For over a quarter of a century the American Scientific Affiliation has been relating scientific data to Christian convictions. Its twenty-seventh annual meeting, held in the labyrinthine halls of York University in suburban Toronto, endeavored to find a way through one of the great mazes in contemporary philosophy of science. Under the general subject “Presuppositions of Science: A Christian Response,” participants struggled with the question, Do scientific advances actually bring about greater objective knowledge of reality, or do they merely signify the substitution of one metaphysical paradigm for another without necessarily moving closer to the real nature of things?

Two major sessions were devoted to the metaphysical vs. objectivist view of scientific progress, and the issue spilled over into many other discussions. What made this inevitable was the strong representation of Calvinist presuppositionalists (Stanford Reid, Robert Knudsen) and Dooyeweerdians (Bernard Zylstra) on the program.

As might be expected, those who hold to an ultimately untestable theological starting-point find comfort in the notion that science may, after all, be dealing not with brute facts at all but with data that become “facts” as they are incorporated into particular scientific constructs. Thomas S. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which persuasively sets forth the metaphysical interpretation of scientific activity, is already paralleled in Calvinist-presuppositionalist circles by Gordon H. Clark’s Philosophy of Science and Belief in God.

Reid, in his characteristically aggressive opening address, chastened the eighteenth-century Anglican apologists Berkeley and Paley and their ilk for trying to “prove Christianity rationally,” thereby “adopting the rationalists’ view of an autonomous universe.”

In opposition to such a “pretended autonomy,” Zylstra, of the Calvinist-Dooyeweerdian Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, chided evangelicals such as Carl F. H. Henry, and asserted that the “biblically inspired view of created reality can be given theoretical formulation in terms of Herman Dooyeweerd’s reformational philosophy.” Zylstra’s attempt to show the application of Dooyeweerd to such pressing contemporary issues as territorial waters and airspace bewildered many conferees.

The same reaction accompanied the efforts of Knudsen, Van Til’s successor at Westminster Seminary, to show how Dooyeweerdian method assists concept-formation in the special sciences. When, for example, Knudsen argued that our presuppositions as to what life is must precede our distinctions between the organic and the inorganic, I asked myself if I must follow the Dooyeweerdian path to distinguish my barber from the barber pole in front of his shop.

Over against these emphases came presentations by pathologist James Kennedy of Queens University, Herman Eckelmann of the Cornell University Space Center, and T. Harry Leith, professor of natural science at York. For Kennedy, “the scientist can gain knowledge about God by applying the same principles he uses in doing his research.” Eckelmann (toward whom I admit an especially powerful bias, since he was instrumental in my conversion to Christianity while an obstreperous philosophy major at Cornell) maintained that the Van Tilian refusal to allow argument for an infinite God or divine truth from finite scientific evidence is as illogical as would be the refusal to accept the description of an infinitely extensible line by a non-infinite mathematical formula. In a striking lecture relating the Genesis cosmology to the latest scientific speculation as to the origins of the solar system—a lecture illustrated by slides prepared at the Space Center—Eckelmann showed by example how much more fruitful it is to correlate empirical scientific fact with revelational truth than to win a Pyrrhic theological victory by refusing to admit the sure reality of scientific discoveries.

My Cornell philosophy mentor E. A. Burtt had not been wrong in stressing the “metaphysical foundations of modern science,” for today’s science often palms off unrecognized and non-scientific value judgments as empirical fact (the phenomenon Anthony Standen well captured in his phrase “science as a sacred cow”). Eckelmann nicely demonstrated, however, that the answer to this is not to reduce all science to metaphysics but to identify genuine empirical work as such and see it as a pathway to the confirmation of scriptural revelation.

Leith closely analyzed the Kuhn thesis and offered trenchant criticisms of his metaphysical interpretation of scientific revolutions. Having written his doctoral dissertation on Karl Popper, Leith was in a particularly good position to explicate Popper’s rejection of Kuhn’s argument. Popper rightly notes that the truly great scientific advances have been made, not by the presentation of untestable world-views such as those of Freud and Marx (anything on the couch fits Freud; anything in history is absorbed by Marx), but by such testable theories as Einstein’s (supported by the crucial Michelson-Morley experiment). In his banquet address on “Galileo and the Church,” Leith offered a concrete illustration of how Christian faith must come to terms with the realities presented by science—and how revelational religion has nothing to fear and everything to gain by doing so.

Not all the activity at ASA focused on this overarching issue. Richard Bube of Stanford hit what he termed the “neo-post-millennial eschatology” of today’s secular man: the utterly naïve conviction that mankind will triumph through the evolutionary process and the power of technology. Robert Knudsen and Robert Denton weighed in their balance the process theology offered by Ogden, Cobb, et al. as philosophical justification for the new humanism and found it wanting. William Paul offered striking insights into Christian philosophy of history through comparison of the African tribal view of time, the Hindu understanding of the timeless, and the biblical conception of temporal fulfillment.

In line with the ASA emphasis in recent years on social and political concerns, an address open to the general public was given by the Honorable Robert N. Thompson, former missionary to Ethiopia. In his present capacity as member of the Canadian Parliament, prominent leader in the Evangelical Free Church of America, and president of the Executive Committee of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, Thompson displays in his own person the interplay of theology and secular involvement that characterizes genuine Christian commitment.

Most moving of all perhaps was the presentation of a plaque to Harold Hartzler, retiring as ASA executive secretary after twenty-two years in official capacities in the organization. Often criticized for his firm position on biblical inerrancy, Hartzler stands as a model of the ASA member: unwilling to make Scripture anything less than Scripture or science anything less than science.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

As theology has declined in influence, its scholars have risen in affluence. And the plush appointments of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles (so named because Twentieth Century Fox once owned the land), site of the largest gathering ever held of scholars in the field of religion, pointed this up. The hundreds of papers presented to groups of widely varying sizes generally dealt with the spiritual dimensions of life, but the sackcloth and ashes of old-fashioned prophecy were nowhere to be found among the some 3,000 delegates to this International Congress of Learned Societies in the Field of Religion, held September 1–5.

Fifteen American and European academic societies met at the invitation of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, a research center of the Claremont Graduate School and the associated School of Theology at Claremont. Also involved in planning and support were the Council on the Study of Religion, which links the eight major American societies, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

As has become customary in such conclaves, vociferous women called for at least equal recognition with men. The congress’s nebulous theme, “Religion and the Humanizing of Man,” might as well have been “Religion and the Dethronement of Males.” Women presented papers with such titles as “A Call For the Castration of Sexist Religion” and “Beyond Male Morality.” (Other more daring—and phallic—topics were considered also.) By contrast, blacks were comparatively unorganized. A few papers had good words for native American religions—once referred to as paganism. Glossolalia was touched lightly, but the revival of occultism attracted only one author. This was enough, however, to outnumber those papers devoted to the Jesus movement.

The two largest societies, the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature (3,700 and 3,000 members respectively; many scholars are in both), have often held joint meetings. A dozen smaller societies joined with them in Los Angeles, many holding their own annual meetings in conjunction with the congress. The new presidents of the AAR and the SBL are both from the University of Chicago Divinity School: Charles Long now heads the AAR and Norman Perrin the SBL.

The fourteen general sessions (generally held two at a time) featured scholars fairly well known to their colleagues, including Ernst Käsemann, Sydney Ahlstrom, Scott Momaday, and Dorothy Sölle. All spoke on how the study of religions enhances man’s humanity. Buddhism, classical paganism, and American civil religion were included among the religions that, in addition to Christianity, had helped make man a little more humane. But no address focused on the humanizing of God the Son through the Incarnation, nor on the eternal salvation Christ made possible (which in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is sometimes spoken of as the divinizing of man).

About 400 technical papers (“The Architecture of the Dura and Sardis Synagogues,” “High Fertility Among the Hutterites,” “The Poetry of Being in Samuel Beckett,” “Soma and the Body of Christ,” “Islamic Revivalist Movements in the Twentieth Century,” “Teaching the New Testament in Swedish State Universities,” “The Rgvedic Concept of Man”) gave scholars the opportunity to display their work in progress and get reaction from fellow scholars. At least as significant for most delegates was the chance to renew old acquaintances.

A number of evangelical scholars attended, with a much higher proportion among the British conferees than among Americans or Continentals. Roman Catholics were numerous, but more often sartorially rather than theologically distinguishable.

Though it may be confusing to the outsider, there is no more reason to expect scholars in religion to be evangelists or prophets than to expect political scientists to be politicians or English teachers to be great poets or novelists. Probably for most religion scholars, the subject that attracts them is analogous to art or cuisine—a matter of taste and cultural expression. Today religion scholars are far removed from the medieval concept of theology as “the queen of the sciences.” Few search for universally true descriptions as do scientists in such disciplines as chemistry or astronomy.

Jesus Joy Revisited

“We didn’t want to be as safe as Explo ’72,” said 31-year-old Jerry Davis, Good News of Jesus editor and one of the coordinators for the second Jesus Joy festival (see April 28 issue, page 40), held on Labor Day in Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum. They weren’t. Controversy and controversial speakers at this “Solid Rock Gathering” made the nearly six hours of music and teaching seem exceptionally brief.

Christian disc jockey Scott Ross, charismatic preacher Bob Mumford, and black evangelist Tom Skinner fed the eager young people with the milk of the Word. Mumford, who rarely speaks under an hour and a half, said Davis, managed to hold himself down to a mere forty minutes. Skinner got the loudest applause and the most enthusiastic “amens” of the evening, but Moishe Rosen, spokesman for the Jews for Jesus movement, certainly proved to be the most controversial. The contrast between the two men pointed up the inclusive quality of the gathering.

Skinner preached a solid biblical sermon with only one reference to social issues, and that seemed to slight their importance. “While the world’s talking about ‘to bus or not to bus’ Jesus is talking about dying.” “He’s talking about dying,” Skinner reiterated as a hush fell over the boisterous crowd.

Rosen on the other hand emphasized social concerns, particularly those involving Jews. His comment that “even if you’re not a Jew, Jesus Christ has made you kosher,” was received with shouting approval. But when he got into “freedom for Soviet Jewry and the integrity of the borders for the state of Israel” the crowd lost its interest. One group, however, failed to fall into apathy.

A group of students called Jews for Judaism turned out that afternoon to demonstrate against Rosen’s presence (Rosen writes his own publicity material, said Davis). About fifty young Jewish men marched in protest before the concert began. The Jewish Press reported that “all major Jewish organizations in New York City have notified their membership that all Jews are prohibited from attending, even for curiosity, the rally at Madison Square Garden next Monday evening.” Billing Rosen as “keynote speaker” (he spoke less time than any of the six scheduled speakers) the weekly said the meshummad—a deserter who has left Judaism for Christianity—wants to “get young, innocent, and impressionable Jewish youth” filled with the idea that Jesus replaces Judaism.

Although Davis—he’s a United Methodist minister serving as youth pastor in a United Presbyterian church—reported that the organizers had not planned to lean on Jewish evangelism, the first half of the gathering seemed to emphasize it. As Rosen spoke, about ten Jews for Judaism moved to the front of the forum; ushers and guards quickly seated them.

The next speaker also concentrated on the Jews and called for Gentile Christians to reexamine their attitudes toward Jews. The Jews for Judaism apparently took that as an invitation to teach the predominantly Gentile crowd a little Yiddish song, but the 4,000-strong Jesus people easily drowned out the Jews with their rendition of “Amazing Grace” (the second time that evening they sang it).

The small group of demonstrators were paraded out of the hall, but the trouble had just begun. Rosen and his small band of fellow Jesus Jews were “attacked,” as one witness termed it, on the way to their hotel. According to one of Rosen’s associates, twenty of the Jewish demonstrators pushed Rosen and kicked one or two of the people with him. They also “grabbed our yarmulkes [skull caps],” the youth said.

Detectives warned Rosen about the group, who are apparently known to the police as “capable of splitting open your heads.” Rosen said he wouldn’t press charges if the yarmulkes were returned. However, one of his followers said Rosen threatened to charge the kids with “petty larceny.”

Back at the Felt Forum the Jesus festival was praising God for protecting Rosen’s life. Scott Ross testified that earlier in the afternoon God had led him to pray for Rosen’s safety.

The program alternated between preaching and music, with such groups as California’s Love Song, Danny Lee and the Children of Truth, and the Maranatha Band; Katie Henley sang “Day By Day.” Miss Henley, currently starring in Godspell, became a Christian when her sister shared the Four Spiritual Laws with her. The most popular group at last spring’s festival and a big hit at Explo ’72, Andrae Crouch and the Disciples, was conspicuously absent. “They went an hour and a half overtime and cost us $2,000 extra at Carnegie Hall,” explained Davis.

The festival had its share of Amens, praise Gods, and One Way signs. Unlike last spring’s gathering, there was no dancing in the aisles and little hugging and kissing. Davis said that the leaders of this meeting intended it to have a “heavy emphasis on teaching and oneness in the Spirit.”

The Jesus Joy organizers expected 15,000 young people to attend, but fell far short of the goal (the gathering originally was scheduled to be held in the Garden itself, not in the Forum, which seats 5,500). Davis attributes the comparatively low attendance to the date (“Labor Day is a bad day to hold anything”) and to the ticket price (“We didn’t realize that $7.50 per ticket was too high.” The concert at Carnegie Hall cost only $5).

Nevertheless, the Jesus Joy people plan to hold a New Year’s Eve intercommunion service, and have promised to get Dave Wilkerson and Hal Lindsey as speakers. Dan Malachuck of Logos International vowed to get Kathryn Kuhlman if possible.

Davis, who was in charge of promotion for this festival, says he won’t be “so much involved” in the next one. The poor attendance “may prove something else that I’ve been saying. Large Christian gatherings are not the thing any more,” he concluded.

CHERYL A. FORBES

Jesus Jews In Jerusalem

Six zealous young people—Jewish Christians from the United States—have taken up residence at 806 Mount of Olives Road in Jerusalem to evangelize their Israeli brothers. But some Orthodox Jewish Yeshivah students (seminarians) are trying to drive them away.

Last month fifteen seminarians invaded a worship service held by the Jewish Christians in a tiny Church of God building. The students accused the Jesus Jews of proselytizing other Jews in Jerusalem. The preacher replied, “We don’t proselytize anyone. We just give them Jesus. Then they become true Jews!”

Another Yeshivah student challenged Mark (the Americans used first names only) to prove his sincerity by obeying Jesus’ command to give up his coat. Since Mark wasn’t wearing a coat he handed the man his shirt, but he refused to relinquish his glasses.

The six Jesus Jews, in Jerusalem for six months, are supported by Jewish evangelist Lewis Caplin of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Caplin is encouraging “completed Jews,” as the kids style themselves, to come to Israel. Mark reported that many are coming to Israel on their own, first as tourists with plans to return later as immigrants.

The group distribute leaflets and tracts on the streets when they aren’t attending a Hebrew ulpan (intensive language course). Through services and witnessing in their apartment, the young people report a number of conversions, baptisms of the Holy Spirit, and miracle healings. Mark explains that they are a full Gospel charismatic band, “not an organized missionary group but believers in the Messiah Jesus who is coming again.”

DWIGHT L. BAKER

Religion In Transit

Billboard magazine accorded the “Scott Ross Show” a first-place tie as the best nationally syndicated radio music show. The independent Ross broadcast is a two-hour package of Jesus music and testimonies now on 109 secular stations.

Planners of new towns such as Columbia, Maryland, were wrong in expecting organic church union and planning the town’s church life on that assumption says a clergyman-sociologist. Dr. Lyle Schaller calls organic union a dead issue for the 1970s.

Bob Jones University is constructing a $3 million, 7,000-seat auditorium believed to be the largest structure in the United States used for non-arena purposes.

A Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Harry Schlitt, has become a “hit” as the replacement host for a daily talk show on a San Francisco TV station.

United Methodist Church members will receive a new national weekly newspaper, the United Methodist Reporter, this fall. The new publication is prepared by the Texas Methodist Reporter, a regional paper.

Publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, interrupted in 1967 by the six-day Arab-Israeli war, will be resumed in Jerusalem by an international committee.

A study of church-going habits in Finland shows only 2.4 per cent of the 4.4 million Finns attend church.

Eleven religious groups with more than 100,000 members in Zaire want to join the Seventh-day Adventist Church because their doctrines are basically similar.

Following increased religious interest, the Czechoslovakian government has increased its anti-Christian attacks, and communications media have been told to propagate anti-church enlightenment.

Two-thirds of all Catholic children in Great Britain attend Catholic schools. More than 890,000 now attend parochial schools, up from 340,000 in 1950.

Visitors to the Olympic games, European televiewers, and newspaper readers all over the continent saw a significant sidelight in Munich virtually unreported by the American media: a vast outreach effort mounted by more than 2,000 young Christians. In some ways the results of the marathon witness were more spectacular than some of the games.

There were many professions of faith in parks and on downtown streets, in Christian coffeehouses, around a university campus, and on the Olympic grounds. Converts came from scores of nations; among them were Arabs and Israelis who discovered togetherness in Jesus, several athletes, and at least two Communist journalists. Thousands of Bibles, Gospels, and tracts in Eastern European languages were gobbled up by athletes and tourists from Communist-bloc nations. Millions of pieces of literature were handed out.

The young people were perhaps at their best during and immediately after the tragic events involving Arab terrorists and Israeli hostages. Clusters gathered outside the Olympic Village in prayer vigils as a somber mood settled over the city. Evangelistic training sessions at outreach headquarters west of Munich were canceled; hundreds participated instead in a day of prayer. Jewish followers of Jesus sat silently with anguish-stricken Israelis. Guitars and tracts were laid aside; believers sought quietly to comfort unbelievers. A leader explained: “There is a time to evangelize and a time to minister.”

Two days later, Olympic officials canceled the free entertainment featuring nude sex acts that had been going on in the main amphitheater at the Olympic site and gave the Christians free use of the facility for the final four days of the games. SRO crowds in excess of 3,000 at a time listened to testimonies and sermonettes in several languages interspersed with music by the fifty Bethesda Singers and The Last Day band from Wenatchee, Washington, and Noah, a southern California band. During altar calls scores of persons of many nationalities walked forward or raised their hands indicating they wanted Christ.

A TV station interviewed Jesus-follower Elizabeth van Ravensberg, 23, a Dutch Israeli, on the day after the shootings. Her Christian witness was aired four times. Youth With a Mission (YWAM) rushed into print with 20,000 copies of a Jesus paper carrying a front-page photo of Egyptian Joseph Faragalla, 35, shaking hands with “Jew for Jesus” Ron Phillips, 22, of Chicago. The headlined caption: “We have found love and unity in Jesus.” (Some leaders expressed concern about the forthrightness of Faragalla, a United Nations accountant in Alexandria. But he went on to declare his faith openly at a large rally downtown, proclaiming that only in Jesus can hatred and hostilities end. Arabs in the crowd seemed pleased by his remarks, especially when he expressed belief that “God is going to give our land back to us.”) Among the last to leave YWAM’s coffeehouse, The Crossroads, on the night after the tragedy were a Palestinian Arab refugee and an Israeli; both had appointments to return the next day to have further questions about Christ answered.

It all led an Australian journalist to observe that sports had failed as a medium of world unity but that the Jesus people were proving Jesus to be the answer.

The Olympic outreach was born three years ago in the mind of Herbert Müller, a former accountant now business administrator of New Life evangelistic association based near Cologne, Germany. His vision was for a unified witness with well-coordinated leadership. (Christian groups were on hand for the Winter Olympics at Grenoble in 1968, but each did its own thing and impact was minimal, he said.) He was rebuffed by Munich churchmen who were turned off by the evangelism idea, but thirty-seven organizations eventually agreed to work together on the project—a minor miracle itself, according to some leaders, because participants ranged from somewhat separatist and anti-tongues groups to state-church and charismatic ones. Most of the groups were German, but American-led organizations fielded the most workers, recruited from all over Europe and the United States (YWAM, 1,000; Campus Crusade for Christ, 175; Assemblies of God, 140 to augment a national Teen Challenge force; Word of Life, 100).

Müller was named coordinator. He received strong help from the Munich YMCA staff. Many of the latter have had the charismatic experience and are enthusiastic about evangelism.

YWAM and Word of Life housed and fed more than half the workers in castles and a hotel they own and lease west of the city. The facilities serve as permanent conference and training centers. The YMCA and several Munich churches cared for hundreds of others. (Nineteen workmen from Bethel Church in San Jose, California, had flown in earlier at their own expense and built bunks for 600, shower rooms, and a dining canopy at the YWAM castle. A brewery donated a tent to seat 1,000, and another provided chairs. Youths pitched in freely to overcome logistical problems—sandwich-making and toilet-cleaning, for example. Participants paid their own travel costs plus $100 for outreach expenses. The YWAMers also gave $33,000 in an offering for a payment coming due on their castle.)

On the day the games opened the Christians stood in a cross formation on a high hill overlooking the main stadium. They sang “He Is Lord” and “Alleluia” while pointing upward in the One Way sign—a familiar sight and sound all over Europe this past summer. Then they staged a candlelight march around the grounds.

Police at the last minute shifted a well-advertised Jesus festival a week later to a remote site north of the city and broke up a massive witness march. Although the festival was deprived of an anticipated large attendance by non-Christians, two dozen publicly professed their faith in Christ at the close of a sermon by New Life’s Anton Schulte, noted German evangelist.

That night a leftist demonstration downtown left fifty-six policemen injured. Newspapers next day carried that story and followed with an account of the festival, complete with a photo of youths holding a banner that proclaimed, “God bless the government!”

The young Christians entered the well guarded Olympic Village almost at will. Inside they participated in Bible studies with athletes and witnessed to others. Eastern Europeans were their main target. Many, especially Romanians, eagerly secreted away Bibles and other literature. Soviet and Bulgarian athletes eluded supervisors and did likewise.

An ecumenical chapel in the village manned by fifty ministers was almost always empty. One exception: a packed-out concert for the athletes by Campus Crusade’s Forerunners. A female U. S. track star said nine on her team were committed Christians who were witnessing. Some wore sweat shirts bearing the One Way slogan. There was an unconfirmed report of a profession of faith by a Russian weightlifter. (Olympic weightlifter Russell Knipp, associated with Crusade’s athletic program, is popular among other athletes and is an aggressive locker-room witness.) Village employees took up a collection of $3,000 and donated it to the Jesus cause.

Cambridge University students and Jesus Liberation Front members arrived from England in double-decker buses ablaze with Jesus slogans in a number of languages and attracted a lot of attention, especially from Eastern Europeans, in the bus parking lots. Literature distribution teams working aboard trains bound for Iron Curtain cities were ejected several times upon complaints from Communists. Witness encounters between two or three in the Marienplatz outside the town hall, where Christians vied with Marxists and ticket-scalpers for attention, nearly always attracted crowds within minutes. In one such encounter a middle-aged East German tourist burst into tears and prayed to receive Christ.

The Christians operated several coffeehouses downtown, and some of the heaviest action occurred there. YWAM’s Crossroads hosted hundreds every night, and scores professed Christ. Among them: Udo Lemke, 24, and Kurt Blumenthal, 20, both Communist journalists. Lemke had served time in French and German jails for his radicalism, and Blumenthal (his father is a Communist official) had been a leader of the youth wing of West Germany’s Communist party. Both expressed interest in full-time Christian service; Lemke says he will enroll in YWAM’s School of Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland. Both said that seeing the futility of politics to solve the world’s ills was a factor in their conversion. “Having a world led by unchanged men will not do,” commented Lemke.

Moody Bible Institute showed Bible and science films to about 15,000 in a rented ($500 a day) theater on the Marienplatz and reported an average of fifty follow-up “conversations” daily. (Fifty Moody students and grads were on hand to assist in counseling.)

The Olympic effort capped a summer of evangelistic activity in Europe that saw thousands of young Christians involved in Jesus festivals, door-to-door evangelism, coffeehouse ministries, and the like. As elsewhere, leaders in Munich are engaged in follow-up.

Meanwhile, the Gospel has apparently gone out from Munich to the ends of the earth.

Doublemindedness Down Under

Australian Presbyterians are of two minds about a proposed merger with Methodists and Congregationalists: they’re for it, but then again they’re against it. In recent voting, 75 per cent—well over the required two-thirds majority—said yes to merger, but 40 per cent said they wanted to remain in a continuing Presbyterian church should merger occur.

The vote puts Presbyterians in a quandary. Evidently some favor union but want their own churches kept out of it. Included in those choosing to remain Presbyterian is the prestigious Scots Church of Melbourne, one of the largest in the country.

In similar voting, both Methodists and Congregationalists overwhelmingly approved merger. None of the denominations is committed by its vote, and the proposal must now be sent to state and federal assemblies and conferences.

Since such a large Presbyterian minority wants to stay out of the union, it may be that the church as a whole will reject merger rather than be so decisively split. If so, will the Congregationalists and Methodists proceed anyway? Right now there is confusion, and the prospect of some interesting months ahead.

LEON MORRIS

Where Have All The Cardinals Gone?

“The venerable fathers in blood-red garments …, locked up as if they were smooth con men,” may be a thing of the past, says Jean Guitton, French author and confidant of the Pope. The crimson-robed fathers are, of course, the Conclave of Cardinals, who elect the pope. Paul VI is reforming the conclave, and some believe he is about to abolish it.

The speculation about the conclave’s future or lack of one is fueled by the fact that Paul has delayed so long in calling another consistory to fill the depleted ranks of the College of Cardinals. This, together with his ruling that disqualifies cardinals over 80 from voting in the conclave, is interpreted as a move to downgrade the cardinals and open papal elections.

But according to latest reports the Pope may hold a consistory for the creation of new cardinals in mid-October to highlight the tenth anniversary of the opening of Vatican II. The last consistory was held in 1969.

Many in Catholic circles are urging that the pope be elected by a synod of all the world’s bishops. Others suggest that the conclave be enlarged to include the presidents of the various national bishops councils, heads of religious orders, and perhaps a few laymen.

But at least one critic, the indomitable theologian Hans Küng, is certain that the Pope is in no mood for sweeping democratic reforms inside the church structure. Küng called Paul’s other reforms “poorly applied cosmetics … eyewash for the growing choir of criticism from both clergy and laity.”

ROYAL L. PECK

Advertising Theology

“Twenty-five per cent larger”—than what? “Incomplete comparatives” were one of the practices that drew displeasure from Canadian theologians who made a study of the ethics of advertising. Others were: illustrations that were “deliberately distorted to convey a false or misleading impression”; “advertising which puts so much emphasis on acquiring status and material possessions that it subjugates human values to this drive”; and “deliberate omission of highly relevant information.”

The study was undertaken by the Toronto School of Theology at the request of two advertising associations. Heading it was Arthur Gibson, a Roman Catholic who is head of religious studies at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.

The report approved the use of attractive models, male or female, if the accompanying text didn’t mislead the purchaser—and if the model didn’t substantially distract the prospective customer from making a reasoned appraisal.

The theologians told the advertising industry there was need for more psychological research into the effects of advertising, more courses on communications in schools, courses on moral norms in industry, and better consumer information.

LESLIE K. TARR

‘Grant Us Peace’

To commemorate the 300th anniversary of the death of composer Heinrich Schütz, who was the greatest composer before Johann Sebastian Bach, the German Federal Republic on November 6 will issue a stamp showing a score for two violins with the text “Verlein uns frieden gradiglich” (“Graciously grant us peace”) from his cantata of the same title. The stamp will also reproduce the musician’s signature. Schütz was born October 14, 1585, and died November 6, 1672.

GLENN D. EVERETT

NEWS

Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis came under official indictment this month for being at doctrinal odds with its parent denomination. Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, in a historic 160-page report, says flatly that “some professors at the Seminary hold views contrary to the established doctrinal position of the Synod.” The issues, he declares, “call for decisive action on the part of the Synod and its officers.”

The findings and recommendations, if upheld by the synod’s convention next summer, could lead to the ouster of seminary officials and faculty members.

In the interim, Preus calls on the Concordia Board of Control “to deal personally and first of all with President John Tietjen (a) as to his own confessional stance and (b) as to his failure to exercise the supervision of the doctrine of the faculty as prescribed in the synodical Handbook.” Preus also asks the board to issue an immediate directive to the faculty aimed at restoring a higher view of Scripture.

“It is apparent,” Preus said, “that a considerable number of the faculty hold a view of the Holy Scriptures that in effect erodes the authority of the canonical text. While the principal doctrines of the Christ and faith in most instances still appear to be upheld, the stage has been set for an erosion of the very fundamentals.”

The president’s report, which has been circulated throughout the 2.8-million-member denomination, traces unresolved doctrinal difficulties as far back as 1950, and identifies “the major question” as having to do with “the nature and role of the Holy Scriptures as a source of teaching in the church.”

Concordia is the largest Lutheran seminary in the world and the third largest Protestant seminary in the United States. It was founded in 1839 and now has some 800 students and fifty faculty members. With some significant exceptions, most Concordia professors and board members have opposed the three-year-long attempt of Preus to get an authoritative determination whether the traditionally conservative seminary has capitulated to theological liberalism.

The long-awaited Preus report was released early this month with special precautions taken to keep it from newsmen before Missouri Synod clergy were able to get it in the mail.

The report is a model attempt to document a doctrinal shift. It relies primarily upon lengthy tape-recorded interviews with faculty members conducted by a Preus-appointed five-member Fact Finding Committee. Substantial portions of the transcripts are reproduced (though the professors are not identified by name). A commentary by Preus is closely reasoned and dispassionate with no hint of polemic. Preus, who has been accused repeatedly of trying to conduct a “witch hunt” or “heresy trial,” includes a letter from the Fact Finding Committee which states that “at no point in any interview did any man being interviewed object that a question addressed to him was unethical in that it asked him to inform on or criticize an absent colleague.”

The Preus report was prepared to comply with a directive from the 1971 convention of the synod held in Milwaukee. The convention had called for a report to Preus and the Board for Higher Education by the Concordia Board of Control, and the synodical president was in turn instructed to report to the synod. These actions were aimed at learning what the seminary was doing to correct the situation unearthed by the Fact Finding Committee.

The Preus report quotes the full text of a “progress report” from the Board of Control. The board’s report, adopted in mid-June, said “to this date has found no false doctrine among the members of the seminary faculty.”

Two Board of Control members wrote a minority report in which they said they were “dismayed and frustrated” that “the substance of the FFC report has not been discussed in Board meetings.” A third member wrote a letter commenting on the minority report, “most of which is consistent with my own concerns and evaluations.”

Preus stated that he wants “a completed report” from the Board of Control by February 1 so that he can prepare a final report to the 1973 convention.

“The convention will then decide,” he said, “whether the action of the Seminary Board of Control is satisfactory or, if not, prescribe whatever action the convention determines proper and appropriate.” He added that “never before in the history of modern Christendom has a church body, its congregations, its lay members, its teachers, and its pastors had an opportunity for such a frank, forthright, and open discussion as to what its doctrinal stance will be.”

The dispute is being watched by many from other denominations because it represents something of a “test case” in which theological conservatives are making an unusually thorough and intensive effort to stop the dilution of key doctrines. The election of Preus to the presidency in 1969 was a surprise—he made no effort to seek the post—and he is obviously much more concerned with the outcome of the theological battle than with his own future. But the struggle has many facets, not the least of which is the imposition on Concordia of a two-year probation by the American Association of Theological Schools as a result of the current dispute. Preus was disappointed that the school did not even bother to appeal this threat to its continued accreditation.

He nonetheless remains optimistic and closes his report with a devotional “Epilog” in which he appeals to his church “to gird up our loins” and “to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ by our words and by our deeds that through our church God’s name may be hallowed, His will may be done, and His kingdom come for the benefit of the whole Christian church and for the world itself.”

Key Celebration Of The Word Of God

Roman Catholics, burned by dropping attendance and plummeting conversions, have turned to the Bible for help. At Washington, D.C.’s Byzantine-like Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, laymen, priests, bishops, and archbishops gathered for a conference on preaching the Word of God. They want a renewal in Catholic preaching.

Organizer John Burke, a Dominican priest, called the first-ever three-day meeting a “celebration” of the power of the Word of God and pleaded for increased Bible study and Bible-centered preaching in Catholic churches. The 800 delegates met for major addresses by leading Catholic scholars and also split into eight concurrent conferences, tackling such subjects as preaching and the Bible, conversion, the priestly ministry, and ecumenism.

Key 73 director Dr. Theodore Raedeke presented to a largely interested and sympathetic audience the group’s plan for nation-wide evangelism. Burke later said he approved of Catholic involvement in Key 73 and told a press conference that the church needed more evangelism. Conference delegates urged Catholic cooperation with Key 73.

Bible-centered preaching is the key to bringing Catholics back to the church, Burke said. He cited a church that began Bible study sessions because many Catholic dropouts were attending a local Lutheran Bible study. But Burke admitted the church doesn’t have trained personnel to lead such studies. The priest in charge of the study already has changed his Sunday sermon to basic biblical messages, Burke added.

Burke also complained that the church hadn’t emphasized evangelism (“We presupposed faith—if people came to church, they believed”), hadn’t produced a Billy Graham, and hadn’t gone in for crusades. A priest, who testified before 100 of his colleagues that he was converted at the recent Billy Graham Cleveland crusade, urged them to attend Graham’s crusades and his evangelism schools to learn all they could about presenting Christ to others. Despite the emphasis on the Bible, however, much time was spent defending the conference as a much needed outcome of Vatican II. Burke denied that this conference was a reaction to the extreme liberalism it sparked. The 1962 conference led the church from liturgy to preaching, said Burke, and the Washington congress was simply trying to translate that into a preaching renewal.

Catholic seminaries and theological schools were roasted for their failure to produce “believers” who could preach. Rather than telling prospective priests how to preach, said Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, they should emphasize “the art of being a preacher” and the ministry performed by a preacher. Sheen, one of the principal speakers, criticized priests for their lack of personal preparation for preaching and told them “we [the church] are not giving the people Christ. We have failed.” The Reverend Joseph Connors, founder of the Catholic Homiletic Society, said priests had been “poorly prepared” for preaching by the seminaries. Homiletics, he said, was too often an elective and taught by untrained men. Some schools are dropping homiletic training. (Catholic University of America, where part of the congress was held, has no preaching course at its theology school. The only such course is given by the speech and drama department, where until recently Burke was an associate professor.) Adequate academic as well as spiritual preparation is the most fundamental need in preaching renewal in the church, Connors added.

For many Catholics at the conference, the Bible emphasis was an eye-opener. Campus Crusade for Christ and its “four spiritual laws” approach was commended for its work. Burke waxed enthusiastic about the Bible for ten minutes at a press conference, but seemed slightly rocked when a reporter told him he sounded more Protestant than Catholic. Priests were urged to daily study the Bible and pray.

Sounding at times like a fundamentalist session, the meeting seemed incongruous with its site. While priests met upstairs, a store in the shrine basement was selling plastic bottles of holy water and a stick-on “Madonna of the kitchen.” Despite the plea to get back to the Bible, confessions to the priest are still in, as are prayer to the saints and Marian emphasis. Delegates urged cooperation with Key 73 and told one another Bible emphasis was one ground where Catholics and Protestants could fellowship.

The congress was Burke’s idea, he said, born of a conviction that Catholics were tired of political and social harangues from the pulpit and wanted more Bible preaching. Convinced of the need, he quit his university teaching post to become executive director of the newly-formed Word of God Institute operating from an office at the university. The institute will promote better preaching with workshops and seminars around the country. Burke hopes that similar regional or diocesan congresses will be held in the future, though there are no plans at present to make the national congress an annual affair. Delegates attended the sessions from all dioceses in the fifty states as well as from Canada.

BARRIE DOYLE

The church building boom that hit its peak in North America after World War II is waning. In its place has come a contrasting trend, one of skepticism over the value—even the validity—of brick and mortar in congregational life. Gibson Winter in The Suburban Captivity of the Churches was among the first to complain of an “edifice complex.” He said it “expresses interest in status rather than worship.” Many a churchman has since picked up this line of criticism, and in some communions and localities a congregation now feels almost embarrassed to suggest it needs to build.

The anti-building mood probably got its start from the new priority given to social activism by religious liberals. They urged that money be diverted from building funds to efforts to bring about needed social change. The mood reached its zenith in 1967 with the halting of work on the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The Right Reverend Horace W. B. Donegan said the building, about two-thirds complete, would stand unfinished as a symbol of the agony of the cities until human needs are met.

The charismatic and Jesus movements with their penchant for extra-church Bible studies and fellowships have contributed to the turn away from reliance on well-equipped facilities for worship and education.

To some extent, the anti-building temperament among North American churchmen has been healthful. Some churches have been extravagantly overbuilt. Some are monuments to congregational pride or to competition with other churches. In some denominations, if a pastor’s tenure at a church was not marked by the start of a building project it was considered less than successful.

Yet Christians must beware lest they get carried away with unbiblical notions. We must resist, for example, Archie Hargraves’s assertion (quoted approvingly by Harvey Cox) that the work of God in the world can be compared to a “floating crap game.” By consistently identifying churches with names of places, the New Testament makes it clear that bodies of believers have geographical roots and should operate from specific bases. The Church is not simply a human institution, but it is at least that, and it needs an identifiable headquarters. It is a corporate assembly of believers who come together for worship, education, fellowship, service, mutual encouragement, inspiration, and, at times, rebuke.

It’s easy to lose sight of this biblical perspective in the drift toward free-wheeling ministries. The church in one sense is Christians in a huddle near the line of action; but in another it is, to change the figure, a control panel where strategy is coordinated.

But can’t the church simply operate out of homes? Isn’t that what the early church did? Comparisons must be made carefully, because neither homes nor separate church buildings are specifically prescribed in Scripture as places for Christian assembly. Small groups meeting in homes offer a commendable form of fellowship and outreach. But in most situations homes cannot adequately carry out the functions of churches. Members of Trinity Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, learned this when a fire destroyed their building and they had to meet in a variety of places for more than two years. “All this taught us that churches do need buildings that are designed to be used for church purposes,” said pastor Bob W. Brown.

Meeting in homes easily if unintentionally reinforces social exclusiveness, and a true church for its own good should have a cultural and age mix. Too many people look for churches that suit them, that is, that underscore their own outlooks instead of subjecting themselves to the perhaps beneficial scrutiny of contrasting viewpoints. In a church building, where property ownership is held in common and services are open to all comers, there is strong likelihood of a broader mix of people.

Compared to the North American standard of living and the vast outlays for luxuries in our homes, the cost of new church construction is usually within reasonable limits. It has never averaged out to more than $10 per year per church member in the United States. Many of us spend more than that on charcoal for cook-outs.

The charge of “extravagance” reminds one of the complaint of Judas Iscariot when Mary of Bethany poured costly ointment on Jesus. The Lord justified the act. “She has done a beautiful thing to me,” he said, adding, “Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

In Old Testament times God commissioned temples that were beautiful and memorable, and the principle of general revelation makes provision for divine communication aesthetically through such a medium. It can be so today, too. Certainly the many great Orthodox cathedrals in Communist countries show that great architecture can be spiritually significant; in those lands, conditioned against any form of religion, the cathedrals speak eloquently. Grandeur is not in of itself evil. Indeed, it can be a part of the worship of God. Even “status” need not be a spiritual liability. Certainly there is no merit in cheapness and shoddiness per se.

Church buildings: who needs them? Christians need them to carry out the Great Commission!

Missouri: Peace In Our Time?

Two years in preparation, the Report of synodical president Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (see News, page 38) is remarkable not only for its comprehensiveness and clarity but also for the author’s evident determination to “speak the truth in love.” Preus set himself to the task of getting at the facts in a situation badly clouded by emotional and sensationalistic charges from several sides.

A substantial amount of hostile advance publicity in both religious and secular media pictured Preus as a witchhunter and stamped his Report, sight unseen, as an unreliable diatribe. At this point in history, the secular mind is indifferent—if not actually contemptuous of—questions of ultimate truth. Therefore the attempts to discredit Preus’s motives, his fairness, and his accuracy are likely to continue, even though reading the Report is enough to refute them. But the important matter is not whether Preus is accurate or fair, nor even whether he is prudent in determining to pursue this issue to a conclusion despite all the criticism he has aroused. Until the amply documented Report came out, it might have been possible to discount allegations of “liberalism” at Concordia Theological Seminary (St. Louis) as witch-hunting. Now the issue is clearly joined.

Neither Preus nor anyone else would deny that the teaching at Concordia is generally more conservative than at most Protestant seminaries. But the biggest question is not where Concordia stands on the theological spectrum but where it stands on the inspiration and authority of Scripture and the objective truth of basic biblical doctrines. The Report, a watershed document, makes it clear that while all the faculty accept the authority of Scripture in theory, several of them claim for “theology” the right to hold different opinions about what Scripture actually teaches on several central issues, including not only the Virgin Birth but also the Resurrection. No one at Concordia seems to be denying that Jesus’ tomb was empty, but several defend the right of theologians to claim that the Bible does not teach that it was. They hold that this difference of opinion falls within the area of “freedom of inquiry in theology”; President Preus thinks that it undercuts biblical truth and confessional loyalty.

Preus will be charged with threatening academic freedom—but to make this charge is to allow the philosophers to sit in judgment on the prophets. He will also be charged with disrupting the peace of the church. But what is the meaning of peace if it can be preserved only by refusing to face issues? The conflict would not have arisen had no attempt been made to legitimate theological pluralism in the Missouri Synod. Before Preus’s Report, it may have been possible to minimize the problem. Now the only way to avoid it is deliberately to ignore it, i.e., in effect to allow a situation in which we say that while we believe the Bible, we are not very sure what it teaches.

The conflict shaping up for 1973 will be rugged, but if the Missouri Synod tries to sidestep it by uttering evangelical platitudes and ignoring Preus’s facts, it may well mean the end of Missouri as a confessing church—and another addition to the long list of denominations whose chief agreement consists in not knowing what to believe.

Southern Presbyterians Regroup

A new Presbyterian church is in the making. Or, depending on your perspective, maybe it is the old one taking a crucial step necessary to retain its identity. At any rate, a group of Southern Presbyterian churchmen have formed a new body that they call the Vanguard Presbytery, Incorporated, a “provisional presbytery for Southern Presbyterian and Reformed Churches in America Uniting.” We will report on the move in our next issue.

We regret that more Southern Presbyterians have not conscientiously sought to arrest that denomination’s leftward theological drift. Now they are witnessing such a marked departure from their orthodox heritage that some churchmen feel they can no longer remain part of the ecclesiastical fellowship.

The Miracle Of Love

Credit Miss America 1973 with giving the world a well-expressed insight into love. It is like the loaves and the fishes, said Terry Anne Meeuwsen of Wisconsin: it multiplies when you begin to share it. She made the comparison in a brief network television interview just after being crowned in Atlantic City this month. Miss Meeuwsen is a Roman Catholic who studied music at St. Norbert College.

Funds And Favors

The incident of the Republican campaign contributions that ended up in the bank accounts of men caught flat-footed inside Democratic headquarters in Washington points out the wisdom of full-disclosure laws. Of course the Democrats will make all the political gain they can so long as the Republicans refuse to issue full account of their getting and spending. Similarly, the GOP should not be remiss in revealing any Democratic deviousness, especially since the Democrats are making special claims to be straight-arrow.

In the past, both parties have passed out favors in return for funds, and the practice is sure to continue. It could be sharply curtailed, however, through the enforcement of full disclosure. No business, labor union, professional or trade association, or individual should hesitate to disclose fully all gifts to candidates for political office. When money is able to influence government, the truly competitive aspects of our self-proclaimed free-enterprise system are hindered. How well one produces the goods or performs the services becomes secondary to how much one has given to successful political campaigns. Full disclosure will not eliminate all the influence that campaign contributors wield on office-holders, but, with the help of an energetic press, it will certainly curtail the more flagrant abuses.

Unlikely Criticism

The United States Supreme Court got a stiff rebuke from an unlikely source last month. A young man caught robbing a bank in Brooklyn, New York, held off police for fifteen hours, and during that time he became quite talkative. A newsman quoted him as saying:

I’ll shoot anyone in the bank. The Supreme Court will let me get away with this. There’s no death penalty. It’s ridiculous. I can shoot everyone here, then throw my gun down and walk out, and they can’t put me in the electric chair. You have to have a death penalty; otherwise this can happen every day.

What he seems to have failed to take into account is that capital punishment is still inflicted by law-enforcement officers. His accomplice in the robbery also missed the lesson—he was killed by FBI bullets that brought the siege to an end.

The effects of the Supreme Court’s decision against the death penalty deserve thorough study. We may find that in the case of capital-type crimes it will encourage police to use deadly force more readily against obvious offenders.

On The Edge Of Bleakness

John Keats captures the cornucopia of autumn in his ode “To Autumn”:

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel.

But heavy-laden trees and deeply-dipping vines soon lose their fruit. Autumn balances between harvesttide fullness and after-harvest barrenness.

Jesus, too, talks of vines and branches, and explains the spiritual way to a rich autumn. If we, the branches, abide in him, the vine, our fruit will be worthy of God’s harvest. If not, the fruit we bear will fall unused and disregarded, leaving us barren of the richness God gives to all creatures who fulfill his purposes.

Another Munich

For those who have hoped to see sport gain greater stature as a means of promoting international harmony, the Twentieth Olympiad was a terribly disillusioning experience. The games in Munich brought out the worst in people: many a sportswriter called them a vivid reflection of the sickness of our time. We might well ask whether there is enough redeeming social value to the Olympics to warrant the all too apparent risks. As travel and communications become still easier, the risks will continue to rise.

Instead of bringing glory, the Olympic games added another black page to Munich’s history. For more than a generation the city’s name has been synonymous with appeasement because of the now infamous concessions made there to Hitler by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Now Munich will also be remembered for political terrorism, ineptitude, opportunism, and poor sportsmanship.

One note of cheer, which few are aware of but which is thoroughly described in this issue’s news section, is the evangelistic blitz that took place in Munich during the Olympics. Despite the chaos, God was at work bringing men and women to himself. There, for all who were willing to look and listen, was a demonstration of the difference the Gospel can make. For this we ought to rejoice, as well as for the remarkable unity of spirit achieved by the thirty-seven Christian groups who were on hand with their 2,000 workers.

When Night Came Too Soon

Who can fail to sympathize with the incredible misfortune that befell two of America’s top sprinters, Eddie Hart and Reynaud Robinson, during the Olympic Games in Munich? A misunderstanding in scheduling was compounded to the point that they failed to appear at the appointed time for a quarter-final heat and thus missed a good chance of winning a medal. In that brief lapse, years of rigorous training went down the drain. They had prepared well, but for one reason or another they simply were not at the right place at the right time.

It seldom happens with such drama, but there are all too many times when Christians fail to seize great opportunities. We invest significant portions of our lives in getting ready—in prayer, education, and so on—and yet when a big moment comes we are not there. Jesus said, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.”

The infants of today are the young men and women of tomorrow, leaving home to enter adult life with the equipment largely provided by parents.

You, fathers and mothers—what have they seen in your house? Have you prepared them to face life, or have you robbed them of important things that they should have seen and experienced?

Has your example been one from which they can profit? Have your concerns been centered on time or on eternity? On material or on spiritual values?

Have your children been conditioned to consider making a living, being a “success” in life, of primary importance, or do the kingdom of God and his righteousness come first?

Have they learned the social graces at the expense of spiritual truth? Have they developed built-in safe guards to purity, or are their standards those of the world?

The children of today are the leaders of tomorrow. Character developed in the home can be the safeguard of tomorrow. The compromise of parents can become the weakness of their children. The flaws of training develop into the follies of mature life.

Only God can give the wisdom, firmness, and love that must characterize the Christian home. And this responsibility cannot be shifted to other shoulders. Teachers in church and school play an important role, but what they give must be supplemental to what children receive at home, not the sole source of training.

Basic to child training are the disciplines that center in God and his Word. “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,” we are told in the Book of Proverbs; we also know this by experience. Christian parents must exercise the wisdom of reproof, of restraint as well as of guidance, if their children are to learn the lesson of true discipline.

What do your children see in your home? Is yours a home where prayer is given its rightful place? Do your children see you turning often to God, praying for guidance and help? Do they sense that divine power is available to those who look to God for specific needs? Do you pray with and for the little ones God has given you? Do your children know that God is near and that he can be talked to as a loving Heavenly Father? Is prayer incidental, reserved for emergencies, or a way of life in your home?

What place has the Bible in your own daily living, and in the training of your children? Is it a pious ornament on your table, or the Book of reference and inspiration to which you turn daily?

No child has been properly trained until he knows that the Bible is God’s Word and that it speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart. What attitude toward the Scriptures are your children learning from you? Do you have a family altar, a place to which the whole family turns for prayer, praise, and the hearing of God’s truth each day?

Again we ask: What have they seen in your house? What have your children experienced at your hand? Have they had the blessing of discipline? Have they learned that you can say “yes” in love and “no” with equal love? Have they learned the meaning of honoring their parents?

What place has the church in your family life? Is it incidental or vital?

Is the cause of world missions kept before the boys and girls under your roof? Do they sense the prime importance of world evangelism, of the needs of those who do not know Christ?

Do the disasters, sorrows, and privations of others bring tangible reactions from your home? Do your children know the joy of helping others?

What have they seen in your house? What have they heard in your house? Bickering and strife? Conversations taken up with trivialities? The standards of Hollywood and its latest productions or the standards of Christ?

Is there a spirit critical of neighbors, pastor, or friends? What is the overall impression—of love or of carping criticism?

Do your children see compromise with wrong? Do they sense that your words and actions do not jibe, that there is some basic compromise with sin?

This is written primarily to you parents because your responsibilities are great, the privileges and opportunities of molding young lives for eternity.

Moses expressed this responsibility of passing on a godly heritage: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou risest up” (Deut. 6:7).

Such responsibilities carry over from one generation to another. Parents bear a priestly relationship to their children. Like Job of old they must pray for those whom God has given them. Like Joshua they must make the decision, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Jos. 24:15).

Your children will only too soon pass out into the world. With them will go the impressions and training of youth. They will go either equipped for life or unprepared to meet the temptations and buffetings that are inevitable. Their future is being determined today.

What are they seeing in your house?

At about twelve noon every Sunday thousands of sermons pass into oblivion with an amen and a closing hymn. Their demise, in some cases, is most fortunate. Yet others are good enough to be shared with a larger audience. Here are some suggestions for getting more mileage out of your sermons.

A tape ministry. Sermons on tape (cassette and reel to reel) are catching on fast. Buy a supply of cassette players (available at $10 to $15) that can be checked out of your church library along with the tapes. My church lends players to anyone of high-school age or above for two weeks; the loan may be renewed for one week if the player is not on call by another borrower. Cassettes are great for people who spend a lot of time commuting.

Many churches lend tapes by mail. Make your tape catalogues available to your congregation for sending to friends. Tapes by mail may be the only solid spiritual food that some believers in isolated areas can get.

Printed sermons. The printed page has the distinct advantage of being easily carried and used. I have had each week’s sermon printed on legal-size paper and folded and stapled for mailing or for use as a handout. When the sermon is on a contemporary issue or on areas of critical need such as the Christian home, people appreciate immediate access to the material. Practically every pastor has been met at the door on Sunday morning with a remark something like, “I wish my sister in Detroit could have heard that sermon!” The sister in Detroit can, if the sermon is in print.

Another method is a sermon series published in booklet form. Several thousand copies of a series on Christian home have been moved this way. A small charge for the booklet will help finance the effort. The sermons may be transcribed from a tape recording of your sermon or from your sermon manuscript. Working from a manuscript offers a definite advantage; you have already edited what you want to say.

Ray Stedman of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, has a flourishing ministry of printed sermons. The operation, which costs $600 a week, has its own publications director and publication manager. Current sermons and back sermons in great demand are available in the church foyer, and hundreds of sermons a year old or more are in a large rack at the rear of the church. A catalogue and the aid of an attendant are available.

Some churches publish a weekly or monthly paper. A digest of the previous week’s sermon or an outline with Scripture references may be a good way to recall the sermon to mind and provoke further thought and study. During a series it would give the congregation a midweek link between sermons and prepare them for the one to come.

Newspaper digest. Some newspapers are interested in what local preachers are saying. For example, for several years Beryl Keene, religious editor of the Northern Virginia Sun, did a column called “A Stranger Visits a Church” in which she wrote a complete digest of a sermon. I kept her supplied with a copy of my sermon every week; so supplied, she gave me far more coverage than any other area pastor.

The Washington Post carried a shorter digest of sermons every Monday morning. The material had to speak to national concerns, however. I was most fortunate to have a journalist in my congregation who kept the Post supplied with well-written digests. Scout your congregation; someone may already have the newspaper contacts you need.

Newspaper ad. A glance at the Saturday church page usually reveals a hopeless jumble of church ads. Even if the casual reader stops to examine them, usually the only information he gets about a sermon is the title.

I comb my sermon for the item that seems to have the most popular interest, perhaps the conclusion of the sermon or an application of one of the points. Then I write about twenty-five words to hook the reader’s interest. The headline of the ad may or may not be the sermon title. The most important consideration of the headline is that it avoids the usual “churchy” language that appears on the church page.

Magazine features. Editors of the several hundred Christian periodicals and denominational magazines published today are always on the lookout for timely, well written material. But by no means is every sermon a potential magazine article. Let your manuscript simmer on the back burner for several days. Then come back and read it as though it had been written by someone else. Attack it critically! If the sermon survives this appraisal, it may be worth rewriting for submission to a magazine.

If this possibility interests you, read all you can on the subject of writing. Christian Writers Institute in Wheaton offers courses in writing. And Decision magazine will be announcing its next writers’ workshop in its January issue.

Radio and television. Many ministers have avoided using radio and television either because of prohibitive expense or because they feel they lack technical know-how. But neither problem is insurmountable. Station owners, aware of interest in religion, usually are willing to listen to your ideas on how to get the public to watch or listen to their station. Get to know the station owners or managers and find out what they want. Let the question of financing come later. The owners or managers will do what they can to help you get on the air if your ideas are good enough.

Surprisingly, the broadcasting of church services still holds interest. One congregation in Indiana purchased equipment and had the inside of the church remodeled to accommodate television cameras. The station engineer trained members of the congregation to operate the camera and audio equipment.

One of the most unusual telecasts is “The Bible For the Deaf” in Columbia, South Carolina. It is a Bible lesson designed for those with hearing loss, broadcast for a half hour on Saturday. The program offers a complete church service with Bible readings, hymns, and a sermon. The cameras are not only on the minister and musicians; they also follow an expert who translates the service into sign language. The program has drawn much praise not only from the deaf but also from others who appreciate a ministry to a particular human need.

A broadcast sermon may be followed by a “talk back” segment in which listeners may respond to the sermon by telephone with questions and comments. Response from a live audience in the studio is another possibility.

If you’re interested in radio and TV, read a lot on the subject and talk with the local station owners or managers. This barely tapped-field of religious programming may be for you.—ANDRE BUSTANOBY, pastor, Temple Baptist Church, Fullerton, California.

Reconstructing Jesus

A Future For the Historical Jesus: The Place of Jesus in Preaching and Theology, by Leander E. Keck (Abingdon, 1971, 271 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Glenn A. Koch, associate professor of New Testament studies, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

Keck, professor of New Testament at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, writes for the clergyman and for the professional scholar. He works from within the realm of contemporary literary criticism and interprets the results in ways that should cause rejoicing in Christendom.

Because of its interdisciplinary argument, Keck’s book is not easy reading. He uses the language of biblical criticism, that of contemporary theological “schools,” sociology, religious thought, and language analysis, and on a few occasions lapses into scholarly jargon (such as “repristinate,” used several times, and “ingressive trust”). However, the book is a very significant work that will more than repay the reader for his time and effort.

Keck’s thesis is that Jesus needs to be “recovered and reconstructed by rigorous historical method.” To do this one needs to maintain a skeptical attitude toward the sources (this is not hostility); he needs to answer historical questions with historical considerations rather than logical ones; and he is obligated to account for the sources as they are, not merely sift them for hard-core facts. If one pursues the historical study of Jesus, Keck is sure that some results, even though limited, can emerge.

Keck reviews briefly the history of the debate over the relation of historical fact to faith. In view of the problems surrounding the use of “faith” as a term that conveys meaning, he proposes “trust” as an alternative. Trust is basic to human existence; it is an act of the self as a self in response to a self; it has social dimensions. The real issue is the relation of the historical Jesus and the act of trust, or what it means to trust Jesus. Keck shows that trust in God has both “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions which, theologically, can be termed “salvation.”

In chapter three, perhaps the chapter most useful to the pastor, Keck distinguishes between gospel and propaganda, theology and ideology. Propaganda is the skillful use of facts to promote a corporation, for instance, or a political party, or a social ideology. “The gospel is debased into propaganda,” says Keck, “whenever the church’s message uses the plight of man, wittingly or otherwise, to enhance the status of the institution, and looks to Jesus as its warrant.”

Ideology is the “theoretical underpinning for propaganda.” When the Church begins to propagandize, “its theology hardens into an ideology without a sense of mystery,” and “the possibility that the church has been wrong appears as an intolerable threat and the call for revision as insurrection.”

Early Christian preaching cannot be classified as propaganda because the apostles were not absorbed in promoting current Messianic expectations or Gnostic systems. This line of thought allows Keck to charge Bultmann, Fuchs, and Ebeling with propagandizing when they make the historical Jesus serve their own modern concerns for security. He also criticizes those identified with the “new quest for the historical Jesus” for making the Kerygma an alternate route to historiography, i.e., ascertaining Jesus by historical methodology.

According to Keck the historical Jesus is to be used in preaching as the catalytic question that “does not provide the congregation with the self-evident answer but exposes a question which invites a response.” By placing the historical Jesus as central to the message one produces a better “grace-laden occasion” than by presenting the Christ of Christian dogma, because “the Christology of the Church is not the door to faith.” The “centrality of Jesus is constitutive of historical Christianity.”

While he recognizes that the trustworthiness of Jesus cannot be proved by historiography, Keck explores the potential of working with the historical “(the historian’s)” Jesus in the area of salvation (“To trust Jesus is to appropriate him as the index of God”) and in the area of the character of God (“… through the cross, understanding of God and trusting God coalesce, so that it is this God who is trusted or repudiated. In this way, the classical theological point is grounded in the historic Jesus: at the cross, revelation, reconciliation, and faith occur together, or they do not occur at all.”

Keck has put together a historical and theological treatment of Jesus that merits serious attention.

But Well Adjusted

Speaking in Tongues, by Felicitas D. Goodman (University of Chicago, 1972, 175 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Sandor Kovacs, retired professor of sociology, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This small book carries the subtitle “A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia.” It is a description of glossolalists’ behavior and manner of speaking. The author considers glossolalia a form of dissociation, similar to vision, hallucination, trance, and spirit possession.

Dr. Goodman set out to test the hypothesis that the glossolalist “speaks the way he does because his speech behavior is modified by the way the body acts in the particular mental state, often termed trance, into which he places himself.” She continues: “In my terms then, when a person has removed himself from awareness of the ordinary reality surrounding him he is in an altered mental state.”

The persons she observed she describes as “lower-class whites” in Columbus, Ohio, “mostly lower middle class” persons in Mexico City, and “peasants” on Yucatán Peninsula. She notes, “Women go into glossolalia much more easily than men.” For the glossolalists she has an assuring word: practicing glossolalists are well adjusted people who, aside from speaking in tongues, behave normally in their communities.

The two major conclusions in this study are: (1) Like other forms of communication, glossolalia is learned or acquired from the social and cultural environment; (2) there are recognizable configuration patterns, such as phonetic characteristics, across the various cultural settings studied. No attempt was made to evaluate the possible influences on the tongues-speakers of the presence of a researcher who took her tape recorder, notebook, and microphone from one person to another during the trance.

Speaking in Tongues is a good illustration of the difficulty of studying that form of human behavior called glossolalia.

Long Overdue

Personal Living: An Introduction to Paul Tournier, by Monroe Peaston (Harper & Row, 1972, 107 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Glenn Wittig, reference librarian, Speer Library, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

Paul Tournier became well known in the States after the publication, in 1957, of The Meaning of Persons. Before long, all his other major works as well as some shorter ones were translated into English, and more than a million copies of the English translations have been published. (His writings have also been translated into Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.) Guilt and Grace, The Strong and the Weak, The Seasons of Life, The Meaning of Gifts, and The Adventure of Living are some of the titles.

Despite the popularity of Tournier’s works, very little has been written about him. This introduction to the man and his writings fills a long-standing need. It is not a biography. Neither is it a definitive critical study; Tournier’s journal articles, in particular, have not been included. It is a succinct and appreciative introduction to the man and his views as expressed in his books.

Peaston, an associate professor of pastoral psychology at McGill University, has directed a number of thesis projects related to Tournier’s works. He tries to expound the salient ideas from Tournier’s books and to relate these ideas to Tournier’s own life and practice. And he succeeds admirably. The tone of the work is expositive; comment and criticism are reserved for a short final chapter.

The opening two chapters deal with major influences upon Tournier’s life, such as the early death of his parents, the friendship of his Greek teacher, his part in the formation and continuance of the Bossey Group, and the influence—both pro and con—of Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group (later known as Moral Rearmament). Tournier’s association with the Oxford Group is presented fairly and wholesomely.

Chapters three through seven summarize Tournier’s thinking on such themes as loneliness, fear, guilt, malaise and rebirth, vocation, and the meaning of persons. Analysis of each theme is restricted, for the most part, to its expression in a single major work, though many of the themes appear in almost all of Tournier’s writings. And herein lies the deficiency in Peaston’s approach. These middle chapters are little more than digests of book contents, though they are seasoned with illustrations and with excerpts from the writings of other well-known persons such as Carl Jung, William James, Carl Rogers, Karen Horney, and Eric Berne.

Yet the book is a joy to read. It is written in a simple style, without being simplistic. Tournier fans should welcome it as a handy synopsis; the uninitiated will find it a heartwarming introduction to some exciting new reading.

Newly Published

Jesus the Messiah, by Donald Guthrie (Zondervan, 386 pp., $6.95). A leading evangelical scholar offers a first-class, non-technical, chronological survey of the life and teachings of Christ. Well illustrated.

A Coffee House Manual, by Don and Ann Wilkerson (Bethany Fellowship, 96 pp., $2.25 pb). A very practical guide for those who want to engage in this effective kind of youth evangelism.

Power in Praise, by Merlin R. Carothers (Logos, 115 pp., $1.95 pb). A sequel to Prison to Praise, this volume contains ample testimony of what can happen when we obey God’s command to praise him in all things.

Putting It Together in the Parish, by James D. Glasse (Abingdon, 159 pp., $3.95). Loads of truly practical advice for pastors by the president of Lancaster Seminary (United Church of Christ). Outgrowth of lectures at Austin Presbyterian Seminary.

Theology of Play, by Jürgen Moltmann (Harper & Row, 113 pp., $4.95). Moltmann gives us some lively reflections on the meaning of rejoicing and liberation that seem to grow out of an orthodox biblical view of redemption in Christ; his American interlocutors respond with trivialities, blasphemous jokes, and good and bad etymology; Moltmann sums up with advice that makes his original contribution seem more flip and trivial than it previously had.

Christian Counseling and Occultism, by Kurt Koch (Kregel, 338 pp., $3.95 pb). The best of this German author’s many books is now available in paperback. It is, regrettably, more needed in English-speaking lands now than when it first appeared.

The Fortune Sellers: Occult Phenomenon of the Twentieth Century, by Gary Wilburn (Regal, 223 pp., $1.25 pb), Satan, Satanism, and Witchcraft, by Richard DeHaan (Zondervan, 125 pp., $3.50, $.95 pb), and The Return of Magic: A Probe Into the Psychological and Religious Roots of Magic and Witchcraft, by David Farren (Harper & Row, 118 pp. $4.95). The first two books are additional evangelical offerings on this resurgent religion. The last book is by an ex-Catholic seminarian turned skeptic who found he had married a hereditary witch. Advanced, mature students of this rival religion might be interested in his reflections.

Genesis in Space and Time, by Francis Schaeffer (Inter-Varsity, 167 pp., $2.25). The well-known apologete expounds on the first eleven chapters of the Bible, showing their foundational importance. (The same author and publisher have also just released The New Super Spirituality [30 pp., $.75 pb] and Back to Freedom and Dignity [48 pp., $.95 pb]).

Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration, and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures, by Archibald Alexander (Arno, 308 pp., $15). Reprinting of the 1836 edition of a major work by the founder of the Princeton theology. The topic is as relevant as ever, and Alexander’s approach is worth reading.

I AMness: The Discovery of the Self Beyond the Ego, by Ian Kent and William Nicholls (Bobbs-Merrill, 258 pp., $5.95). A popularization of Hindu-inspired pantheism as a basis of psychotherapy and life adjustment by two unusually balanced and irenic authors; interesting, but incompatible with a biblical view of God and man.

Friendly Heritage: Letters From the Quaker Past (Silvermine Publishers [Comstock Hill, Norwalk, Conn. 06850], 342 pp., $9.95). The 240 “Letters from the Past”—really a series of columns—focus on the tradition of the Quakers and provide an interesting, well-written approach to their history.

Religion’s Influence in Contemporary Society, edited by Joseph E. Faulkner (Charles E. Merrill [1300 Alum Creek Dr., Columbus, Ohio 43216], 578 pp., $9.95). A well edited handbook providing examples of good work in the sociology of religion. Since most of them are written from a secularist or liberal religious perspective the book’s seeming objectivity is on balance illusory. Contains some non-statistical opinion pieces such as those by James H. Cone (black consciousness) and Huston Smith.

The Problem of Miracle in Primitive Christianity, by Anton Fridrichsen (Augsburg, 174 pp., $5.95). English translation of a 1925 work that influenced much of academic biblical study.

The Reform of Society, by Lyman Beecher (Arno, 211 pp., $11). Reprinting of nine sermons by one of the foremost early nineteenth-century American evangelicals. Six are on intemperance.