TWO TIMES TWO

Strangely enough, I still remember my initiation into the mysteries of the multiplication table. It happened in Mrs. Dunlap’s room in the third grade. Confronted with that great mysterious acrostic with 144 squares I thought, “I’ll never learn that.” I was almost right. Without a little mechanical help I might never have gotten through the whole nightmare.

Now it can be told. My father had given me an automatic pencil with a revolving barrel. One strip of the barrel was of clear plastic exposing a row of the multiplication table to view. By spinning the barrel one could find any product up to twelve times twelve.

I became expert at holding the pencil just below the corner of my desk and spinning the barrel with my thumb. (Mrs. Dunlap, wherever you are, forgive me.)

By the time I entered the fourth grade the pencil had disappeared, and that meant trouble. It was one of the few times I was ever in a sweat to learn. My assiduousness impressed both parents and friends. It wasn’t easy. After rattling off the seven table I would realize the six table had fled my memory.

Eventually, however, sheer repetition did the trick. Now, waked in the middle of the night I can provide you with the product of eleven times eleven or of seven times nine.

Our youngest son is presently going through this struggle. He came home after the first day of school and announced, “We had a math test. The teacher wanted to see how much we remember from last year.”

“How’d you do?” I asked.

“Pretty good. I only missed six.”

“How many questions were there?”

“Twenty,” he responded cheerfully.

Archibald Rutledge, former poet laureate of South Carolina, once commented that he wrote his first poem on entering the third grade. Seeing what he was supposed to remember from the previous year he versified:

Every summer

I get dumber.

But he learned it all. And my son will learn the multiplication table and fractions and percentages. Once he does, he’ll never forget them.

My question is, why can’t we get the lessons of the Christian life down pat like the multiplication table? Why does Jesus have to keep teaching us the same old lessons over and over? If you have an answer please send it to …

RENEWED APPRECIATION

The editorial in the June 23 issue, “The Lord Is Coming Again!,” was pointed, powerful, pertinent, and personal. It would be much easier for me to modify my views and stand with the majority of our day who are looking for a reign of Christ on this earth. At the same time I cannot be dogmatic about my amillennial views and break fellowship with precious warm-hearted brethren who are laboring for the Christ who is coming again!

Big Lake Church of God

Columbia City, Ind.

P.C.U.S. AND INERRANCY

It is cause for both alarm and sorrow when we see men who profess to be Christian leaders undermining the very basis of the Christian faith. This has been happening all over the world, and one recent incident of this nature prompted me to write this. I refer to your news item in the July 7 issue on the annual meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S. (“Southern Presbyterians Elect Bell, Stay in COCU”), reported as “rejecting 264 to 50 a report that would have put the denomination on record as holding to biblical inerrancy”.… One wonders how people who have been born again through faith in Jesus Christ can make such a tragic error.

Courtenay, British Columbia

NOT OF TRINITY

The paragraph which mentions the People’s Christian Coalition group in your Explo ’72 story (July 7) could lead some of your readers into directly associating this group with Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Although this group has many legitimate grievances, they are but a small fraction of the college and seminary student body of about 1,200. It should not be thought that their ideas and beliefs are in any way representative of the student body. Unfortunately, some of the supporters of Trinity have tended to be misled by the extent of the publicity that the Coalition has received, much of which has been distorted. They do not represent Trinity, neither are they supported by Trinity.

Deerfield, Ill.

MORE PARTICIPATION NEEDED

I disagree with the premise in your editorial “Sport: Are We Overdoing It?” (August 11). In the Old Testament tradition, man was a fully unified being of body, soul, and spirit and no part of him should be neglected. Sport is an altogether appropriate activity for the Christian, perhaps one that most Christians have neglected. The problem, which you fail to mention, is that sports today is too much a spectator thing than a participatory one.

Washington, D. C.

WELFARE FOR ALL

As an old and appreciative reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I am intrigued with your editorial “Sunday Laws and Human Welfare” (July 28). I can understand a religious motivation for Sunday laws, but using welfare as the “reason” for such laws makes no sense to me. If the welfare of all workers is our real concern, we should exact laws which guarantee to every employee of all business concerns, including supermarkets, a five-day working week. The employee could choose to work a sixth day at time-and-a-half pay. Working the seventh day of any given seven days would be prohibited, or in certain cases permitted only if the worker is paid double time. Such a plan would effectively protect the worker and would not arouse the cry of “blue laws.”

Hinsdale, Ill.

TOO MUCH DRY CEREAL?

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is too much “ivory tower” for me to get much out of it. Eutychus I dig, L. Nelson Bell sometimes, but the monotonous professionalism in the wordy articles makes me turn the page—only to find more of it there.

And your poetry! Why don’t you get a human being for a poetry editor? I’d like to see more poetry, but such as can be read from a pulpit and grasped by a congregation. Preachers that I know don’t have time or inclination to sit and ruminate over what you print.

I subscribed to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for some years and dropped it. Then in order to get the Living Bible I signed up again. I’d like to renew for the paper, not for a “come-on” offer. But frankly speaking, most of the contents is like shredded wheat without milk, possibly nourishment but not too appetizing. The redeeming feature of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is its sincerity. I’m strong for that, but what I want is some milk and sugar on my shredded wheat.

Portsmouth, N. H.

JUXTAPOSITION

The position of two news items in your August 11 issue was most suggestive (“Holy War in Canada” and “Unhistoric Judgment”). I don’t know what Forrest published, but one argument for the Jewish review alleged that Christ was illegitimately born (blaspheming his virgin birth of the Holy Spirit). Is B’nai B’rith also subject to libel suits over alleged anti-Christian libel?

Almonte, Ontario

NOT SECOND HAND

Leon Morris, in his Current Religious Thought column “God’s Dice or God’s Purpose” (August 11) gives us an excellent example of a person using a pretext in place of a text. It is surely unconscionable to rebut Monod’s argument while acknowledging that he has read only a review of Monod’s Chance and Necessity. It is ingenuous of him to think that Monod’s argument can be rebutted with the old homely illustrations. Those who have read Monod and found him persuasive will simply be alienated by Morris’s shabby scholarship. Those who have read Monod and want to rebut him know that it cannot be done at second hand.

Chairman, Humanities Division

Wabash College

Crawfordsville, Ind.

There are several points in addition to those Morris made which may be helpful in appraising the current scientific scene, especially to people unfamiliar with the ways man’s total depravity has affected his scientific endeavors.

In distinction to Morris, it is not a good enough apologetic to get people to ask “Why?” instead of “How?” because the scientist already has his reasons which go no further than the laws of physics, chemistry, and chance, and which therefore exclude the God of Scripture. Such a scientist also is not ultimately impressed by the apparent enormity, design, regularity, and purpose of the universe, for even these senses of grandeur have their explanations in physical laws of human brain molecules. When men form their hypotheses around the postulate that no God exists, it is not at all surprising that they end up without him.

Thus it is not a matter of giving “more than one explanation of an occurrence, such that each is true and each is complete in itself,” for not only would Christianity be no longer an imperative, but Scripture passages that point to the prior necessity for the knowledge of God would be vitiated. As Christians, we are not allowed to compartmentalize our thoughts into what is scientific and what is of faith, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Our message, then, must involve presupposing God’s special revelation as a framework into which we fit our scientific findings, not vice versa. Monod, therefore, is not simply seeing but one side of existence; he is dead wrong.

Cambridge, Mass.

WORD OF PRAISE

Part I of Harold Lindsell’s article on “The Infallible Word” (August 25) deserves special commendation. I found it especially refreshing to read such a presentation of the case from the pen of a well-known and respected evangelical when so many well-known evangelicals seem to have betrayed their trust in the integrity of Scripture. It was highly gratifying to read his treatment of “inerrancy.” Altogether too many are willing to surrender on that point in the face of a “world come of age.” I anticipate the forthcoming conclusion to the article, and trust that it will be of like caliber!

Wilmer Independent Baptist Church

Phoenixville, Pa.

An erroneous explanation of the inerrant Word scarcely helps understanding. The editor says, “The writers of Scripture were inspired …”; and, quoting the Baptist New Hampshire Confession, “We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired”—neither of which does the Bible say. However, in explaining pasa graphe, it is correctly stated, “The very words of Scripture are thus inspired …”

Fortunately inspiration is a quality not of the men who wrote but of their product. All the Scripture writers are dead, but inspiration did not die with them for inspiration was a quality not of their persons but of their writings. Theopneustos, God-breathed, is a verbal adjective used in the New Testament only this once, and it modifies graphe, the written word, only. While the prophets spoke from God and were born (pherō) by the Spirit, we only add confusion by stretching “inspiration” to cover matters other than graphe. Probably this already weasel word should be abandoned even though so deeply intrenched in systematic theology. “God-breathed” does it better, and is true to biblical theology. For a short definition we would say, Inspiration is that quality God imparted to the Scripture writings of men chosen by him and born along by the Holy Spirit by which their written word is God-breathed. And if a Doctrine of Inspiration, why not also a Doctrine of Profitableness, since ōphelimos bears exactly the same relation to graphe as does theopneustos?

Hillcrest Heights, Md.

The spiritual person is a reflective person. It is by reflection that he becomes acquainted with the mind and ways of God. Consequently, when Scripture wants to speak of the secular man it says he is one who has “forgotten” God (Ps. 50:22; 106:21). By contrast, the godly man is one who “remembers” God (Ps. 119:55; 111:4). This distinction is axiomatic in biblical teaching; few doubt its validity. The presence, then, in some evangelical churches of a form of spirituality that is decidedly if not deliberately unreflective is a matter of no small concern.

Reflective spirituality is exhibited well in the psalms. The psalmists’ food was to think on God, in times of adversity (Ps. 119:78; 143:3–5) no less than of peace, in the night (Ps. 1:2; 63:5–7) no less than in the day. They knew that a man is not other than his meditation; “for as [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). This is a profound lesson to learn. It quite clearly underlies all Jesus’ teaching on personal sanctity (Matt. 15:17–20; 12:34; 5:27).

Apparently the psalmists were in the habit of taking a text or passage of Scripture and ruminating on it during the day. “I will meditate on thy precepts …” (Ps. 119:15) says one author. He decided to do this and then followed up his decision by daily, dogged discipline. The law, he adds, “is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97). Probably no day passed in which he did not reflect on the Word, and it was his intention not to perform any action in the course of the day without consciously aligning it with biblical teaching.

Meditation is more than simply Bible reading. What comes into the mind will just as quickly go out, leaving behind neither joy nor instruction, if it is not actively appropriated. Asaph speaks of musing on God’s ways, turning these thoughts over in his mind (Ps. 77:12). It is the habit of meditating that allows truth to take root in us. Meditation is the plow that breaks up the fallow ground (cf. Jer. 4:3; Hos. 10:12) in preparation for the seed, and it is the harrow that follows behind the planting. No great Christian attained his spiritual maturity without learning the art of meditation.

In Psalm 49:3 the psalmist explains why this is so. “My mouth shall speak of wisdom,” he says, “and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.” The first assertion seems to have reference to prophetic activity, but the author immediately links it with reflection. The Spirit who made the prophets eloquent first of all made them thoughtful. In the later prophets especially, the Spirit first led them to ponder deeply the ways of God and the shortcomings of men. Then, when this reflective process came to maturity, they were ready to speak. Their words arose out of the depths and caught fire. Any man who wishes to speak with authority must learn this lesson. If evangelical pastors would relearn the lost art of meditation, congregations would not leave their churches as hungry as when they came in (a situation far more common within evangelicalism than many would care to admit).

To people of today, harried by life’s insidious pressures, its corrosive demands, and the force of its dramatic change, one of the astonishing aspects of the psalms is the unbounded enthusiasm with which the psalmist reflected on the divine Word and ways. He said he loved the law (Ps. 119:97); it was his delight (Ps. 119:15), even “sweeter than honey” (Ps. 119:103). In a summary statement it is said: “My meditation of him shall be sweet” (Ps. 104:34). It is this delight in God, the first fruits of meditation, that made David dance. “It stands out as something astonishingly robust, virile, spontaneous,” says C. S. Lewis, “something we may regard with an innocent envy and may hope to be infected by as we read” (Reflections on the Psalms).

There seems to be a vicious circle involved in this. We do not reflect on God unless we desire to do so; we do not desire to do so unless we habitually reflect on him. The tempo of the inner life was very high when the psalmists spoke of delighting in God. But this hunger for God was always in a tenuous balance with its satisfaction, and the satisfaction, oddly enough, seemed to enlarge the hunger. Deep satisfaction there was (Ps. 63:6), but the soul continued to thirst for God “like a parched land” (Ps. 143:6); the psalmist was like the deer searching for water, desperately needing to drink (Ps. 42:1; 63:1, 2).

There is no easy way into this circle. The desire for God does not appear overnight like the desert bloom. It is, like all life, fragile in its infancy. Like a newborn child it has to be carefully tended, nourished, and trained. Reflection leads to desire and desire stimulates reflection. The utter seriousness of this quest, however, cannot be diluted.

In three incidental remarks in the Psalms a window is opened for us to look into the godly soul. When David retired to bed at the end of the day, his thoughts turned to God. On his bed, he said, he thought about God (Ps. 63:5–7), even into “the watches of the night”; it was “in the night” (Ps. 119:55) and “day and night” (Ps. 1:2) that the psalmists did their meditation. When the darkness and silence of the nighttime enclosed them, they abandoned the worries of the day. Their real concerns now emerged. In their aloneness there were no social or family pressures to be “religious.” Privacy offers no encouragement to hypocrisy. What a man does when he is alone is the best indicator of what he is really like. No one is incapable of “play-acting” before others, but it takes an unusual person to enjoy deceiving himself when he is alone. The unrelenting seriousness in the pursuit of God now becomes clear from the Psalms. It is both instructive and disturbing.

The psalmists’ sense of priorities, their careful preservation of the important things, perhaps gives us the clue to why, by contrast, Christian spirituality today is sometimes unreflective and undelightful. No less than they, we are in constant contention with “the world” for our priorities. But whereas they won the battle, we sometimes lose it.

A witness to this point, though from an alien quarter, is Herbert Marcuse. In his book One Dimensional Man he speaks of the pressures of conformity and control that society exercises over man. These controls begin to resemble prison bars, outside of which the human spirit cannot wander. The economy requires certain standards of living, and the opinion-makers on television blatantly or insidiously insist that we meet them. The struggle for existence becomes a battle in which, more often than not, we lose. If nothing else, he says, we lose our humanity even if we keep our heads above water financially. La dolce vita is, in fact, a rat race.

Marcuse speaks, too, of a political system that functions without regard for those whom it is supposed to represent. It creates its values and imposes them on people who are powerless to resist. The values it has ordered are dehumanizing ones. If it is the Welfare State it is also the Warfare State; its inherent disregard for life when “policy” requires it now becomes plain.

Further, Marcuse believes that freedom of thought has largely been surrendered, albeit unwittingly. It has been supplanted by the indoctrinating process of mass communication. The opinion-makers, principally those shadowy figures who control the networks, implant in people needs and ideas that they, the opinion-makers, rather than the people, define as important. Priorities are established by the corporation, political parties, and advertisers. These priorities are then accepted with little thought and even less struggle. Man has simply become a pawn in a large game played by impersonal forces, a fly caught in a web of values spun by someone other than himself.

Stated in these terms, Marcuse’s discussion of societal controls in some ways lies quite near to at least one aspect of the Bible’s teaching on the “world.” This word “world” is used in Scripture to designate the web of values that has been spun with man, rather than God, at its center. Man’s pleasures and desires are the end to which all life’s processes are directed. Humanistic assumptions replace religious norms. And so those who build their lives on these values are the enemies of God (Jas. 4:4). To be sure, Christians have an existence in the midst of society, but their life and values are not derived from it (John 17:14–17). Being “worldly,” then, is a far more serious matter than simply succumbing to the trivial do’s and don’ts with which the “world” is usually identified. It means that at one place or another, a Christian has adopted values that assume God is not a meaningful reference point for a value-system and may be disregarded. The Christian lives as if God were dead, however vehemently he might deny this in theory.

A value-system detached from divine reference is open to manipulation, and this is what Marcuse sees happening today. His description, insofar as it is accurate, covers one phase or chapter in this sequence of worldliness. Judged by Christian standards, Marcuse’s view of man and his proposal for liberation from societal controls are woefully inadequate. Nevertheless, his analysis of contemporary society bears careful consideration.

If there are Christians who have succumbed to these societal controls, they are the victims of a value-system that is not only unchristian but also anti-Christian. It aggressively assumes that man has displaced God from His world. This being so, the desire to reflect on God and his ways not only is irrelevant but also runs quite counter to activities that assume that he can be ignored. The extent to which this worldliness reigns in us is the extent to which we neglect the culture of the inner life.

In addition to this, and perhaps as part of it, an all-pervasive activism has infiltrated American Christianity. It is, in fact, the by-product of the element of change that is so much a part of contemporary life. What is paramount is what is now; activity is associated with life (and relevance), while inactivity is associated with death (and irrelevance). Thought is devalued; action is considered to hold the key to Christian life. If a Christian is not out “doing,” he is backsliding.

This attitude is part of a much wider one that has tinged the whole of American life. In his 1964 Pulitzer prize-winner Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter has this to say:

Both our religion and our business has been touched by the pervasive egalitarianism of American life.… At an early date, literature and learning were stigmatized as the prerogatives of useless aristocracies.… It seemed to be the goal of the common man in America to build a society that would show how much could be done without literature and learning—or rather, a society whose literature and learning would be largely limited to such things as the common man could grasp and use.… Ours is the only educational system in the world vital segments of which have fallen into the hands of people who joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and show their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise [Vintage Books, 1963, p. 50].

A striking illustration of Hofstadter’s last point was the recent decision of Indiana University to include a course on comics in its curriculum.

Not to reflect on one’s Christian life is all too easy, first because the pressures of life work against meditation, and second because we have all learned to be suspicious about the mind. Unreflective spirituality, then, is a “natural” by-product of our age. But it is natural only in the sense in which all sins are natural (1 Cor. 2:14). It is really a grievous flaw.

The teaching of Scripture and the wisdom of the ages combine to condemn it. If the psalmists are clear on this point, so are those saints in all ages who have in any way sought to recapture the biblical ideal. “Seek a convenient time (Eccles. 3:1) to yourself and meditate often upon God’s loving kindnesses,” counsels Thomas à Kempis. Prayer, meditation, and temptation, declares Martin Luther, makes the man of God. Calvin speaks of the “cares of the world” and the “daily temptations which suddenly overtake us,” leaving “no time or leisure for meditating on the doctrine of God.” He urges Christians to be clear-sighted enough to resist these temptations; we are to “direct all our energies to the subject of meditation on God’s precepts.” A little later, when Protestant orthodoxy was declining inwardly while outwardly remaining impeccably pure, Philip Spener had occasion to speak of this truth again:

This much is certain: the diligent use of the Word of God, which consists not only of listening to sermons, but also of reading, meditating and discussing (Ps. 2:1), must be the chief means of reforming something.… The Word of God remains the seed from which all that is good in us must grow [Pia Desideria].

What Spener said is especially relevant today, for our situation closely parallels his. Now, as then, the Church does not lack for professions of orthodoxy. But orthodoxy, while it is the beginning of godliness, is not a substitute for it. The most urgent need today is to recover a high view of Scripture practically. It is one thing to affirm one’s belief in the plenary inspiration of Scripture; it is quite another to live in accordance with this truth. After all, what profit is there, my brothers, if a man says he believes in inerrancy but does not meditate? Can his bare affirmation save him? Someone will say, “My affirmation shows my faith even as your meditation shows yours.” Yes, but even the devils affirm inerrancy. When will you learn, you empty man, that faith-affirmations apart from works are dead?

David F. Wells is assistant professor of church history and the history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He received the Ph.D. from the University of Manchester.

Man has shown he can solve many of his problems. He has developed microphones and subways and contraceptives and flea collars and erasable bond. He can have his air conditioned and his face “lifted.” Awaiting his beck and call are computers, tranquilizers, telephones, and—sometimes—vending machines. He can fly now and pay later, protected during his trip by vaccines and traveler’s checks. True, he is still haunted by gigantic problems of poverty, disease, pollution. But he is confident that, given a little more time and a lot more money, he can find cures for these and other remaining ills.

There is one basic problem, however, that he shows few signs of solving: conflict between human beings. Despite all the efforts of idealists, reformers, and even revolutionaries, conflict continues between individuals, between classes, and between nations, thereby contributing to many of man’s other problems.

Men have been wondering for centuries about this apparently ineradicable tendency to fight. Immanuel Kant blamed man’s irrational loyalties and desires: all would be well if only man could order political and international affairs more rationally. Karl Marx held that the cause of the trouble was class conflict arising from the unequal distribution of wealth: let everybody be reduced to one class with the whole economic mechanism owned by all, and everything would become peaceful. Friedrich Nietzsche attributed the constant struggle to “the will to power.” Others have named other causes. But they all have missed the point. Man’s tendency to fight his fellows springs from the depths of his own personality. Each one of us is an egotist who wants to play God, at least in his own little world. We seek to be free to do our own thing without being constrained by either man or God. The problem is, in a word, spiritual; strife in economic, political, and social spheres usually is rooted in man’s spiritual condition.

Behind man’s conflicts lies his alienation from God, his separation from his Creator, Sustainer, and Lord, the true center of his being. In his sinful desire to be God, man has declared his independence. He has cut himself adrift on a sea for which he has no map. And the Pole Star, the sovereign God, is clouded from his sight by his own rebellion and by God’s wrath against his sin. Knowing God, as Paul says in Romans 1, man yet denies him, rebelling not only against his Lord but also against his own true self. He suppresses the knowledge of God and of his own creaturely nature, bringing dire consequences to himself and to all around him.

That man’s denial of God affects the whole creation is very evident in his self-assertive destruction of the environment. Furthermore, because of man’s rebellion, God’s judgment rests upon all of creation. But sin’s most obvious consequences appear in man’s relations with man; when men no longer submit to and trust God and when they assume that no one else does either, trust between “neighbors” disappears. And, as Max Lerner pointed out in one of his syndicated columns, where trust disappears, society breaks into universal conflict. Unbelieving, disobedient man then seeks to force stability by setting up some sort of dictatorship to overcome the disintegration he has caused. Only the grace of God restrains man from destroying himself and his world.

Into this situation came Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the express image of God’s person, the Creator, the Sustainer and Ruler of all things (John 1:1 ff.; Col. 1:15 ff.). He came not for some economically, socially, or politically revolutionary purpose but to reconcile the world to God. He came to satisfy the demands of God’s justice and at the same time to remove the cloud between man and his Creator and turn man back to the true center of his life, the sovereign Triune God. Only Christ could accomplish this, for he alone was and is both God and man. By Christ’s life, death, and resurrection God reconciled the world unto himself.

Yet man refuses to accept God’s offer. The idea that he must humble himself before God, acknowledging that he is a sinner who can be reconciled to God only by divine grace, is unappealing. Man prefers to think he can earn God’s acceptance. But the Holy Spirit has been sent to open man’s eyes to his condition before God and to the availability of God’s offer of reconciliation. When the Spirit effectively calls a man, he is “born again” as a new creature, for he then returns to his true condition and status as God’s child, giving to Christ the preeminence in all things (1 Pet. 2:25). Reconciliation to God is thus completed in and through the gift of the Spirit.

But this is only the beginning of a process. Before regeneration, a man’s life is off center for he considers himself the hub of his own existence. But Christian man recognizes and accepts his position not only as a forgiven sinner but also as a creature of God placed in this world to serve Christ his Lord. The world around him is no longer a chaos of random happenings; it is all part of God’s creation, operating according to his plan.

This realization changes the Christian’s attitude toward his fellow men. Faced with the fact that all men are his neighbors whom he is to love as himself, he accepts the need to be trustworthy, doing to others as he would have them do to him. He also recognizes that, since God in his grace still preserves and maintains in all men some vestiges of the divine image, men should trust one another, for only then can any form of society exist.

Yet true fellowship and mutual trust in the highest sense are possible only between those who together acknowledge and serve Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. As Paul pointed out to the Ephesians, Christ has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile; all partitions dividing those who are in Christ have fallen, for they are all one body in him (Acts 15:17 ff.; Eph. 2).

This should have very practical effects. Not only to fellow Christians but also to unbelievers, the Christian should manifest the love of Christ in his life and deeds. In so doing he may win some to Christ (1 Cor. 9:19 f.). But even if he does not, his attitudes and his actions will have a healing effect on human relations. By his influence he will be a peace-maker, a true sign that he is a child of God (Matt. 5:9).

He must go beyond merely manifesting an attitude, however. As a citizen, an employee or an employer, a son or a daughter, a husband or a wife, the Christian should work for reconciliation, for “peace on earth to men of good will.” As the salt of the earth, Christians should work to overcome all causes of discrimination and to help all those in need. The Christian, because of the love of Christ in his heart, should be the Good Samaritan of the world (1 Cor. 13).

The Christian never reaches sinlessness in this life. He still has attached to him the graveclothes of his old nature with its egotism, selfishness, pride, and rebelliousness. Constantly faced with temptation, he repeatedly disobeys and comes short of God’s perfection. The result is continual conflict with God. Consequently his reconciliation to God, while in principle complete in Christ, is never fully achieved; he must continually repent of his sins and seek anew God’s forgiveness.

The imperfection of the Christian’s life leads not only to transgression of the divine law of holiness but also to conflict with other Christians. Conflicts appeared among Christ’s disciples while he was on earth and among his followers after his ascension, and, as most of us know well, they have continued in the Church down to the present. Bitter quarrels often break out in churches and other Christian groups because of Christions’ egotism, pride, greed, and fear. Yet Christians should always strive for reconciliation with one another, for they are members of one family. Harmonious relations will require confession and repentance toward each other, steps that are very difficult for our stubborn hearts. With the help of the Spirit and the grace of God, and with constant prayerful attention to maintaining a loving attitude, conflicts can be reduced and reconciliation increased.

At the same time Christians must live in a world that rebels against Christ’s universal lordship. However successfully they manifest the love of God to man, the world will rarely appreciate their effort. To the unbeliever Christ is simply a usurper seeking to take over a world that rightfully belongs to man. Still, by the influence of their words and lives, Christians may stimulate a certain amount of external reconciliation between man and man, yet at any time the rebel world’s suppressed hostility and aggressiveness, sometimes sparked by Christian boldness and sometimes by Christian’s lack of tact, may break forth in opposition to—even persecution of—those who represent Christ and his rule in this world.

The outcome is constant, unresolvable conflict between the people of the Kingdom and those who reject Christ’s lordship. While many Christians, stressing Christ’s office as the Prince of Peace, insist that whenever the Gospel is preached peace will result, this has not proved to be so. Although those who believe will find peace with God that changes their attitude toward others, Christ promised his people not peace but tribulation in this world (John 15:18 ff.; 16:33). Furthermore, he told his disciples he had come to bring not peace but a sword that would divide even families. Therefore, throughout the whole of history the Gospel has brought both reconciliation and conflict (2 Cor. 2:16; 1 John 2:15 ff.; 3:1).

This ambivalence will be resolved only at the end of history, at the final reconciliation when every tongue shall confess that Christ is Lord, and the restored creation will be submitted unto the Father, that God may be all in all (Phil. 2:10; 1 Cor. 15:24). And yet the Scriptures never speak as though this means that all men will be accepted by God. The rebels will be cast into outer darkness—the darkness of knowing their own stupidity and futile rebelliousness. Though forced to acknowledge Christ as Lord, they will be separated from him forever.

Those who have known and accepted his gracious reconciliation, on the other hand, will experience its fullness in the completeness of God’s eternal grace. And all creation, restored and healed, will show forth the glory of the Triune God. Reconciliation will finally have won out over conflict.

W. Stanford Reid is professor of history at Wellington College, University of Guelph, Ontario. He received the Th.M. degree from Westminster Theological Seminary and the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon said to the theological students at Princeton: “The prophetic voice which the church is called to speak in our age is more likely to be heard and followed by those in political power when it is spoken by those who, in committed pastoral relationships, have shown their genuine concern and love.” It is a false dichotomy that pits the prophetic role of concern for poverty, war, and social injustice against the pastoral function of concern for individual spiritual maturation. What is needed is a balance between the two.

Many ministers are struggling with this problem of how to keep the prophetic function and the pastoral function in creative tension. Like so many of our problems, this one is not new. At a time when historians are reexamining the American Revolution in anticipation of the two-hundredth anniversary of our national independence, we might be able to learn about a balanced ministry from a colonial pastor who resolved the conflict between the prophetic and pastoral roles.

John Witherspoon wore three hats: president of the College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University), Presbyterian clergyman, and member of the Continental Congress. After a distinguished career as a pastor in the Church of Scotland, he was called in 1768 to head the struggling College of New Jersey. At that point he could not have foreseen the extent to which he would become caught up in the fight for American independence, but he observed from the start that there was a contagious air of freedom in the New World environment.

In 1774 John Adams passed through Princeton on his way to the Continental Congress, which was meeting in Philadelphia, and he visited Witherspoon. Adams marveled at the college president’s grasp of political matters and recorded in his diary: “Dr. Witherspoon enters with great spirit into the American cause. He seems as hearty a friend as any of the natives, an animated Son of Liberty.”

The political life-style that Witherspoon eventually adopted has some noteworthy features. First of all, Witherspoon was determined to approach his political responsibilities with intellectual integrity. He was a scholar accustomed to debating both in church and in academic life the fine points of theology, philosophy, and history, and he thought it only natural to do considerable research before claiming to be a spokesman for American liberty. Also, he had always respected the British monarchy and valued highly the established institutions of society. He could not lightly toss aside this treasured heritage.

Tremendous pressure was exerted upon him to become more active in political affairs, but he would not be rushed. He insisted on gaining a thorough knowledge of the issues. During the critical months of May, June, and July, 1776, when tensions were mounting in the colonies, he wrote a series of scholarly essays in the Pennsylvania Magazine. Realizing that he would be criticized for his extensive literary venture at a time when others were calling for immediate action on the battlefront, he explained why there was need for scholars as well as soldiers. In his first article, published in the May issue, he contended: “I am much mistaken if the time is not just at hand, when there shall be greater need than ever in America, for the most accurate discussion of the principles of society, the rights of nations, and the policy of states; all which shall have a place in the subsequent numbers of this paper.”

Before engaging in political action, he carefully, almost tediously, formulated his intellectual convictions, even at the risk of seeming pedantic. The result was that when emotions were at fever pitch, his political position was marked by a keen perception of history, a reasoned defense of revolutionary principles, and an indefatigable moral earnestness derived from his staunch Calvinism and his Scottish common-sense academic heritage.

A second characteristic of Witherspoon’s approach to political matters was his own kind of pragmatic activism. Once he had done his homework, he was ready to take part in the leadership of the patriot cause and urged others to do the same. During the years immediately before the Revolutionary War, the Princeton commencement orations often had political themes, and the college became a virtual training base for future political leaders. A resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who attended a commencement service in Princeton as early as 1772 was shocked at the ease with which young students were resolving the most complex problems, and he complained: “I could almost have persuaded myself that I was within a circle of vociferous politicians at Will’s coffeehouse, instead of being surrounded with the meek disciples of wisdom, in the calm shades of economic retirement.”

In June of 1776, Witherspoon responded to a call to become directly engaged in politics: he was appointed a member of the New Jersey delegation to the Continental Congress. Arriving in Philadelphia, late in June, Witherspoon participated in the closing debate on the proposed Declaration of Independence. He listened intently to the arguments and suggested a few revisions. He called for deletion of the phrase “Scotch and foreign mercenaries,” which he felt cast aspersions on the overwhelming majority of patriotic Scots in America. The phrase was omitted in Thomas Jefferson’s final draft, which had been revised by the Congress. Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, wholeheartedly endorsed it and staked his reputation and life upon the validity of these principles of political liberty.

From June, 1776, to November, 1782, Witherspoon served regularly in the Congress except during 1780, when he asked for a leave of absence to tend to pressing duties at the college. During his long period of service he was active in debate and in policy-making and sat on several key committees, including the Finance Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Board of War. His somewhat sheltered background as a clergyman and college president did not deter him from working alongside businessmen, plantation owners, and lawyers to resolve the knotty problems—economic, social and political—that came before the Congress.

A third characteristic of Witherspoon’s political participation was an unmistakable confidence in the future. Although at the outset of the war there was an exhilarating spirit of optimism, the morale of the people sank perilously low as the war dragged on. General Washington was forced to retreat from place to place in order to conserve his limited resources in men and equipment. The economic situation gradually deteriorated. Victory was never a certainty. The solid contribution of such men as Thomas Paine, William Livingstone, and John Witherspoon in counteracting the colonists’ sagging morale has not always been fully appreciated; through their prolific writings they were able to inject a note of confidence and optimism that ultimately was to pay rich rewards.

As a congressman Witherspoon was in the midst of the decision-making process. His specific assignments, for example as a member of the Board of War, gave him opportunities to observe the military condition in the field. These activities also provided him with a basis for neutralizing the effect of Tory propaganda and instilling in the colonists a reason for believing that their cause would prevail. As a clergyman he spoke the religious language of a sizable portion of the population, many of whom were Calvinist in persuasion whether they were Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Baptist, Congregationalist, or Presbyterian. Witherspoon was especially effective in marshalling the considerable strength of the Scots in America and was determined that if he had anything to do with it, all Scots would support the patriotic side.

Furthermore, he could see beyond the immediate prosecution of the war, important as that was, to the equally crucial task of providing an adequate foundation for building a strong nation. While the war was still in progress he called for a sound economy based on hard money, a centralized government with the power of taxation, and a forward-looking foreign policy. He showed enormous confidence in the potential of America, citing her rich physical resources, her expanding population, and above all her spirit of individual freedom.

A fourth characteristic of Witherspoon’s political life was his profound sense of his calling as a Christian minister. Few of his political colleagues could ignore the fact that he was a minister of the Gospel. Witherspoon usually wore his tabs and Geneva gown at the meetings of the Congress, but the real impact of his moral presence was associated not with his clerical attire but with his reputation as a leading religious spokesman in the colonies.

Since he was able to communicate his thoughts in clear and cogent language, Witherspoon was asked several times to draft proclamations for special fast days and thanksgiving days authorized by the Congress. In these official documents his usual theme was the certainty of God’s providence guiding the American cause. He was firmly convinced of this, and he sought to transmit this conviction to those who assembled for the official days of national prayer. From our perspective of almost two centuries later and in the light of several more catastrophic wars, we would want to add some reservations to Witherspoon’s clear-cut and detailed interpretation of the workings of providence in the midst of the American Revolution, but we must not underestimate the positive effect his moral leadership had upon the religious rank and file in the colonies. Though they might experience reverses and defeats, Witherspoon assured them that any setback was temporary. Ultimately God would bring victory because their cause was just.

No matter how frenetic the pace of political affairs became, he refused to forget his calling as a minister. When the war was over and he was convinced that his political service was completed, he returned to his prime responsibilities as college president, pastor at the Princeton chapel, and a leader in organizing a national denominational structure for Presbyterians.

These four characteristics of Witherspoon’s political life are strikingly pertinent to the minister who today is to steer his way between the Scylla of inane quietism and the Charybdis of irresponsible radicalism.

Intellectual integrity is still absolutely essential for the minister who wishes to influence the body politic. Too many men and women enter the world of politics without doing their homework. Idealistic phrases and simplistic proposals are poor substitutes for tough intellectual analysis of problems.

Pragmatic activism is needed today more than ever before in the work of the ministry. After one has assiduously studied the issues at hand, the time comes for some form of specific political action. One minister may act as a catalyst to induce the laity to become more politically involved. A second minister may prefer to organize pilot projects that will encourage business and government with their greater resources to follow his lead. A third may choose to run for an office, as, for instance, on a school board.

Confidence in the future is a valuable quality for any minister to have, but especially for the one who is in politics. Our nation has already suffered enough from the divisive tactics of “unloving critics and uncritical lovers.” It needs a kind of “theology and hope” that will build on the best in our heritage and at the same time be open toward renewal of all the institutions of society.

And finally, the clear sense of vocation as a minister is always needed. Donald G. Miller, in stressing the point that theological education should remain true to its historic task of shedding theological light on society, recalls Henry Van Dyke’s story entitled “The Keeper of the Light.” When the lighthouse keeper died, his young daughter assumed the responsibility. One day a crisis developed: the supply boat scheduled to bring food to the isolated village was delayed. In desperation the people tried to get the oil in the lighthouse to use for food. The girl courageously locked herself in the lighthouse and with her father’s gun defended the precious oil. Eventually the food and supplies arrived. If the girl had not preserved the oil to keep the light burning, the boat could not have found its way to the village, and all would have died.

It is not enough for the minister to be busily engaged in humanitarian projects in the world; he must also use the light of his theological resources to interpret the contemporary scene. How tragic if the minister ignores or dissipates the really distinctive contribution he has to offer to the problem-stricken world.

As Witherspoon did, the Christian minister should weave his prophetic and pastoral roles together into one ministry of reconciliation.

Richard A. Hasler is pastor of the United Presbyterian Church in Hornell, New York. He has the B.D. from Princeton Seminary, M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary Foundation.

“If you plan to read only one book this year, this is probably the one you should choose.” With this recommendation the New York Times pointed up the importance of Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner, behavioristic scientist at Harvard. If this book is that significant, surely Christians should give attention to it.

Let me begin with two questions. Why did Dr. Skinner write this book? Answer: Skinner believes that only through radical application of behavioristic science, such as what he advocates, can mankind survive. What is his thesis? Answer: If society will apply to human behavior the scientific ingenuity that has proved successful in physics and biology, it can create the sort of utopia he has vividly pictured in his fictional Walden Two.

Skinner begins with the raw assumption that to approximate such a utopia will require planned control of the behavior of society and its components. This control must be based upon principles of behavioristic conditioning such as have already been applied in Pavlov’s experiments with dogs and in Skinner’s own experiments with pigeons. (He has conditioned them to play ping pong!) The control must be universal; no person or event may be exempt.

For several centuries, thoughtful men have believed that the best possible structure of human living rests solidly upon those principles that give the greatest support to man’s freedom and dignity. But Skinner believes those days are gone forever. “We have gone beyond freedom and dignity,” he says. He admits that in times past the concept of freedom played a vital role in men’s successful efforts to overthrow tyrants who had denied to them certain basic rights. But this concept of freedom and dignity that formerly prevailed now threatens twentieth-century man’s future, he says. He is convinced that no individual or nation can long survive without “controls” of some dynamic and conditioning character. The only outcome of unbridled permissiveness is chaos, anarchy, and destruction.

There is much truth in these observations. What makes Skinner’s scheme so revolutionary is his affirmation that these “controls” are found not within man himself but wholly in his environment; he flatly declares that all behavior is determined not from within but from without. Still more explosive is his judgment that there is nothing wrong, emotionally or morally, with people who behave badly. He writes: “They [young people] behave as they do, not because they are neurotic or because they feel alienated, but because of defective social environments in homes, schools, factories, and elsewhere” (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Knopf, 1971, p. 15; further quotations in this essay are from the same book unless otherwise identified).

“Mistakenly,” says Skinner, “we believe that man initiates, originates and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous” (p. 14). But Skinner says autonomy is a myth. Belief in an “inner man” is a superstition that originated, like belief in God, in man’s inability to understand his world.

What then is man? From the behavioristic standpoint, man is “a person who is a member of a species shaped by evolutionary contingencies of survival, displaying behavioral processes which bring him under the control of the environment in which he lives” (p. 211). This view of man provokes one of Skinner’s most ambiguous affirmations: “The direction of the controlling relation is reversed: a person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him” (p. 211). So! It is not a good man or a bad man that makes a good or bad environment—the reverse is true! But consider these words found near the end of his book: “While man is indeed controlled by his environment, we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making” (p. 215). Even more puzzling is this: “We have not yet seen what man can make of man.” It seems to me that if the professor were consistent, that sentence would read: We have yet to see what the environment can make of man.

At this point the inevitable question is: Who is to design and direct the behavior-controlled society? Will it be the environment? Let another social scientist, Aldous Huxley, reply:

When a piece of work gets done in the world, who actually does it?… Certainly not the social environment; for a group is not an organism, but only a blind unconscious organization. Everything that is done within the society is done by individuals.… No amount of scientific explanation, however comprehensive, can explain away the self-evident facts [Brave New World Revisited, p. 100].

And of course, Skinner has his chosen leaders as his controllers. Plato had his “philosopher-kings.” H. G. Wells had his “samarai.” Skinner has his behavioristic scientists and technicians, always portrayed as a “noble breed.” But are these persons made of other stuff than ordinary men? Are they something immune from pride and corruption?

Skinner admits that the control can be in the hands of either saints or villains. (The heading of the Times’s review of the book is startling: “Skinner’s Utopia: Panacea or Path to Hell”!) Even in Skinner’s eyes, these controllers are not so saintly as to preclude a suspicion that even they will have to be controlled. How does he handle this one? Quite readily: “The controller must be a member of the group he controls” (p. 172). So the controller controls the controlled, but, to make sure he does not over-control the controlled, the controlled control the controller! Feel better now?

The professor is not blind to the fact that in his utopia there would be conflicts of interest. But whose interest would finally prevail? Would there be no opposition party? What would happen if the dissidents shouted down “the conditioning reinforcements” in riotous protest?

And then there is the most crucial of all questions: Would such a society guarantee to man his legitimate creaturely freedom? Skinner has another ready answer: “The individual will find his own destiny fulfilled by cooperating freely with the purposes of society.” Do we not hear echoes of Nazism and Communism here? The existential psychoanalyst Rollo May thinks Skinner is a totalitarian without fully knowing it. He comments: “I have never found any place in Skinner’s system for the rebel, yet the capacity to rebel is of the essence in a constructive society” (Time, Sept. 21, 1971, p. 52).

But what about the future? Who of us is not haunted, as is the professor, by the horrendous prospect of the suicide of the race? To imply that such a crime could be charged to some impersonal and neutral entity called “the environment” would be to abolish any concept of moral reality within the structure of the universe. And that is why we Christians reject all utopian schemes, whether scientific or romantic, that are founded upon a false view of man.

Many scientists, psychiatrists, and theologians vigorously oppose Skinner’s view of man. The well-known psychologist Michael Beldock wrote perceptively:

Man’s problems are all rooted in that “inner man” on whose psychological nature the fate of all of us hangs like a fine platinum thread. It has not changed very much, if at all. Man has changed [outwardly], having added to his natural biological capacities, special devices for increased speed and strength, and for the relative control of nature, and for the conquering of disease. But the “inner man” still struggles with the same issues: greed, jealousy, anger, and how to live with one another and like it. It is hardly wise to assume that because man has been partly successful in remaking his physical environment, the same set of skills will be sufficient to control his inner psychological makeup [Psychiatry and Social Science, Dec., 1971, p. 18].

The writings of Bertrand Russell, too, undermine Skinner’s whole structure. In speaking of the aspirations of the scientific community to bring about a “better world” this distinguished philosopher and scientist asks a stubborn question: “What stands in our way?” He answers: “It is not physical or technical obstacles, but only the evil passions in human minds” (The Impact of Science on Society). Now we have it. Our problem is not primarily an evil environment; it is evil men. John wrote of Jesus: “He knew what was in man” (John 2:25). Jesus knew what the essential man is. He knew that the core of human personality is in the heart center; he knew that heart center is spirit; and he knew that out of that spirit are the issues of life. He never looked upon man as only a body, or as a body with a spirit. He always looked upon him as a spirit with a body. Nor did he believe that the body is inherently evil. He knew that when man behaves badly, it is not because any part of his physical being is bad in and of itself, but because, as Jesus said, there is within man an unclean spirit, out of which emerge “evil thoughts, fornications, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, evil, slander, pride, foolishness.” And then Jesus pronounced one of his “universals” that all history confirms: “All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man” (Mark 7:21–23). Christ did not spend his time and energy dealing principally with externals in his efforts to help broken humanity. It is true, blessedly true, that he healed and fed people, but the context clearly indicates that he was interested more in their hearts than in their bodies. He ministered to them both spiritually and physically, but there was no question in his mind as to which was of primary importance. Blessed is the Church when it follows in his steps.

I have no quarrel with Professor Skinner about the need for a changed environment. Nor do I deny that both men and the environment need to be under some kind of control. Never in history has this not been true. My basic difference lies in the fact that Skinner believes man is best controlled from without, by manipulation, whereas Christians believe that man is best controlled from within, by motivation.

The Christian Gospel most surely calls for obedience on man’s part, which indubitably implies that the Christian is under some form of control; but by no means does this control rob him of that creaturely freedom and dignity which are legitimately his as gifts from the divine Creator. He accepts this control of his own free will. This voluntary assumption of an inner control over his life, thoughts, and actions is a result of a personal, uninhibited choice to open his sovereign consciousness—his “holy of holies”—and invite in Another Person. And who is this Person? None other than the sovereign God in the person of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the only One who has the right to exercise ultimate control over his creatures.

Paul of Tarsus had made this choice. What was his motive for doing so? “He loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Of what love does Paul speak? It was not man’s love for himself (the highest level recognized by philosophers of the “Age of Reason”), nor was it his love for his fellow man (so persistently advocated by secularists and religious humanists of our times), nor was it man’s love for God as admonished in the First Commandment. Rather, it was that love of which John writes: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). This was the dominant and all-consuming passion that motivated Paul, the greatest of all Christians. It was an experimental conviction with him, for when he tries to explain to the Corinthians why he so loved them, and why he would “most gladly spend and be spent” in their behalf, his simple answer, in Second Corinthians 5:14, was, “The love of Christ controls me.” Now we have it—the ultimate control! The ultimate control based upon the ultimate motive! And that motive is God’s love for man in and through Christ, the Crucified and Risen One.

Let me give two illustrations of how this “divine control” functions on two levels, the individual and the societal. I quote from an article on the “Jesus movement” published in U. S. News and World Report, March 20, 1972:

Today, at a time when B. F. Skinner and other behavioral psychologists proclaim the coming of the “manipulated man”—responsive by conditioned reflex to the requirements of external society and its rulers—the “Jesus people” are reasserting the validity and force of inner experience in shaping human lives. In recent years, America’s young have tried to find themselves through drugs, political violence and easy morality. Now they are turning to Christianity in its oldest form—still looking for answers to the ultimate questions: Who am I? What is the order of things? Where do I belong?

In a survey of Jesus people made in southern California and published in Society, one finds these items: 72 per cent of those listing their fathers’ occupations indicated a-white-collar background, mostly upper and middle class; 62 per cent of those over eighteen, and 44 per cent of those under that age, reported drug usage prior to conversion—nearly always more than incidental; 62 per cent said they had engaged in pre-marital sex before conversion; fewer than 5 per cent continued to do so afterwards. One does not have to approve all phases of this movement to recognize that many of these young people have undergone a genuine change from within that expresses itself outwardly in a changed environment.

My second illustration points up the fact that what takes place on the individual level can also take place on a much broader scale in society. The Cambridge Modern History sums up the eighteenth century in England as a time of “expiring hopes.” England seemed on the brink of its own “Bath of Blood,” like that into which France was plunged; but then came the Evangelical Awakening under the leadership particularly of John Wesley. The tide turned.

J. Wesley Bready speaks of this awakening as “the watershed of Anglo-Saxon history,” for this movement

became the spiritual Magna Charta of the common people of England.… This peerless revival caused the then prodigal Anglo-Saxon people to find its soul; and having found its soul, it created an epic era of freedom and social reform.… The glorious heritage of liberty and social reform bequeathed to the modern Anglo-Saxon and American peoples has been fed at many springs; but the mighty river which carried those blessings far and wide is none other than the Evangelical Revival of “vital practical Christianity”—a revival which mediated the Gospel’s inspiration and ethic not only to the individual but to the home, the factory, the market place and the seats of learning and government [Eighteenth Century England: This Freedom—Whence?, preface, XVI].

Dr. Bready concludes his remarkable study of Wesley and Whitefield and their leadership in this awakening, both in England and in America, with a challenging insight to which all social reformers, both Christian and secular, should give serious heed:

The early leaders were pre-eminently ambassadors of Christ who had experienced in their own lives the transforming power of the Gospel, and though not indifferent to social and political affairs, they felt the “call” to preach a Gospel which transforms men rather than to agitate for social reconstruction. Indeed had Wesley and Whitefield spent their careers as social reformers they would have lived disillusioned, and died heartbroken men. From their efforts, however, emerged the most profound political and social achievements, thus illustrating history’s central truth: that the changing of the hearts of men is ever the surest road toward lifting the level of human society.

Howard W. Ferrin is chancellor emeritus of Barrington College in Barrington, Rhode Island, which he served as president from 1925 to 1965. He has written several books, including “The Riddle of the Middle East.”

This issue marks the end of our sixteenth year of publication and contains the annual index, with 5,000 entries. Students, teachers, and preachers will find this index useful in writing papers, sermonizing, and teaching.

Months ago we sent Managing Editor David E. Kucharsky to the Soviet Union as part of the entourage that accompanied President Nixon on his historic trip, and he brought back information on the religious situation behind the Iron Curtain. This summer News Editor Edward Plowman traveled throughout Europe, spending some of his time at the Olympic games at Munich. His first report appears in this issue.

Next issue Mr. Plowman will survey the religious scene in a four-page report that will concentrate on the moving of God’s Spirit among the young people of Europe. He has brought back voluminous information gleaned from conversations with young people who have been gloriously converted. This is a thrilling and challenging story that includes dramatic accounts of conversions among Communist writers at Munich. It all begins to sound like an updated version of the Acts of the Apostles.

Soon after leaving seminary, I applied for a post as chaplain to a military school, and through some oversight I was put on the short list. Confidently I boned up on questions I expected to be asked. Never was disillusion more utter. Came the day, and I was ushered before a formidable array of top brass. I promptly discovered that the martial mind roves along lines decidedly unfair.

For starters, a brigadier sent down a curly one. “Do you,” he demanded balefully, “consider yourself a supporter of lost causes?” (Gentle reader of the current, religious, and thoughtful, how would you have responded?) Mercifully I have no recollection of how I coped with the situation. By the time all other candidates had presumably withdrawn and they got around to offering me the job, I had already committed myself to another area where Lost Causemanship was not regarded as a burning issue.

Many years later, a not dissimilar matter arose during my candidacy for a key post in my own denomination. This was admittedly something of a kite-flying ploy, for while the establishment encouraged a nodding acquaintance with the Scarlet Woman, I was known to be in league with her detractors. Again, however, I made the short list.

The selection committee was courteous, friendly, and (like the earlier chaplain-seekers) tactful enough during a lengthy interview to raise not a single theological or religious question. Only on one point did they come close to it. “Are you,” I was asked, “likely to take a strong stand on anything?” This was honesty indeed. Strong stands, it was implied, were definitely Out. I did not get the job, and I could appreciate the wisdom of its not being offered to one with my suspect antecedents.

Now this should be the cue for jumping on my theological steed and rushing madly off in all directions, but today I am resolved on low-keyed, feet-on-the-ground stuff. My fellow columnists on this page can, I know, be relied on to redress the balance toward controversial divinity and spiritual uplift. I want to take a strong stand on lost causes.

I am not referring to those that are irreclaimably lost, like that of the unfortunate ladies who were condemned to carry water in a sieve, or of Sisyphus the veteran stone-roller (though he got a lot of exercise on the side). Nor am I a professional espouser of lost causes, like Dean Burgon, Norman Thomas, and E. M. Forster, who almost seemed to make a career out of it.

Most of us do, however, have our list of incorrigibles. Mine includes chatterers in church before the service begins; unthoughtful hymn-singers expressing a preference for an “oldtime religion” with which they simply could not cope; Christian publishers who do not pay their contributors and rely on their goodness not to hie them before the magistrate; drivers who discuss sanctification while doing forty-five in a thirty-mile zone on the basis that they are “no longer under law.” The latter tendency genuinely mystifies me, and once I summoned up courage to say so to one totally committed to the authority of Scripture. I mentioned First Peter 2:13. “Ah,” he said breezily, “I always add to that one the postscript, ‘provided the ordinance is reasonable.’ ” The theological implications are staggering.

But that is a diversion. My friend Eutychus V has been squeezing impressive mileage out of asking readers what they would do if they were editing this journal. Eut should have known better, and thoroughly deserved the answers he got.

Nevertheless I am not too proud to learn from him. Let me take reader participation a step further, and seek advice on how to get evangelicals to meet literary deadlines solemnly undertaken. Evangelicals, I said deliberately, because piety and procrastination are often found in bizarre affinity. I know that this is a lost cause, and that there will be muttered maledictions on my bringing it up at all, but as the organizer of sundry literary projects past and present I am determined to strike a blow on behalf of editors and publishers everywhere—a much maligned and misunderstood breed.

It is fourteen years since I jauntily accepted my first encyclopedic assignment, one from which men wiser in their generation had recoiled in alarm. Now, a little greyer and considerably less trusting (no editor can have serious doubts about original sin), I would give some advice to those who are rashly contemplating a similar type of work: Don’t do it.

If you disregard this, note the following:

1. No man is a hero to his editor; indeed, many a scholar’s reputation for piety depends upon the editorial silence. The preacher-scribe is very susceptible to the double-think. Will Rogers used to say that no nation should go to war till it had paid for the last one; he might have agreed that no minister should hold forth on moral turpitude till he has fulfilled his own ethical commitments to others. It would be tempting to emulate one Thai radio station and broadcast a list of public delinquents.

2. Theological conservatives are the worst offenders; thus in order to keep the statistics favorable I regularly sneak into the ranks a platoon of those whose theological unorthodoxy is more than offset by their meticulous attention to deadlines.

3. The ideal editor, like the ideal school principal, ought to be slightly unpopular. Coping with a couple of hundred scholars, including the normal quota of the idiosyncratic, I often think of myself in terms of Father O’Flynn, the Irish cleric famed in song and story, given to

Checkin’ the crazy ones

Coaxin’ onaisy ones

Liftin’ the lazy ones

On wid the stick.

4. When sweet reasonableness fails, I try firmness, but the mailed fist tends to be ignored, or brings back reproachful tales of obscure ailments, unparalleled domestic calamities (“my bookcase fell on me”), strange emergencies (“I had to go to Jerusalem”), or faculty in-fighting of gory and disabling dimensions. One brash young professor said didn’t I know that no writer took an editor seriously unless subjected to merciless harassment. He’d caught me out, for I didn’t know that, me with a a touching addiction to Robert W. Service (“a promise made is a debt unpaid”).

5. So we come to sneaky and unscrupulous tactics, and I offer a piece of counsel gratis to the longsuffering who have read thus far: The most effective way to get a long overdue article out of a laggard is to write to his wife. And make it poignant. “But that’s fiendish!” commented a young Episcopalian on whom I tried it last week. That may be so, but it shows a gratifying success rate. In the case of one wifeless scholar I addressed a plain postcard in capital letters to his dog; his tail will forever wag in my heart, for I had the material within a week.

The trouble is, by the time I get around to editing I have been exhausted by the preliminaries. There’s a lesson in that somewhere if I could just lay my finger on it.

There’s a new emphasis within evangelical Methodists’ “Good News” group. And last month’s third annual Convocation of United Methodists for Evangelical Christianity, held in St. Louis, reflected the change.

The 1,100 delegates heard a potpourri of speakers at morning and evening sessions of the three-day conference with the theme “Above All—Christ.” A charismatic, a counter-culture minister, a black, and a fair share of traditional evangelists shared the speaker’s podium. Between speakers the audience listened to Jesus love songs, black soul (gospel), and Hawaiian-style “sweet Jesus” music. Delegates also got to sing some of those simple songs of the faith.

Delegates had a choice of six training sessions and thirteen seminars to attend in the afternoons; each was repeated four times, with such topics as racism, the charismatic movement, and “frankly, political” “Strategies for Influencing the Annual Conference.”

At last spring’s international United Methodist General Conference, the 200 known evangelical delegates were unorganized, admitted Robert G. Mayfield, a member of the Good News steering committee. Mayfield, who opened the convocation, explained to the delegates just what happened and once again advocated economic pressure to change United Methodism. He would like Good News to become a much more active lobby group within the denomination, rather than remain merely a movement. He charged the denomination’s various boards with “misappropriation of funds,” though he admitted at a news conference that he could cite no examples.

This year’s Good News meeting turned out to be a kind of target for another lobbying effort. Unlike last year, when there was much discussion of the evangelical’s responsibility in the social arena, the poverty and race seminars were neglected. In fact, at some sections no one showed up. And last year there had been no mention of the gifts of the Spirit (particularly tongues); this year the two seminars on the Holy Spirit were filled.

C. Philip Hinerman, vice-chairman of the Good News steering committee, was disappointed that the social-action seminars were empty but maintained that there is “a great social edge to the conference.” Other speakers urged evangelicals to get involved.

The only black speaker on the program, W. Maurice King, preached a soft-sell sermon against racial hypocrisy. When he told delegates and visitors, “We can’t fight busing during the week and then bus our children to church on Sunday,” few said “amen.” But when King declared, “Man, to be black is to be evangelical,” the crowd applauded enthusiastically.

The real concern, however, wasn’t social issues (one delegate said they’re “oversaturated with social concern” in their home churches). The big news in Good News is the charismatic movement.

Mrs. Reeve Betts, a former missionary to India, spoke for nearly an hour and a half on her experiences with pain—she suffered from blinding headaches for thirty years—healing, and tongues. She begged the audience to seek the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and defended tongues-speaking as nondivisive.

Good News founder Charles Keysor joined Mrs. Betts in leading a seminar on “The Evangelical and the Charismatic Movement.” Keysor styled himself a “sympathetic critic” of glossolalia. While a majority of the participants were avowed non-tongues-speakers, some said they had had the experience.

A woman from Kansas who a year ago was ready to leave the United Methodist Church said she found new life among the evangelicals in her church and neighborhood, most of whom are charismatics. Mrs. Mary Simpson explained that she speaks in tongues only during private prayer and that she can distinguish linguistically between sounds. “One name,” she said, “sounds different from another name.” Later she told a fellow delegate about two healings she experienced—one of acute hepatitis (“The doctor said it was a miracle”) and the other of a 50 per cent hearing loss.

Another woman was concerned that she hadn’t had a charismatic experience, even after much prayer about it. And this is the problem some have with the movement. Keysor and Dave Seamands, who led the seminar on “The Gifts of the Spirit,” warned that tongues could be divisive. “No one,” said Keysor, “wants to be called a second-class citizen in God’s Kingdom just because he hasn’t spoken in tongues.”

But all speakers called for the filling of the Spirit. Bishop Kenneth W. Copeland, considered by mainline Methodists the most evangelical of the church’s bishops, said that the delegates better get “tuned in to the Holy Spirit.”

While the number of delegates as a whole decreased, the number of youth participants increased. This is the first year Good News had a planned youth program, and about 150 high-school and college-age kids attended the convocation. Fred Kunkel of Lamesa, Texas, one of the most active young people there, hopes that 600 or 700 will attend next year. (Good News plans to hold next year’s meeting at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, July 30 to August 2.)

Each evening after the general sessions ended the young people held special “youthspirations.” Christian World Liberation Front founder Jack Sparks told the young people about his work in Berkeley among the counter-culture radicals. He suggested that rather than meeting in the hotel the kids should be witnessing in some park. And the next day about sixty young people and fifteen adults took his advice.

After a short briefing the group went to the St. Louis Zoo to witness. All who went were also required to attend the “Personal Evangelism” seminar. A security officer looked nervous when they entered, reported one of the leaders, but later commented, “As soon as I saw the Bibles, I knew we weren’t going to have any trouble.” The group sang and witnessed for over two hours, and seven people professed faith in Christ.

At the final session evangelist Edmund Robb invited all those who wanted the Spirit’s filling to come forward and kneel near the stage. But the area was too small for the crowd; people all over the auditorium knelt by chairs with arms raised in prayer and praise.

Although no one spoke in tongues—audibly, at any rate—this convocation seemed little different from other recent charismatic meetings. Methodists, like so many other mainline denominations, are getting the Spirit.

Mid-America Baptist

To the six Southern Baptist seminaries (Golden Gate, Midwestern, New Orleans, Southeastern, Southern, and Southwestern), a seventh has been added, but with a significant difference in organization. Mid-America, which began in Little Rock, Arkansas, this month, has an independent board instead of being owned and operated by the Convention as a whole. The school stresses, however, that all its trustees and teachers are members of cooperating congregations of the denomination. The Bible is recognized as “the verbally inspired Word of God, wholly without error.…”

The president is Gray Allison, holder of a Th.D. from New Orleans Seminary, where he taught for twelve years. Director of development is H. D. Bruce, president-emeritus of East Texas Baptist College. Former SBC president R. G. Lee and the head of the Arkansas state convention were among the Baptist leaders participating in the founding ceremonies.

Hensley’S Golden State

Million-minister-maker Kirby J. Hensley and his mail-order D.D. degree mill are grinding again in the nation’s most populous state.

The “bishop” of the Universal Life Church, Incorporated—which got its start in a Modesto, California, garage in 1962—has ridden out a temporary injunction that forbade him from issuing doctor of divinity degrees in the state for three years (see March 14, 1969, issue, page 34).

And the semi-literate onetime Baptist has realized his hope that the U. S. Supreme Court would hear his case. Hensley is presently under a stay from a year’s imprisonment in Santa Clara County while the high court considers his appeal. He was convicted in San Jose in 1969 for mailing out honorary degrees with a $20 set of lessons on how to set up a do-it-yourself church.

Hensley achieved national notoriety when he ordained by mail several animals, including a dog and a bird. He claims to have ordained 1.2 million ministers—most of them human beings—through his free mailaway scheme. The courts have said his church and ordination mill are legal, but the California attorney general blew the whistle on the D.D.s, saying Hensley has no accredited institution.

Dismissal was granted by San Joaquin County superior judge Bill Dozier last month without opposition from the attorney general. The injunction had expired.

Hensley, 60, whose ministers are free to believe anything—or nothing—says he’s “going to start issuing religious degrees exactly the same as I was.”

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, since California clamped down on his non-curricular activities. Hensley said after his Stockton, California, court appearance: “I won’t move my stuff back.… I’ll simply begin mailing them out here from Arizona.”

His choice may be auspicious: Arizona’s motto is Ditat Deus—God enriches.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Paoc Preaching Points

Canada’s largest Pentecostal body officially endorsed participation in Key 73 Canadian efforts at its annual convention last month in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The 150,000-member Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada also agreed to grant special preaching licenses to native Indian and Eskimo laymen who fail to meet PAOC ordination requirements.

Delegates to the denomination’s twenty-eighth biennial General Conference heard American Pentecostal leader Thomas Zimmerman, Assemblies of God general superintendent, urge participation in the continent-wide Key 73 thrust. (In Canada, a separate committee is planning a nation-wide effort along the lines of the Key 73 effort in the United States. PAOC leaders and ministers are already participating in the plans, but full endorsement by the conference was needed.)

The 400 delegates agreed to do away with college and seminary requirements for native lay preachers, accepting the argument that a man can be called to preach and yet have little formal education. One official estimated that in Manitoba alone more than fifteen Indian laymen were eligible for the special licenses (renewable annually). Others across the western provinces and North West Territories are also eligible. The church has 130 Indian churches or preaching points and two Eskimo congregations throughout the Canadian north. The denomination is generally regarded as having the second-largest church group (behind the Anglicans) working with Canada’s native peoples.

The PAOC mission budget, meanwhile, was boosted by $165,000 during a special nation-wide telephone hookup in which churches and congregations phoned mission offerings to a special Sunday-night conference session.

International Congress On World Evangelization

Another major strategy session on evangelism is scheduled for 1974, this one specifically aimed at proclaiming the Gospel throughout the globe within the current generation. After a meeting last month with church leaders from all six continents, evangelist Billy Graham announced that 3,000 people would be invited to what is being called an International Congress on World Evangelization. The emphasis will be on delegate participation. Location and specific dates are still under study.

Graham said he believed “God will use this congress to focus our attention on the strategy for total world evangelization in our time.” He told newsmen in Los Angeles that since the World Congress on Evangelism in 1966 many church leaders—pastors, evangelists, and missionaries—have urged a second such gathering.

Anglican bishop A. Jack Dain of Australia is to be executive chairman, heading up a twenty-five-member planning committee formed out of a 150-member convening committee. Dr. Donald E. Hoke, veteran American missionary in Japan, has been appointed coordinator.

The 1966 meeting in Berlin was held under the auspices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It touched off a series of regional evangelism congresses and has been credited with helping to spark a new interest and participation around the world.

Religion In Transit

Campus Crusade for Christ will hold a second evangelism Explo in Korea, 1974, according to CCC president Bill Bright. Attendance goal is 300,000—triple the Dallas Explo goal.

Filming of the off-Broadway musical Godspell has begun in New York City. The movie, updated and set in contemporary New York, uses tourist sites for many of its scenes.

Divorce is increasing among clergymen and their wives, notes marriage counselor Donald Moore of Wake Forest, North Carolina. He cites unfaithfulness—“emotional as well as physical”—as a leading cause, rooted in emotional immaturity and unwholesome experiences with parents.

The Roman Catholic Church must join the World Council of Churches at the next WCC assembly (1975) if the conciliatory spirit of the 1960s is to be continued, warned Douglas Roche, editor of the Canadian newspaper Western Catholic Reporter.

The United Church of Canada faces a serious pastoral shortage and, despite mergers of some congregations, will be in need of 175 pastors by 1974, warned General Council secretary Ernest E. Long, who recently retired.

Seattle’s Metropolitan Community Church, ministering primarily to homosexuals, has received a charter as a member of the homosexual-oriented Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Churches, founded by Troy Perry of Los Angeles.

Contributions to major Protestant churches are increasing despite continually dropping memberships, according to a National Council of Churches study.

A national day of prayer has been set for March 2, 1973, by the National Association of Evangelicals. The NAE plans to emphasize “spiritual renewal” through the year, though it decided not to participate in Key 73.

Rex Humbard is reopening Mackinac College as a Christian university. Humbard bought the Moral Rearmament structure on Mackinac Island, Michigan, for $3 million and has been using it as a winter-summer resort.

Personalia

Singer Pat Boone and his family became “Boonies” in bunny-land last month when they entertained at a Playboy Club-Hotel in McAfee, New Jersey. Boone disagreed with the Playboy philosophy but said he welcomed the chance to spread his own Jesus-people thoughts.

Evangelist Billy Graham will visit Nagaland, India, in November as part of the state’s 100th anniversary celebrations of the arrival of the first Baptist missionary. Most of the area’s inhabitants are Baptists.

British pop singer Cliff Richard and his five-man backup group have been banned from a Singapore performance this month. Under government regulations for foreign entertainers, their hair is too long.

The Reverend Ira Gallaway, of Fort Worth, Texas, known as a staunch evangelical, was elected general secretary of the United Methodist Church’s evangelism board.

A Dutch Reformed Church tribunal has ruled invalid the election of WCC staffer Albert H. van den Heuvel as general secretary of the denomination, because only one candidate was proposed. Van den Heuvel, who obtained a 28–20 majority, will be renominated at an extraordinary session of the synod this month.

Arthur H. Matthews, assistant editor of the Presbyterian Journal, was named press aide for evangelist Billy Graham.

President Nixon appointed Dr. Harry L. Evans, president of Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to a five-man commission studying volunteerism across the country. The commission will work with the National Center for Volunteer Action.

Dr. Davie Napier will be inaugurated as the seventh president of Pacific School of Religion at the school next month.

A black priest was appointed Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Johannesburg, capital of the apartheid state of South Africa. The Reverend Pietro Butelezi was serving as a diocesan administrator in Natal, South Africa.

World Scene

Four French Roman Catholic priests, captured by the North Vietnamese during heavy fighting in South Viet Nam in April, were freed unharmed last month. The North Vietnamese still hold five Protestant missionaries.

Yugoslavian radio broadcasts indicate government concern over religious activity in Vojvodina, an autonomous region. The Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox churches were singled out, but the state radio said the activity was legal.

A joint Anglican-Lutheran committee recommended full acceptance of each other’s ministries. The two-year study also suggested intercommunion as a first step to acceptance.

The British Methodist Church, with slightly more than 600,000 members, reported a loss of 50,000 for the past three years.

A Texas-born missionary is bishop-elect of the new Anglican diocese of Botswana in South Africa. Shannon Mallory will be a white prelate in a black-dominated area. He was chosen by the provincial assembly of the Church of Central Africa.

Communists in Lithuania who antagonize believers with crudeness in anti-religious attacks were warned by a party newspaper that a religious backlash could occur in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

Jesus Christ Superstar, a super hit in the United States, received lukewarm to hostile reviews when it opened in London last month. One critic told newspaper readers there was a “false” assumption that the musical had something to do with Christianity. Another called it a “child’s view” of the New Testament.

Miniskirts at the Vatican will now be covered with long black monks’ robes. The Vatican formerly refused entry to women wearing the short skirts. The robes qualify as proper attire for Vatican visitors.

Southern Baptist missionaries in Israel have agreed to document their opposition to anti-Semitism. A resolution passed by the Baptist Convention in Israel calls anti-Semitism a “sin against Christ” and a denial of Jesus’ teaching.

Two charismatic conferences, one on the heels of the other, drew thousands of persons to Minneapolis last month. The Assemblies of God Council on Spiritual Life (August 14–18) followed the First International Lutheran Conference on the Holy Spirit (August 8–12). That the Lutheran “neo-Pentecostals” upstaged the “classic Pentecostals”—in the mass media, at least—didn’t appear to upset anyone. And many people attended both meetings.

Five thousand persons attended the Assemblies’ meeting. At the opening rally they heard a report from the Executive Presbytery that said in part, “The winds of the Spirit are blowing freely outside the normally recognized Pentecostal bodies. Thousands of persons have prayed for years that this could come to pass.” Apparently referring to the swelling charismatic tide in mainline Protestant churches as well as in the Roman Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God leaders declared that “the coming of the Holy Spirit upon so many in such a broad sweep of the church world is God’s way of counteracting the liberalism, secularism, humanism, and occultism that plague our present-day society.”

The unofficial Lutheran meeting, like most charismatic events these days, turned out to be an ecumenical affair that some traditional Lutherans probably found more Pentecostal than Lutheran in approach. Revival music, speaking and singing in tongues with outstretched arms, frequent prayerful “praise-the-Lord” and “hallelujah” exclamations, several prayer sessions for salvation, healing, and Holy Spirit baptism, and reports of “miracles” that followed charismatic renewal in other countries characterized the four-day conference. At one session, a bearded young man screamed in agony, and the audience prayed for his “deliverance from demons.” Later, he jumped up and down in apparent thanksgiving.

Nineteen workshops on various aspects of the charismatic movement were repeated six times. The Reverend A. Herbert Mjorud, whose call as an evangelist of the American Lutheran Church was terminated several years ago because he allegedly promoted speaking in tongues, led the most popular seminar, “Faith and Healing.” Mjorud along with other evangelists laid hands on those who came to the workshop for healing. He also led prayer for mass healings at the plenary sessions.

One Lutheran pastor from Tofte, Minnesota, reported that a year ago he was healed of a back ailment after Mjorud prayed for him. His leg, he told a Religious News Service reporter, grew two inches. In the conference’s mass healing services Mjorud prayed, “In the name of Jesus, we command every sickness and disease to go.”

The conference claimed a registration of some 8,000 persons, though it seemed that there were never more than 5,000 or 6,000 present at any one session. Hundreds of the registrants were reportedly Roman Catholics, and hundreds more were non-Lutheran Protestants and traditional Pentecostals. Five of the seven main speakers were non-Lutherans. No Lutheran denominational officials were on the program. The final service of holy communion was open to “all born-again believers.”

The organizing was done by a steering committee of sixteen Lutherans headed by the Reverend Norris L. Wogen, who recently resigned as pastor of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church (ALC), in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Wogen estimated that 1,000 Lutheran pastors in this country have “received the baptism of the Spirit”—400 in the American Lutheran Church, 400 in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and 200 in the Lutheran Church in America. But many, he said, aren’t making themselves known to avoid becoming targets of criticism and suspicion among congregations and hierarchies. Because of this, and to avoid personality emphasis, names of other conference steering-members weren’t disclosed.

Leading Roman Catholic charismatic theologian Father Edward O’Connor of Notre Dame told conferees that the primary purpose of charismatic inspiration “seems to be to demonstrate to us in a convincing way that Jesus did not depart from us 2,000 years ago but still reigns among us with power.” O’Connor pleaded with charismatics to be obedient to their spiritual shepherds and urged pastors and other church authorities to remember that they have been “put in charge of souls with the mission of opening them up to the Spirit of God.”

Indonesian evangelist Mel Tari, another non-Lutheran, reported resurrections and other miracles performed since charismatic revival broke out on Timor Island in 1965. A Seattle, Washington, Episcopal rector, Dennis Bennett, told how this movement had awakened his once hopeless parish (it’s now the largest in his diocese). He also reported that singer Johnny Cash received Holy Spirit baptism at a recent Las Vegas appearance; however, Cash later denied the story. American Baptist minister Kenneth Pagard of Chula Vista, California, described the work of his charismatic congregation. And David du Plessis, founder of the World Pentecostal Council and co-chairman of the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue held recently in Zurich, Switzerland, told the applauding delegates that he heard a critic of the charismatic movement say, “Don’t worry. It’s just a passing whim. It will blow over.” “And it did,” observed du Plessis. “It blew all over.” Lutheran speakers at the conference were Mjorud and Hans Jacob Froen, a pastor from Oslo, Norway.

The conference charged no registration fee, but free-will offerings reportedly will meet the $18,000 expenses, which included several chartered planes that brought European Lutherans to Minneapolis.

Wogen and du Plessis urged charismatics to remain within their churches. But several conference workshops were led by formerly Lutheran pastors who had severed denominational ties. One of them emphasized the need to trust in God, and said his income had doubled since he left his denomination.

Wogen got the idea for the conference after attending a Catholic charismatic conference at Notre Dame (see June 23 issue, page 34). He said another Lutheran conference is planned for next summer, possibly again in Minneanolis.

Religion On The Rocks

Taking the church to the people, a popular idea, has been carried a step further by a Lutheran minister in New York City. With approval from the local synod of the Lutheran Church in America, Dale R. Lind now tends a bar on the upper east side of New York.

Lind, a Gettysburg Seminary graduate, received a church call to work with young adults whose lives are unaffected by the church. Claiming that Jesus went to the people, Lind got a job in a bar frequented by pimps and prostitutes. He now works in a bar that caters to young couples and singles.

Off hours he meets with customers seeking more help and teaches courses at New York Theological Seminary. Besides helping customers, Lind also has become unofficial chaplain to Manhattan bartenders.

Church officials told the New York Times they were pleased with Lind’s work and predicted that self-supporting ministries such as Lind’s (he earns $150 per week from the job and collects no salary from the church) may be the church of the future.

Wogen regards the charismatic upsurge as a prelude to Christ’s second coming. “I have an abiding conviction that I will not die until I have seen Christ,” he said. “And my hair’s pretty white, too.”

Southern Presbyterians: Bedrock Revision

Southern Presbyterians, who have looked to the 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith as denominational bedrock, are being asked to consider a new, poetic confession that some characterize as vague and weak. The draft confession took three years to write and is now under study by members of the Presbyterian Church U.S. If approved at intervening stages it will be presented for ratification at the church’s 1975 General Assembly.

The twenty-three-page document, written in a poetic style, is praised by supporters as a statement in plain English with the emphasis on clarity. Detractors call it obscure and say it embodies a form of “vague universalism” that seems more humanistic than Christian.

Newly elected church moderator Dr. L. Nelson Bell particularly dislikes the absence of explicit statements on the Virgin Birth and on biblical authority. The confession does not use the word “virgin,” preferring to say: “He came as a child,/born of woman as is every child,/yet born of God’s initiative as was no other child.” And “infallible” is not mentioned in the same breath as “Bible”; the statement says only that the Bible is the record of Israel’s experiences with God set in various literary forms that, as they were read and expounded, proved sufficient witnesses to Jesus Christ.

The draft was written by a ten-man committee headed by Dr. Albert C. Winn, president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. It is expected to undergo revision when reactions are received from church members. Questionnaires are due back December 15.

The draft is to come to the 1973 assembly for study and to the 1974 assembly for approval to present it to the presbyteries. If 75 per cent of the presbyteries approve, the 1975 assembly will take final action.

Conservatives in the denomination who are disturbed by what they consider liberal tendencies met in Weaverville, North Carolina, last month to plan a new church should the proposed merger with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. be approved. Speakers included Westminster Seminary president Edmund P. Clowney and Greenville, Alabama, attorney W. Jack Williamson, a member of the steering committee planning the new church. The participants went ahead with their plans despite pleas from Bell that they stick to witnessing for Christ. Bell was a founder of the weekly Presbyterian Journal but broke with the magazine’s editorial board and other conservative groups when they announced plans last year for formation of a new church.

Plans call for the group to seek a “survival” clause if merger goes through, allowing opposed congregations to withdraw with their property. It was also suggested that where there is sufficient strength, entire presbyteries should be pulled out.

Fcc Petition-Pondering

Federal Communications Commission officials are examining two petitions by Christian broadcasting groups—one to get started, the other to hire theologically compatible employees.

In Washington, D. C., two groups combined forces to seek FCC approval of plans to purchase an AM station and convert it to full-time Christian broadcasting. The new organization, WCTN Broadcasting, is headed by MacArthur A. and Keith M. Jollay, the father-son pastoral team at Christ (Assemblies of God) Church in the capital, and Bruce Jackson, a Washington businessman and backer of Jesus Radio, which tried earlier to obtain a license. While the FCC ponders the application, backers are scouring the capital to raise funds. The younger Jollay says that no target date is set to begin broadcasting but that he hopes the station will be on the air this fall. If not, he says, the whole plan may fall through.

In Washington state the FCC was approached to allow a Christian station to examine religious as well as professional qualifications of prospective employees (see June 9 issue, page 4). King’s Garden Incorporated, operating two stations in Edmonds, Washington, wants the FCC to change its hiring rules and exempt religious organizations from 1968 Civil Rights Act requirements. King’s Garden appealed to the FCC to be consistent with new congressional statutes that allow such organizations to examine the religious qualifications without fear of Civil Rights Act reprisals.

The issue hit the FCC when Trygve Anderson, applicant for a post as news announcer, was asked if he and his wife were Christians and could give a testimony. Anderson refused to answer, maintaining the questions had nothing to do with his technical qualifications. Backing Anderson is the communication office of the United Church of Christ, which claims broadcasters are “public trustees” and cannot discriminate on religious grounds. The church has asked the FCC to deny the proposed rule change.

BARRIE DOYLE

The Sdbs And The Ncc

The 800 delegates and visitors to the annual Seventh Day Baptist General Conference held in Denver last month voted to remain in the National Council of Churches—at least for one more year. The small (5,331-member) denomination is a charter member of the NCC and is proud of its ecumenical record (see September 10, 1971, issue, page 46). But it will reconsider the matter next year.

Meanwhile, the conference ordered the Council on Ecumenical Affairs to analyze the pros and cons of NCC membership and report its findings to the denomination’s sixty-six congregations. Delegates debated for two hours what instructions to give those who will attend the NCC General Assembly next December. The ecumenical-affairs council wanted the SDB church to vote for NCC restructure, but opposition led to a compromise. The SDBs favor NCC government decentralization to promote inter-church cooperation.

Delegates declined to make a statement on Viet Nam and referred the question of gun control to committee. Denver orthopedic surgeon Edward J. Horsley is the new president.

NEWS

There were plenty of things for reporters to write about at last month’s annual meeting of the 125-member policy-making Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in Utrecht, Holland, the country where the WCC was born in 1948. But the most significant action was the election of Philip A. Potter as general secretary (see following story), to succeed the retiring Eugene Carson Blake on November 1.

In an interview, Potter disclosed that he will try to get many of the non-WCC churches in Africa and South America into the WCC fold. Most of these churches are theologically conservative, and some belong to the United States-based World Evangelical Fellowship. But, said Potter, these churches tend to be socially and politically active, quite unlike their U. S. counterparts. In fact, he said, third-world evangelicals are dismayed by the silence of Western evangelicals on important social issues, and are thus ripe for WCC harvesting. Potter’s identity as both a black and a third worlder, his advocacy of activism, and his facility in quoting the Bible should make him an effective reaper.

Whether his election will help the cause of unity remains to be seen. Although the WCC was brought into existence as “an effective tool for Christian unity,” that unity has recently proved to be more illusive than ever. The three-year-old Program to Combat Racism has caused bitter grass-roots reaction by funding controversial “liberation” movements; the Dutch Council of Churches and other member groups have left the fold. The Vatican recently served notice that it would not seek membership within the foreseeable future. (Indeed, commented an official Catholic observer to the committee members, after careful study and observation the Vatican is wondering just how committed to the WCC its member churches really are.) Blake and other speakers complained about the lack of genuine fellowship and unity in the ranks. Ironically, the meeting’s theme was “Committed to Fellowship.”

The Central Committee decided to raise the goal of its controversial anti-racism fund from $500,000 to $1 million (about $400,000 has come in so far). In a split vote the body also acted to get rid of WCC stock in companies doing business in southern Africa (about $3.5 million in WCC reserve funds is said to be affected), and to urge its member churches to do likewise.

Episcopal bishop John E. Hines, Lutheran Church in America president Robert J. Marshall (a member of the WCC executive committee, a 15-member group within the Central Committee that meets every two years), and the WCC’s financial unit opposed the action, saying it is best to exert economic pressure from within. Blake and others argued successfully for disinvestment.

Curiously, although Burgess Carr of Nairobi, head of the All-Africa Council of Christian Churches, said his council’s committee concerned with the Program to Combat Racism was unanimously for the WCC disinvestment move, committee member A. H. Zulu (Anglican bishop of Zululand in South Africa) said in a letter that he opposed such economic reprisals because they will hurt blacks more than whites.

In other actions, the Central Committee set up a rehabilitation fund and program for Indochina, called for immediate unilateral U. S. ceasefire in Viet Nam and withdrawal of all U. S. troops by December 31, and asked Uganda to refrain from oppressive acts against its citizens.

The latter seemed to be a painful decision for the WCC body. The council has been badgered almost daily by the press over its silence on Uganda’s announced decision to evict Asians. In reply Blake and other WCC officials said that the WCC spoke only when spoken to—“and no churchmen in Uganda have approached us yet.” In fact, Central Committee member Janet Wesonga of Uganda was inclined to have the WCC remain silent when the issue finally surfaced on the floor. Other blacks wanted a strong statement against Uganda, but Blake suggested milder wording and got it. The measure covered only the Asians with Ugandan citizenship, not the 50,000 without it.

A group of Dutch students led by church-history professor Gilles Quispel of the universities in Utrecht and Leuven (Belgium) demonstrated in the lobby of the meeting hall. They implored the WCC to send a message of “solidarity” to oppressed Christians in the Soviet Union to inform Soviet authorities when the civil and constitutional rights of citizens are violated, and to take a stand with the oppressed and against the oppressor everywhere in the world. (The WCC has always publicly passed by on the other side when confronted with reports of persecution of Christians in eastern Europe, not wanting to rock the ecumenical boat. But several WCC officials admit privately that the situation for Christians in the Soviet Union is “unbearable.”) The demonstration failed when W. A. Visser’t Hooft, the first WCC executive secretary, charged that Quispel had been a quisling during Nazi times.

A more positive demonstration was offered delegates by the controversial Children of God cult (see November 5, 1971, issue, page 38, and December 17, 1971, issue, page 35). The Children were invited to conduct a noon worship service and to set up a table in the display area. For nearly two weeks the Children, who are on record opposing the institutional church, courted the WCCers with songs, smiles, and Scripture verses. In return, says leader Jonathan “Hosea” Berg. 23, the Children were accorded the warmest welcome given them by any church group. A number of WCCers and family members accepted Christ, say the Children, and several moved into the Children’s colony at Amsterdam at least temporarily. The demonstration marks a change in style for the Children; they formerly invaded church gatherings to call down God’s judgment upon members lax in discipleship and doctrine.

What the Central Committee left unsaid evoked comments among reporters and observers. There was no mention of the surging revival movements around the globe or of the growing charismatic phenomenon, and there was only an oblique reference to the Jesus movement among youth. Young people were absent from sessions, even in Sunday ecumenical church services.

Blake said church division, especially at the Communion table, was responsible for young people’s lack of interest. If the fellowship crisis is not taken seriously, he warned, the young will leave “to sit at other tables and bow down before other altars.”

Potter said a major WCC conference on “Salvation Today” to be held in Indonesia at the end of the year will take serious note of the spiritual upsurge, especially among the young. Additionally, the education and communication committee called for a renewal conference to discover “where and how God is acting today through new and radical movements,” and stated it should include “conservative evangelicals and Jesus people” as well as women, social activists, and others.

Eight churches were voted into WCC membership. These include the 500,000-member Church of North India formed in 1970 by the merger of ten groups, the 150,000-member Presbyterian Church of Zaire, and the International Evangelical Church, a Pentecostal body claiming 200 churches with 200,000 members in Italy.

A 1973 budget of about $1.5 million was adopted, not including relief or certain other programs. Two German churches wiped out the WCC’s 1971 deficit with $250,000 in gifts, canceling anticipated sharp cutbacks.

There were major hassles over drafting a letter to the churches on the topic of fellowship and over the wording of a theme for the next assembly. The letter was sent back twice for revision, including an acknowledgment of the “many Christians [in the WCC] who are not in sympathy with some contemporary trends in the ecumenical movement.” The letter calls for discussion of the issue but recognizes that after everything is talked out some may feel “bound in conscience to act in ways that divide us.”

West Indian To Succeed Blake

By a unanimous vote of its Central Committee in Utrecht last month, the World Council of Churches chose the Reverend Philip Alford Potter, 51, to succeed Dr. Eugene Carson Blake as its general secretary.

Potter is a black who hails from the West Indian island of Dominica. A six-footer and former athletic star, he was educated at Jamaica’s United Theological College and London University. He was active in the Student Christian Union movement, served as a Methodist pastor in Haiti, and held executive positions with the WCC youth department and the British Methodist Missionary Society. Since 1966 he has headed the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism.

When in Geneva, Potter sings in a Church of Scotland choir that is conducted by his Jamaican wife Doreen. He is due to begin his five-year WCC term when Blake retires this fall (in November).

In his acceptance speech Potter said he “grew up with a passion for Christian unity” because his father was Roman Catholic, his mother Protestant. “Only as the cross becomes a central part of our life will we come closer together,” he declared.

The new chief executive warmly defended the council’s involvement in the anti-racist program, in international affairs, urban industrial mission, interchurch aid and development, against the charge that these tend to divide Christians. “It is my conviction,” he said, “that to separate the horizontal from the vertical, the immanent from the transcendent, is a denial of the cross and the resurrection.”

Potter is a Bible student in the tradition of Karl Barth. He salts his addresses liberally with scriptural illustrations. He subscribes to the so-called documentary theory. He assigns Genesis, for example, to writers in the fifth century B.C., and sees some biblical accounts as myths.

In an interview Potter tended to give vague or ambiguous explanations of his doctrinal beliefs. He says he is not a universalist on salvation and that a “personal point of reference” must be established with Christ. He allows for differing “expressions and styles” in living out this relation to Christ. His own permanent attachment to Christ came when he was a young teen-ager, he recalls.

Above all, Potter—also a student of history—believes that faith and action are inseparably entwined. “Each new man in Christ is the promise of the renewal of society,” he says, declaring that Christ saves a man not so he can escape the world but so that he can be “more genuinely involved in it as an authentic person.” To be for Christ, he adds, “is to be for humanity.”

The question for the WCC, says Potter, is whether “we can live with the tension between faith and action … in repentance, faith, and joy.”

The conflict over the theme at first was whether it should be “Liberated for Fellowship” or “Liberation for Fellowship.” Then Metropolitan Antony Bloom of the London-based Russian Orthodox Church criticized the absence of the name of Jesus. He wondered if the WCC was “calculatingly” avoiding “the name which is at our center.” He drew enthusiastic applause when he asked, “How can we dare to hope for a good assembly if we do not openly witness and proclaim the name of the only one who is liberation?” Others voiced support, and the issue was sent back for further study. (Whenever deliberations touched on theological matters, Orthodox leaders all but monopolized the floor; on social and political questions they were silent.)

Although other issues got the headlines, the overriding issue was fellowship and unity. For Blake, the pursuit of unity has brought frustration and disappointment. Visser ’t Hooft’s great vision was for theology; it led to the emphasis on faith and order during his term as WCC head. Blake came to the job with a passion for unity. He had been instrumental in the United Presbyterian merger, and in 1960 he issued the call that led to the Consultation on Church Union, a movement in which he now has little interest. His dabbling in social protests and programs helped to bring into focus for him the essential disunity that exists within the Church. As he prepared to step down, he said he felt “frustration over failure to achieve greater unity.” He cited “distrust, timidity, separatism, small vision, misunderstanding, confessional arrogance, and cultural, ideological, regional, and national communities which exclude each other in varying degrees.”

With that kind of turbulence, and with activist Philip Potter at the helm, the fellows in the WCC ship may be headed for the rocks. Time—and the 1975 General Assembly at Jakarta—will tell.

Bavaria Won’T Listen

The Evangelical Lutheran (state) Church of Bavaria has refused to publish the Pentecost message of the presidents of the World Council of Churches. In a letter to the WCC general secretary Eugene Carson Blake, Lutheran bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger declared that the message, signed by the seven WCC presidents, was defective in its exposition of Scripture.

The bishop said that the living Christ was not mentioned anywhere, and that as a result the reference to the Holy Spirit was misleading. Because of this “unclear theological background,” he said, the Bavarian church decided not to cause confusion in the congregations by publishing it.

This Pentecost message, the only annual message of the WCC to all the congregations of member churches, referred to the activity of the Holy Spirit in appealing for more vigorous activity against environmental pollution, military action, and human isolation.

Canadian Union In Limbo?

Eighteen months ago in the honeymoon capital of Niagara Falls, Canada’s two largest non-Catholic churches, the Anglican and United, met in joint sessions, enthusiastic for forthcoming union. In the prairie city of Saskatoon last month representatives of one of the churches, the United Church of Canada, found that the prospect of church union now seems to be drifting into a lethargic limbo.

Outgoing moderator A. B. B. Moore—longtime union enthusiast and co-chairman of the commission that produced a draft plan of union presented in 1971—disappointedly told 450 United Church delegates at the twenty-fifth General Council Meeting that union seemed far off. He said there had been a noticeable drop in temperature between the two churches in the eighteen months since the Niagara conclave. Union talk is entering the doldrums, Moore said, as caution quietly overtakes the spirit of adventure that characterized early Anglican-United talks.

Nevertheless, a proposal to halt all talks with the Anglicans was overwhelmingly defeated. (The proposal said that while its sponsors themselves favored union, the Anglicans seemed less than ardent about the plan.) Moore had urged the delegates to reject the proposal and stated that the 2.2-million-member church should abide by its covenant with the Anglicans.

Delegates chose as successor to Moore a 43-year-old Toronto minister, N. Bruce McLeod. One of the youngest moderators in the church’s forty-seven-year history, McLeod is considered a creative, unorthodox man; many church members would call him radical. He admires the Jesus people, and thinks the church has trained “over-polite” young people—he wants more “rude and abrasive kids” in the church. He also favors legalizing marijuana (“prohibition is no answer”).

Union talks with the Anglican church don’t excite him as much as union on a world-wide scale—Christian-Muslim cooperation for example. McLeod calls for Anglican-United merger within a year; union any later would be a “marriage of the senile,” he says.

Convention delegates also tackled abortion. The 1971 conference approved abortion as a matter of personal choice between a woman and her doctor. But editorial pressure from the denominational magazine, the United Church Observer, forced reconsideration. Observer editor A. C. Forrest called the 1971 decision a mistake that should be corrected.

The often heated abortion debate left the church trying to reconcile opposite views and being accused of fence-sitting for doing so. The half-lay, half-clergy delegates, a third of them women, batted the issue back and forth. A large number of the women supported the church’s 1971 position. Later in the conference the issue resurfaced, and the church approved abortion in special medical, social, or economic situations.

Also up for discussion were the editorial activities of gadfly editor Forrest, who has been criticized in the past for using the Observer to promulgate anti-Jewish views (see August 11 issue, page 39). An unrepentant Forrest—he received a standing ovation—told the delegates the church may be unnecessarily worried about offending Jews. Forrest also pecked at the church for criticizing South Africa and Rhodesia while refusing to take a similar stand against Israeli actions such as reprisal raids on Lebanon condemned by the United Nations.

The discussion was a vindication for Forrest. New moderator McLeod described the Observer as the best church paper in Canada, praised Forrest as the best editor, and promised to back him “any chance I get.” Forrest told delegates he had never advocated a Middle East policy that wasn’t consistent with findings of the World Council of Churches or the United Nations.

Business sessions at the nine-day meetings were kept short so delegates could tackle issues facing Canada. A position paper on relations with French-speaking Quebec urged church members to be prepared for the possibility of the province’s secession from Canada. Delegates approved the paper, which recommended that Canadians accept the right of either of the country’s two linguistic units to dissociate from the other.

On the foreign-affairs front, Canada’s largest Protestant denomination roundly condemned Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa for their racial policies. The church agreed to examine its own investment policies in South Africa to see if they were hurting the church’s credibility on racism. Portugal was slammed for what the church termed oppression of residents of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Rissau, three Portuguese colonies.

Delegates rejected a suggestion that the church ask Uganda to extend its deadline for expulsion of resident Asians. One church leader said the church should listen to black Africa, not lecture it. Nations have the right to decide who is alien, he said, though sympathy might be felt for the Asians.