tentative proposals for a new united church in Scotland are outlined in a 30,000-word report just published (Multilateral Church Conversation in Scotland, Saint Andrew Press). Suggestions are made for new enlarged parishes and the pooling of resources in buildings and manpower, as well as for small groups to be formed within these parishes. Ministers and congregations would be in the care of “superintendents” or bishops, since it is felt that some personal pastoral oversight is desirable. The superintendent would deal with an enlarged parish rather than a diocese, and he would be regarded as a pastor of the people, the congregations, and the ministerial team.

The proposals have been drawn up by representatives of six denominations: the Church of Scotland, the United Free Church, the Episcopal Church, the Methodist Synod, the Congregational Union, and the Churches of Christ. Round-table talks have been held over five years. Two years ago the ruling bodies of all six agreed to a list of principles and authorized the hammering out of a plan of union.

On the question of relations with the State, the report notes the United Free Church’s opposition to establishment and says, “A united church would need to stand at a measured distance from State institutions, free to exercise a prophetic criticism of them while falling heir to the responsibilities in both mission and service accruing from establishment.”

If there is to be any possibility of recovering the “lost unity” of the churches in Scotland, declares the report, it must be on the basis of agreement on the fundamental Christian beliefs. The panels have found that such consensus already exists, and the report includes a brief statement of these fundamental convictions.

So much for summary, presented very largely from official sources lest my own selectivity be faulted. This, it is stressed, is an interim report only and goes now for discussion and comment to the ruling bodies of the six. It should be added that non-participants in the conversations were three smaller Scots Presbyterian bodies (including the historic Free Kirk) and the Baptist Union.

It is in the nature of inter-church reports to emphasize points held in common, while insisting that there have been frank exchanges on strongly held differences. Just as predictable, however, is the discovery that such differences are seldom mentioned in anything but the vaguest terms.

For example, I have before me now a Scottish Episcopal Church booklet entitled “The Apostolic Succession,” written by one of its bishops who is currently the executive officer of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Its claims on this single issue would serve to focus inter-church conversations largely on the terms on which the 97 per cent non-episcopal church membership (i.e., membership of the five other churches in the talks) would accept bishops. I have always been appalled in ecumenical discussions that Anglicans should so easily assume they are negotiating from a position of strength when their stance is rejected both by Rome and by Reformed churches. It makes me think of the exasperated parliamentarian who said he did not mind Gladstone’s acting as if he had the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but he did object to his assumption that God had put it there.

But confronted by the present report I would not make the above a major issue. Whatever the merits of the case, to the overwhelming majority of Scots the bishop is an alien concept in which a sense of history is for once utterly unhelpful. Not untypical is the reported protest by one university teacher against the 1956 “Bishops’ Report”: “I may be an atheist, but I’m a Presbyterian atheist.”

What made me groan continually as I read this report was its failure (though we are told it tried) to speak to the intellectual capacity of the people for whose benefit presumably the words were put together. There is something pathetic about high-level talkers of several denominations ascending amid jovial good fellowship into the profounder reaches of church order, polity, and doctrine, fondly imagining that the average church member is following them.

Even if we overlook the tendency to linger lovingly over questions that the man in the pew is not asking, there is a problem of sheer communication when the compilers’ niceties of speech are as incomprehensible as the mumbled Latin Mass, which even traditionalist Rome is superseding. I took this report to my octogenarian farmer friend, a man of generous heart and shining witness. His radio has told him of new church talks; he wants to know what is being said. I open the report: “The Gospel has to be indigenized … Jesus is aut deus aut non bonus … extra ecclesiam nulla salus … The Church will readily consume all the presbyteral man-hours it can get, and is unlikely to spawn unattached practitioners of the Presbyterate” (which would have the makings of humor in any other context). My farmer friend, who left school at twelve, listened with that patient courtesy still found in TV-less households, then told me I’d had a long ride and that I’d better sample some of those scones before a couple of big-eating Methodists arrived for the weekly home Bible study.

I persevered, this time with a Presbyterian landlady who saw me through some tricky student years. I chose an easy sentence: “The witness of the Church as a whole is weakened by the fact of disunity.” She understands. She agrees. But her mind is not on the vision splendid. It turns out that she is thinking of the ancient parish church where the two ministers are not on speaking terms and communicate through a church officer. Happily neither of the ministers is a signatory to the present report. And unhappily (Women’s Lib please recall this remark when the battle is won) the Church of Scotland’s fifteen representatives included not a single woman to obtrude that unity-but-begin-in-me note into the conversations.

I mention the above for no mischievous purpose, and not simply to highlight an extreme example of disunity within my own church. The Church of Scotland (which comprises some 85 per cent of the church membership represented in the six bodies) has in the last decade conducted individual talks with four of the others. All of them began with high hopes; all have quietly foundered. Are we then to evolve a new Parkinson’s Law for ecumenical man—that unity prospects are enhanced as dissident elements increase? That after four discordant duets a sextet of the same fumbling trumpeters will blend in harmony? Moreover, will they choose the right music to play?

It is a pity that ecumenical discussion in Scotland was not put into cold storage for a generation after the bishops-in-presbytery scheme was rejected, for we still have something to learn from an Arab proverb: “Keep your tents separate and bring your hearts together.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

“Dear God,

“Please don’t think me to be smart by putting grass in your offering plate. It means I am giving it up for your son, Jesus Christ.”

The letter—signed “Your daughter, Debbie”—and an ounce of marijuana came out of a collection bucket on the final night of the Leighton Ford crusade in Rochester last month.

Ford, 38, heir apparent to the Billy Graham role (he is Graham’s brother-in-law, vice-president of the Graham organization, and frequent speaker on Graham’s “Hour of Decision” broadcast), maintained his strong appeal among young people. More than half of the 3,293 “inquirers” were teen-agers. (Total attendance for the ten-day crusade: 65,400, a record.)

There were other notable aspects. Crusade planners—representing 250 churches—launched a unique social-action ministry to inmates in Attica prison, and Ford promoted a fledgling work among young people on probation. Jesus people were enlisted to work with street youths. And evangelical Catholics participated in significant numbers—even as counselors.

“I believe the ‘sweet bye and bye’ and the nasty here and now belong together,” declared Ford in forging the link between evangelism and social action. (That piety is essential but must be combined with involvement is a point he makes in his book One Way to Change the World.) Presbyterian pastor William Showalter, crusade chairman, noted approvingly that Ford had “developed social consciousness as an evangelist. Those who are socially concerned see in him someone they can trust.” Until Rochester, Ford had merely recommended certain service agencies on “Christian Action Night” in his crusades.

To set up the prison project Ford relied on his friend Richard J. Simmons of Seattle, who has established well-known help programs at a number of West Coast prisons. The project, known as “The Bridge,” will be beamed to prisoners at the nearby Attica State Correctional Facility, where forty-three died in a riot last September. Initially, thirty volunteers from Buffalo and Rochester will visit inmates regularly, then help them make a new start after they are released, staying with them throughout the parole period.

New York authorities expressed uneasiness about having outsiders run the program (more than 100 organizations asked to work at Attica after the riot), so it will be sponsored instead by the Genesee Ecumenical Ministries of Rochester and the Buffalo Council of Churches.

Ford also publicly endorsed the new Volunteers in Probation unit working with a county family court and the local FISH (Friends in Service Here) organization that volunteers help to the needy. The 5,300 at the crusade session where the three ministries were highlighted gave an offering of $3,500 to help stake them. An anti-war group tried to disrupt the meeting, but Ford welcomed the protesters and discussed issues with them later; they did not return.

Showalter, fellow Presbyterian minister James Rice, who served as Christian-action chairman, and others on the crusade planning committee suggested the Attica idea to Ford months ago. (Local Presbyterian involvement in evangelism goes back nearly 150 years, when evangelist Charles G. Finney drew thousands to his Rochester campaign and sent 635 new members into three Presbyterian churches. The area was so saturated with hellfire-and-brimstone preaching that it was dubbed “the burnt-over district.”)

The planning committee also recruited a dozen members of the Love Inn Christian community near Ithaca to counsel street people—some of them zonked on drugs—who made decisions. The young Christians helped reunite runaways with their parents and spent days rapping with other youths in parks and shopping plazas.

Another committee idea: a “Help” table next to the platform where nearly 100 in need signed up for aid in lining up job interviews, pregnancy and marriage counseling, and the like. (Two psychiatrists were on call.)

Catholic bishop Joseph L. Hogan of the twelve-county Rochester area gave the Ford crusade his official approval and urged his faithful to attend. (In an interview Hogan revealed that he often listens to Billy Graham and appreciates Graham’s style and message, “which you don’t hear much in the pulpit these days.”) Indeed, one-third of the decisions recorded were made by Catholics, and some Catholics—including at least one nun—served as counselors. It marked the first time a Ford crusade had gotten so much Catholic support and participation. (Catholics and Protestants alike from non-participating churches are provided special follow-up and referred to a Bible-study course, according to Ford’s advance man, Lawrence Selig. If Catholic churches ever participate officially, he replied to a question, new believers with Catholic backgrounds will probably be steered to those churches for follow-up.)

The crusade featured a Jesus witness march through downtown Rochester, where hundreds handed out evangelistic newspapers and tracts. A large 15- by 20-foot TV screen behind Ford on stage enabled the audience to maintain eye contact with him, another evangelistic first.

Among the firsts there was also a last: “crusade”—a word that has some bad connotations, especially among Jews. Ford’s next campaign will be billed a “Reachout.”

Billy Graham: From Birmingham To Belfast

Blacks and whites in Birmingham, Alabama, sat side by side through eight crusade sessions listening to evangelist Billy Graham expound the Gospel as God’s answer to man’s most pressing social and spiritual needs. Attendance averaged about 40,000 per service; of these, an estimated total of 10,000 streamed forward during the invitation periods indicating they wanted to try the answer in their own lives.

On the day before Governor George Wallace was shot, the presidential hopeful telephoned Graham and told him, “I will be with you from Thursday on.” The assassination attempt moved the 53-year-old evangelist to scrap a Youth Night sermon and preach instead on “the pornography of violence,” citing especially “the influence of the devil.”

In a different vein on another night, guest James Johnson, assistant secretary of the Navy, in a testimony related how upon his arrival in Washington he had committed himself to “make a friend each day for Christ.”

Scholars Agree …

What’s the “best” Bible? Austin Chapman of Minneapolis, Minnesota, conducted a survey among forty-six well-known Bible scholars, clergymen, and theologians to find out. Among those who responded to the questionnaire: Harold Lindsell, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Harold J. Ockenga, Gordon-Conwell Seminary president, and Francis A. Schaeffer, of L’Abri Fellowship.

Chapman’s survey covered the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, and the King James Version. Out of ten categories the RSV snagged seven first places and three seconds. The ASV took first in “most accurate,” but the RSV got first in “scholarship” and “best whole Bible.” The KJV came in last in nine out of the ten categories, including accuracy and scholarship.

A daytime school of evangelism attracted 1,000 participants, including many pastors. The executive committee of the crusade was racially mixed and represented every major branch of Protestantism. The racial mix was evident nightly on platform and program.

Back in 1964, when racial tensions were still running high, Graham conducted an Easter service at Legion Field attended by nearly 50,000. “That’s when blacks and whites learned they could sit side by side,” observed a reporter. “This year they learned they could work side by side.”

Having gotten blacks and whites together in Birmingham, Graham at the close of the crusade announced he would make a six-day visit to Belfast and Dublin in early June, presumably in hopes of getting Irish Catholics and Protestants together. He said he would have a few speaking engagements, including a television appearance, but would not fill a political role. Instead, said he, he would seek only to carry a message of love to “integrated” audiences (Catholics and Protestants), emphasizing the biblical message of reconciliation, while trying to learn from the Irish. As long as the United States is in Viet Nam, he pointed out, Americans have no right to tell others how to solve their problems.

Before leaving Birmingham he told reporters that a rehearing of the school prayer issue before the U. S. Supreme Court would be preferable to legislative attempts to pass a “Prayer Amendment” to the Constitution. But if no court relief is forthcoming, he said, he would assume his original stance and might even lead a march on Washington—“the largest of such marches”—to restore prayer in public schools.

Skinner Gets Them Together

Black evangelist Tom Skinner preached to about 30,000—many of them high schoolers—in an eight-day Flint, Michigan, crusade sponsored by more than 300 churches in the area. Associate evangelist Bill Pannell reported 1,167 decisions. More than 500 youths staged a Saturday ten-mile Trek-for-Tom walkathon to raise funds for the crusade; their efforts netted over $2,000. Crusade co-chairman Avery Aldridge of the Foss Avenue Missionary Baptist Church reflected: “A new day has come to Flint, a day when black and white Christians realize that we are together, truly serving the same personal Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

Earlier, Skinner and evangelist Leighton Ford had teamed up in an unusual outreach at the University of Virginia sponsored by the local Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship chapter, whose membership numbers in the hundreds. IVCFers from other campuses and a dozen Gordon-Conwell seminary professors and students were also recruited to aid in the low-key effort. There were meetings in the main auditorium, scholarly seminars, classroom lectures, an appearance before the debating society (seminary professor William Lane was accorded a standing ovation), and personal encounters throughout the campus, with a number of decisions for Christ.

Participant Richard Lovelace, church history professor at Gordon-Conwell, sees such involvement as a breakthrough that would “make the seminary a reaching as well as a teaching institution, helping to focus everything the seminary does on the practical demands of mission.”

Charisma In Pittsburgh

Overflow crowds—4,000 from twenty-four states and four foreign countries—packed into the stately Hicks Memorial

Chapel of staid Pittsburgh Seminary in mid-May for the annual six-day Greater Pittsburgh Charismatic Conference. They represented what charismatics like to call the “true ecumenical movement,” for among them were members of all the major denominations plus some old-line Pentecostals, “completed” Jews, and a large number of Roman Catholics. (The burgeoning Catholic Pentecostal movement began in Pittsburgh in 1967 at Duquesne University, site of next year’s conference.)

Intended to be primarily a “ministry of teaching,” the conference featured speakers from Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish backgrounds. They included well-known author Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch victim of a Nazi concentration camp, Derek Prince of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who specializes in exorcism. J. Rodman Williams of Austin Presbyterian Seminary conducted a clergy workshop on the theology of the Holy Spirit, laymen listened to popular Roman Catholic psychologist-lecturer John Klem, and converted Jewish rabbi Michael Esses of Anaheim’s Melodyland Christian Center led participants in a study of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.

Speaking to overflow evening sessions (many were turned away) were Indonesian revival evangelist Mel Tari and Dr. Harold Ockenga, president of Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Tari, author of the best-selling Like a Mighty Wind, reported that the seven-year-old Indonesian revival is still spreading through that country’s islands and into New Guinea. He affirmed that the New Testament-like miracles are still occurring and answered his detractors with, “This is just the fulfillment of the Bible your missionaries brought us. Thank you for bringing us this word of God!” Tari told of Muslim priests on his island of Timor who had torn up the Koran and accepted Christ. He claimed that now 850,000 of Timor’s one million residents are Christians. (Some missionaries have disputed the authenticity of parts of his book, but Tari insists the accounts are true.)

Ockenga brought the house down at the closing session with a repeat of his prophecy address at last year’s Jerusalem Conference on Prophecy and a triumphant “Even so come, Lord Jesus!” Ockenga himself is not a charismatic.

Conference chairman Russell Bixler, a Church of the Brethren pastor, said hundreds had been “baptized in the Holy Spirit” and many had been physically healed. (Numerous conferees reported they no longer needed their eyeglasses.) He cautioned zealous charismatics not to come on too strong in their home churches, but to talk about Jesus and be a uniting force.

ROBERT E. FRIEDRICH, JR.

Amish Schooling: Unenforceable

The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously 7 to 0 that the state of Wisconsin does not have the constitutional power to punish Amish parents who refuse because of religious convictions to send their children to public high schools.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, speaking for the court, said a state’s interest in universal education is not entirely free from a balancing process when it impinges on other fundamental First Amendment rights. He held that Wisconsin would “greatly endanger if not destroy the free exercise of their religious beliefs” if Amish children were forced to attend high school and that the state did not show a compelling need for thus interfering with the traditional Amish religious way of life.

The court asserted that an Amish child would not be deprived of the ability to earn a living should he leave that faith in later years since he would have received excellent vocational training and learned habits of hard work and honesty in his Amish education.

Other justices, while agreeing with the basic decision, questioned whether the court was really taking adequate heed of the children’s freedom of choice, an issue that, they noted, was not directly raised in the Wisconsin cases.

GLENN EVERETT

Holding Academic Hands

An evangelical university system may evolve out of the Christian College Consortium. Dr. David L. McKenna, president of Seattle Pacific College, says the ten member schools in the consortium are already cooperating in a number of ways and are planning more joint efforts. One key project is a summer institute on faith and learning that will bring together faculty representatives to discuss the integration of faith and learning. McKenna is chairman of the executive committee of the consortium.

Scotland: Specter Of The Bishop

For five years clerical and lay representatives from six Scottish churches have quietly been talking about unity. They have now produced a 30,000-word interim report that is sure to cause a storm in a land where religion still regularly makes the front page.

Proposing a merger into one body that will draw on the traditions of all six, the document stresses that true unity will come only when “the road back” is closed for good. It sees one vital principle: “The authenticity and credibility of the Church depends not on any given form of order, worship or service, but on God’s own action of calling, sustaining and forgiving. The shaping of the Church has always been vitally affected by involvement and concern within a given historical situation.”

While the report goes into great detail on the organizational grouping of the unified church in congregations, parishes, and regions, many Scots will see in its recommendations only the “unexorcised specter of the bishop” come again to haunt them, unconvincingly disguised under the flexible appellation of “superintendent.” Said one Kirk minister, quoting an early Presbyterian, “Busk [dress] him, busk him as bonnilie as ye can, we [still] see … the horns of his mitre.” And the Beaver-brook press, which does not wish bishops well, resumed its traditional cries of outrage at yet another secret plot.

The six involved are the Church of Scotland (accounting for all but 300,000 of the potential 1.5 million membership), Episcopalians, Methodists, Congregationalists, United Free, and Churches of Christ. The report goes now for consideration to the governing body of each church.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Constantinidis, ‘Heretic’

Greek journalist George Constantinidis, an evangelical, has been sentenced to five months’ imprisonment and six months of deportation (confinement to a particular part of the country) on charges of proselytizing, but he is free pending appeal. In the same courtroom in Pyrgos, Greece, in November, 1970, Spiros Zodhiates, president of the New Jersey-based American Mission to Greeks (AMG), was acquitted of similar charges (see December 18, 1970, issue, page 43, and January 1, 1971, issue, page 29).

The charges against Constantinidis—sending New Testaments and evangelistic booklets to school children and sending literature to adults—were lodged by Orthodox bishop Athanasios of Elias. Orthodox officials claim the materials are “heretical” because they are published by the AMG’s O Logos publishing house, a non-Orthodox publisher. According to news sources, an Orthodox spokesman said the literature failed to mention the Orthodox teaching that salvation is effected by Jesus Christ only through the Greek Orthodox Church.

Defense attorneys tried to show that their client had been the victim of an Orthodox plot and that prosecution witnesses had lied, but they based their case mostly on the alleged invalidity of the anti-proselytism law, arguing that the Greek constitution allows the freedom to propagate religious beliefs.

Constantinidis explained that he had never tried to “convert” Orthodox members into the Evangelical Church but was intent only on “evangelizing” them, defined as “bringing someone to Christ.”

If a higher court rules in the journalist’s favor, it will be a landmark decision perhaps abetting the evangelical cause in Greece.

Religion In Transit

More than 265,000 homes in the San Diego area have received the Living Bible version of the Gospel of John, delivered by 700 members of the city’s Scott Memorial Baptist Church. Of 600 responses so far, 200 have resulted in professions of faith, says pastor Timothy LaHaye.

Park Street Church in Boston has pledged a record $335,000 for missionary work in the year ahead.

Stony Brook School, a leading evangelical prep school, held its fiftieth commencement. Speaker: Senator Mark Hatfield.

A federal study shows that 46 per cent of the nation’s unmarried women have engaged in premarital sex by age 19, and that “while proportionately more blacks than whites have had intercourse, it is the white non-virgins who have sex more frequently and are the more promiscuous.”

Roman Catholics in the United States increased by 176,261 to a total of 48.4 million during 1971, but decreases were reported in the number of priests, nuns, students, schools, baptisms, and converts.

Activist students on college campuses are becoming more “person-oriented” than “cause-oriented,” Lutheran Student Movement executives reported after a tour of campuses, confirming observations of John Charles Cooper in The New Mentality and Charles Reich in The Greening of America.

World Wide Pictures, producers of Billy Graham films, will produce a film version of The Hiding Place, World War II hero Corrie Ten Boom’s best-selling book co-authored with John and Elizabeth Sherrill.

A tornado roared through part of Heather Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis, but 500 praying parishioners huddled inside the sanctuary escaped unhurt. Among them: fifty teen-agers who left a makeshift Sunday-school building moments before it was destroyed.

The National Catholic Register again editorially urged Catholics to participate in the Key 73 evangelistic campaign.

Wheaton College students have raised $50,000 to support fifty-two students in Christian service abroad this summer.

The American Board of Missions to the Jews has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to deny WOR-TV (Channel 9 in New York) renewal of its broadcasting license because it canceled a film on the Passover last year, after which nine other major stations also canceled.

“DIMENSION For Better Living,” a twelve-page evangelistic tabloid newspaper supplement in color published by Moody Monthly magazine, is being inserted in a number of major dailies and distributed in other ways by interested Christian groups.

Inteen magazine, edited by Henry Soles, Jr., and published by Urban Ministries, Inc. (UMI), of Chicago, was named “Christian Education Magazine of the Year” during the recent Evangelical Press Association convention. The one-year-old UMI, founded by Melvin E. Banks and chaired by evangelist Tom Skinner, is the first black-owned independent publisher to produce interracial Sunday-school literature.

The executive board of the National Coalition of American Nuns, representing 1,800 of the nation’s 175,000 Catholic nuns, has called upon Catholic women to withhold church offerings until the Catholic Church gives women equal status with men.

Personalia

Pastor John Huffman of the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church has carried a Miami radio station from sixth to first in number of listeners on Sunday nights with a three-hour open-phone talk show that begins at 10 P.M.

Minneapolis insurance broker Vernon Blikstad, a Lutheran believed by many to be the nation’s largest single distributor of Scripture portions, has been ousted from membership in the Christian Business Men’s Committee for promoting the charismatic movement during CBMC luncheons. “The leaders of yesterday’s revival are the enemies of this one,” he countered.

American financier-philanthropist John M. Templeton, a United Presbyterian elder, announced creation of a “Nobel prize” for religion worth $88,400 annually to a person of any faith who is deemed significantly “instrumental in widening man’s knowledge of love of God.” The nine judges include World Council of Churches executive Eugene Carson Blake and Princeton seminary president James McCord.

For reasons of health, pastor Edward L. R. Elson, 65, of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington gave up his church duties last month rather than waiting until January to bow out as earlier announced. He will continue to serve as chaplain to the U. S. Senate.

World Scene

New York Times correspondent Anthony Lewis reports that early Sunday-morning masses at the Catholic cathedral in Hanoi are packed, and crowds worship in another Catholic church in the city. Authorities, however, allow no seminary, hence no new priests have been ordained in the past ten years. Meanwhile, Catholic officials denied that two French missionaries had been crucified by invading North Vietnamese troops north of Kontum, South Viet Nam.

Resorts are springing up on the site of Sodom on the shores of the Dead Sea, a development seen by some as a fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy of redemption for the infamous sin city.

The World Council of Churches’ anti-racism commission says it will press for the withdrawal of all foreign investments from South Africa as part of a stepped-up drive against apartheid.

Suburban Johannesburg authorities have arrested twenty-seven young people for “disturbing the peace” by street witnessing.

The Nationalist Chinese government refused to permit a recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan to discuss a controversial statement issued by the church last year. The statement reflected concerns of native Taiwanese displeased at domination by Chinese exiles from the mainland, and called for government reforms.

Indonesian Baptists have set a goal of one million converts by 1981; they have grown from 850 in 1960 to more than 20,000 today.

In evangelist John Haggai’s Lisbon, Portugal, campaign attended by 63,000, more than 2,500—mostly young men—professed Christ.

It may have been the altitude—one mile above sea level—or perhaps only remembrances of the old pioneer experience suggested by the “unsinkable” millionairess Molly Brown, who lived there. But whatever the cause, this year’s 184th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., meeting in Denver, Colorado, proved particularly unpredictable.

Foremost on the list of surprises was the firm decision on the part of commissioners (voting delegates) to withdraw from the ten-year-old Consultation on Church Union (COCU), which had been launched by former stated clerk of the UPUSA church Dr. Eugene Carson Blake. Withdrawal of the three-million-member denomination was expected by many observers to have the effect of ultimately defeating the COCU plan to merge the nine participating churches. The action was unexpected, since COCU’s Plan of Union was currently only under study and was not to be presented for definitive action until next year’s assembly.

Withdrawal from COCU came early in response to an overture from the Presbytery of Philadelphia. The overture had originated in Philadelphia with a group of conservative ministers and laymen known as the Geneva Forum. In its original form it had merely asked for rejection of the proposed union plan while nevertheless “continuing ecumenical conversations through the Consultation on Church Union.” In Denver this original motion was strengthened by the assembly’s Committee on Bills and Overtures so that the recommendation that reached the floor called for total withdrawal. According to spokesmen on the committee, the decision was reached despite pressure by denominational officials to reverse it. Final action passed by a vote of 411 to 310.

Several days later, a maneuver to delay the disengagement until January 1, 1973, and to permit the United Presbyterian Church to send observers to COCU even after that date was defeated. COCU committee members were given until October 31 to terminate their participation. Also defeated (365 to 333) was an earlier substitute motion to keep the denomination in COCU while nevertheless rejecting the current plan.

Reaction was predictable. Dr. James I. McCord, chairman of the UPUSA Committee on COCU and president of Princeton Seminary, called the assembly’s decision “an aberration that will have to be corrected.” He tended to blame the results on the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a conservative group within the denomination that had been laboring for a year to defeat the COCU proposal. McCord argued that the COCU committee had erred “in letting the process of study and criticism go on too long.”

Dr. Robert V. Moss, president of the United Church of Christ, which was also involved in the Consultation, expressed “deep regret” at the action. The Reverend William A. Benfield, chairman of the delegation to COCU from the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), argued that the “precipitous action” of the northern church would be interpreted as “breaking the faith” by the other denominations.

Those who supported the assembly’s action reiterated their belief that the COCU plan was obsolete and unworkable and that its defeat actually freed the church to pursue more valid and more promising ecumenical ventures.

One such venture seemed to be found in efforts to unite the northern and southern churches. The General Assembly voted to continue such efforts, which could lead to the reunion of the two major Presbyterian denominations “within five years,” according to the Reverend Robert C. Lamer, co-chairman of the joint reunion committee.

For a time it looked as if the same script would be played out on the issue of United Presbyterian participation in the Key 73 nationwide evangelistic campaign. UPUSA’s Council on Evangelism had opposed participation, but this was reversed by the assembly’s own committee. However, after extended debate, at which youth delegates spoke heartily in favor of the Key 73 proposal, a vote of 387 to 237 barred Presbyterian involvement at the denomination level. Instead the action recommended that the proposal be called to the attention of the lower judicatories of the church and to local congregations.

In an important denominational matter, the assembly also approved costly and extensive plans to restructure all the boards and agencies of the church along more modern lines and to relocate headquarters from Philadelphia to New York. This restructuring is intended to produce substantial savings in overhead and staff salaries, though no one would estimate how many of the 1,028 staff jobs would be eliminated. The move is expected to result in a voluntary loss of 20 per cent of the executive and 60 per cent of the secretarial and clerical personnel. Technically, all the current jobs are up for grabs, and there is no guarantee that any one now employed by the church will be rehired.

In further actions the assembly also:

• Adopted a statement urging that women should have “full freedom of personal choice concerning the completion or termination of their pregnancies” and that abortions should not be restricted by law.

• Called for the immediate and total withdrawal of all United States forces from Southeast Asia and asked Congress to withhold spending for support of the war effort.

• Rejected efforts to alter or eliminate the controversial Emergency Fund for Legal Aid (which came under fire last year because of a grant of $10,000 to the Angela Davis Defense Fund), while at the same time establishing a further set of guidelines and criteria for the administration of the fund.

• Adopted a report of the Standing Committee on Baptism that acknowledges the validity of both infant and believers’ baptism and permits the practice of both within the church.

• Called for extended changes in America’s criminal-justice system, substantive tax reform at all levels of government, and congressional action to prohibit “the manufacture, sale, ownership, and possession” of concealable weapons.

• Approved plans for a new monthly magazine to be known as A.D., combining and replacing the present magazines Presbyterian Life and the UCC’s United Church Herald.

On the first day of the assembly, the position of moderator—highest leadership post in the denomination—passed from Lois H. Stair to C. Willard Heckel, a professor of constitutional law at Rutgers University. In a postelection interview, Heckel justified the Angela Davis grant, expressed reservations about Key 73, and opposed the Indochina war, terming U. S. involvement “lawless … immoral … and stupid.” He won a first-ballot victory over three other candidates.

Estranged Presbyterians Aye Reunion Basis

Two small groups of Presbyterians, divided since 1939, took a significant step toward reunion last month in separate but related actions. The Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church both approved a new “Basis for Union” and instructed subcommittees to report back next year with detailed plans for a church merger. Negotiations between the two churches—which have a combined membership just over 25,000—have been under way for more than five years. The actions came at a time when many union-movement advocates in both churches had given up hope of getting together.

Reformed Presbyterians in their 150th general synod, held at Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, listened to Covenant Seminary president Robert G. Rayburn present the proposed “Basis,” then approved it overwhelmingly after moderate debate. Opponents argued chiefly that Orthodox Presbyterians had not yet shown sufficient willingness to recognize the right of a church body to speak on moral issues not explicitly forbidden by Scripture.

Approval of the same “Basis” by Orthodox Presbyterians meeting in Oostburg, Wisconsin, came from a majority of at least two-thirds.

Joint committees of the two churches will work during the coming year on such matters as merging presbyteries, control of educational institutions, publications, and realignment of missionary agencies.

At Harvey Cedars, about 200 commissioners heard reports of unprecedented evangelistic growth in local churches of the Reformed Presbyterian denomination. Elder Marion D. Barnes, president of the recently accredited Covenant College at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, was elected moderator.

JOEL BELZ

Flunking A Religious Test

Can a Christian organization (radio station, magazine, or college, for example) hire personnel—or deny employment—on the basis of religious creed? This is the latest question that the federal government is asking, and in the first case tested the answer is no.

The Federal Communications Commission notified radio stations KGDNAM and KHIQ-FM in Edmonds, Washington, that they violated the law by requiring prospective employees to answer such questions as “Are you a Christian?” and “Is your spouse a Christian?” Trygve J. Anderson, an applicant for radio announcer, complained to the FCC that such questions “have no bearing on a person’s ability to handle a job in broadcasting.” King’s Garden, Incorporated, owner of the stations, replied that most of its programming is inspirational.

The FCC cited statutes already on the books (1964 Civil Rights Act and the rules of the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity) that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of creed. To avoid asking questions for employment such as those King’s Garden uses, some federal personnel suggest that the employer advertise with the religious press or recruit from religious colleges.

In handing down the ruling, the FCC said that persons employed to present a particular religious philosophy over the air may be exempt from the religious discrimination code, but that this is “a very narrow exemption” and not applicable to general employees.

The Department of Labor has issued proposed new guidelines to define further the statutes the Edmonds stations violated. The new order emphasizes that it’s the employer’s obligation “to provide equal employment opportunity without regard to religion.”

GLENN D. EVERETT

Passing The Missions Buck

Unlike many of the major denominations, the 120,000-member Christian and Missionary Alliance reports its revenues have increased consistently since World War II, reaching a total of $7.6 million for worldwide missionary work last year. CMA treasurer B. S. King said that 95 per cent of the money comes through free-will offerings. The funds are used to support 191 missionary personnel and their work in forty countries.

The report was given at the annual CMA meeting, held in suburban Oakland, California, last month. The Omaha Gospel Tabernacle in Nebraska led giving with $106,500.

American Baptists: Some Dreams Come True

To conclude his speech at the sixty-fifth annual meeting of the 1.5-million-member American Baptist Convention in Denver last month, District of Columbia congressman Walter E. Fauntroy—a black Baptist clergyman who sings tenor fairly well—burst into strains of “The Impossible Dream.”

While the song was intended to underline his call for blacks and whites to work together, it was also a fitting finale to much that had transpired at the business sessions.

For years various groups in the ABC have been pursuing their own versions of the impossible dream. This year the dream came true for some. Leaders who have lobbied for denominational restructure and streamlining won their case by a wide margin. Evangelicals, feeling the ABC has been long on social action and short on evangelism, were warmed by the virtually unanimous endorsement of ABC participation in the nationwide Key 73 evangelism campaign next year—and by the election of a theologically conservative general secretary. Racial-justice forces won a resounding okay for a joint $7.5 million fund-raising venture with the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention (the money will be used mostly for minority educational purposes). And mission leaders glowingly reported receipts of more than $16 million and deferred gifts of $7 million in a campaign launched in 1963 to raise $10 million for capital needs of ABC home- and foreign-mission agencies.

But for Women’s Lib advocates the dream ended in never-never land, and for anti-war enthusiasts and the resolutions committee the dream lapsed into a nightmare.

Under the terms of restructure, overwhelmingly approved (though only 1,900 of the 3,200 delegates voted in the late-night session) and due to take effect January 1, 1973, the ABC’s name will be changed to “American Baptist Churches in the U. S. A.”

The name change was only one of a number of important measures. Four major denominational program boards, until now autonomous agencies that have elected their own officers and staffers, will be brought under the direct control of a new 200-member policy-making “General Board.” Selection of the latter is designed to give the grass roots more say in denominational doings. Three of the boards will have their names, not functions, changed to reflect their status as boards of national, international, and educational ministries.

The new general secretary, dean and New Testament professor Robert C. Campbell of the American Baptist Seminary of the West at Covina, California, will have greater authority than any of his predecessors. (In perhaps the briefest acknowledgment speech in Baptist history, Campbell responded, “Thank you, I think.”)

The ABC’s presidency, a figurehead position, will be rotated among clergy and laity with equal consideration given all candidates “regardless of race or sex.” (This year’s president is pastor Gene E. Bartlett of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, formerly president of Colgate Rochester Divinity School.) An amendment intended to guarantee women 50 per cent of the General Board’s seats was defeated 2,221 to 296. A section calling for the ABC’s annual conventions to be replaced by biennial meetings survived 1,385 to 1,101, but many delegates said they wanted more—not less—fellowship, and they vowed to raise the issue again.

As predicted, the resolutions session again this year ended in a shambles for want of a quorum. And again the issue up for grabs was a lengthy controversial statement on the Indochina war. It called for “immediate” unilateral ceasefire and withdrawal by U. S. troops and congressional cut-off of war funds. Indiana pastor A. E. Lacy, with backing of the resolutions committee, introduced a shortened version of the original, but it was rejected 846 to 818. A New Jersey layman then introduced an amendment supporting President Nixon’s policies. In light of the earlier action it could conceivably have squeaked by, but the convention fell apart amid haggling and a quorum call. (It was the first major church parley following mining of North Viet Nam’s harbors and the step-up in bombing.) The opposing groups ended up sending their statements as telegrams to Nixon.

An endorsement of Key 73 and part of a statement on racism were voted upon before the fiasco took place. The Key 73 paper called for “person-to-person communication of our faith.” witness through social action, experiments in worship forms, and togetherness with other Key 73 participants. The racism measure supported quality education for all children, even if busing is necessary to achieve it.

All was quiet on the black, Spanish American, and Indian caucus fronts. (“It’s because we’ve made progress in these areas,” explained an ABC press spokesman.) Even the evangelically oriented American Baptist Fellowship took pains to avoid rocking the boat.

But also missing were last year’s throngs of young people caught up in revival, the crowded evangelism and spiritual-life seminars, the sense of spiritual jubilance and expectancy. The dream of a revived, revitalized ABC seemed a bit more possible then.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

“As the head of a large, international movement I am involved with thousands of others in a ‘conspiracy to overthrow the world.’ Each year we train tens of thousands of high school and college students from more than half of the major countries of the world in the art of revolution, and daily these ‘revolutionists’ are at work around the globe, spreading our philosophy and strengthening and broadening our influence.”

These words come not from a Communist party chairman but from Bill Bright, founder and president of the growing Campus Crusade for Christ organization. The revolution he mentions is a spiritual one, for Bright and his workers are out to evangelize the world by 1980. It is no empty vow. Crusade’s full-time staff now numbers more than 3,000, up from 250 ten years ago. And already hundreds of thousands of persons worldwide can trace their spiritual ancestry to Crusade. (Crusade grew out of a ministry Bright and his wife beamed to University of Los Angeles students in 1951 when he was a businessman-turned-seminarian. See April 12, 1968, issue, page 40.)

Crusade is no longer confined to campus. More than 100,000 laymen are trained each year in lay institutes, says Bright. These range from small interchurch groups to large denominational gatherings. Special divisions work with pastors, missionaries, blacks. American Indians, Spanish-speaking people, and military personnel.

Nor is crusade confined any longer to America. Its international staffers work in more than fifty countries. Fewer than 100 of these workers are Americans; over 400 are nationals. (Most of the national leaders were converted and recruited while they were college students here. Some are former Communists.) Many will be on hand for Crusade’s Explo 72 evangelism congress this month in Dallas.

In addition to its main multi-million-dollar headquarters at Arrowhead Springs on the slopes above San Bernardino, California, Crusade operates centers in Manila, London, Switzerland, and Mexico.

Bright and his administrators are tuned to goals, and they devise strategy accordingly, country by country. But whether it’s America or another nation and students or church members under consideration the entire operation boils down to a simple concept: train Christians to share their faith with their peers—then press for a decision, lead them into the filling of the Spirit, enroll them in follow-up, and turn then into reproducers. This, Bright believes, is the fastest way to fulfill the so-called Great Commission of Christ. It is also, he is convinced, the best hope for changing the world for the better.

Although the international aspect of Crusade’s ministry is only a few years old, impressive results are being reported. Here is a recent sampling:

South Korea. According to many South Korean leaders, their nation is in the midst of a revival greater than the famed outpouring of 1907. And Crusade is in the thick of it, led by national director Joon Gon Kim. Last August Crusade drew 10,000 persons (6,000 were high school and college-age young people) to leadership training sessions at Taejon. They witnessed personally to 42,000, and 16,000 prayed to receive Christ. The newly trained leaders went back home and passed on their training to thousands of others. In less than two months, leaders say, 180,000 were taught how to give their faith away. At Kongju Teachers College nine professors and 150 students accepted Christ. The principal at Samchuk high school led fifty of his pupils to Christ—and into the church he attends. More than 3,000 primary school teachers evangelized in homes. Kim preached to 1,600 army commanders and on another occasion to 14,000 troops, with many decisions reported. Three collegians led half their classmates in the engineering department to Christ. The accounts of conversions, changed lives, transformed homes, and revived churches are endless.

Mexico. Fifty Crusade “action groups” of college students are functioning weekly on campuses. At least 2,000 reportedly received Christ during a “campus invasion” at the 110,000-student National University in Mexico City, and nearly that many registered decisions in a similar outreach at the 65,000-student National Polytechnic University where Christian students were allowed to speak in 220 classroom meetings.

France. The Forerunners, a traveling Crusade music group, opened the way at a university in Orleans. Half of the large audience asked for follow-up interviews, and “discovery groups” were formed in all six residence halls.

Colombia. Crusade’s activists are under attack by Communists, but leaders expect to have 2,000 students in weekly meetings in Cali soon.

Brazil. During a leadership institute workers practiced their new methodology on campuses and beaches and from door-to-door, and reported that half of those they spoke with made decisions.

Indonesia. In a high school class on religion in Djakarta, a Crusade-trained student wielded his “Four Spiritual Laws” booklet (it’s in dozens of languages) and all 112 of his classmates said they wanted to accept Christ.

Pakistan. Leader Kundan Massey says there is “tremendous fruit” just now among Moslems and Hindus (workers make them renounce other gods), and that many educated persons are turning to Christ. The liberal-oriented West Pakistan Christian Council representing more than 500 churches has asked him to conduct schools of evangelism for all its pastors, and these are under way. An Anglican priest led his congregation through the Four Laws at a Sunday worship service and dozens of members walked forward to pray to receive Christ. Similar happenings—and accounts of personal renewal—were reported by other clergymen.

Our Man In Moscow

Although protocol kept Soviet Baptist leaders from inviting President Nixon directly to visit their church in Moscow sometime during his week-long stay in the capital, they did ask press personnel to relay their hopes that he would. They also got ready—just in case.

Workmen were making repairs on the outside of the church when this reporter saw it the day after Nixon’s arrival in the Soviet Union. The inside also was being spruced up with paint, and a woman was polishing the ornate wooden pulpit.

The church, which is in the same building as the offices of the Soviet Evangelical Baptist Union, is located more than a mile from the Kremlin, where Nixon and his wife stayed while in Moscow. It schedules three services each Sunday (most are packed) plus evening services on Tuesday and Saturday.

The distinguished-looking white-haired president of Soviet Protestantism, the Reverend Ilia Ivanov, uttered an eloquently expressed hope for God’s blessing upon the summit conference to the end that it might foster world peace. He said he and his colleagues were praying that the talks would be fruitful.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Finland. New staffer Lassi Kontula, a divinity student, says there are more young Christians in his land than ever—“and they are more active than ever before.” There has been opposition from Communists, but 150 Crusade action groups continue to hold forth on every campus in Helsinki.

To complement the ministry abroad, Crusade three years ago launched a ministry to reach the 150,000 international students in this country. “These are the cream of the crop, the future leaders of their countries,” explained Massey. “Yet 80 per cent return to their lands without hearing the Gospel here.” Indeed, until now more of them have probably returned as Communists than as Christians, say many observers.

About fifty Crusade staffers have enlisted so far to work with international students. Meanwhile, Crusade’s lay contacts are being urged to open their homes to touring internationals. Bright and other leaders are convinced that nationals must bear the prime responsibility for reaching their respective nations with the Gospel.

Amid the blessings are some headaches too. Crusade’s current budget is about $2 million. An administrative aide says that must be hiked next year to $5 million in order to keep abreast of goals—and to $200 million by 1980. So far staffers have had to raise their own support (ranging from $285 monthly for a single rookie to about $950 for a veteran with four children, with housing and auto allowances extra), but the Arrowhead Springs property still carries a hefty mortgage, there is plenty of overhead, and the foreign work must be staked until it is self-supporting (Australia and Canada have reached that status; Korea is nearing it). Yet Bright believes God will continue to supply all needs.

Some staffers grouse about the tight regimen imposed by headquarters, but Bright insists it will take discipline to do the job right.

There are detractors too. Liberal critics complain that Crusade’s message is too narrow and its methods too rash. Some cite a lack of social consciousness. And several theologians say more theological content is needed. But, backers defend, who else is doing as effective a job? They say the average Crusade staffer is a sharp, socially-aware student of Scripture who believes that evangelism must precede any lasting social impact. And as for aggressively sharing the faith, he is only carrying out a task given him by Christ—a task that will last at least until 1980.

British Seek A Total Strategy

A week-long strategy-for-evangelism conference held in the English coastal town of Morecambe acknowledged that Britain is no longer a “Christian country” but a mission field.

Conference chairman John Stott, Anglican rector and a chaplain to the queen, entoned to the 2,000 delegates: “We want to begin the conference on a note of penitence for our share of responsibility in the country’s spiritual and moral decline, and of humility that the problem of evangelizing Britain is far beyond our meager resources.” Speaking on “the irreducible minimum of the Gospel,” seminary head Michael Green, a well-known author, charged that evangelicals had introduced a new religious language not demanded by the Bible in the realm of salvation.

Bishop David Sheppard, who succeeded the radical John Robinson at Woolwich, warned that, while caring for the casualties of our society, evangelicals must not neglect the society that produced those casualties.

Conspicuous for plain speaking, the conference—sponsored by the Evangelical Alliance and the Church of England Evangelical Council—considered drugs, work among immigrants, the industrial scene, and offered training courses for witness in specialized areas.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Reconsidering Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard’s Thought, by Gregor Malantschuk (Princeton, 1971, 388 pp., $12.50), Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, by Louis Mackey (University of Pennsylvania, 1971, 327 pp., $12.50), Kierkegaard and Consciousness, by Adi Shmuëli (Princeton, 1971, 202 pp., $8.50), and The Problematic Self in Kierkegaard and Freud, by J. Preston Cole (Yale, 1971, 244 pp., $7.50), are reviewed by Donald W. Dayton, assistant professor of bibliography and research, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Sören Kierkegaard has suffered much at the hands of evangelicals. The usual evangelical caricature, as found for example in the writings of Francis Schaeffer, views him as the “father of existentialism” and thereby to be blamed for much that is wrong-headed today in both theology and philosophy. Fortunately within the last decade cracks have begun to appear in the solid wall of evangelical repudiation of Denmark’s greatest son. And irony of ironies, one may now well argue that Kierkegaard shares the basic commitments of evangelicals.

The major charge against Kierkegaard among evangelicals is that he advocated an irrational “leap of faith” that leaves no objective content to be believed. Those making such a charge reveal only that they have not read Kierkegaard, especially the now readily available paperback On Authority and Revelation, the most important part of which has also been published as “Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle.” Fortunately for Kierkegaard’s reputation among evangelicals, E. J. Carnell of Fuller Seminary lived long enough to declare in his last book (The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard): Let it be asserted for all to hear that Kierkegaard did not separate himself from the traditional orthodox claim that the data of Christianity are objective in the sense of existing “out there.” And Canadian evangelical Kenneth Hamilton attacks head-on the usual interpretation of Kierkegaard’s place in the history of Western thought by claiming (perhaps a little too brashly) that “any paternity suit brought against him now for fathering existentialism would be likely to be promptly dismissed” (The Promise of Kierkegaard).

Indeed, as we have already suggested, Kierkegaard seems to share the concerns of evangelicals. Consider, for example, his attitude toward the Bible. In common with most evangelicals, Kierkegaard was passionately committed to devotional reading of the Bible and very leery of the critics. That he moreover held a high view of Scripture was ably argued at the 1965 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society by Vernon Grounds, president of Conservative Baptist Seminary—though he was admittedly not able to wring the word “inerrancy” out of the Kierkegaard corpus. In a neglected “Princeton Pamphlet,” Paul S. Minear and Paul S. Morimoto predict that “coming generations will increasingly reckon with him not so much as a philosopher, as a poet, as a theologian, or as a rebel against Christendom, but as an expositor of Scripture” (Kierkegaard and the Bible). Sure, he was sometimes wrong; but so are evangelicals. More often he was right and profoundly illuminating. Evangelicals should be delighted to do half as well.

Other common concerns can be adduced. In Kierkegaard’s own words, “The whole of my work as an author is related to Christianity, to the problem of ‘becoming a Christian’ ” (The Point of View For My Work as an Author). E. J. Carnell and Vernon Grounds have both endorsed the verdict of Denzil Patrick: “He was an evangelist rather than a theologian. There can be no question about his own adherence to the orthodox Christian Faith of the ecumenical creeds. But he sought to speak to the needs of his time rather than to give a timeless exposition of the faith” (Pascal and Kierkegaard). My own experience confirms this. I have known several persons converted through reading Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard’s attack on the church of his day was aimed at shaking it loose from its self-satisfied smugness, and was no more vitriolic than some of the attacks launched by evangelicals against the established church of our day. And recently Vernard Eller has argued (in Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship) that Kierkegaard’s view of Christianity was much like that of the more radical or “anabaptist” church traditions that have had such an important role in shaping evangelicalism.

One may even argue that evangelicals share the excesses of Kierkegaard, such as his individualism and his tendency toward “fideism.” To a great extent Kierkegaard was merely a highly sophisticated pietist. This is recognized by George Price (The Narrow Pass): “His abnormal religious experiences … are common in protestantism—and in many of its sects are actually demanded as the signs of a genuine religious experience. This was especially true of the pietistic movements of his time.” Nearly every one of Kierkegaard’s strictures against historical and rational arguments for faith is paralleled in John Wesley, who was also profoundly influenced by the same forms of Continental pietism.

The appearance of four “Ivy league” university press books about Kierkegaard in a single season testifies to the continuing impact on the American scene of Denmark’s profoundest thinker. Evangelicals would do well to ride this wave and not deprive themselves of a most powerful ally. Unfortunately, these four works—two general introductions and two specialized studies—will be of only mixed value for the evangelical task. But they will contribute to a better understanding of Kierkegaard in general and at the same time show the need for evangelicals to take the initiative in unfolding the Christian character of Kierkegaard’s works.

The most valuable is that by Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen. The translators, Howard and Edna Hong, earlier won the National Book Award in translation for Sören Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers. When Malantschuk’s volume first appeared in Danish in 1968, reviewers insisted that it be immediately translated into a world language. The translators go so far as to call it “the best work currently available on Kierkegaard in any language.”

One can only concur in that judgment. Malantschuk’s work is obviously the product of a lifetime spent with Kierkegaard. Its greatest strength is the way in which Kierkegaard is allowed to interpret Kierkegaard. However, the emphasis on discovering the coherence in Kierkegaard’s thought results in a rather “philosophical” reading of an essentially “religious” (to be carefully distinguished from “theological”) writer.

Louis Mackey, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, provides some clues to why Kierkegaard has been consistently misunderstood. Mackey argues that he is primarily a poet: “whatever philosophy or theology there is in Kierkegaard is sacramentally transmitted ‘in, with, and under’ the poetry.” Mackey therefore applies techniques of literary criticism, rather than theological or philosophical criticism, to key works in the corpus of Kierkegaard. The resulting interpretation is better than most. The method is helpful if kept under control, though it borders on the same error as viewing the Bible primarily as literature.

Adi Shmuëli’s book presents an interesting anomaly: an Israeli professor of philosophy who has a firmer grasp of the Christian character of Kierkegaard’s writings than most Christians. According to Shmuëli, Kierkegaard’s aim is to create “Christian awareness” in his readers, or better, to unfold to them a Christianity that “reveals to man what is truly in him—that he is fallen, a sinner; and it bids him to be born again in faith.” But these concerns are peripheral to Shmuëli’s main intention: to describe Kierkegaard’s understanding of “consciousness,” and this very much from the milieu of French existentialism and phenomenology (the book was originally a French University dissertation). The editor himself, Yale Kierkegaardian scholar Paul Holmer, finds the argument unconvincing but provocative. At the very least it does serve to remind us that Kierkegaard’s primary interest was in the analysis and development of Christian experience.

J. Preston Cole’s book is the least valuable of the four. Cole, dean of Kendall College, compares Freud and Kierkegaard on the “self” and suggests that a viable conception might emerge from the dialectical tension of their essentially complementary conceptions. His argument depends upon such claims as, “For both, the essence of man is Spirit,” and that Kierkegaard can correct Freud by providing a historical rather than naturalistic ontology for the analysis of human existence. Cole is actually more interested in the “remnants of philosophical idealism” to be found in Kierkegaard than in any of the distinctively Christian elements.

For Devout Novices

Biblical Theology, Volume One: Old Testament, by Chester K. Lehman (Herald, 1971, 480 pp., $15.95), is reviewed by Ronald Youngblood, professor of Old Testament, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lehman’s synthesis of Old Testament theology, the fruit of a teaching career at Eastern Mennonite Seminary that spanned almost half a century, has much to commend it. The author cheerfully and gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Geerhardus Vos, a recognized evangelical giant in the field. The arrangement of the volume is attractive, though its attempt at interweaving logical and chronological treatment of biblical themes makes for somewhat disjointed reading in the chapters on the prophets. Lehman’s recognition of the principle of double/multiple fulfillment of prophecy as a working hypothesis in prophetic interpretation is to be a welcome feature. And his admission of pictorial and symbolic elements in the Genesis creation account and of dramatic touches in the story of Job, without denying the historical reality of either narrative, is refreshing.

Other aspects of the book, however, do not so readily attract compliments. For example, how can anyone write an Old Testament theology in our day without using recent insights of ancient Near Eastern studies (languages, texts, archaeology, covenant formularies, form-critical approaches, and the like)? Also, Lehman tends to be inconsistent in certain areas. On the one hand he assumes without further ado that David was the author of numerous psalms, Solomon of Proverbs, and Jeremiah of Lamentations, while on the other hand he affirms, with a minimum of explanation, the existence of the J and P writers in the Pentateuch as well as a late date for Isaiah 40–66. The purist will shudder at the inconsistency of Lehman’s transcription of Hebrew (e.g., qodesh, p. 139; kodhesh, p. 149). Lapses of this kind make it evident that he is less at home in technical Old Testament disciplines than in the broad range of theological studies. And even his discussions of theological themes are far too often little more than a rephrasing of the biblical text.

Yet this “fault” may also encompass the chief strength of the book. Lehman’s staunch Christian faith and warmhearted love for Scripture are everywhere apparent in his writing, and what he says will be most useful to the devout novice who wants to know what the Old Testament has to say about a particular theological theme. The footnotes arc full of biblical references for further study. Regrettably, the publisher has placed the footnotes at the end of each chapter, giving the diligent reader the feeling that he is watching a tennis match.

The Four Visions

A Commentary on the Revelation, by George E. Ladd (Eerdmans, 1972, 308 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Robert Guelich, associate professor of New Testament, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Professor George Ladd of Fuller Theological Seminary is known to the evangelical community through his previous writings in eschatology. He has behind him years of study in the prophetic and apocalyptic backgrounds of the New Testament message of fulfillment in Jesus, and it is most appropriate for him to write a commentary on Revelation, which involves both prophetic and apocalyptic elements.

Ladd’s exposition of Revelation does not fall into any of the traditional categories. On the one hand he rejects the historically and apocalyptically oriented preterist position for ignoring the prophetic element. On the other hand he also rejects the futurist position for failing to take history seriously, as did both the prophets and apocalyptists who saw “imminent historical judgment” as a “type of, or prelude to, the eschatological judgment.” The solution lies in a blending of the two positions. Ladd does take a premillennial stance. Yet he sees the millennium and the whole book of Revelation referring chiefly to the “destiny of the Church” rather than to God’s “theocratic promises to Israel.” Consequently, this commentary offers a fresh and distinctive approach to the Apocalypse.

Ladd’s basic structure is the four visions at the heart of the Apocalypse. The first vision (1:9–3:22) involves the message to the seven churches. Comments on topography, conditions, and local color suggest their historical character, but the context shows that their message was intended for a wider audience than a particular local church. The second and longest vision is composed of three sets of sevens with various interludes. According to Ladd, the sevens are telescoped so that the seven bowls (chs. 15 and 16), which relate the outpouring of God’s wrath in the great tribulation, are included in the seventh trumpet. The seven trumpets (8:2–14:2), which related the beginning of the end events, are themselves the content of the seventh seal. The seven seals (6:1–8:1) in turn have related the forces leading up to the end, namely, the content of the scroll (5:1 ff). The interludes (ch. 7; 10:1–11:13, chs. 12–14) are but close-ups of elements in the panoramic vision. The third vision pertains to the mystery and judgment of Babylon (17–19:5) and to the triumphant consummation that begins with the resurrection of the saints at the parousia and concludes with the new creation following the millennial reign of Christ on earth (19:6–21:8). The final vision is that of the heavenly Jerusalem come to earth (21:9–22:5).

The variegated and often moot symbols of Revelation leave their interpreters, Ladd included, especially vulnerable to those of a differing persuasion. No doubt some will take issue with Ladd’s interpretation of the first seal as the proclamation of the Gospel, of the 144,000 as spiritual Israel, i.e., the Church, and of the measuring of the Temple and the two witnesses as the salvation of the Jewish remnant and the two eschatological prophets who witness to them. Yet, as usual. Ladd has carefully and exegetically laid the bases for his views. Some will be disappointed by his refusal to identify such familiar symbols as Armageddon, 666, Babylon, and Gog and Magog. Yet fanciful speculation would be incongruent with his exposition. Ladd has gone as far as the text in its context will allow.

Ladd has an amazing ability to explain simply and clearly something that is complex and opaque. He writes on the mysterious and complex Apocalypse lucidly, thoroughly, and very readably. He transliterates the rarely occurring Greek words. He interacts with other viewpoints sensitively and fairly, he avoids the very technical debates. This commentary comes as a very valuable interpretative aid to layman, pastor, and scholar alike.

Newly Published

A Coward’s Guide to Witnessing, by Ken Anderson (Creation House, 157 pp., $3.95). An outstanding book. The well-known evangelical writer and film-maker shares his frustration, fears, and modest achievements over the years in personal evangelism. Too many books on witnessing lead to dejection because what the author triumphantly reports seems regrettably alien to the average Christian’s personality and accomplishments. Anderson’s book is as different as the title suggests.

Jesus Confronts Life’s Issues, by Joseph D. Ban (Judson, 128 pp., $1.95 pb). Useful and discussion-provoking thoughts about a dozen incidents in Jesus’ life (e.g., temptation, breaking with tradition, payment of taxes) and their relation to similar issues we all face today.

Jesus and the Old Testament, by R. T. France (Inter-Varsity, 286 pp., $9.95). A revised Ph.D. thesis studying Jesus’ application of Old Testament passages to himself and his mission. A major contribution.

America’s Fastest Growing Churches, by Elmer L. Towns (Impact [1625 Broadway, Nashville, Tenn. 37202], 223 pp., $4.95). An admittedly uncritical report on ten congregations (eight of them with the Baptist Bible Fellowship) with average Sunday-school attendance (except for one that is smaller and younger) of 830 in 1967 and 2,080 in 1971. Also includes some good reflections distinguishing these self-designated fundamentalist congregations with their authoritarian pastors from other evangelicals.

An Evangelical Faith for Today, by John Lawson (Abingdon, 95 pp., $1.75 pb). A discussion guide that brings central Christian doctrines back into focus—e.g., the doctrine of God, Christ, the Atonement, the Second Coming—and attempts to make them intelligible rather than to demythologize them; not altogether sharp on all points (e.g., the doctrine of Scripture).

Labor Problems in Christian Perspective, edited by John H. Redekop (Eerdmans, 364 pp., $6.95). A useful if uneven collection of articles giving widely differing views ranging from the Christian legitimacy of laissez-faire capitalism to a kind of Christian socialism.

Suicide and Grief, by Howard W. Stone (Fortress, 134 pp., $3.50 pb). If understanding fails to prevent suicide, the minister may find this book helpful in dealing with the survivors.

Marquee Ministry, by Robert G. Konzelman (Harper & Row, 123 pp., $4.95). Advice to pastors: encourage your congregation to attend films, and use them as sermon texts. The author also explains how to use movies for discussions; his examples: Cromwell, The Learning Tree, and I Never Sang For My Father. Films are an important aspect of our culture and shouldn’t be ignored. But the emphasis here is a bit too strong.

The Eternal Feminine, by Henri de Lubac (Harper & Row, 272 pp., $6.95). Examines an obscure element in Teilhard’s early writing and seeks to show that his cosmic, mystic vision involves a unique understanding of the feminine.

The Freedom of Man, by T. Paul Verghese (Westminster, 157 pp., $6.95). A stimulating and provocative essay on the nature of man and of freedom by a former WCC staffer, an Eastern Orthodox priest. Verghese combines many valuable insights, many of them gleaned from the early church fathers, with occasional simplistic platitudes derived from liberalism.

Not A Silent People: Controversies That Have Shaped Southern Baptists, by Walter B. Shurden (Broadman, 128 pp., $1.95). A breezy, fairly accurate glance at six of the many controversies in Southern Baptist history. Perhaps does not distinguish clearly enough between controversies over method and those over the message. Definitely errs by implying that Baptists have more controversies than other denominational families.

God’s Will For Your Life, edited by Gary Meader (First Presbyterian Church [1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood, Cal. 90028], 81 pp., $1.50 [$1 each in lots of 25], pb). Study guide for new Christians; excellent, as far as it goes. No Presbyterian bias. Sticks to certain practical topics, such as guidance, prayer, baptism of the Spirit, the state, and drugs. Avoids others, such as water baptism.

The Wilderness Revolt, by Diane Kennedy Pike and R. Scott Kennedy (Doubleday, 385 pp., $7.95). Building on the fanciful speculations of the late and eccentric Bishop James A. Pike, his widow and her brother resurrect the Reimarus-Brandon thesis that Jesus was a frustrated political revolutionary, without, however, entirely discounting a possible supernatural element in his ministry. The resurrection is explained away, then brought in again by a back door. Detailed but unreliable.

Jesus and the Politics of Violence, by George R. Edwards (Harper & Row, 186 pp., $5.95). A scholarly reopening of the Brandon thesis (that Jesus was a political revolutionary) that comes to contrary conclusions and goes on to reject Christian support for the state in favor of non-violent social change. Relies heavily on liberal New Testament scholarship.

The Roman Siege of Jerusalem, by Rupert Furneaux (McKay, 274 pp., $6.95). Another in the rash of books asserting that Jesus was a political rebel and that the gospel writers and Paul misrepresented his intentions. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 provides the focus.

The Message of Liberation in Our Age, by J. Verkuyl (Eerdmans, 110 pp., $2.45 pb). A study written by a missions professor at the Free University of Amsterdam for the upcoming assembly of the World Council’s Commission on Mission and Evangelism seeks to interpret the mission of Christ in terms of the key words liberation and emancipation. Evasive.

The Pseudonyms of God, by Robert McAfee Brown (Westminster, 234 pp., $3.25 pb). Slightly dated occasional essays demonstrating the author’s passionate involvement with some current ethical problems, such as the draft, civil rights, and civil disobedience. Lacking in biblical perspective. The “Open Letter to Spiro T. Agnew” is of questionable taste.

Christian Prisoners in Russia, by Rosemary Harris and Xenia Howard-Johnston (Tyndale House, 166 pp., $1.25 pb). Open letters, similar to that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from Russian Christians to their leaders.

Campus Aflame, by J. Edwin Orr (Regal, 277 pp., $2.95 pb). A documented chronicle of student evangelical awakenings and movements, mostly American, since about 1800. The more recent ones are chiefly in evangelical colleges. Shows that the current “Jesus movement” is hardly unprecedented; one hopes it proves to be less short-lived than some earlier youth stirrings.

Where Do I Go From Here, God?, by Zac Poonen (Tyndale, 86 pp., $.95 pb). A fairly good contemporary treatment of the principles of discerning God’s will for one’s life, using the customary guidelines. More realistic than some counterparts, yet not quite adequate for explaining the great failures of even well-meaning Christians.

Renew My Church, by David Haney (Zondervan, 95 pp., $1.50 pb). A brief study guide emphasizing a reexamination of one’s own beliefs, attitudes, and behavior patterns with a view toward legitimate and genuine church renewal.

From Luther to Chemnitz, by E. F. Klug (Eerdmans, 261 pp., $4.95 pb). A thoroughly documented attempt to set straight many misconceptions of Luther’s doctrine of inspiration and to introduce the views of one of Luther’s most influential successors.

Half-Truths or Whole Gospel?, by Chester A. Pennington (Abingdon, 127 pp., $2.25). A thoughtful attempt to bridge the gap between salvationists and social activists, without surrendering either the unique spiritual claims or the socially transforming ethics of Jesus Christ.

Death, Heaven and the Victorians, by John Morley (University of Pittsburgh, 208 pp., $12.95). A well-illustrated and well-documented study of an aspect of nineteenth-century English behavior that is usually, but regrettably, left to anthropologists studying “primitives.” Useful for reflecting on how present funeral practices exemplify Christian doctrine.

The God Who Understands Me, by Gladys M. Hunt (Harold Shaw, 87 pp., $1.25 pb). Fifteen group Bible studies on the Sermon on the Mount.

Ethics and the Urban Ethos: An Essay in Social Theory and Theological Reconstruction, by Max L. Stackhouse (Beacon, 220 pp., $7.95). In a kind of in-depth follow-up to Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, Stackhouse does not give us a clearly more biblical approach to its problems, but, as a pupil of James Luther Adams, he is thorough, imaginative, and fair.

Your Marriage—Duel or Duet?, by Louis H. Evans (Revell, 125 pp., $.95 pb). Since it was originally published a decade ago, this inexpensive reprint does not interact with women’s lib. But Evans does make good points for maintaining the institution of marriage, and even for making it an “enjoyable partnership.” Helpful biblical and practical advice.

Americans Speak Out on This Nation’s Top Ten Problems, by Charles E. Blair (Moody, 119 pp., $2.95). The pastor of the huge Calvary Temple, Denver, reflects on the issues he found to be troubling his fellow citizens most.

When Love Is Lost, by Donald J. Tyrell (Word, 155 pp., $4.95). For amateur counselors, pastors, or those just interested in personality development, this volume can serve as a basic, simple-to-read introduction.

Christianity and Its Cultural Bondage, by M. B. Martin (Herder of St. Louis [314 N. Jefferson, St. Louis, Mo. 63103], 232 pp., about $4.50). A Catholic author attacks the cultural bondage of Christian theology to Hellenistic views of the natural immortality of the soul and calls for a greater emphasis on the resurrection of the body. Overstates the extent of the bondage but contains many valuable insights.

Psychology For Successful Evangelism, by James H. Jauncey (Moody, 126 pp., $3.95). Not on evangelistic techniques and not a comprehensive text. A pastor simply shares his attempts to apply some modern psychology to the practice of historic, Spirit-empowered evangelism.

Understanding People: Children, Youth, Adults, by Omar Brubaker and Robert Clark (Evangelical Teacher Training Association [Box 327, Wheaton, Ill. 60187], 95 pp., $1.75 pb). Intended as the text for a new required course for an ETTA diploma, but can be used for private study.

Noah’s Ark: Fact or Fable?, by Violet M. Cummings (Creation-Science Research Center [2716 Madison Ave., San Diego, Cal. 92116], 352 pp., $5.95, $3.95 pb). Those who are passionately engaged in a quest are hardly the most impartial witnesses, so don’t suspend your critical faculties if you are tempted to read this account. When, if ever, an ancient ship or barge is undeniably found, we will let you know.

The Opposite Sex, by Irene and Allen Harrell (Word, 135 pp., $3.50). Down-to-earth prayers of a husband and wife; they raise some practical questions on everyday problems that even the best marriages encounter.

Speak Through the Earthquake, by Elihu S. Howland (Pilgrim, 125 pp., $4.95). A psychiatrist who is also on a congregation’s counseling staff attempts a theology of emotional crisis that has not yet reached the “breakdown” stage and discusses various ways to help. Of value to pastors, especially since he dissents from the notion common to his profession that ministers are to be very junior partners in therapy.

To Turn The Tide

The Anchor Bible: Matthew, by W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann (Doubleday, 1971, 564 pp., $8), is reviewed by Robert H. Gundry, professor of New Testament and Greek, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

By appeal to recent studies of Samaritanism and of the literature from Qumran and Chenoboskion, Albright and Mann attempt to turn back the tide of Germanically dominated studies of the Gospels, particularly Matthew. Agreement with the milieu in Palestine before A.D. 70 becomes the main criterion of and (in view of the breakup of Palestinian Jewish Christianity around A.D. 70) argument for authenticity. Oral tradition replaces any sort of documentary solution to the synoptic problem (though A & M rarely mention, much less dispose of, specific evidence favoring Marcan priority). Matthew the Levite captures nomination to authorship. Historicity gains high marks in their estimation.

Yet the supernatural causes embarrassment. Some of the miracles originally were parables, others symbolic dramatizations, still others psychosomatic healings. Exorcisms pass for shock therapy. Predictions stemmed from natural foresight. The transfiguration is a dramatically theologized description of the disciples’ thinking about Jesus’ Messiahship. The Parousia becomes Jesus’ coming to the Father via crucifixion and resurrection. Therefore the warnings to watch for the Parousia mean, “Don’t miss the significance of My crucifixion-resurrection.”

Naturally, elimination of a documentary solution to the synoptic problem drastically reduces the viability of redactional criticism: for A & M, theological variety derives, not from redaction by an evangelist, but from independent developments of an oral tradition largely unavailable to our scrutiny.

As to individual points of interpretation, the kingdom of the (Son of) Man/heaven, which is the Church, is distinguished sharply from the kingdom of God, which is the final state. The distinction depends on tortuous explanations of particular sayings and on quiet omission and stated excision from Matthew’s original text of sayings awkward to the distinction. In other matters, too, A & M display a penchant for conjectural emendation of the text. Historical conjecture appears in the rather confident opinion that not only John the Baptist but also Jesus himself belonged to the community of Essenes at Qumran—why else did the townspeople of Nazareth ask, “Is not this the carpenter …?,” as though they failed to recognize him immediately because he had not lived there for some time?

It is well argued that “hypocrite” means “casuist” rather than “pretender.” And an insightful suggestion is made that parables were prophetic case laws. The continuity of Jesus’ community with Israel appears to be overstressed and underqualified. All in all, this welcome commentary nearly always stimulates and, on distinctive points, occasionally convinces.

Third in a Series

8. The stark confusion in theology and philosophy has plummeted the prestige of these fields of knowledge to sad new lows. General public interest in serious religious and philosophical literature has been eroded. The list of 100 best books for 1971 carried by many Sunday newspapers at year-end did not even include theology or philosophy as a category.

9. As modern theologizers increasingly promoted their perspectives not as unchanging “gospel” but as merely “jump-off” points for contemporary inquiry, divinity students more and more forsook theology for social activism as the essence of Christian response. Thus for many clerics God’s Word and work gave way to political engagement as the focus of interest. In Germany, the appeal to socialism as informing the content of the theology of hope has so pervaded the ecumenical seminaries that Marxism now elicits notably wider loyalties among divinity students than among university students generally. A remarkable percentage of German seminarians today regard the churches not as centers for proclaiming an apostolic Gospel but as strategic springboards for promoting socio-political change.

10. The faddish cult of irrationality in the theology of the recent past is now fast running its course and a faith at once revelationally based and rationally compelling is reasserting its claims. The ablest Christian apologists have always contended that Christianity speaks the truth in view of intelligible divine revelation, and that what Christianity affirms about God is the case whether men choose to believe it or not. Augustine insisted that faith issues in understanding, and the Protestant Reformers stood with him against any reduction of divine revelation to camouflaged truth. J. Gresham Machen, Protestant modernism’s American archfoe, deplored the divorce of Christian faith from supernaturally revealed information about God and his purposes. C. S. Lewis correlated devotion to the Christian faith with the service of reason. Gordon H. Clark criticizes non-evangelical theories for their contrast of faith and reason.

Mediating views—such as process theology—that reaffirm the indispensability of rational coherence to a sound religious outlook, nonetheless needlessly constrict the rational activity of God and forfeit special cognitive revelation. Such speculative alternatives to philosophical and theological irrationalism promote supposedly coherent conceptualities that, as unstable half-way positions, compromise the Christian faith and make it necessary for others to formulate an acceptable counterview. Those who reject biblical theism cannot do so on the basis of coherent reasoning, for the Christian revelation of God is rationally consistent and compelling, and, moreover, rationality has its very basis in the nature of the Living God.

11. Evangelical Christianity is unlikely to gain penetrating and persuasive significance in American life today unless it speaks a theological-ethical word to the nation and not simply to isolated individuals. The weakness of the evangelical thrust in both community and campus crusades is that it now aims almost solely at rescuing parched souls from the burning without energetically enlisting minds for intellectual perspicuity and bodies for public justice. Its witness to a Christian world-life view as a socio-cultural alternative to the empirical eccentricities of the West is meager.

Many Americans are given over to the vision of a scientific society in which cities are to be saved by technocratic planning and individuals by medical progress. Counter-cultural youth have disowned the technocratic world-view in the name of human values, but, disillusioned by the Vietnamese war abroad and social injustices at home, they tend to embrace private mysticism and to lack consistent dedication to national purpose. Not long ago the danger of revolutionary rebellion was widespread; social critics were asking whether the disenchanted young might rally to a tyrant mounting a Red charger, much as restless German youth became Hitler’s Nazi storm troopers. Now the question is whether the alienated young, many of whom are dropping out of the public arena into private communes, have resigned themselves to the ambiguity of their experience and given up hope for a new direction—whether they will even bother to vote.

American society is increasingly adrift on matters of destiny and morality. The American people are sinking into a socio-political and religious-moral crisis that demands the leadership of a modern Lincoln. No society can long take a rain check on final commitments. The relevance of religious truth to public politics must not be muddled into generalities. Nor ought concern over religion in public education to leap over the question of truth in the classroom in order to debate simply whether prayer and meditation are permissible—while non-theistic teachers proceed with impugnity to capture the minds of young America.

Evangelical “think tanks” intended primarily to formulate an evangelistic strategy without wrestling with the larger concerns of truth and right cannot adequately cope with these concerns. No theological outlook is now likely to exert a shaping influence on the American scene unless it moves the masses toward both a new vision of truth and justice and a new way of life in a socio-cultural context. If revealed religion is to become formatively significant on the present American scene, the Christian vanguard must address man as man as well as man as sinner; it must speak to the destiny of nations and the meaning and worth of life, while it speaks to man in his private needs and as an evangelistic target.

12. American evangelical Christianity is by no means in an enviable position. No academically great university reflects its views, and no voice like President Timothy Dwight’s at Yale almost two centuries ago calls academia to contemplate the logic of biblical theism. Many large state and private universities crowd historical Christian perspectives out of their philosophy and religion departments. Many evangelical colleges are running large deficits; few are concerned with solid literary production, and rarely are these colleges’ administrative spokesmen and scholars quoted in the public arena. In denominational circles, evangelical seminaries are continually merged out of their historic commitments or tend to become theologically imprecise through ecumenical dilution. Leading evangelical magazines have not escaped substantial circulation losses; long-range gains in readership are now usually achieved through magazine mergers. Most evangelical journalistic efforts remain too pontifical and propagandistic to interest disenchanted liberals, and too theologically unexciting and journalistically unimaginative even to pace evangelical frontiersmen. In evangelism, only exceptional churches across America have recaptured the energies that crusade evangelism hoped to stimulate; many congregations still pray that a crusade will rescue their declining cause, and usually that does not happen.

[To be continued.]

CARL F. H. HENRY

Should there be a Sudden Rending of the sky, a lightning-like flash, the sound of trumpets such as our ears have never heard—if Christ should suddenly appear in the sky with his holy angels—what would our reaction be?

It will happen!

One of the most frequently mentioned truths of all Scripture is that Jesus Christ is coming again. Strange to say, it is probably the most abused as well as the most neglected teaching in the Bible. Some ignore it altogether, and others distort it.

The time of Christ’s return has been the subject of much foolish speculation. Some people become so interested in the details of events of that future time that they fall to wrangling among themselves and in so doing becloud the whole transcendent fact that Christ is coming again.

Generally speaking, there are four schools of thought on this subject. Some people flatly deny that Christ is to return in person. We will not deal here with this group; many among them even question the uniqueness of Christ as the eternal Son of God, and their position hardly comes within the purview of Christian consideration.

Most differences of opinion center on when Christ will come. Postmillenarians believe in the gradual improvement of conditions on earth until the millennium is ushered in, after which Christ will appear.

A second and larger group is the amillenarians, who believe in his return, but also believe that the millennium described in Revelation 20 is figurative rather than literal.

Finally, there are the premillenarians, who believe in the imminent return of the Lord to set up his reign on the earth for a thousand years. After that Satan will be released for a short time, finally to be destroyed by Christ and the armies of heaven.

Because of the strong convictions held on these matters, few people will be pleased by this article, but I feel constrained to write because so many good people are beclouding a transcendent and glorious truth by arguing over details of secondary importance.

What is of paramount concern is the fact that Christ is coming back to this earth.

As he ascended to heaven after his resurrection, and while his disciples were gazing upward in amazement and awe, two men clothed in white suddenly stood near and said, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

“This same Jesus … shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” These words are as clear and specific as words can be.

If this were an isolated statement that was at variance with the general teaching of Scripture, we might be constrained to look for some other meaning. But it coincides perfectly with what our Lord said on a number of occasions and with what the writers of the Epistles and of Revelation reiterated again and again.

What a stupendous thought! What a portentous event! From our position in the twentieth century, we remember that Christ lived on earth two millenniums ago. While we may accept the fact of his resurrection, it is easy to give him—so far as his bodily presence is concerned—a place in past history. We fail to realize that with our own physical eyes we may see him at any moment!

It is at this point that the tragedy of controversy over the second coming is most poignant and that the silence of many believers becomes so distressing.

The doctrine of the second coming of Christ centers in the fact that he is to return. He himself affirmed this truth on many occasions. Speaking to his confused and sorrowing disciples, he said, “Let not your heart be troubled.… I will come again.” Then, “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Repeatedly he gave such assurances to his disciples.

The Holy Spirit, speaking through the disciples, affirmed the same truth. In First Thessalonians 4:16, we read: “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.” And in Revelation 1:7, “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.”

Christ spoke of his return as a sudden event: “As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” He compares his return to the sudden destruction that came on Noah’s generation, and to the unexpected entrance of a thief at midnight.

The imminent return of the Lord has been the comfort and hope of the saints down through the ages since his ascension. That he has delayed so long serves to emphasize the fact that for him a thousand years are but a day. He is not “slack” in keeping his promise, but rather is longsuffering toward sinful men and anxious for them to repent while there is still time.

In their enthusiasm for the subject of the second coming, some are likely to confuse the infinitudes of God and eternity with time and space as we know them. Einstein’s theory of relativity, the splitting of the atom, and yet undiscovered facts of the universe may well give inklings of what Christ will do and how he will do it, but this does not mean that this world and the universe of which it is a part will continue to be governed by laws as we now know them. Paul may have given a hint in First Corinthians 1:27–29; the God of creation can easily use “things which are not, to bring to naught things that are.”

But even more reprehensible than the setting up of details and schedules pertaining to the Lord’s coming are the strange phenomena of silence and indifference. European theologians, far less certain of a man-made utopia than some of their American confreres, urged the World Council of Churches in its Evanston meeting years ago to face squarely the doctrine of last things, and in subsequent discussions were far more inclined to follow a biblical approach than some in this country.

Why the resounding silence concerning Christ’s second coming in so many American pulpits today? Why ignore a truth as clearly taught as any to be found in Holy Writ? Why deny to men the thrilling fact that Christ is coming back and that he is the hope of the world? The fact is inescapable that he is going to return to this earth, and there is no truth more calculated to galvanize attention, to promote right living, and to generate witnessing zeal.

The early Church found the hope of Christ’s coming a constant source of comfort and a spur to righteous living. This hope can do the same for the Church today.

WITH A SONG IN MY HEART

It was recently my happy privilege to interview Hank Pulaski, dynamic prince of gospel music. Hank has just returned from a highly successful world tour that took him to Tegucigalpa, Manicore, Piparia, and Bontang.

Hank, rotund, handsome, and well tanned, has come a long way since his birth in a logging shack in the foothills of the Florida mountains. He laughingly comments that lying in a manger is probably a notch above lying on a heap of logging rope.

Hank maintains a wonderful sense of humor about those early hardships. “Why, I was ten years old,” he recalls, “before I knew a McCulloch chain saw wasn’t a piece of furniture. We were so poor the squirrels used to leave nuts on our doorstep.”

Young Hank regularly occupied a place in the choir of the Swedenborgian Mission Church. His booming bass-baritone became well known in the area, and he was called on to sing at many wakes and bar mitzvahs.

In his teens Hank felt the lure of the big city, but he got his directions confused and ended up in New York. His big voice and commanding stage presence earned him a place as a substitute in the chorus of the Jimmy Dean show.

After a few years he moved to Nashville and the big time. He landed a berth with the Birch Brothers, which put him in the middle of the gospel-music business.

“I sang the Gospel in song just about every night,” he says. “I guess I just wasn’t listenin’. My personal life was pretty wild about that time. I was smokin’ cigars and datin’ a couple of go-go dancers.”

Then the Birch Brothers hired Marilee Williams as their booking secretary because she knew how to write. Things began to happen to Hank.

“I took one look at her and thought, a guy would have to be crazy to marry a prude like that.” However, the Lord had his way, and they were married three weeks later.

At first married life was pretty good, according to Hank. “Instead of eatin’ overcooked food in some strange restaurant I could eat overcooked food in my own home.”

Then some of his old habits began to reassert themselves. He began to smoke cigars again and stay out late at night.

Hank knew that Marilee was praying for him during these rough days and resented it. “It made me so mad I caroused all the more. By this time I had moved up to rum-soaked cigars.”

Then a dramatic change occurred. “I was way down,” Hank recalls. “It was the middle of the night and I had run out of cigars and it just didn’t seem worthwhile goin’ on so I knelt right there by the go-go cage and gave my heart to the Lord.”

“Now I sing the Gospel with my heart, not my mouth—although it’s a little muffled that way,” he says, that irrepressible sense of humor coming to the surface.

When you see Hank out on center stage, down on one knee, arms outstretched, chartreuse silk suit glowing in the spotlight, singing about that old rugged cross, you know he’s singing about his own experience. If you don’t have the opportunity of seeing Hank in person, be sure to hear this marvelous performer on the Hominy label.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDELINES

I would like to express my hearty thanks for the recent bibliographical articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Being in Hong Kong, I cannot go to a seminary library or a Christian bookstore to find out and browse through the recent theological publications. I am already teaching at the school with the best theological collection in Hong Kong. So those bibliographical articles give us faculty good guidelines in ordering books.… Anyway I am grateful for such an evangelical voice as CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Department of Philosophy and Religion

Chung Chi College

Chinese University of Hong Kong

BELATED PROTEST

I have recently been shown a copy of your report on my Boston speech (“The War on Church Establishment,” March 3). If you call me such flattering (and undeserved) names as “probably the world’s foremost expert on the state of Christianity in the Soviet Union,” could you at least do me the courtesy of reporting me accurately?

I have always maintained, as you say, that the majority of Soviet Christians wish to legalize their position and not operate as an “underground church.” They often call themselves the “persecuted church,” which I prefer—but this is really only a question of terminology.

I would like to place on record (which I have already done elsewhere) my attitude to taking Bibles into Russia. This is both one’s legal right and one’s Christian duty—which I have fulfilled on every single one of my own visits to the Soviet Union. However, although the Soviets have never published any law against importing Bibles (how could they when a small number are produced quite legally inside the country?), in fact they treat those who take in large quantities as offenders. I know this—I had many confiscated in 1960. Sometimes confiscated Bibles find their way on to the black market. Therefore I advocated caution in trying to take in large numbers. I have never taken “a dim view of smuggling in Bibles” and I have been seriously misquoted. Perhaps your reporter heard me say: “I repudiate the word ‘smuggling’—you cannot ‘smuggle’ something which is not legally banned and on which no duty is payable. However, for your own sake be cautious.”

The CSRC is not itself an organization dealing with Bible importation to the U. S. S. R., but seeks to publish the facts about the religious situation there.

Director

Centre for the Study of Religion

and Communism

Chislehurst, Kent, England

AWAITING OUR VERDICT?

Inasmuch as J. W. Montgomery (Current Religious Thought, March 31) censured my essay, “The Impropriety of Evidentially Arguing for the Resurrection,” and at the same time advanced a representation of presuppositional apologetics which is as confused as it is counterfeit, perhaps you would allow me to reply.

Contrary to Montgomery, presuppositional apologetics is neither apriorism nor pietism; it neither views fallen man as without evidential reasoning ability nor faith as anything akin to blind credulity. Montgomery’s scholarship is here inaccurate. The presuppositional apologist is not indifferent to God’s acts in history, and he certainly does not discourage rational, scholarly research into history! What my essay was demonstrating, on the other hand, was that evidential argumentation methodologically cannot and morally ought not become the crux or foundation of our apologetical witness.

An apologetic such as Montgomery’s cannot offer any assured hope to an age longing to hear the meaningful affirmation, “He is risen!” Montgomery’s case for the weakened profession, “He probably arose,” is non-telling under cross examination and is easily faulted as statistically improbable, as using the assumption of uniformity to prove nonuniformity (miracle), and (without scriptural presuppositions) as rendering the resurrection a freak event without theological implications (such as Romans 4:25).…

Building our apologetic upon the rock-words of Christ and not foolish sand (Matt. 7:24 ff.), we must in repentant faith renounce intellectual self-sufficiency which assigns God to the dock to await the creature’s verdict. Not as Adam in the garden or Israel in the wilderness, Christ obediently presupposed the truth of God’s word when tempted by Satan to adduce empirical proofs of God’s veracity; he countered with authoritative Scripture: “You shall not put the Lord your God to a test” (Matt. 4:7). The special status of God’s word is that one is not to demand proof of it. This self-attesting word must be central in our apologetic, for “if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

North Wales, Pa.

STRAINING THE COUNTERCULTURE

I was pleased to see my article, “The Literature of Countercultural Religion” (April 28), poured in between the FBI and a reactionary editorial. You know what they say about old wineskins. Your readers deserve to know, however, that the two countercultural types my original manuscript specified were “protestant and gnostic,” in line with the article’s religious motif. Clearly, changing “protestant” to “protest” permits one to make gnosticism the religion of all the authors I cited. This obviously appealed to your editorial writer. It does not appeal to me, nor to those who know anything about the counterculture.

Strasbourg, France

PERCEPTIVE PORTRAIT

The article by Thomas Howard, “The Burden of the God” (April 28), presents an unusually perceptive account of why people create evil from the best of motives. The conclusion, however, appears to be one of those “leaps of faith” so vividly described by Dr. Francis Schaeffer. It seems that we are to somehow muddle along knowing that our best efforts are doomed to achieve only disaster, and yet valiantly we are to continue to do the right things, without any reasonable hope of success.

The article portrays the attitude of our times. A forgetfulness that the kingdom of God is meant to be a real country. A community of believers, peculiar, consecrated, called out, spiritually organized under the leadership of Christ, who demonstrate to the secular world a new way of living. This spiritual community has the power to bring good from righteous living because, and only because, of the life of Christ in it. Until Christians recapture the sense of identity and community taught in the New Testament, we will be caught in the same trap as everybody else, trying to do good without God.

Our world teaches that everything depends on people. It docs. If people acknowledge the sovereignty of God, he will pour out his blessings. If, on the other hand, humanity is made to reign, God’s wrath will be upon us all. The choice is clear, God or man. We know that most of our society and institutions have already made the wrong choice. We Christians must now show that there is a better way.

Tempe, Ariz.

Paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 on page 7 of the April 28 issue, which carried my article on “The Burden of the God,” belong after the first paragraph on page 5. It’s rather chaotic the way it appears there, and I guess it was a matter of one page of the manuscript getting out of place on some copy editor’s desk!

Associate Professor of English

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

• The mistake was in the galley-handling, not in the copy-editing.—ED.

A PLACE FOR HOOVER

I was very pleased to read J. Edgar Hoover’s well-written and authoritative article in the April 28 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (“A Morality For Violence”).

He earned a prominent place in the history of our nation by his leadership of the FBI in protecting and Preserving our freedoms. As a giant on the national scene, he attracted more than his share of rocks and mud, particularly from the criminals and revolutionaries who felt threatened. His clear-cut Christian testimony, and his outspoken advocacy of Sunday-school attendance, have endeared him to Christians for generations.

Broomall, Pa.

MISSING THE POSITIVE THROB

The coverage given the recent 104th annual convention of the Christian Holiness Association (“Holiness Groups Pare Down Creed,” April 28) is appreciated.

I regret, however, that the prevailing throb of positive Christian expression was not captured by the report. Must a report be hypercritical to be news-worthy?

Alas, perhaps some reports of the incident of Jesus cleansing the temple (Matt. 21:12) would not have majored on his correctness in action, but would have given priority to the unemployment problems of the moneychangers. Matthew’s report had a different focus, and I’m glad.

Executive Director

Christian Holiness Association

Indianapolis, Ind.

A few miles after I left the Ohio Turnpike near Cleveland an extraordinary sight loomed ahead on a little country road. It was a horse-drawn vehicle painted bright orange. Suddenly two bright red lights began flashing on it. I pulled my car to an abrupt halt, and it is well I did; Ohio has a $50 fine for passing a school bus while it is discharging passengers. The wagon bore in large letters the words “School Bus—Stop on Signal,” and little Amish children scrambled from its rear and ran laughing to their nearby farm homes. They looked exactly like a bookplate from McGuffey’s Reader of 125 years ago, the boys wearing straw hats and trousers held up by broad suspenders, and the girls in lace caps, their long dresses stirring the dust as they ran.

This horse-drawn school bus represents a typical compromise that the bishops of the Old Order Amish Mennonite church have reached with state laws on compulsory education. When the old one-room country schoolhouses were abolished in favor of centralized schools, the Amish set up their own elementary schools. There are now some two hundred schools, with an enrollment of 13,000. The small cement block buildings are neat and fireproof. One or two teachers instruct all eight grades. And there are never more than eight. This far and no further will the Amish bishops go. They fear that the education offered in large, modern, centralized high schools is too grave a threat to their traditionally simple, agrarian way of life.

In Ohio, when state law required that all children living more than a half mile from a school be transported by bus, the Amish got a school bus—their own kind. When education to age sixteen became compulsory, they worked out a compromise whereby for the ninth and tenth grades they substitute home-instructed courses in agriculture, animal husbandry, carpentry, and other trades for the boys and such skills as sewing and butter churning for the girls. The Amish children take the same standard aptitude tests in basic reading, mathematics, and other learning skills as public-school students and, to their parents’ pleasure, rank very well. No nonsense like neglect of homework is tolerated by the Amish.

As long as the Amish can work out a compromise like this with state educational laws, they are content. But when, as in Wisconsin, officials have insisted that Amish children attend public high schools as do all other children, or that the Amish must build an equivalent private high school—something they may think is far beyond their financial means—Amish parents have preferred to be jailed.

Thus arose the case the United States Supreme Court considered this year. It poses a very difficult constitutional issue for Americans. On the one hand, the Old Order Amish bishops insist that religious freedom means the right to hold to their archaic way of life, handed down from their forefathers, and the right to train their children in the precepts of that tradition. On the other hand, a state may insist that all children born within its domain have the same right to education and the career opportunities education affords. And to have genuine religious liberty, the state may say, children born in Amish households must be given a free choice of religion, including the option of breaking with the ways of their parents. By foreclosing higher education, the Amish parents are said in effect to deprive their children of the freedom of choice enjoyed by all other young people. The Supreme Court seemed to leave the door open for further suits on this basis even though it struck down the convictions in the current case.

To understand this conflict and its potential consequences, we must know why the Old Order Amish believe the Christian religion compels them to follow so unusual a way of life and why, to preserve it, they would be willing to leave the United States and go to such countries as Paraguay or British Honduras where, though all sorts of hardships may await them, there is no compulsory school attendance law.

The Amish are spiritual descendents of the most radical Reformers of the early days of the Reformation. Shortly after Martin Luther boldly posted his Theses on October 31, 1517, religious revolt broke into open flame through Germany. Switzerland, and the Low Countries. Luther, alarmed at the excesses to which he saw the movement heading, sought in vain to restrain it, but conditions were soon out of his control.

On January 15, 1525, one Conrad Grebel, a particularly outspoken young rebel against the evils of established institutions of both church and state, was baptized in a ceremony at Zurich. He soon baptized scores of followers. Among his teachings was that infant baptism lacked support in Scripture and that valid baptism could take place only after the age of sixteen, when an individual understood the commitment he was undertaking. From this, Grebel’s followers came to be known as the Swiss “Anabaptists.” The Amish and all other Mennonites consider themselves spiritual heirs of Grebel’s little band.

Grebel and the Anabaptists went much farther than Luther, Calvin, or Zwingli in their zeal for reform. They would have nothing to do with fancy church edifices, organs or other musical instruments, altars, vestments, or any other trappings of institutionalized religion. They insisted that to be true to the commands of the Bible Christians must eschew all things not in accord with the letters of instruction Paul sent to the early Church. They were also pacifists and refused all military service. They had as little as possible to do with the state.

The Anabaptists were soon being harried and persecuted almost as vigorously by the followers of John Calvin as they were by the armies allied with the pope. Grebel died of illness at only twenty-six, but angry authorities could not quench the flaming revolt he had started.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands at about this time the writings of the Protestant Reformers were increasingly troubling the conscience of a brilliant Catholic priest, the Very Rev. Monsignor Menno Simons. From his pulpit in the church at Witmarsum, he found it more and more difficult to defend the actions of the Vatican. One day he witnessed the horrible massacre of 300 Protestant “heretics,” including women and children, who were fleeing from their homes in Belgium. He could find no justification in Scripture for such violence and said so from his pulpit. Sharp warnings from church authorities only aroused his conscience all the more. In 1535 Father Menno and many members of his congregation broke entirely with Rome.

Menno Simons became even more impassioned than the Swiss Anabaptists in denouncing the violence perpetrated by kings and their armies, and soon he and his followers had to flee from their homes at Witmarsum. In the years of persecution and exile that followed, Brother Menno led an inspired and growing congregation from one place of refuge to another. From Switzerland and the Palatinate came Anabaptist refugees by the score to join them. First dubbed “Wederdoopers” (water-dunkers) by their scoffing critics they came to be known as Mennonites and bore the name with pride.

During the period in which they wandered from place to place suffering intense persecution, Brother Menno instituted strict rules for his followers. One was the practice of meidung, shunning the fallen brother. If there was one who showed signs of compromising with the world or who was losing heart for the struggle, he was to be dropped from membership, lest his weakness affect the faith of all. Strictly applied, the rule meant that he should be shunned as the most dangerous of all sinners, and that no member of the church should speak to him, eat with him, or have any dealings with him whatsoever unless he could be persuaded to repent publicly and beg forgiveness.

After the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 finally brought peace to Europe, the Mennonites settled down in the places of refuge they had found in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Alsace and prospered with their industrious farming, which restored the fertility of the war-devastated land. With peace came relaxation of the stringent old rules. In 1697, another flaming reformer arose, a Mennonite minister from Canton Bern named Jacob Amman.

Amman contended that the Mennonites were departing from the fierce, pure faith that had guided their forefathers of 150 years before and called upon them to separate themselves again from the world and particularly to return to the practice of meidung, shunning, which had nearly died out. Other Mennonite ministers disagreed with Jacob Amman, and a trenchant exchange of letters followed. Ultimately, Amman’s followers departed from the fold, set up their own church districts (they met in homes and never erected church buildings), and came to be called the Amish Mennonites.

The Mennonites and the Amish brought their differences to the New World with them. When the Mennonites suffered renewed persecution in the early 1700s, William Penn, hearing of their suffering, offered them a place of refuge in his colony of Pennsylvania. Many Mennonites eagerly accepted this haven. The Amish learned of it, too, and some came as early as 1737; nearly all the remaining Amish left Europe after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, during which they had again been severely persecuted because of their refusal to serve in any nation’s army.

Today you will find two books in most Amish homes, in addition to the Holy Bible in Luther’s German translation, which heads a very narrow list of approved reading (books are printed for the Amish by the Mennonite Herald Press in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania). One is The Letters of the Amish Division, which they still read eagerly and cite as justification for their separation from other Mennonites. The other is Van Braht’s Martyrs’ Mirror, originally published in the Netherlands in 1637 which relates in gory detail the terrible persecutions visited upon the early Mennonite and Anabaptist martyrs.

Old Order Amish elders see themselves as the inheritors of this revolutionary Christian faith. They see themselves as God’s own elect, the one small group that through all the tortures and trials of faith has, by remaining separate from the evil world, held true to the pure New Testament faith. They believe they have built and preserved a true Christian society in a world of sin, and they intend to keep it.

They interpret very strictly the Confession of Faith adopted February 24, 1527, by the Swiss Anabaptists, meeting near Schauffhausen on the Rhine, which declares:

A separation shall be made from the evil and from the wickedness which the Devil planted in the world: in this manner, simply, that we shall not have fellowship with them and not run with them in the multitude of their abominations.…

To us then, the command of the Lord is clear when He calls upon us to separate ourselves from evil and thus He shall be our God and we shall be His sons and daughters.

A more recent statement of the doctrine of separation is that adopted by the Mennonite General Conference in 1921: “Of Separation: We believe that we are called with a holy calling to a life of separation from the world and its follies, sinful practices and methods.…”

The majority of Mennonites do not let separation from evil prevent them from carrying on an energetic and effective ministry of evangelism, such as the “Mennonite Hour” on radio. The Amish, however, declare that they will have nothing to do with the rest of the world and carry on no evangelism whatsoever. To the Old Order Amish God seems to care only about them; they pay no apparent heed to the Great Commission.

It is a very good thing for Christianity that the early Church, which the Amish profess to copy so zealously, did not regard the Christian faith its personal property. While the early Christians separated themselves from the pagan idolatry of Rome, and practiced among themselves a set of moral values much different from that around them, they nonetheless were eager to share their faith and worked hard at winning converts. To the early Christians the world was not to be left to its evil ways but was to be changed.

Obviously, if a group of Christians try to live a strict interpretation of one part of the New Testament but ignore other important scriptural teachings, a rather distorted faith results. This has been the misfortune of the Amish today. And this is how the Amish have come to a head-on collision with the majority of Americans on the subject of education.

The Old Order bishops tend to be unreasonable on this subject. Their position is rigid and inflexible, as though eight years of schooling were a precept of the Bible itself. Much of this may be explained by the fact that the Amish bishops are possessed by deep fear. A man who is consumed by fear is not one who can think clearly.

We need to have compassionate understanding of this fear. When the Amish first came to America they differed only in theology from the Mennonites, the Quakers, the Dunkards, and the other Plain Sects. In dress and in mode of life, they were distinguishable only by the fact that they did not build churches, did not have communication with others, and conducted their religious services in High German, while speaking in their homes that Old German dialect corrupted by colloquialisms and English vocabulary known as Pennsylvania Dutch (which a modern German can understand only with difficulty).

When mechanization first came to American agriculture in the form of McCormick’s reaper, the Amish adopted it as eagerly as did their neighbors. The steam threshing machine became as much a part of harvest time among the Amish as with other farmers. They adopted crop rotation, fertilizers, and modern soil-conservation practices.

But about 1900, the Amish began to fear that once again they were becoming too worldly. Modes of dress began to change in rural America, but the Amish held rigidly to the styles of the nineteenth century. They had never been willing to wear buttons (presumably because Prussian military officers wore fancy buttons and these came to be associated with militarism and extravagance in dress). Now not only their hook-and-eye styles but their broad hats, coarse fabrics, and floor-length dresses became increasingly a denominational costume that set them very much apart from their neighbors. The Amish bishops rather liked this situation because it made it more difficult for their young people “to jump the fence over” and to “turn Yankee” (as they say when young people leave the Old Order faith).

The die was cast. From this point on, having refused to allow any change in style of clothing, the Amish bishops seemed determined to outdo one another in rejecting every change the modern world offered. The Amish bishops do not have conferences or any kind of central organization. Each is supreme in his own church district of fifty to one hundred families. There are no church buildings among the Amish; they meet in homes or barns. They are eager to avoid criticism and desire to be known for the strict piety with which they hold to the faith of the forefathers.

Although they had eagerly accepted the steam engine, they drew the line at the gasoline engine. Tractor plowing was rejected as was all other farm machinery operated by the internal combustion engine. The automobile was condemned because it would make travel to the outside world much too easy. Electricity was also frowned upon because it would make life easy, and if life was easy, the people would never hold to the stem old faith.

Inevitably, a bitter division occurred in the ranks of the Amish. In 1926, a bishop named Noah Beachy declared he could find nothing in the Bible that commanded Christians to plow with horsepower while other farmers cultivated far more acreage and raised much more food by using tractor power. The Beachy Amish, several thousand in number, left the fold and soon adopted automobiles, though they painted the chrome bumpers black to avoid being fancy. They still drive only black cars, retain distinctive dress, have their own schools, and are as reluctant as the Old Order Amish to see their children attend public high schools. Unlike the Old Order, they support an evangelistic program and try to have some outreach to their neighbors. Their dissidence has made the Old Order bishops all the more trenchant in defending the strict traditional way of life.

‘IN THE YEAR THAT KING UZZIAH DIED’

Isaiah 6:1

Shut up as a leper,

Dead under a cloud,

Your royalty eclipsed:

And not till then My vision dated.

Dated

That with certainty

I could look upon mortality

And know

When breath of kings and princes fail,

There would remain

That other vision burning,

Burning with a heat

Proportioned to its light.

No repetitious revelations

Come with such a vision.

It is enough to see

In each Uzziah dead,

In each disease, each shame,

Each royal claim eclipsed,

My Lord uplifted.

Surrounded with a host

Whose faces, feet and features

Are covered for that vision’s errand,

To serve with nothing less

Than angel’s wings;

And sing no other song

Save, Holy, Holy. Holy!

RUTHE T. SPINNANGER

Despite all their problems, including defection of many of their young people, the Old Order Amish continue to grow in numbers. This is due in part to their large families (although Amish couples do use contraceptive devices). Total number of Amish is estimated at 30,000.

The Old Order Amish believe that the modern world is going to blow itself up with the bombs and other terrible weapons its military leaders have assembled. They also believe that modern American society is going to sink into a slough of disease and crime that will utterly bury it. As they see the advertisements for X-rated films when they visit town, they shudder at the degeneration already evident. Our rising crime rate, our divorce rate, the unhappiness among young and old that leads them to use alcohol, marijuana, heroin, and other drugs—things like this convince them we are Sodom personified, and they feel certain of what our end shall be.

We cannot blame the Amish for not wanting their young people to become part of the urban culture of contemporary America. Actually, the Amish feel generally sorry for us. They know that there are many earnest Christians among us, but they feel we are unlikely to win salvation because we are subjected to just too many temptations. We have set ourselves to too unequal a task, they believe. We cannot really be Christians in such an environment. Our only hope is to pull out and try to save ourselves by rejecting the crumbling, doomed world.

The Old Order Amish present us with an unusual problem of Christian charity. Their simplicity we are coming to appreciate more. Their extraordinary family stability, the loving care they give to their aged, the help they extend to those in distress, touch any observer deeply when he is privileged to live among them. The criticism they make of our society is in all too many respects valid.

Their continuance in their unique way of life is a tribute to our tolerance and respect for the beliefs of others. We hesitate to disturb them by intruding the force of government—by, for example, imprisoning them for their conscientious refusal to send their young people to a centralized high school. We have discovered that to use force against them is, in the end, as futile for us as it was for the frustrated crowned heads of Europe. The beatings given Amish boys who refused to be sworn into military service in World War I did not induce a single one of them to serve. Efforts to force participation in the social security program by seizing horses for nonpayment of taxes resulted only in eventual amendment of the Social Security Act to provide for exemption on conscientious grounds. We may eventually drive the Amish out of America to foreign lands where no compulsory schooling exists, but we may never see in the student body of any modern high school a single child who is in good standing in the Amish community.

Glenn D. Everett is the Washington correspondent for a number of religious periodicals, including the “Sugar Creek Budget,” the unofficial national newspaper of the Old Order Amish. He is a United Methodist layman.