What is a legitimate method of studying the Holy Scriptures? This is surely one of the hardest problems on the theological agenda of our time.

The study of the New Testament seems to throw the question of method into focus. Bible believers tend to feel anxious about this question. They fear that the Scripture will be victimized by scientific vivisection, and that critical-scientific approaches to the Bible will take away its direct, clear, and uncomplicated meaning for the Church. The anxiety is understandable.

Although the problem of scientific approaches to the Holy Scriptures has been with us for many centuries, newer methods have made the old problem more intense. The study of the Gospels has been particularly affected. The process by which the Gospels came to be as we have them, plus the special facets of each evangelist, especially the three Synoptics, have been the object of much study. For a long while, objections were raised to speaking about the “theologies” of Matthew, of Mark, and of Luke. But today we use this phrase freely, because we understand that each evangelist had his own conscious purpose in writing of the Christ. The differences had to do not only with matters of style and language but also with the way Christ and his redemptive work were described and interpreted.

Herman Ridderbos’s article “Tradition Editorship in the Synoptic Gospels” (in Jerusalem and Athens, edited by E. R. Geehan, 1971) gives a neat overview of several critical problems in the study of the three Gospels. Ridderbos has for some time shown the importance of method in the study of Scripture, but has at the same time always warned against the danger of personal whim in selecting methods. And this sets before us one of the core problems. Some have had nothing to do with the question of method precisely for fear of arbitrariness in selecting a method. They seem to think they can get rid of the problem by ignoring it.

Some Roman Catholics, for instance, have shied away from form-criticism for fear that it would subvert the dogma of the primacy of Peter as it was supported, they assumed, by Matthew 16. But some Protestant theologians, too, have feared to take note of a subjective role of the writers of the Gospels, a special personal purpose and an interpretation given by the writers. This, they thought, would subjectivize revelation itself: the New Testament witness would, they feared, be turned into a creation of the early Church instead of being a revelation of God.

In response to historical methods, many readers of the Gospels have wanted to make a sharp cleavage between historical reporting and interpretation. But to make this sort of division is just not possible. Thus many orthodox students of the Bible have been willing to take account of the nature of biblical writing by observing that the witness and the interpretation of the evangelists was taken up by the divine purpose into the inspired Scripture. They were not intending to be critical of the Scripture; they wanted to deal with the actual words of the Scripture as they came from the pages.

No one who wants to understand the New Testament can escape the question of method. The word “method” is related to the Greek word hodos, or “way.” A way must be walked toward understanding the Scriptures. A way must be followed into an understanding of the varied Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. What does each evangelist’s special approach mean for us? Is it not true that interpretation is something very different from falsification? And is it not true that in each evangelist’s interpretation the unique significance of Christ and his work comes to expression?

Methods have changed through the years; this too must be noted. In the Middle Ages the allegorical method dominated scriptural exegesis. But the allegorical method frequently brought distortions into understanding; for instance, it was commonly thought that every passage had four possible interpretations.

Calvin, in his commentary on Galatians, branded the allegorical method a device of the devil. He discerned in it a serious unwillingness to let the literal sense of Scripture have its right, and in response to it he demanded respect for the actual words of Scripture. This Reformation respect for the actual words resulted in careful attention to details, to variations, to the relation between the evangelists, and to the special purpose of each of the writings. And thus the richness of the Scriptures was not diminished but brought to clearer light.

In our time, a time in which method is a very acute question, we are again faced with the danger of arbitrariness. It is possible that in our struggles over methodology, we may neglect the mystery of the Scriptures while we lose ourselves in details; we can keep looking at the trees of problematics and never see the forest of the Gospel. Karl Barth warned against this danger in his Romans commentary; he complained that scholars have often buried themselves in textual problems so deeply that they never heard the message Paul was preaching. The danger implicit in the quest for method is just this, that in asking how we are to go about understanding the Scriptures, we forget to listen to what the Scriptures say.

Still, the dangers must not prevent us from admitting the rightness of the question. The fact that the Word of God has come to us in the human form of human language compels us to deal with the problem of method. Luther saw this, and he wrote:

If we love the Gospel, let us pay attention to the languages. For God has not given us the Scripture in two languages: Hebrew and Greek, for nothing. Let it be said, that without these two languages, we would not have the Gospel.

Luther went on to say that the jewel is encased within these human languages; the drink comes with the mug, the meal with the dish. If we forget this, we will lose the actual Gospel. It was this Reformation respect for the very words of Scripture that led to the seriousness of exegesis—and thus to the question of method.

This does not put faith at the mercy of science. It does mean that scientific study is put to the service of a right understanding of the Bible. This is surely the case with the enormous amount of labor put into Bible translation. It is also the case with the exegesis of Scripture. Decisions are made here that can, if made wrongly, put the Bible at the mercy of the exegete. Existentialist exegesis tends to force the Bible to fit our understanding of our existence. Pneumatic exegesis tends to set the Spirit loose from the Word.

But these temptations only make the question more urgent. Anyone who takes the words of the Word seriously has to take seriously the question of the method of understanding the words. Let the words of the Word speak to us. And let us not fear to spend ourselves prayerfully and carefully in the question of how rightly to understand the words of the Word of God.

South Korea’s government is apparently weary of the “orphan image” the nation has developed over two decades of child-care appeals mainly by Christian groups in the West. A quiet but tough crackdown on agencies involved in child sponsorship is going on. Also affected are relief programs and funding of Korean institutions by foreign religious organizations.

National leaders, arguing that their republic is a “developed nation,” have bitterly criticized the content of some fund-raising appeals by child-care agencies, the quality of the child care itself, financial arrangements, and standards of institutional operation.

A few leaders wryly allege that the subsidies from abroad are in some cases “creating” orphans. They point out that children in many “orphanages” have one or both parents still living.

A number of Christian groups have made changes to conform to the new policies, but critics counter that these are merely cosmetic changes for the most part. It is widely rumored that the government plans a systematic closing of the 530 orphanages now functioning. Officials of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs want the orphanages replaced by foster-home programs that won’t destroy the traditional Korean family structure. At any rate, the ministry so far this year has ordered the closing of eighty orphanages for failure to meet the new standards.

Under the new codes, orphanages directed by pastors and others who are not “qualified” social workers must close. The “chain” system must end; each orphanage must have its own qualified administrator. There must be adequate facilities, funding, and educational opportunities. Institutions must be run in accord with their original charters. Some affected orphanages may be allowed to remain open as day-care centers.

A press aide at the Korean embassy in Washington disclaimed knowledge of aggressive government action in orphanage affairs. But he revealed that U. S. postal authorities were investigating fund-raising appeals of at least one church group.

A World Vision spokesman acknowledged that government moves were afoot but said his agency was unaffected. “Responsible” agencies are glad that substandard operations and shady-dealing organizations are being shut down, he said. (It is commonly known that in some instances very little remains after administrative and promotional costs have been skimmed from each dollar earmarked for orphans or relief.)

Executive director Varent J. Mills of the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF) in Richmond, Virginia, confirms that government reforms are under way. “We stand 100 per cent with the government on this program; we think it will accomplish a great deal of good,” he declared. The CCF, which services about 18,000 Korean children, has a “Family Help Program,” giving direct subsidies for schooling, clothing, and food to children even if they are living with their own family, he explained. (The crying “orphans” in the familiar magazine ads of some agencies are likely to be slum children whose families are too poor to provide adequate support rather than actual orphans.)

Other factors cloud the picture. Now that many of the children orphaned by the Korean War are adults, and with more pressing needs arising in Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, and Africa, major relief organizations are diverting their attention—and funds—elsewhere. Since 1970, two dozen of the eighty-seven members of the Korean Association of Volunteer Agenices (all foreign) have phased out their programs in Korea.

Rising costs amid the cutbacks and reforms meanwhile are creating a financial bind for the Korean operations. One solution would be for the Korean churches themselves to raise more money—a solution quite revolutionary to most directors of child-care programs. Hundreds of churches operate orphanages; almost all of them are totally funded through child sponsorship programs in the United States. The crisis extends to schools and hospitals run by the churches with the backing of missions and relief money. Christian leaders insist that foreign help is still needed. The government seems willing to concede the point for now but wants the foreign benefactors to eschew a crisis mentality in favor of concepts of long-term development.

Missionaries and church leaders in Korea are pondering what kind of help is called for. There are obviously still great needs in the land, but they are not the dramatic ones brought on by war and refugees. And of late, evangelical groups seem unsure about how deeply they want to get involved.

Religion In Transit

William R. Johnson, 25, became the first openly self-avowed homosexual to be ordained by a major denomination: the United Church of Christ. He was ordained in a suburban San Francisco church by the UCC’s Golden Gate Association. Meanwhile, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Netherlands accepted a report which holds that homosexuality should not be a barrier to a person’s becoming a pastor.

Pleas of helpless old people for “the right to die with dignity” have given birth to the Good Death Fellowship, as reported in its quarterly journal, Euthanasia News.

Associate evangelist Grady Wilson of the Billy Graham team held a ten-day crusade backed by 300 churches on Barbados in the West Indies. Attendance totaled 64,000, with a one-night high of 14,000. Pre-crusade wrangling by islanders over alleged racism and money matters almost scuttled the campaign but may have led to deeper impact than was felt in previous meetings, says one insider.

Only days after Presiding Bishop John E. Hines of the Episcopal Church endorsed the ordination of women to full priesthood, the conservative American Church Union (Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians) called on all Anglicans to break communion with any bishop “attempting” to ordain women as priests. Earlier, a Hong Kong bishop had ordained two women.

In less than one year the attendance at Westside Assembly of God Church in Davenport, Iowa, has soared from an average of 78 to nearly 1,000, with a high of about 1,400. Pastor Tommy Barnett credits door-to-door visitation and a vigorous “bus ministry.”

About 400 men of the Old Order Amish sect lost their construction jobs in Indiana for refusing to don hard hats instead of their broad-brimmed black felt hats, considered by them to be an integral part of their faith. The U. S. Labor Department has finally granted an exemption in the name of religious freedom.

The Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico have issued the sternest official warning to date on the modern Pentecostal movement. They cautioned Catholic charismatics to guard against claims of miracles, a false sense of ecumenism, and a watering down of the meaning of baptism.

The greatest number of phone calls to church-related “hot-line” crisis centers are received during a full moon and at Christmas, according to a Contact Teleministry study.

Personalia

Astronaut James B. Irwin, asked to retire early from the space program because of budget cuts, will also retire from the Air Force to devote full time to evangelism and ministry. His organization, dubbed “High Flight,” will be based in Colorado Springs and headed by his pastor, William H. Rittenhouse, a Southern Baptist who will resign from his Houston church in September.

Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary Garth W. Hunt was awarded South Viet Nam’s highest medal of honor, primarily for his eight years of hospital and relief work. He is the first foreigner to receive the medal, usually reserved for top government officers.

Sally Priesand, 25, goes to work next month in a New York synagogue (Reform Judaism) as apparently the first woman rabbi in history. And Judith Hird, 26, is America’s first woman Lutheran parish pastor, serving at a Toms River, New Jersey, church.

The 16,795-member First Baptist Church of Dallas is expanding its Criswell Bible Institute; pastor W. A. Criswell announced the appointment of H. Leo Eddleman, 61, former president of the New Orleans Baptist Seminary and doctrinal analyst for the Southern Baptist publication unit, as president.

American street evangelist Arthur Blessitt has preached to more than 30,000 in Belfast, Londonderry, and other Northern Ireland towns. Catholics have generally given him a warm welcome. He has set up a number of prayer-and-witness groups, says correspondent S. W. Murray.

Southern Baptist evangelism director Kenneth L. Chafin, 45, has resigned after two and a half years to pastor the 5,700-member South Main Baptist Church of Houston.

World Council of Churches communications executive Albert van den Heuvel, 40, has been elected general secretary of the Netherlands Reformed Church.

Cited by Religious Heritage of America: Notre Dame University president Theodore M. Hesburgh as Clergyman of the Year; Metropolitan Opera star Jerome Hines as Churchman of the Year; Mrs. Lenore Lafount Romney, wife of political figure George Romney, as Churchwoman of the Year. A special award went to publisher Kenneth Taylor whose Living Bible has hit the 3 million mark in less than two years.

Deaths

WASSIL ANGELOFF, 56, American-educated leader of the evangelical community in Bulgaria and pastor of the Baptist church of Sofia; in Sofia, from complications following surgery.

VAN V. EDDINGS, 82, founder and general director emeritus of the Orinoco River Mission; in Whittier, California, of a heart attack.

PETER KINDRAT, 79, leader of Ukrainian evangelicals in Canada; in Winnepeg, Manitoba.

O. FREDERICK NOLDE, 72, Lutheran Church in America clergyman, leading Lutheran educator, and long-time director of international affairs for the World Council of Churches; in Philadelphia.

CAMERON ORR, 65, for thirty-three years chaplain to the ships plying Canada’s Welland Canal; in Toronto, of cancer.

PYONG-HO SO (Philip Suh), 86, prominent Presbyterian leader who in 1887 became the first Korean Protestant baptized as an infant; in Seoul.

World Scene

In their campaign to show that Jesus is alive and relevant Catholic bishops in Brazil raised a national furor with their posters showing Jesus in a contemporary shirt and necktie.

A serious financial crisis prompted the North Africa Mission to curtail services. The move includes temporary suspension of its periodical, The Cross and the Crescent.

Seventh-day Adventists are beginning a ministry in Upper Volta. The West African nation has a population of some 5.5 million, and there is only one other Protestant group working there, the Christian and Missionary Alliance. SDAs now operate in 188 countries.

Sunday-school manuals are available for the first time in the language of the 100,000-member Hmar tribe of northeast India (about 85 per cent of the Hmars are Christian); the manuals are adaptations of Scripture Press materials.

Two dozen top African leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Mozambique were jailed with no reasons given.

Missionaries report revival and church growth among the Quichua Indians of Ecuador, descendants of the Incas. A recent breakthrough has resulted in 1,600 baptized believers; a like number is on the waiting list. The Quichuas have spread the revival to Colombia; groups of believers are springing up there.

Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal leaders met with Catholic officials in Zurich in the first session of a five-year dialogue to discuss “the understanding both sides have of the fullness of life in the Holy Spirit.” Co-chairmen: Pentecostalist David Du Plessis and Catholic scholar Kilian McDonnell. Participants agreed it is the Spirit who makes one a Christian and that believers must submit to his guidance.

Egypt and Libya have sent officials to investigate clashes between Muslims and Christians on the island of Mindinao in the Philippines. More than 1,000 have been killed recently in the longstanding feud, said by most observers to be political rather than religious.

The Synod of the Diocese of London—the most populous of the Church of England’s forty-three dioceses—voted for disestablishment; if others follow, it will mean a complete break between church and state.

Britain’s Methodist Church suffered a net loss of 50,000 full members in the last three years (current membership: 601,000); leaders blame the decline on lagging recruitment rather than the exodus, which is at a fifteen-year low. The Methodists have 4,000 fewer churches than forty years ago.

Large numbers of people in Southern Sudan are turning to Christ, according to a Church of England newspaper report. One pastor in the strife-torn land has baptized 10,000 in the past three years, it says. A ceasefire agreement signed in March gives responsibility for foreign affairs to the Muslim-dominated North, dimming hopes of a soon return by missionaries (ousted from the South in 1964).

With the addition of twelve more couples, the missionary force of the Evangelical Missionary Society (EMS) now numbers more than 100 Nigerian couples serving in remote areas of Nigeria and in neighboring countries. The EMS is an arm of the Evangelical Churches of West Africa, an outgrowth of Sudan Interior Mission work in Nigeria.

Uganda evangelist Festo Kivengere says that on a visit to the Solomon Islands he found revival and packed churches. “Many pagans have been converted. The church is well established on Bible teaching [and] many young people are in it,” he reports. The stirrings have been going on for three years.

One hundred Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested in Chalkis, Greece, for meeting in a house without a permit. And a 72-year-old Swedish evangelical tourist was jailed for twenty days for handing out tracts on the island of Rhodes. Greek law forbids proselytizing.

Anglican bishop Jack Dain of Sydney and other evangelical leaders are organizing a media consortium known as ECCE to produce and distribute materials for mass media evangelism throughout Asia.

The hoped-for symphony involving the 3.1-million-member Lutheran Church in America (LCA), the 2.5-million-member American Lutheran Church (ALC), and the 2.8-million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) seems as far away now as it did three years ago. At least that was the feeling among many of the 681 delegates to the LCA’s sixth biennial convention, which met in Dallas earlier this month.

Dr. J. A. O. Preus, the Missouri Synod’s embattled president, greeted the delegates on Independence Day and declared Missouri Synod’s unwillingness to lose its freedom. He told the assembly that “we are not interested in organic union at the present time, feeling that such union can succeed and be a fruitful device for carrying out the Lord’s work only when it is founded on consensus in the doctrine of the Gospel and all its articles.” The traditional position within the LCA is that doctrinal talks are unnecessary, since the church holds to the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism. But the head of the more conservative sister church disagrees.

Preus explained that the LCMS’s hesitation grows out of “genuine ecumenical concern—not narrowness” and that the “refusal to extend the hand of fellowship must sometimes be done for the sake of the Gospel, on behalf of the entire church.” He applauded the LCA’s and the ALC’s decision to participate in new theological discussions and quoted LCA president Robert J. Marshall’s recommendation that the church reconsider its theological affirmations. “Affirmations,” however, was too weak a word for Preus; he suggested to Marshall that the LCA draw up “guidelines”—“or call them anything you like, but not merely affirmations.” “That’s just a suggestion,” he added, amid laughter and applause.

During Marshall’s press conference after Preus’s speech, the LCA president said Preus was more distant from Lutheran union than “I would like.… But we’re no more willing to compromise our theology than is the Missouri Synod Church.”

The question of Lutheran union first came before the convention several days prior to Preus’s greetings. The LCA, considering restructure (most of the week-long convention was spent discussing, approving, and reconsidering bylaw and constitutional amendments), was uncertain whether a change in organization would hinder further talks with the ALC. Kent S. Knutson, president of that denomination, was asked to answer that question.

“I’m glad I have access to the floor. Do I have a vote?” asked Knutson.

“Not yet,” replied Marshall. But it seemed from the reception the delegates gave Knutson that such a vote might not be far away.

Knutson assured the delegates that restructure wouldn’t hinder further Lutheran unity. He emphasized that the ALC, which enjoys pulpit and altar fellowship with both the LCA and the LCMS (those two churches don’t, as yet, have pulpit and altar fellowship with each other), wants union with both Lutheran groups (a traditional stand that could change, report ALC observers). Although the LCMS has declined to participate at this time in the Inter-Lutheran Consultation for Achieving Common Organizational Structures, it will send official observers. The ALC has been involved in restructure studies for several years; at the last convention it appointed four members to serve on the Inter-Lutheran Consultation.

Dr. George Forell of Iowa City, Iowa, professor of religion at the State University of Iowa, suggested to delegates that they issue an immediate invitation to the ALC for merger, adding, “Let’s forget about the Missouri Synod. Everyone knows they’re going their own way.” His suggestion was greeted with thunderous applause.

Forell was one of the most vocal opponents of restructure, which was given first-reading approval. At the next biennial convention, to be held in Baltimore, the church will have to approve it again. The new organization could not go into effect until at least 1975.

The new structure and function would reduce the number of church boards and agencies and do away with a large biennial convention. Instead, a smaller, 250-member annual legislative convention would be held. Some delegates expressed concern that too much power would be given to a few people; there was some talk of a compromise—an annual legislative convention plus a large quadrennial meeting.

LCA president Marshall sees the church moving toward “a more episcopal form of government.” In his report to the convention he recommended the new function and structure, and called for two changes in title, synod president to “bishop” and convention president to “presiding bishop.” Marshall stressed that the term “bishop” would emphasize the pastoral rather than the political or administrative duties of church leaders. But in a surprise vote during the convention’s final session, the measure failed by a mere fifty votes to receive the needed two-thirds majority. The issue, according to some observers, is likely to come up again. The ALC in 1970 approved use of the title on an experimental basis.

Another divisive issue is the rise of Pentecostalism. Dr. Walter Wick, president of the Indiana-Kentucky synod, reports that many Lutherans are being converted to the charismatic movement by Catholic Pentecostals. Marshall appointed a special commission to study the problem.

Additionally, the delegates adopted statements on ecology and social justice, the latter a controversial paper calling for forthright efforts to ordain ex-convicts. The convention also approved a budget of $30.7 million for 1973 and $31.4 million for 1974.

If the three Lutheran bodies are having some trouble getting together on an organizational and hierarchical basis, they are cooperating on the local level in social, welfare, and educational endeavors. While Lutheran adults discuss structure, LCA young people through Key 73 are trying to improve relations among the three groups.

The LCA has developed a strong program for Key 73. Early in the convention a special late-evening session was held to celebrate “the year of evangelism,” which is to begin with a kickoff “Come Together Sunday” in December. New Jersey pastor Frank D. Fry, son of the late Franklin Clark Fry (the LCA’s first president), keynoted the Key 73 presentation. He gave a Lutheran-styled Jesus cheer (“J-E-S-U-S is the Christ!”), the closest anyone came to overt excitement about evangelism throughout the convention.

Nevertheless, some of the younger delegates felt disappointed. Twenty-year-old Kathleen Peterson told the convention she was “disillusioned at the lack of concern for the church’s real mission, which is to win souls to Jesus Christ.” In an interview she commented, “I don’t think anyone here really understands what Key 73 means.”

Meeting at the same time as the regular convention, youthful Convo 72—some observers called it a Lutheran version of Explo ’72—drew nearly 300 young people to study evangelism and to learn to work within the church.

Among Lutheran youth working in Key 73, 17-year-old Nancy Schoenfeld of Parsippany, New Jersey, is one of the most outspoken. She is chairman of the evangelism committee (and the only young person on it) at her home church. “We’re getting too hung up on numbers,” she commented. Some of the church people, she said, see Key 73 as a chance to bring in more church members—make Lutherans instead of Christians. But that isn’t her idea. “We’ve got to be willing to lose members during our year of evangelism emphasis to win some to Christ.”

The big youth involvement in Key 73 will come in August next year. Miss Schoenfeld expressed hope that it will be the start of a real “coming together” for all three Lutheran bodies. Mass evangelism rallies with rock as well as gospel music will be featured at “The All-Lutheran Youth Gathering” in Houston’s Astrodome, to which the LCA has invited ALC and LCMS young people. “The one thing we will avoid—tactfully, I hope—is holding communion services, so that the Missouri Synod kids can participate,” she said. (Communion was held frequently at Convo 72.) Miss Schoenfeld hopes the kids can pull off the unity that continues to elude the adults.

Nazarenes: Touch And Grow

While workmen were still getting the Miami Beach convention hall in shape for the national political conventions, more than 25,000 Nazarenes (640 of them voting delegates) moved in for their church’s eighteenth General Assembly. Florida governor Reubin Askew, Democratic keynoter and an evangelical, welcomed the visitors and bade them to “spread the healing touch of the Gospel throughout the world.”

Though unmanned, the three giant television booths installed for the political conventions suggested that the world was looking in. Occasionally, the oratory seemed to respond to the outside stimulus. General Superintendent George Coulter in a State of the Church message called for an application of the Christian touch “to the needs of suffering humanity.”

Members of the Church of the Nazarene have traditionally hewn to a rigorous gospel, abstaining from the world, urging church loyalty, maintaining a strict conservatism while trying to extend that healing touch. The denomination reached out to divorced persons and voted overwhelmingly to admit “repentant” divorced persons into church membership, an action which in reality only brought the church manual into line with widespread practice.

But neo-Pentecostalism was something else. Although speakers affirmed that “the ground is level at the foot of the cross,” no official room was allowed in the quadrant of meetings for members interested in glossolalia. A small but growing number of Nazarene ministers and laymen during recent months have professed receiving the gift. A move to get assembly approval of a hard-nosed statement against the practice was sidetracked. This prevented even a discussion of the charismatic phenomenon.

The issue may have had a bearing on the election of a successor to retiring general superintendent Samuel Young. Support for William Greathouse, president of Kansas City’s Nazarene Seminary who led through seven ballots, faltered after he failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority. Prior to the voting a local newspaper story branded Greathouse a moderate on the tongues issue. But moderation on this issue was clearly not in the minds of the delegates, scores of whom have devoted part of their ministry to keeping their congregations free from ecstatic speech.

Instead, on the fifteenth ballot—the longest election in the church’s history—front-runners were bypassed for a compromise candidate, Charles Strickland, a 56-year-old former missionary who heads Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs. Said to be a cautious conservative, he joins five incumbents (re-elected with virtually no opposition) on the Board of General Superintendents. The board is responsible for administrative policy for both foreign and domestic work.

Coulter, president of the board, reported that the past quadrennium had been a period of growth. Per capita giving jumped from $203 to $235, enabling the church to surpass its $30 million world evangelism budget goal by $1.4 million. More than 100,000 new members were received during the four years, resulting in a net gain of 11.3 per cent and pushing total membership past the half-million mark for the first time. Nearly 200 new churches were added; there are now about 6,350.

In a related meeting, 5,000 Nazarene church school workers listened to minister Paul Moore of New Milford, New Jersey, knock the spending of “billions of dollars” on “elaborate Sunday-school facilities used but a few hours weekly.” He suggested as an alternative neighborhood Bible classes where the teacher hosts a group at a mutually convenient time. Members of his church conduct twenty of these classes, he said, with attendance exceeding those held in the church building.

In a meeting of 4,000 youths Moore lambasted the faddism associated with the Jesus movement, charging that the movement “is being co-opted from every direction.” Young Christians must go beyond the “highs” and commit themselves to serious Bible study, prayer, witnessing, and fellowship, he declared. (Moore’s Maranatha Nazarene Church is the largest Jesus movement center in the Northeast; more than 5,000 young people have been converted there in the past two years, according to reports. Recently he persuaded Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts, to set up an extension department near his church to offer theological training to movement people.)

Maranatha singer Ike McKinnon urged his comrades to “leave a little of the Holy Spirit’s influence here” for the Democrats and Republicans. “He can show them how to lead our country.” he affirmed.

ELDEN RAWLINGS

Amazing

A 200-year-old American hymn tune, with words by a former English slave trader, played by, of all things, a Scottish bagpipe band, is the runaway hit record of 1972 in Canada and Britain. “Amazing Grace,” performed by the regimental pipes and drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (a British cavalry regiment), was recently the number-one record in Britain and now tops charts in Canada. Sales in the United States are brisk but have apparently peaked, say industry spokesmen.

More than 100,000 copies of the 45 rpm single sold in Canada within three weeks of release, and sales of the band’s long-play album total half that. Amazing, says a distributing company official.

BARRIE DOYLE

The Anguish Of Agnes

Only three weeks after Rapid City, South Dakota, experienced the worst flood in the state’s history—and churches and organizations were just starting to make some headway in relief efforts—tropical storm Agnes hit the East Coast, causing the worst flooding there in the nation’s history. Scores of churches and parsonages were destroyed, and many church members were among the dead and uprooted.

The Assemblies of God alone suffered property losses in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area exceeding $1 million. Forty-two United Methodist churches in central Pennsylvania were ravaged. Flood waters swept through the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s publishing facility in Harrisburg, ruining $300,000 worth of printed material.

As the waters subsided, relief poured in from many denominations and groups. Money remained the biggest need. Food, clothing, and muscle power were abundantly provided. For instance, 400 Southern Baptist volunteers helped families in the Harrisburg area rebuild homes. Salvation Army volunteers and disaster teams were at work throughout New York and Pennsylvania.

Immediate relief help in the central Pennsylvania area came from Mennonite and Amish workers. More than 500 volunteers, some of them working through the Mennonite Disaster Service, shouldered shovels and brooms to help disaster victims dig out from under the debris. The workers refused to be photographed and resisted interviews. “We don’t want publicity,” explained an Amishman from Lancaster County.

Mormons Move On

Elder Harold B. Lee, 73, a former school principal, businessman, and first director of the widely hailed Mormon welfare program, has been named president of the three-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was appointed this month, less than a week after the death of Joseph Fielding Smith, 95, president since 1970. (In Mormon belief, the president is the channel of continuing revelation from God.)

Lee, at 73 the youngest Mormon president in forty years, has been credited with masterminding a reorganization of the Utah-based church that resulted in a doubling of its world-wide membership in the last ten years.

Recent figures show the church has jumped more than 50 per cent to 2.1 million in the United States alone, to become one of the twelve biggest churches in the country. The Mormons recently announced a complete revamping of their supervisory structure to cope with the accelerating growth. The revamp applies particularly to the training program for the church’s estimated 12,000 mostly short-term self-supporting missionaries.

Now There Are Two

A Canadian Presbyterian church that has been under guidance of a General Assembly-appointed commission since it was torn apart over the charismatic issue has called a former Pentecostal as its pastor. The new minister of First Presbyterian in New Westminster, British Columbia, is Kenneth Wheaton, 36, of Toronto. He was ordained under the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada before becoming a Presbyterian a few years ago.

The 500-member congregation split after the assembly commission called for the “dissolving of the pastoral tie” between the church and its charismatic pastor, Calvin Chambers. Half the congregation followed Chambers and now worship in nearby rented quarters as the “First Continuing Presbyterian Church.” Chambers remains a minister in good standing of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and various officials say that no action against him is currently contemplated.

Controversy reached the national level after the Westminster Presbytery responded to evidence that First Church’s session was divided over Chamber’s approach to charismatic matters. Charles Jackson, another Pentecostal-background Presbyterian minister in the area, disagreed with a presbytery decision to ask Chambers either to cease overt charismatic promotion or to resign. Jackson appealed to the General Assembly, which in response appointed the commission a year ago. The commission ordered Chambers’s removal in November, stating that because of the controversy he could no longer minister to the whole congregation. The body will serve in its watchdog role for another year.

Wheaton said he left his former denomination when he realized he simply “was not a Pentecostal.” He maintained, however, that he has no animosity toward charismatics and will adopt a live-and-let-live attitude toward the nearby group pastored by Chambers.

For his part, Chambers conjectured that Wheaton is a charismatic like himself. “The sad thing is that Mr. Wheaton may be coming to a congregation which denies the reality of these [charismatic] gifts and has expressed its intolerance in removing the minister and all the congregation who did not agree with them,” Chambers said in a letter published in the Columbian, the New Westminster daily paper.

Various presbytery officials noted, however, that some charismatic families remain in First Church. They pointed out that the church complaint was not over charismatic practices but over the alleged downgrading of other church members by charismatics.

LLOYD MACKEY

Convention Circuit

Spring and summer months are crowded with church conventions and conferences. Here are the facts and figures on some of them:

General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Messengers to the forty-first annual meeting in San Diego, California, voted unanimously to oppose “ecumenical evangelism” as represented by Key 73 because it “opens the doors to confusion.” The church also announced that thirty-eight congregations joined them but that twenty-one others exited for various reasons, including disagreement with the denomination’s separatist stance. (The 1,400 GARB churches have 250,000 members.)

The delegates commended California for requiring that a creationist view of science be given validity in state schools, recommended standard use of the King James Bible and urged that great care be taken with modern versions, applauded President Nixon for his Viet Nam stand, denied the theory of evolution, opposed the abolition of capital punishment, and spoke out against anti-Semitism in both America and Russia.

Reformed Church in America. The RCA General Synod overwhelmingly selected a layman as president—only the second in the church’s history and the first in thirty-five years—in the annual meeting at Loudonville, New York. Harry De Bruyn, a 40-year-old Chicago-area lawyer, was chosen on the first ballot. Delegates of the 385,000-member church approved women’s serving as elders and deacons by removing the word “male” from position qualifications, approved a $4 million benevolence budget despite a current deficit, and voted to stay out of the Consultation on Church Union.

African Methodist Episcopal Church. Charges and counter-charges of malfeasance and misadministration were bounced back and forth during the twelve-day quadrennial convention in Dallas of the 1.6-million-member black denomination. The 1,200 delegates heard charges against four bishops: John Bright of New York, E. L. Hickman of Georgia, H. N. Robinson of Alabama, and W. F. Ball of South Carolina. All were acquitted except Ball, who maintained his innocence. Ball, president of the AME Church General Board, was twice in the past two years ousted from office—and twice reinstated. He was bounced again.

On the convention’s final day, Bishop Bright, 55, who was a champion of South African liberation and was twice named by Ebony as one of the 100 most powerful black men in America, collapsed on stage of a heart attack and died a short time later.

The convention adopted a $12 million budget for the 1973–76 quadrennium and elected eight new—and younger—bishops to office.

Christian Reformed Church. After a year-long denomination-wide debate on the nature and extent of the Bible’s authority, the 148 delegates at the annual synod in Grand Rapids declared by an overwhelming vote that the Bible is “the self-authenticating … saving revelation of God in Jesus Christ.” While acknowledging that God is the source of the Scriptures, the synod also recognized that the peculiar nature and extent of scriptural authority derives from what God has done in history.

In a hotly contested decision, the synod ruled that abortion is a murderous act except when continuing a pregnancy would endanger the mother’s life. But the delegates also decreed that those who in crisis resort to abortion should be dealt with not judgmentally but with loving concern.

The body adopted a $10 million budget for the 285,000-member denomination and elected Grand Rapids pastor Clarence Boomsma president.

On the ecumenical side, the CRC synod gave its blessing to plans for a two-day meeting this fall with the Reformed Church in America. Discussion will center on the reasons the CRC left the RCA in 1857. This will be the first such confrontation in the 115-year separation. But the delegates decided to discontinue frustrating efforts toward union with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Canadian Reformed Churches. Although not itself a member of the World Council of Churches, the synod instructed its delegates to the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, of which it is a member, to oppose any efforts by the RES in its summer meeting in Australia to oust the Gereformeerde Kerken of the Netherlands because of its WCC membership.

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America. Ashen-faced Archbishop Iakovos of New York announced to the 1,000 delegates and guests at an anniversary dinner for Athenagoras I, 86-year-old patriarch of the 200-million-member Greek Orthodox Church, that the primate was dead. Spontaneously the delegates to the twenty-first biennial congress began singing, “May His Spirit Be Eternal.” Athenagoras, the first Greek patriarch to meet with a Roman pope since the fifteenth century, died in Istanbul of kidney failure caused by a fall he suffered several days earlier.

A special plenary session that lasted until midnight adopted all the housekeeping resolutions on the agenda; then the congress adjourned.

The Turkish-born Iakovos, considered a major contender for election to the office of patriarch, was denied entrance into Turkey for Athenagoras’s funeral, presumably a Muslim-motivated move.

Evangelical Free Church of America. The nearly 900 delegates to the 64,000-member church’s eighth General Conference, meeting on the campus of Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, heard encouraging reports of the schools’ and denomination’s physical and financial growth. The schools, recently rumored to be in deep financial trouble, have raised $800,000 of the $900,000 needed to balance their budget, reported Harry L. Evans. Also, $250,000 was shaved from next year’s needs through “frugalities” and other measures. He added that enrollment has increased.

The delegates passed resolutions against: legalizing marijuana, offering indiscriminate amnesty to draft evaders, abortion on demand, the occult, and homosexuality (but churches were urged to show “love” and “concern” for homosexuals). They resoundingly approved participation in Key 73.

Church of the Brethren. Budget problems highlighted the annual meeting at Cincinnati; four staff persons, including the 181,000-member church’s news editor, were released and two others deployed to non-staff positions. The changes were intended to make a dent in a $200,000 deficit and bring a balanced 1973 budget within reach.

The church approved plans for entering an “associated relationship” with the American Baptist Convention to increase cooperation between the two without destroying denominational autonomy. The 1,000 delegates waffled on abortion, opposing it because it destroyed fetal life but agreeing it should be accepted as an option where other choices lead to greater loss of life. They voted to sell all stocks and bonds the church has in defense industries.

NEWS

As if in benediction on the week’s activities, what was variously seen as a golden or rainbow-hued halo hovered over the San Francisco Hilton Hotel for two hours during the nineteenth annual world convention of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International this month.

Passersby and faithful alike stopped in their tracks to witness the glowing spectacle; Polaroid photos at a dollar apiece were soon selling briskly on the street.

But then, it was a week of wondrous signs and miracles, if you should ask most any of 6,000 delegates who came to hear old-fashioned revival preaching, pray in tongues, be healed in a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting, or simply soak up charisma from a dozen of the nation’s most renowned “full gospel” promulgators.

Healings were reported by the hundreds, even before Miss Kuhlman’s two-day stand July 4 and 5, and at least one hundred swarmed forward for “first-time salvation” when Akron, Ohio’s Cathedral of Tomorrow pastor Rex Humbard packed them into the 4,000-seat grand ballroom two days later.

Impelled by the burgeoning charismatic movement in this country and abroad, the FGBMFI is rapidly coming of age twenty-one years after its founding by California dairy farmer and shopping-center developer Demos Shakarian.

Basically a lay movement, the fellowship is helping to break down denominational walls. It represents a rallying force for “Spirit-filled” converts to evangelize boldly in what are seen as assuredly the last days.

No wonder, then, that spines tingled when speaker Ken Copeland interrupted his sermon July 3 to say that he had a word of prophecy from the Lord: “You will see me within hours!” Or the ready identification of fulfillment with that halo over the Hilton.

Speaker after speaker challenged conferees (who included a rather surprising number of minority persons): “God’s talking to his people today; are you listening?”

The FGBMFI is doing more than admonish its 300,000 adherents in 700 chapters worldwide to listen. As founder-president Shakarian put it in an interview: “God is using the fellowship to bring the Holy Spirit movement and his gifts back to the people.”

By the first of next year, says stocky and genial Shakarian, the FGBMFI’s witness will be “as great as it has been in the past twenty years combined.”

This great advance is expected through a two-pronged attack: expansion of a new half-hour weekly color TV series in newscast form (using laymen almost exclusively) called “Good News,” and an increasingly popular and successful evangelistic airlift operation.

The TV show is now beamed over thirty-four stations, with a goal of fifty by year’s end and 100 by mid-1973. That would be enough to reach 90 per cent of the population, figures Shakarian, whose son, Steve, 24, is in charge of the operation.

Growth of the FGBMFI overseas (there are now six or seven international presidents) is largely attributable to airlifts paid for by well-heeled businessmen who want to spread the word. Art Nersasian, Shakarian’s nephew and administrative assistant (FGBMFI’s leadership is a family affair), describes the airlift: “One man will get a burden or a vision for a country and will invite others to work with him and set up meetings.”

One airlift, with fifty or sixty full-gospel businessmen and their wives aboard, will wing to South Africa and Swaziland next month (cost—$1,975 each). Turlock, California, mayor Enoch Christoffersen recently returned from an airlift he arranged with some 170 FGBMFIers to Europe; there have been five airlifts to Sweden alone since the idea took off five years ago.

Other reasons for the increasing visability of the FGBMFI include its international monthly magazine, Voice, with a circulation of 600,000 in seven languages. A series booklet known as “The Work of the Holy Spirit Today” and tape sales of recorded convention messages all help to swell FGBMFI ranks (“a new chapter is formed every working day,” says Demos) and pump $1 million a year into operating budgets.

A spin-off ministry is fast becoming a pace-setter among youth crusades. Shakarian’s 38-year-old son Richard this year launched an independent ministry called Youth Crusades of America. Recently, more than 7,000 jammed the fairgrounds in San Bernardino, California, for a rally that broke a thirty-two-year attendance record at the auditorium. Some 1,100 young persons reportedly professed Christ at the rally there and in Los Angeles, where Teen Challenge leader Nicky Cruz and Spirit-singer Pat Boone told how Jesus had changed their lives.

A huge sign floated above the speaker’s platform at the Hilton: “His Banner Over Us Is Love.” “That’s the heart of it,” said the senior Shakarian, now 58, who first met with twenty-one businessmen in Clifton’s Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles in 1950 to form the FGBMFI. “It’s a melting in love by the Holy Spirit.”

Nowhere did that seem more evident than in the reception accorded Father Joseph Fulton, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Seattle and an ardent spokesman for the Catholic Pentecostal movement. About 30 per cent of the audience the night he spoke was said to be Catholic. Later, several nuns received a very un-Roman communion administered by Shakarian youth leaders on closing night.

Other speakers drawing raves were four-star general Ralph E. Haines, Jr., commander of the U. S. Continental Army Command (an Episcopalian who got the baptism at an FGBMFI military breakfast last year), healing minister Joe Poppell of Jessup, Georgia (he specializes in miraculously lengthening limbs, filling teeth, and restoring eardrums), and converted socialite Eleanor Searle Whitney. Black singer-evangelist Andrae Crouch and the Disciples moved the crowds to loud applause and set a few dancing in the joy of the Spirit. The Living Sound group from Oral Roberts University added a hard-driving, right-on sound lauded by young and old alike.

And Kathryn Kuhlman was at her best. San Francisco Examiner religion writer and columnist Lester Kinsolving exuded in print: “Even the most cynical observer could marvel at this lady’s indefatigable energy and homespun charm.”

The grand-ballroom crowd was electrified momentarily when her pianist, Dino Kartsenarkis, reached for two microphones; they short-circuited, jolting him to the floor. After laying on of hands by Miss Kuhlman and prayers in the Spirit by the audience, the young man revived and was helped off stage. He returned minutes later to play—to the audience’s delight and their audible praise to God.

Less sensational but perhaps more significant was the apparent healing of a 3-year-old Eureka, California, girl, Kimberly Pavlich. Her parents brought her to the fourth of July Kuhlman meeting after taking her earlier in the day to the Mount Zion Institute in San Francisco, where she was diagnosed as having lung cancer (an earlier operation had incised her other lung).

When Miss Kuhlman called for “someone with cancer of the lung” to come forward, an usher nudged Kimberly’s parents. Katherine laid hands on the tot as well as her father, Gary, of Catholic background. He soon spoke in tongues, and extensive tests next day at the same hospital reportedly gave little Kimberly a clean bill of health.

When FGBMFI holds its next world convention in New York in 1973, delegates may be looking for something more amazing than a halo in the sky. “Someday,” noted S. Lee Braxton, a vice-president of the fellowship board and president of Oral Roberts University regents, “Campus Crusade for Christ, FGBMFI, and the Billy Graham groups are all going to get together to fulfill the Great Commission.”

Watchman Nee Dead?

Watchman Nee, 71, the noted Chinese churchman and devotional author (The Normal Christian Life), died June 1 in Anhwei province, according to reports received by his British publisher, Victory Press. The sources say he had been released from a Shanghai prison a few months earlier and was suffering from a heart condition. His wife Charity reportedly died last fall.

It had been widely rumored of late that Nee had been tortured and mutilated, but the sources insist the rumors were untrue. Nee was given a twenty-year prison sentence by the Communists in 1952 on apparently trumped-up charges, notably multiple adultery. Formerly a chemist and pharmaceutical manufacturer. Nee is believed to have spent much of his prison time translating science books from English to Chinese.

Nee’s nameless evangelical movement was akin to the Exclusive wing of the Plymouth Brethren in belief and structure (Nee had early ties with them). It was known popularly in Western circles as the “Little Flock” movement, perhaps because of the Little Flock Hymnal used by Nee. The movement grew from three members in 1922 to more than 70,000 by the time the Bamboo Curtain fell. Its members, meeting mostly as cell groups in houses, remained “more numerous than all the other Protestant denominations combined,” observed a Communist source in the fifties, even though 2,000 of its leaders were arrested with Nee.

Nee resisted close ties with Western missions and the denominations they spawned, and he was opposed by these denominations. This proved to be a benefit: after the Communist takeover Nee’s leaders had no connections with the West to confess, and it wasn’t until 1956 that the perplexed Communists finally forced his church into the so-called Three Self Movement (self supporting, governing, and propagating).

Born Nee Tuo Sheng, Nee as a student in 1922 at the Anglican Trinity College in Foochow joined an early version of the Jesus movement (led by former naval officer Leland Wang), complete with Jesus marches, music fests, an abundance of young people, and an absence of church buildings. After a missionary stint to the South Sea Islands, Nee established his own first “assembly” in Shanghai. Advocating the necessity of an unpaid ministry, he built up a successful business to support the burgeoning work. Many of Nee’s people gave up all their possessions and lived communally as they spread revival throughout Shantung province—long before the Communists assumed power and decreed the commune idea.

Nee went to Taiwan in 1949, but not wanting to “desert the brethren,” he returned to the mainland after appointing his close associate Witness Lee to open a new front among the refugees. Under Lee, the movement has spread throughout the Chinese diaspora and is growing even among Westerners.

A spokesman for Victory Press said that partial royalties got through to Nee in prison (his writings predate his imprisonment) but that the firm has not decided what will be done with the balance of the growing account.

Bench, Chair, And Altar

The U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling against capital punishment won applause from many top religious leaders, but at least one influential evangelical group demurred.

The decision did not rule out the death penalty entirely. But for the time being, at least, the complex opinion is expected to have that effect upon lower courts.

Some seventeen or more religious groups had filed briefs urging that the Supreme Court outlaw capital punishment. They represented for the most part the liberal religious establishment led by the National Council of Churches.

In contrast, the National Association of Evangelicals had adopted a resolution this past spring opposing abolition of the death penalty. It was the first time the NAE had spoken to the issue, though many rank-and-file evangelicals are known to have favored retaining the principle of capital punishment. Their view is based primarily upon appeal to the Old Testament, which clearly allows it.

In recent years some evangelicals, particularly young ones, have expressed growing reservations. Their main thought is that poor people are almost invariably the ones who are executed, and that the Bible’s principles of justice are therefore violated.

An NAE spokesman said the court’s decision finding that the death penalty was being imposed in a “capricious and arbitrary” manner was itself “capricious and arbitrary.”

In another major case involving religous interests, the Supreme Court ruled that the arrangement of Senator Mike Gravel (D.-Alaska) with the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Beacon Press to publish portions of the “Pentagon Papers” is not shielded from possible grand jury action. The 5–4 vote held that neither Gravel nor his aides enjoyed congressional immunity in the case.

The nation’s highest tribunal may be asked to settle another church-state issue when it reconvenes in the fall. The U. S. Court of Appeals has ruled that compulsory chapel attendance at the three military service academies is unconstitutional, a move endorsed by many religious groups. The Defense Department may still appeal to the Supreme Court.