators. There are an estimated 1.6 million Catholics in South Viet Nam, with 1,700 priests and eighteen bishops.

No one knows how many Protestants are in North Viet Nam, Crouch points out. The Christian and Missionary Alliance once had about 10,000 members, but half or more fled south in the fifties. In South Viet Nam, the CMA-related Evangelical Church of Viet Nam has more than 53,000 baptized members in 368 congregations.

Crouch implies that America’s war role and an unwillingness of American churches to extend relief aid to the north will impede post-war relations with North Vietnamese churches.

The Jackson Move(Ment)

The six-million-member National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., a black body, scheduled dedication of its new J. H. Jackson Library in Chicago May 11. Named after the denomination’s president, the library will house the group’s national offices, presently located at its publishing quarters in Nashville.

Conservative Slowdown

Conservative church growth, the subject of several articles and at least one book, may be slowing down. According to figures compiled in the latest (1972) Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, published by Abingdon, the conservative churches showed only slight gains, and in some cases, loss.

The Yearbook, prepared by the National Council of Churches, said denominational reports indicate that such stalwarts as the American Lutheran Church (ALC) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) lost members since the 1971 Yearbook report. The ALC dropped by 21,362 members (0.8 per cent) for a new total of 2,521,930 while the LCMS lost 426 members, giving a new total of 2,788,110.

Other churches generally included in the conservative bloc showed slight gains. The Reformed Church in America picked up 2,345 members for a 369,951 total. The Christian Reformed Church, meanwhile, increased by only 466 members to a total of 286,094. The Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) showed negligible changes in its 1972 total of 949,857.

Despite the general slowing down, however, some groups, notably the Southern Baptists, showed continuing numerical increases. The Yearbook indicates the Baptists grew by 1.7 per cent to 11,824,676. (Figures released by the denomination earlier this year and after the Yearbook went to press, however, show that the Southern Baptists have broken the 12-million-member mark. Their total now reads 12,067,284.) Baptists are second in membership after the Roman Catholic Church’s 48,390,990.

Also showing increases for 1972 were the Jehovah’s Witnesses, up 7.2 per cent to 416,789; the Seventh-day Adventists, up 4.9 per cent to 433,906; and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), up 2.9 per cent to 2,133,072.

Declines were experienced by many churches, including the Episcopal—3,217,365 (down 2.1 per cent); the United Methodist—10,509,198 (down 1.5 per cent); the Lutheran Church in America—3,069,679 (down 1.2 per cent); the United Presbyterian—3,013,808 (down 2.4 per cent); and the United Church of Christ—1,928,674 (down 1.6 per cent).

The study also shows that 40 per cent of the adult population attended church weekly in 1971, continuing a decline since the 1955 high of 49 per cent. Of those surveyed 57 per cent were Catholics, 37 per cent Protestant, and 19 per cent Jewish, the Yearbook says. Significantly, organized religion in the United States remains over-whelmingly segregated. Approximately 90 per cent of black Christians (estimated at 14.4 million members) are attending wholly or over-whelmingly black denominations. The remaining 10 per cent are spread over a number of predominantly white denominations.

Statistics in the book are largely based on 1971 figures, the last year for which comprehensive data are available. Yearbook editor Constant H. Jacquet indicated also that figures are based on denominational sources, and therefore on varying ways of reckoning. Roman Catholics count children as members, while most Protestant churches limit their rolls to adults or confirmed youths. Also, he said, some churches compile membership statistics on an irregular basis.

Although it has carried information on Canadian churches for several years, the Yearbook bowed northward by including Canadian in its title for the first time. It lists Canadian church membership at 12,770,268 of Canada’s more than 20 million population. At the same time, the Canadian figures show the same trends reported by U. S. counterparts.

Gregarious Greeks—Almost

The Orthodox Church of Greece suffered a major setback last month in its quest for internal unity. In an important ruling, the Greek State Council—the nation’s supreme court—upheld an appeal against the church’s Holy Synod by two dissident bishops. The action nullifies all synod decisions since November, reinstates the resignation of the church’s embattled head, Archbishop Ieronymos, and in effect calls for reorganization of the synod, which the government now has demanded.

At the center of the issue is the question of who controls thirty-three dioceses in northern Greece that have historic links to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. Under a 1928 agreement, the dioceses were “temporarily assigned” to the Greek church, but “permanent jurisdiction” was left with Istanbul. The Holy Synod was to be composed of six bishops from the north and six from the south. With the adoption of a new church charter in 1969, permanent jurisdiction of the dioceses was assigned to Athens, and Ieronymos reconstituted the Holy Synod without regard to the old division. Many northern bishops were unhappy about his choices, and the strife boiled into the open at the first full meeting of the hierarchy last year. Further, Demetrius I, the Ecumenical Patriarch, denied that he had never objected to the new arrangement, contradicting Ieronymos.

Subsequently, Ieronymos suffered a near-breakdown physically, and he resigned. The synod rejected his resignation and offered him a three-month leave instead, and he acquiesced.

Meanwhile, in January, northern bishops Ambrosios and Augustinos (he’s said to be eyeing Ieronymos’s seat) appealed to the State Council for a return to the old setup, resulting in last month’s decision. At that time the council also ruled that Ieronymos could not recant his decision to resign.

As things now stand, the whole Greek Church structure—Ieronymos included—is in limbo.

More than 250 delegates from nineteen states gathered in Pittsburgh last month to observe the tenth anniversary of the National Negro Evangelical Association (NNEA). Five days of celebration and self-examination made it clear that the NNEA has come a long way from those early days when it was little more than an appendage to the white evangelical establishment. While maintaining its theologically conservative stance, it is today much more black-oriented in its social perspective than before. It is also more activist-minded.

Under the theme “The Renewed Community in Action,” the delegates sought to assess needs within the total black community and determine how to relate to them as Christians. Evangelist Tom Skinner, chairman of NNEA’s board and, at 31, a principal spokesman for black evangelicals, outlined the flesh-and-blood architecture of the renewed community, underlining the need for Christian activism. Workshops and seminars dealt not only with family life and techniques of evangelism but also with how to work for better schools in the inner city, how to achieve prison reform, and how to mount drug-abuse programs.

United Methodist bishop Roy C. Nichols called on “the churches and the preachers” to “bring to bear in the black community a spiritual rehabilitation.” Another guest speaker, George E. Riddick, research director of Chicago’s Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), expounded from Deuteronomy the black Christian’s obligation to “possess” a just share of the “land of the American economy” and thus help prepare for the economic liberation of the black masses. He said there are “28 million statistical poor and perhaps as many as 40 million near-poor and poor” in the nation, the majority of them blacks. (PUSH says it has channeled more than $102 million into black communities.)

Exhibits reflected a greater sensitivity to black concerns on the part of predominantly white evangelical agencies, from increased visibility of black staffers to civil-rights emphases in Sunday-school materials.

Doctrinal issues aren’t a big source for debate in the NNEA, which is affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)—where doctrine is often a predominant note. To an observer, it seems that a theologically conservative position is assumed in the NNEA, and that attention is focused instead on the nitty-gritty of pragmatic concerns. Indeed, NNEA president William Bentley is quoted in an Evangelical Press story as saying that the NNEA is considering a name change because the word “evangelical” doesn’t have much meaning in the black community. The NNEA welcomes all who can “relate to our statement of faith and purpose,” he said. “But we have no yardstick of conformity for our members. People of all persuasions belong, from Pentecostals to Presbyterians, including some Roman Catholics.”

No one knows how many evangelicals there are in the black community. Skinner says there are at least two million. Whatever the number, they are a potentially powerful force for spiritual renewal. But to motivate them for evangelism and social action in black America is something else. Clearly, the NNEA needs all the help it can get.

John Fowles interrupts chapter thirteen of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, his novel about Victorian England, to reflect on the limitations of a creative artist:

You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen.… Only one same reason [for writing novels] is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than, the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world as an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live [New American Library, 1971, p. 81].

For Fowles, a world alive with characters who bear responsibility makes free will a necessity. A novelist who refuses to program his characters frees them to assume a believable existence, just as God willingly endows his creatures with a totally “other” life of their own.

Fowles, however, capriciously illustrates the point. Having framed a situation with enough tension and enough irresolvable problems to illustrate a possible human story, he glibly resolves it in chapter forty-four:

Charles and Ernestina did not live happily ever after; but they lived together, though Charles finally survived her by a decade (and earnestly mourned her throughout it) [p. 264].

The ending is obviously too easy—so contrived that the author resorts to cynical description of it. He attributes the too-easy resolution to his protagonist’s daydreams and adds:

I said earlier that we are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that is, we have a habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves, although perhaps today we incline more to put ourselves into a film. We screen in our minds hypotheses about how we might behave, about what might happen to us; and these novelistic or cinematic hypotheses often have very much more effect on how we actually do behave, when the real future becomes the present, than we generally allow [p. 266].

John Dewey, in his monumental work Art as Experience, comments on the importance of allowing novelty and surprise to function freely in the summary phases of artistic creation:

The consummatory phase of experience—which is intervening as well as final—always presents something new. Admiration always includes an element of wonder. As a Renaissance writer said: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” The unexpected turn, something which the artist himself does not definitely foresee, is a condition of felicitous quality of a work of art; it saves it from being mechanical [Capricorn, 1958, p. 139].

The interplay between a watercolorist and the chemistry of his medium, the efforts of the later Goya to follow the brutal realism of Nature and humanity wherever they might lead, and the surprises offered by the aleatoric—random, chance—music of the twentieth century all illustrate the dialogic approach to materials taken by many artists.

Perhaps this is a prime reason why art appeals to young people: creative artists try to forgo manipulation. In contrast with a computer-card society that accepts the mechanism of the assembly line, the local credit bureau’s machine-prepared report, even the canned university degree, art seems to support human individuality and integrity.

A contemporary scholar has commented on the process in “The Transference of Problematicity”:

The crucial point in the creative process is that at which the developing quality of the artwork becomes dominant. The medium being ordered seems to take on a life of its own, and to make its own demands on how it is to be completed. Up until this point, every decision is taken only in conformity with the artist’s psychological needs. When the medium begins to manifest its own qualitative requiredness, the artist has a standard to which to appeal in his decisions [Matthew Lipman, What Happens in Art, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967, p. 116].

Recognition of this process is probably one reason why the awe-inspiring moment of man’s creation painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel remains so breathtaking. In all literature and art related to the Judeo-Christian faith, this moment remains one of the ultimately aesthetic experiences: the moment when Creator God gives man breath, thought, choices, values, and eternity of his own, as well as the need to create. Skinnerian behaviorism has no adequate explanation for this self-contained entity—a human being—who takes on life and becomes a creative personality under his own control. Baron von Swieten’s adaptation of Milton expresses the power and majesty of God’s handiwork manifest in the man he made after his own image:

In native worth and honour clad,

With beauty, courage, strength, adorn’d,

Erect, with front serene, he stands

A man, the lord and king of nature all.

His large and arched brow sublime

Of wisdom deep declares the seat;

And in his eyes with brightness shines

The soul, the breath and image of his God.

God willingly created man with this selfhood, even at the risk of human rebellion. Since fiction is created by people and is about human experience, it illustrates the integrity that God grants human personality. And it should also convey respect for this integrity.

The awesome recognition that in a person resides the freedom inherent in the imago Dei, that God respects and loves this person and through his Son provides the breath for a second Birth—this knowledge reveals to us that sublimity in life envisioned by aestheticians. Seeing Michelangelo’s vision of Creation transposed from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel into living creatures of God’s own design, we realize that it is impossible for us to manipulate people or impose upon them standardization and conformity. And we realize also that it is essential to bring them the love of Christ that frees man to conform to the real personality God intended him to possess. DALE A. JORGENSON, head, Division of Fine Arts, Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville, Missouri.

The King Comes To Bakersfield

“And the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.”

It happened. Bakersfield, California, just northwest of the Mojave Desert, blossomed with The King of Glory last month, and rejoiced in dance and song. The pageant on the life of Christ was a lively celebration of God’s coming to man, and at the same time a deep hymn of praise.

After two and one-half years of preparation, the five sell-out performances at the Civic Auditorium were more than a cultural event: they represented the community in a way that no event had done before. Choirs, orchestra, ballet, and dramatists participated in one presentation. The 412 performers were joined by some 100 technical workers, supported by a majority of the local businesses, and endorsed by seventy-five churches, some of which made the production part of their Key 73 outreach.

Over 15,000 people attended The King of Glory, an original production adapted from parts of the Bible, Handel’s Messiah, and Berlioz’s Requiem, Lélio, and L’Enfance du Christ. Producers added a dramatic ballet to the music and narrated text.

Despite its cast-of-thousands nature and strong Berlioz influence, the production was not an overblown extravaganza. The two choirs stood in black on risers on each side of the stage, while the orchestra was concealed in the pit, leaving only the stage area to strike the eye. With skillful lighting, the 100-by-140-foot stage area became fluid, shrinking to an intimate circle for the annunciation to Mary, but powerfully expansive for the heavenly hosts with the shepherds. The music likewise ranged from hushed and lyric to loud and crashing power. In the narration, however, the delicate touch was lost: loud, solemn voices previously taped were played on the sound system.

Amazingly, a coherent whole was produced out of the various movements of the Berlioz works with a few important sections from the “Messiah.” “Our first goal was to do the story, not the music,” explains Martha Knight, dramatic director, who did the initial selection of musical and scriptural passages and planned the drama and choreography. Phillip C. Dodson, musical director, refined the selection and did orchestration and arranging, including the composing of transitional pieces.

“When we first began, we saw this as a great witness to Jesus Christ—presenting the good news as it had never been presented before in Bakersfield,” says Dodson, minister of music at the First Baptist Church and director of the Masterworks Chorale, which started forty years ago as a vehicle for presenting the Gospel.

The most successful scenes dramatically were those conveying joy and excitement—the miracles and resurrection scenes, and especially the adoration of Christ at his birth. Leaping and skipping in a free, emotive style of ballet to Handel’s chorus, “For Unto Us a Son Is Given,” fifty young women of the Bakersfield Ballet Theater were joined by thirty persons dressed as shepherds. By groups of five and eight, twenty white-robed children ran in curiosity to the manger and then off again, sharing the news or circling hand-in-hand.

Disappointing by contrast was the long static scene of the Sermon on the Mount, where the people listened quietly as the production’s Jesus reeled off line after line in a gentle, unimpressive voice. With slow movements and gentle gestures, Darrell Cates portrayed Jesus as a kind, wise, somewhat lofty teacher—a king of glory. This interpretation was very effective in the Last Supper and Garden of Gethsemane scenes with their somber overtones, but in many others the pose suggested a lack of interaction between Jesus and the people. Lines such as “Love your enemies” sounded like the platitudes they have become rather than fresh ideas.

The spectacular music of the Requiem moved into the foreground near the production’s end. A moving “Agnus Dei” underlined the Last Supper, and “Hostias” and “Sanctus” supported a convincing performance of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Use of “Dies Irae” for the death of Judas had time for frenzied running over all 14,000 square feet of the stage before his death.

The “Lacrymosa” during the trial before Pilate built powerfully until the cast was shouting “Crucify him!” with a roll of drums and acclaiming Barabbas. As Christ took up his cross and the crowds dispersed, a low, staccato “Kyrie eleison, kyrie eleison” from the choirs effectively marked his suffering. The trumpets of “Tuba Mirum” began as the nails were hammered in and the men on crosses were lifted up—Christ with a tremendous roll of kettle drums. The audience sat transfixed. “It is finished” came with a huge crash of cymbals and drums.

At this point the genuine emotional tension created largely by the orchestra was endangered by special effects. An artificial-looking reddish-blue pattern of sky and clouds appeared on the scrim, and the “Voice of Prophecy” pronounced in deep, reverberating tones, “He was wounded for our transgressions …,” much in the manner of the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy stands before him. In scenes that were milder to start with, the sonorous, over-modulated “Voice” was more intrusive. Don Allen, a retired Los Angeles radio announcer famous for his deep “Go-oo-od morning,” read the lines.

Lighting made the final post-ascension tableau memorable. The only light was directed at Jesus; it spread to the angels around him and softly touched the worshiping figures on earth. A scrim separated the worshipers from the heavenly scene, and darkness joined them with the audience; all were hushed before the softly blurred distant tableau of heavenly glory, as the “amen” of Handel’s final chorus faded.

Each night after the dancers ended the performance by running down the aisles with the news, “He is risen!” the audience gave a standing ovation. Old people, teen-agers, and whole families were there, including Jewish people, some with children in the show. The only sizable elements of the community noticeably absent were blacks and Chicanos; they made up only a sprinkling in the audience and about twenty out of the 412 performers.

With one or two exceptions, all the participants were from Bakersfield, and most were amateurs. Only union members employed by the auditorium and orchestra were paid. School auditoriums and an empty store building were lent for rehearsals. Christian businessmen provided working capital, but the $60,000 spent was earned back in ticket sales. Without donated labor costs might have neared $1 million.

The King of Glory brought the community and the churches together, according to Dodson. Doctrinal differences were overlooked or worked out. Mennonites and Southern Baptists objected to the dancing, especially in leotards during rehearsals, but were satisfied on learning that dresses would be worn during performances. (Also, Jesus was baptized by immersion!)

“Those who are not praying Christians are seeing those who are—they are learning,” comments Knight, who discovered that many members of her ballet theater had deep religious convictions. “They told me, ‘We’ve danced joy, but we’ve never yet been able to say our love of God.’ I can see what it does for their lives. Just what it’s done for my cast has been worth the effort, even without any audience.”

Key 73 set up tables for those who wanted counseling after the show, but there were few takers from the largely church-oriented audience. Knight did not see them as there to be saved. “We wanted to touch these people and make them feel what they’re hearing in a more real way—to give them a thrill for Easter.” ANNE EGGEBROTEN, Berkeley, California.

Pressures on Christians in Israel have mounted in recent months, and, as a result, many American evangelicals who have long supported Israel’s right to a homeland and security against Middle East hostility are now questioning the Israeli commitment to religious liberty. Christian workers in Israel not only have been targets of bristling press and political criticism but also have suffered bomb and arson attacks on homes and cars. The 1,000 Christian missionaries are continually declared to be excessive, and a movement launched in the Knesset (parliament) would evict them altogether.

The United States has a $515 million combined economic-aid and military-assistance program for Israel and recently approved an additional $50 million grant. Reports carried by American newspapers nationwide concerning governmental pressures to expel the Christian missionary task force have evoked letters of indignation to the White House and State Department.

Many of the 350 participants in the World Bible Conference held in Israel and Galilee March 8–12 signed a statement directed to both Israeli and American officials asserting that U. S. economic assistance should be reduced rather than expanded where public forms of religious intolerance persist. They urged Israel’s political leaders to give an unambiguous affirmation of religious liberty and to fulfill this policy in its treatment of Christian missionaries in Israel and Christian Jews seeking Israeli citizenship.

Religious controversy over evangelism has in recent months been attributed to the zeal of “Jews for Jesus,” depicted as an aggressive group that disregards Hebrew cultural traditions and invades absorption centers for immigrants and university campuses with noteworthy evangelistic success. Jews for Jesus are not connected with established Protestant groups or with Hebrew-Christian assemblies. Israel’s chief rabbi, Schlomo Goren, reportedly sought to curb their missionary activity by depicting them before the Knesset as outside invaders (mostly from Chicago or New York) who capture lonely spirits and undermine Jewish traditions. Charges are made that Jews for Jesus fraudulently entered Israel as Jews.

However, since they are Jewish (some born abroad, some in Israel), they can hardly be charged with fraud; the only basis for excluding them would be an anti-Christian national stance. Although the Israeli minister of justice Jackov Shapiro says that a Jew does not lose citizenship rights if he becomes a Christian any more than if he becomes an atheist, the chief rabbi wants to amend the Law of Return to exclude Jewish believers in Jesus Christ.

Behind these religio-political pressures stand radical orthodox rabbinical elements working in cooperation with the Jewish Defense League, whose leaders claim to be the defenders of Judaism while they are hostile to Jewish Christians. At one point they complained that Jews are being converted to Christ at a rate of seven or eight thousand a year. Despite record numbers of Jewish conversions, however, the JDL figures seem to be unreliable.

Israeli pressures have not been confined to Jews for Jesus. The attempted burning of a Christian bookshop on Mount Zion is widely thought to have been encouraged by JDL animosity. Last year an angry crowd attacked a bookstore in Tel Aviv. Messianic Jews long settled in Israel and associated with Christian works independently of foreign missionaries now feel themselves increasingly isolated by other Israelis; the pattern includes social ostracism by neighbors and nonpreferment for jobs for which they are eligible. This discourages otherwise interested Israelis from associating with Christians Jews. The car of Victor Smaja, an Israeli, and the apartment of Schlomo Hissak, an Israeli, were hit by incendiary bombs in reprisal for their cooperation with Christians. The chief rabbi has even requested a new law punishing missionary activity among Jews, and his influence is seen in Israeli refusals to give return visas to missionaries who are evangelically aggressive.

The Knesset has thus far demurred, fearing adverse reaction from the Christian world. The Israeli minister of justice opposes legislation against Christians and claims to reflect the position of Premier Golda Meir. He contends that Israel is religiously tolerant, and notes that evangelism is a basic tenet and commandment of Christianity.

Yet statements on the religious situation continually place the Christian community on the defensive, and exert a subtle kind of psychological pressure, since far less press visibility is given to comments against intolerance than to those against Christian activities.

The present Israeli stance has drawn sympathetic and even approving comments from other than fanatical Orthodox Jews. The Jerusalem Post (March 12, 1973), in an article entitled “Christians Scored For Ignorance of United Jerusalem,” quotes Dr. G. Douglas Young, head of the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, as criticizing Christian spokesmen for being unaware that Israel has achieved “freedom of access for worshipers of all religions for the first time in its entire long and bloody history.”

A Franciscan friar in Jerusalem, Joseph Cremona, declares that “Protestant missionaries of various sects … are not true missionaries, but rather mercenaries who want to make proselytes at any price.” Father Cremona, for thirty years a parish priest in the Middle East, taking Nazareth as an example, complains that there are “no less than eight Protestant sects” although the Catholic Church “has plenty of churches, schools, hospitals, orphanages and other social welfare agencies.” While Cremona insists he is not suggesting that the Israeli government curb missionary activity, his characterization of “Protestant sects” as “fanatical” indirectly supports their disengagement from active evangelism.

Leaders of many churches in Israel, however, protest the threats and violence recently directed against evangelical groups. The minister of justice, Mr. Shapiro, has defended missionary effort on the grounds that “whoever wants to rule Jerusalem, the seat of three religions, will have to put up with such activity.” Evangelical Christians consider political aspirations an inferior anchorage for religious liberty; they do not believe that assurance of religious freedom in Israel should be tied to perpetual Israeli rule of Jerusalem or any other political condition.

It is doubtless true that some evangelical workers among Jewry lack adequate cultural understanding. Yet ten Hebrew-Christian leaders from many parts of Israel recently protested against Israeli pressures on Jewish believers in Messiah. The statement did not mention Jews for Jesus; the signers neither identified with them nor dissociated themselves from them.

Some Israeli police and state officials are known to be critical of the Jewish Defense League, but the movement nonetheless carries on its anti-evangelical thrust.