This year’s annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), representing 86 per cent of total religious broadcasting, was calm in comparison to last year’s stormy sessions over new gospel music. The majority of the 519 delegates seemed determined to ride the waves, not make any. Besides, there were other worries.

Congress recently passed a bill requiring all radio and TV stations to permit “reasonable access” to lowest-rate broadcast time by candidates for federal office. The NRB in a resolution asked that educational and non-commercial stations that do not air political broadcasts be exempted from the law.

Delegates also urged Congress to amend the Communications Act “to reestablish an orderly renewal procedure” with provision for “immediate hearings” in disputed cases. The move is directed at the current practice of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of permitting competitors to take over when station licenses are up for renewal. The license is awarded to the party stating in an application the best case for serving the public.

Some station operators wondered how they should respond to requests from atheist agitator Madelyn Murray O’Hair for free time under the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine” governing controversial subjects. Guest speaker Vincent Wasilewski, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, replied that the FCC had left it up to local operators to decide whether religion itself is controversial, and that there is no obligation to answer Mrs. O’Hair’s letters.

During a panel session one night, Trans World Radio, a mission broadcaster, treated delegates to an intercontinental broadcast via satellite. Broadcasters on three continents chatted with one another live for half an hour on dual channels leased from an AT&T satellite at a cost of about $1,000. A number of Christian radio stations in the United States also listened in.

Afternoon workshops were sparsely attended; only four showed up to discuss how religious broadcasters should handle social issues. A missions seminar revealed several trends, including Far East Broadcasting Company’s help in getting nationals into broadcasting (stations are being built in thirteen provincial capitals in the Philippines). The U. S. based Rumanian Missionary Society reported that its broadcasts beamed to Rumania were getting nearly 8,000 letters per year.

As was true last year, no station managers or owners dropped in on the youth programming workshop. Disc jockey Scott Ross announced that his two-hour Jesus rock show was now on nearly eighty secular stations. His show features “message” songs, Jesus music, testimonies of name musicians, and even invitations to receive Christ. Response, says Scott, has been “fantastic.”

Although a few youth programmers reported innovative breakthroughs, there are indications that a stiff reaction to the young is building up among many broadcasters. WMBI’s Perry Straw said that Moody Bible Institute president George Sweeting handed down a “hard line” on youth and music programming after a youth show was picketed by discontented fundamentalist Paul Lindstrom of Chicago. The San Francisco-based Family Radio Network has cut back on youth programming, and owner Harold Camping has banned the use of much contemporary Christian music, as has evangelist Jack Wyrtzen on his Word of Life program. A young producer complained that his youth-oriented show was turned down by virtually every broadcaster there.

In interviews, some operators responded that they feared loss of donations if they kept pace with youth, and others admitted outright that they opposed the sounds and styles of the new young Christians.

National headliners and FCC commissioners also addressed the gathering. Senator Mark Hatfield chided those who aired political views in the name of religion, and suggested that “faith” broadcasters should spend less time begging for donations. Maintaining that 93 per cent of impact on persons is through non-verbal means, he implored the broadcasters to communicate love.

Africa: Unprecedented Response

Revival tides continue to flow high in Africa. Mission sources report that more than 15,000 new believers among the southern Ethiopia Wallamo tribe were baptized in 1971, and that Wallamo evangelists baptized more than 10,000 people from neighboring tribes. The Sudan Interior Mission has made translation of the Scriptures into the Wallamo language “a top priority project.”

SIM workers also tell of “unprecedented spiritual response” in the strongly Islamic Kano area of Nigeria—despite a cholera epidemic that wrought personal tragedy among families of national evangelists. After hundreds of persons received Christ in Kano city a Nigerian counselor commented, “Kano has never witnessed such revival before.”

“Tens of thousands of Africa’s bush people are coming to Christ,” declared Asbury evangelism professor Robert Coleman after a recent visit.

Forecasts Conservative Baptist foreign-mission head Warren Webster: “The entire Animist world of 150 million people is up for grabs in this decade; they will turn to Christ or to some ‘ism.’ The Church must keep its evangelistic task uppermost.”

The Multiplying Millions

Kuwait, a small country located at the southeastern tip of Iraq on the Persian Gulf, has the largest population growth rate, according to the latest population chart issued by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D. C. At its present rate of 8.2 per cent, Kuwait’s estimated 600,000 population will double in just nine years.

Only about 2 per cent of that population is Christian. The Roman Catholic Church has two parishes and five priests in Kuwait; there are no Protestant missionaries. But in Costa Rica, which pulled the number-two spot with a rate of 3.8 per cent (its population will double in nineteen years), at least thirty mission organizations are at work.

English Church Merger

In the first union of English denominations since the Reformation, the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Union of England and Wales have voted to merge. The Presbyterians were already committed to union and awaited the result of Congregational voting last month: 2,133 of the 2,280 churches voted, 1,668 in favor, 465 against. The total membership supporting the merger, to become effective in October, was 82.2 per cent. Earlier, all but two of the 308 Presbyterian churches voted approval.

Some of the Congregational dissentients have already formed an association to maintain an “essential Congregationalism” in which each church is free to govern itself.

The new United Reformed Church will have a membership of 260,000.

In May, the Anglican church will vote on whether or not to link up with the Methodist church, which has already approved such a move.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Bibles And High Ups

Kenneth Taylor’s Living Bible paraphrase, Pearl S. Buck’s Story Bible, and a recent translation of the Torah were presented to the White House library by Arthur J. Goldberg, former U. S. Supreme Court justice, on behalf of the Laymen’s National Bible Committee. Goldberg, the first Jew to hold the post, was chairman of the 1971 Bible Week; President Richard Nixon was honorary chairman.

Meanwhile, Chilean Roman Catholic cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez was reported to be shipping 10,000 copies of the Bible to Communist Cuba at the “personal request” of Premier Fidel Castro. The cardinal said Castro requested the Scriptures after Henriquez presented him with a Bible during his recent twenty-five-day state visit to Chile. At last word, however, a paper shortage had delayed shipment.

Rebuilding In Love

Barn-raisings may be outdated, but in Texarkana, Texas, several Baptist churches got together for a church-raising in a show of racial brotherhood.

Last March arsonists destroyed St. Paul Baptist Church, owned by a black congregation, following student racial disturbances that closed the high school. White Baptists from Tyler, Dallas, and Texarkana pitched in with St. Paul’s people to rebuild the church; Texarkana’s white First Baptist Church donated $5,000. The arsonists were never found, and the town’s $5,000 reward for their capture also was donated to the rebuilding fund.

The walls, made out of finished spruce logs trucked in from Colorado, were raised in just two weeks. The all-volunteer—and mostly unskilled—builders plan to have the $100,000 building ready for worship next month, one year after the fire bombing.

Commented Lory Hildreth, pastor of Texarkana’s First Baptist Church: “Both races are working together, shoulder to shoulder, rebuilding in love what was destroyed by hate.”

Stop The Music

A self-styled “oobie-doobie” girl, Canadian Carol Feraci, disrupted a White House dinner honoring Mr. and Mrs. DeWitt Wallace, founders and co-chairmen of Reader’s Digest and this year’s winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Miss Feraci was a last-minute substitute in the Ray Conniff Singers, the after-dinner entertainment. But the guests, among them Dr. and Mrs. Billy Graham and Dr. and Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale, got more entertainment than they expected. The Canadian singer pulled a hand-lettered sign from her dress that read “Stop the Killing” and said: “Stop bombing human beings, animals, and vegetation. You go to church on Sundays and pray to Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ were here tonight you would not dare to drop another bomb. Bless the Berrigans and bless Daniel Ellsberg.”

After Conniff ejected her and apologized, Nixon responded, “Oh, forget it. Those things will happen.”

Graham pointedly shook hands with each of the remaining singers—some of them visibly distressed by Miss Feraci’s action. “No matter how you feel, this was not the time or place,” he said.

Religion In Transit

More than 360,000 persons in North America applied for Bible-instruction courses offered in 1971 by the Seventh-day Adventist “Voice of Prophecy” broadcast, an increase of 82,000 over 1970.

The 16,300-member First Baptist Church of downtown Dallas plans to build a forty-story home for the aged, according to pastor W. A. Criswell.

Fourteen Presbyterian, Catholic, and Lutheran churches in eight California cities have formed a Sanctuary Caucus to offer refuge and meals to servicemen who don’t want to go to war.

Two records were set at the annual meeting of the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene: a budget of $7.7 million (including $4.9 million for foreign missions) and appointment of thirty-three missionaries.

A Minneapolis Jesus People congregation moved into its own church building last month. It is being purchased from the city’s First Christian Reformed Church, which has moved to the suburbs.

In memorial services for Martin Luther King, Jr., held at a Harlem Baptist Church and attended by more than 1,500, pastor Wyatt T. Walker described King as “the only authentic spiritual genius Western religion has produced” this century.

Members of the Yarmouth, Maine, Unitarian Universalist Church voted to refuse to allow the public, especially long-haired youth, to sit on the church steps and walk in the churchyard, ostensibly because of littering.

An emergency ministry to veterans of the Viet Nam war facing problems of employment, education, discrimination, disabilities, and drugs has been established by the United Presbyterian Church. With first-year funding of $20,000, it will join with other groups in a common program through the National Council of Churches.

Deaths

LEONARD CARROLL, 51, general overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee); in Cleveland, Tennessee, of a heart attack.

GEORGE NAPOLEON COLLINS, SR., 73, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Florida and the Bahamas and president of the AME Council of Bishops; in Lake City, Florida, after an auto crash.

PAUL G. ELBECHT, 50, president of Concordia Lutheran College, Austin, Texas; in Austin, of a heart attack.

HOWELL FORGY, 73, the Navy chaplain whose exhortation “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor became a World War II slogan and song title; in Glendora, California, after a long illness.

KARL HOLFELD, 69, former president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada; in Calgary, after a long illness.

FRANK HOUGHTON, 77, general director of the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship) during the crucial 1940 to 1951 period; in Tunbridge Wells, England, from bronchial pneumonia.

G. ELSON RUFF, 67, editor of The Lutheran, a Lutheran Church in America publication, since 1945; in Philadelphia, of a heart attack.

If the Supreme Court overrules a Wisconsin Court decision exempting Amish children from public high-school attendance, most U. S. Amish families will not comply but will leave the country instead, predicts public-education specialist Donald A. Erickson of the University of Chicago.

Clergy and Laymen Concerned, an interfaith anti-war group, has taken over a nationally syndicated radio program from the Businessmen’s Educational Fund and renamed it “American Report.” It is used by hundreds of stations.

The historic sanctuary and educational building of the Lake Avenue Baptist Church in Rochester were destroyed by fire. They were insured for $900,000.

Personalia

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has named Baptist minister C. T. Vivian, a close associate of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., to head the SCLC’s Chicago branch. He replaces Jesse Jackson, now pushing his own new group, PUSH (People United to Save Humanity).

After three and one-half years, the sometimes besieged W. Seavey Joyce, S. J., has resigned as president of Boston College, one of the nation’s largest Jesuit schools.

Vaughan P. L. Booker, convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1970, was accepted as a candidate for the Episcopal priesthood by Bishop Robert L. DeWitt of Philadelphia. He aims to become a prison inmate-chaplain.

A new spat may be brewing in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod over the refusal by the Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) board to grant tenure to Old Testament professor Arlis Ehlen. He is being released, sources say, for alleged liberal views.

Dr. Walter F. Wolbrecht, who lost his job as executive director of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in a denominational shakeup last year, has been named president of Chicago’s Lutheran School of Theology, a Lutheran Church in America school.

Episcopal bishop Horace W. B. Donegan, 71, of the diocese covering New York City and its environs, will retire in May. Coadjutor Paul Moore Jr., will replace him.

Collins Radio engineering supervisor David M. Hodgin, a lay leader of First Christian Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced in a church service that he had quit his own job rather than force out two of his “more valuable than me” employees in a cutback of 550 persons at his plant. He wants to form a corporation based on “human dignity and full participation.”

Arizona mission vicar Harold S. Jones, a member of the Dakota (Santee) tribe, has become the first American Indian to be consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church. He will serve the South Dakota diocese.

President Kent S. Knutson of the American Lutheran Church in a special message to members of the ALC’s 4,822 congregations appointed them “evangelists, all of you, each one,” in preparation for the nationwide Key ’73 evangelistic campaign.

The controversial Catholic pastor of San Francisco’s ghetto-district Sacred Heart parish, once the site of Black Panther breakfasts for children, changed jobs this month. Father Eugene J. Boyle is now director for justice, and peace—a newly created post—of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils.

A Harris poll shows SCLC’s Ralph David Abernathy as the black leader U. S. blacks respect most. Next are Mayor Charles Evers of Fayette, Mississippi, and Roy Wilkins, whose NAACP ranked first in respected organizations.

Life magazine says comedian Vaughn Meader, famous for his impersonations of President John F. Kennedy, is now “an aging Jesus freak,” following trips into the drug and occult scenes. His strange new comedy album, “The Second Coming,” about Christ’s return, rankles many radio listeners, but Meader explains, “My Jesus has a great sense of humor.”

World Scene

In Ethiopia the newly constituted 200,000-member Word of Life Evangelical Church, composed of 1,600 congregations and an outgrowth of Sudan Interior Mission work, has applied for government recognition.

Full intercommunion between India’s Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the Church of South India has been established, and negotiations are under way toward “organic union,” say sources.

Protestants and Catholics alike are victims of a renewed Communist hard line in Czechoslovakia. The regime has restricted religious education, stepped up ideological attacks, and arrested church leaders on political charges.

Christian mission work has been resumed—after a lapse of 120 years—among the “Sea Gypsies” who live on boats and on islands off the southern coast of Burma. A Burmese Baptist, a product of missionaries ousted in 1966, built a church and school on the island of Mali.

The Greater Europe Mission of Wheaton, Illinois, and the Belgium Gospel Mission of Philadelphia have merged, with the GEM assuming control. BGM’s Brussels Bible Institute becomes the sixth such GEM school; four other GEM institutes report record enrollments.

An Assemblies of God spokesman says his denomination is growing so fast in Korea that one church in Seoul now numbers 13,000 members, requiring six services and a pre-dawn prayer meeting to accommodate everybody. He adds that at least 10 per cent of the 36.5 million Koreans are believers.

The European Student Missionary Association will hold its annual conference March 3–5 at the European Bible Institute in Lamorlaye, France. About 300 youths from twenty Bible schools and fifty missionaries along with local evangelicals are expected to attend.

The Indian Parliament rejected a “Prevention of Conversion Bill” that would have virtually outlawed conversion to Christianity in India. Indian mission executive Rochunga Pudaite hailed the significant news and commended the government for “willingness to uphold religious freedom and democracy.”

The 200,000-member Presbyterian Church in Taiwan has called on Chiang Kai-shek’s government to hold parliamentary elections for the first time in twenty-five years. Other churches reportedly will join in the call.

A murder convict who recently received Christ through listening to the “Unshackled” broadcast in his Monrovia, Liberia, prison is the first person to be given clemency and his release by newly installed president William R. Tolbert, a devout Baptist.

The pan-denominational charismatic movement pulled headlines last month at evangelist Morris Cerullo’s Seventh World Deeper Life Conference in San Diego. Crowds ranged from 1,200 at afternoon seminars to more than 3,000 at evening rallies. On the program were internationally known speakers, national evangelists from fifteen foreign countries, specialists (including an ex-Satanist leader), and Cerullo himself.

Cerullo, surprisingly unassuming in contrast to the image created by his flashy PR people, is perhaps better known abroad, where he spends 80 per cent of his time. His overseas campaigns have sometimes attracted as many as 100,000 to a single meeting.

Herb Ellingwood, Governor Ronald Reagan’s chief legal aide, relayed Reagan’s greetings to the San Diego gathering and told of the charismatic movement’s reach into the state capitol. “We have more Spirit-filled janitors than any capital in the world,” he declared, sparking laughter. Prayer groups, he said, are growing in all levels of the legislature from secretaries to attorneys and elected officials. He stated that Reagan is aware of what is happening spiritually and that the governor’s own Christian life is deepening. Ellingwood also laid down legal advice at a seminar for those operating hotlines and other drug-counsel ministries. He estimated that 300,000 youths have been delivered from drug abuse by the Jesus movement.

Pastor Chuck Smith of the widely known Calvary Chapel near Costa Mesa, California, told how his church had become a haven for thousands of youthful Jesus people. It began, he said, when he encountered a hippie Christian “pouring forth the love of God.” Out of that meeting sprouted a super-effective “House of Miracles” outreach ministry, headed by two teen-age evangelists. Seventeen of the twenty-one young men who accepted Christ the first week at the house are now in the ministry, said Smith. He went on to offer guidelines to churches pondering a response to the Jesus revolution.

One of the favorites of newsmen at the conference was a mobile anti-occult display, soon to make a forty-five-city tour in the United States. Its samples of voodoo oil, Satan-worship paraphernalia, and other items were explained by Michael Warnke, a naval medical technician who says he used to be a Satanist priest and leader of a 1,500-member witchcraft group.

Warnke, in an interview, said witchcraft rites include mocking the Christian communion and often end in sexual orgies. Selfishness, he explained, is taught as equivalent to holiness. His own conversion to Christ occurred after drug trips, and near suicide.

Cerullo bore down heavily on the theme that Satanic forces are loose in the nation. He urged his audience to go home and declare war on the devil in the name of Jesus. Aides handed out 20,000 copies of his new antiwitchcraft newspaper.

He also hammered home the theme of the week-long conclave, “The New Anointing Is Here,” declaring that God had promised an outpouring of his Holy Spirit so that spiritual breakthroughs comparable to the vast strides made in science and medicine would be experienced today. God’s healing power will be demonstrated in a way that will “supersede what the early church saw,” he predicted.

As if to buttress the point, a number of persons testified how they had been miraculously healed of assorted afflictions. A surgeon told how his son’s poor eyesight was instantly corrected during a Cerullo healing service. And 1,400 made decisions for Christ.

Cerullo and foreign nationals gave highlights of his international ministry, headquartered in San Diego: “30,000 ministers” trained worldwide to keep giving “the full Gospel” to their people; fifty-five crusades sponsored monthly in scores of countries; effective literature-oriented outreach in Israel.

Cerullo says that he accepted Christ at age 14 in an orthodox Jewish orphanage, and that in recent years his ministry has brought hundreds of Israelis to Christ. A Pentecostal, he estimates that 60 per cent of those in his American audiences are not old-line Pentecostals, and that up to 30 per cent are Catholics.

The Troublesome Ten

Prophecy buffs are talking about recent additions to the European Common Market that bring its membership to ten countries. Some dispensationally-minded Bible students believe that a ten-nation alliance, composed of ten nations once a part of the old Roman empire, will have a central place in a seven-year period of war and tribulation leading to Christ’s second coming to earth. They also believe, however, that the Church will be raptured from the earth before the trouble begins. The teaching is based on interpretations of passages in Daniel and Revelation.

Prophecy analyst-author J. Dwight Pentecost of Dallas Theological Seminary believes that a literal ten-nation alliance is necessary, and that the Common Market ten may or may not be the “required” ones. Because of splintered history, it may take more than ten Western nations to come up with the correct ten revived Roman powers, he says.

At any rate, some prophecy students aren’t making any long-range plans.

Handclasps And Prayers

“America needs to repent” was a note sounded repeatedly, if somewhat obliquely, at the latest of the Washington prayer breakfasts, now attended by some 3,000 influential people annually. The note was not sounded as clearly as a country preacher would give it, but most breakfasters in the huge ballroom of the most prestigious hotel in the nation’s capital should have caught it.

“We have not arrived.” said Congressman Albert H. Quie of Minnesota in opening the program. “We are a gathering of sinners.”

Board chairman Arthur F. Burns of the Federal Reserve System carried forward the theme with readings from Ecclesiastes and Micah that warn of judgment as well as offering hope.

Mayor Walter Washington pleaded for unity and reconciliation, and said he found it hard to understand why the nation finds it so hard to help those who are poor or alienated. He closed by asking the audience to join hands around the tables as an expression of spiritual determination in the presence of their leader.

President Nixon said the breakfast “symbolizes the strength of America,” adding that if participants had not recognized their shortcomings “we would not be here.” He observed that to the everlasting credit of the United States it did not use nuclear blackmail when it could have, and that “we helped our enemies until now they are our major competitors.” But he went on to deplore the fact that the two great wars in this century in which some 20 million died were fought between “Christian” nations.

“Are we on God’s side?” the President asked. He said that while he appreciated prayers for his forthcoming journeys to China and the Soviet Union, he felt that intercession ought to be made primarily “that this nation will be on God’s side.”

Senator Harold Hughes of Iowa then got up to give the closing prayer and prefaced it with a request that his hearers clasp hands again. “Jesus also stretches his hand to you,” said Hughes. “Take it! Let him into your life.”

Several cabinet members and governors were present with their wives for the February 1 event, along with a number of international dignitaries, including a leading Irish government official. Business and civic leaders, professional athletes, and noted evangelical leaders from all over the country made up the audience. Every place was taken. The Washington Hilton served a menu that featured quiche lorraine.

Billy Graham read from Philippians 2 and voiced a reminder that the Bible promises a permanent peace. Christians, he declared, will have a fourth day to celebrate along with Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, when God intervenes in human history and ushers in Utopia.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

The Jesus Movement Under Theological Scrutiny

An analysis of the Jesus people by the Archbishop of Canterbury highlighted a three-day conference in New York last month. It was the first time the contemporary phenomenon has come under scrutiny at a major theological meeting, convened in Riverside Church.

In a sermon at Lincoln Center, Archbishop Michael Ramsey cited three ways in which people today are seeking Jesus: through social action, through mystical experience, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

A number of participants seemed to presume that the Jesus movement today embraces such musical and dramatic expressions as Superstar and Godspell. Those involved deny any connection, and indeed point to profound theological differences. Some Jesus people have picketed Superstar performances.

The conference was sponsored by an Episcopal organization, the Trinity Institute. The director, Dr. Robert Terwilliger, asserted that the Jesus movement has rediscovered the historic Christ who has been rejected by the church. “The time has come to think again about the whole doctrine of redemption as it is being forced upon us,” he said. But with regard to Jesus people who emphasize the filling of the Holy Spirit, he warned that “instant experience, whether it’s sexual or religious, is transitory.”

DARRELL TURNER

Baptists, More Or Less

They’re smiling these days around American Baptist headquarters in Valley Forge. The $15.2 million budget income for 1971 was the largest in the history of the 64-year-old denomination, report officials. An economically imposed ban on sending out foreign missionaries was lifted. And a middle-of-the-road evangelical was nominated to fill the office of general secretary—the ABC’s top staff post, vacant for more than a year.

The nominee is Dr. Robert C. Campbell, dean and professor of New Testament at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, Covina, California. Nomination is tantamount to election, to be held at Denver in May.

Campbell holds degrees from Westmont College, Eastern Baptist Seminary, and the University of Southern California. Writing in his statement of faith, he says, “Our sense of estrangement is met by a vital confrontation with the living God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Meanwhile, ABC officials are pondering the significance of action taken by an ABC-related school. Twenty-year-old Eastern Baptist College (enrollment 595) on the western edge of Philadelphia has dropped its middle name. “The dropping of the word Baptist does not diminish our commitment to Jesus Christ as an evangelical and conservative institution of Christian higher education,” insisted President J. Lester Harnish. Rather, the change reflects the fact that the board, student body, faculty, and staff include many non-Baptists, he said.

Spokesmen emphasized that the change in no way dissociates the college from the ABC. “We should not, however, give the false impression of full denominational underwriting,” they added. The ABC gave only $2,000 toward the school’s $2 million budget last year, a financial officer explained, and individual ABC churches accounted for about $50,000. Actually, he commented, the denominational label hurts more than it helps. So from now on it’s simply Eastern College.

Jewish Furor: Jesus (Again)

Rabbi W. B. Silverman of Kansas City’s Temple B’nai Jehudah, one of the nation’s leading Reform congregations, believes that the best defense is an offense.

In December, responding to the Jewish students in his congregation, Silverman set up some forums on Christianity designed to help both students and adult members of his congregation defend themselves against the Jesus onrush. The first program, featuring Lyle Murphy of Calvary Bible College, led to a heated controversy among local Jews.

The editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle found Murphy’s language “offensive.” Murphy included in his speech such statements as, “The gift of life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Silverman, however, said he found Murphy tactful and dignified. Although the controversy, which made news in many of the country’s Jewish newspapers, continued through January, the congregation supported Silverman’s judgment. “We should seek the truth,” the rabbi said, “no matter how controversial it might prove.”

The temple is planning another such forum on February 23: “Jesus Freaks, Jews, and Judaism.” The panel will include members of the Jesus movement, a Jewish student, and a Protestant minister, as well as Silverman and two laymen.

Silverman claimed that his students had been “harassed and heckled” in cafeterias and school buildings by fiery young believers, some of them Jewish Christians. When asked if he had lost many young people to Christianity, Silverman replied, “A few—here and there.”

CHERYL A. FORBES

Christian Zeal Miffs Soviets

Over-eager American tourists in the Soviet Union came close to provoking an international incident last month. One was a Lutheran congressman, Earl F. Landgrebe of Indiana. Landgrebe, a Republican, said he was picked up by Soviet police and interrogated for two hours after he had distributed Scriptures.

Ten students from Oral Roberts University were detained by Soviet customs agents for six hours because they tried to bring in quantities of Christian literature and records in the Russian language.

Soviet authorities confiscated the materials the students were carrying as well as a small number of Scriptures that Landgrebe had not yet given away.

The congressman was part of a seven-member House Education Subcommittee delegation that visited the Soviet Union in January while Congress was in recess. The House members were supposed to be studying Soviet education. Landgrebe readily admitted he had given away about 300 Russian-language copies of Scripture. He said some people wept and kissed the Bibles. The night before he was to leave the Soviet Union, he said, he decided to distribute what he had left. After he gave away two copies of the Gospel of Matthew in front of a theater, a young woman who Landgrebe said was obviously shadowing him called a policeman, and the U. S. legislator was taken into custody.

No official charges were placed against Landgrebe, but the Soviet newspaper Izvestia subsequently accused him and two other subcommittee members of “promoting anti-Soviet agitation, abusing Soviet hospitality, and threatening Soviet-U. S. cultural relations.”

Congressman James H. Scheuer, a Democrat from New York was expelled after he visited several Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel. He and Congressman Alphonso Bell, a Republican from California, were accused of aiding Zionists.

Landgrebe said he distributed only Bibles because the U. S. State Department had told him beforehand that Soviet authorities were leary of the content of literature brought into the country. The Soviet government has always forbidden the importation of quantities of foreign literature except without special permission. But tourists are generally allowed to bring in several books or Bibles, even if they are to be given away. Most Americans who have visited the Soviet Union say visitors are clearly warned about the literature restrictions upon entering and are told to declare openly what printed materials they are carrying.

A spokesman for the Oral Roberts students said Soviet authorities had overlooked about a dozen Bibles and two records with Russian hymns. These, he said, were passed out to Protestant congregations in Leningrad and in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The group spent more than two weeks in the Soviet Union.

Christians who visit the Soviet Union almost invariably think of taking Scripture only in the Russian language, which is just one of a number of languages used in the Soviet Union. When they distribute Russian Scriptures in areas where another language predominates, they inadvertently aid the “Russification” promoted by the Kremlin but resisted by Soviet minority groups.

One mission source reports distributing 12,000 Russian Bibles and 182,000 Gospels in the Soviet Union in 1971, only a fraction of the total estimated input by many agencies and individuals.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Radio Network has been featuring a lengthy attack on what it calls the Roman Catholic Church’s “anti-communist campaign,” leading some observers to speculate that another anti-religion campaign has begun.

Churches And The ‘New Poor’

One year ago churches in the Seattle, Washington, area, along with two United Methodist-supported agencies, Fellowship of Christian Urban Service (FOCUS) and Ecumenical Metropolitan Ministry (EMM), formed Neighbors in Need (NiN) to help feed the 100,000 unemployed workers there.

These middle-class, highly-skilled professional people suddenly found themselves “the new poor” (as sociologists named them) when Boeing Aircraft’s work force was cut by almost two-thirds over a two-year period. Government help for Seattle, considered the area hardest hit by aerospace cutbacks, with unemployment at 12 per cent, twice as high as the national average, was almost nonexistent. Welfare officials refused to provide both food stamps and foodstuffs simultaneously to one area; “it’s never been done before,” they reasoned. Many of the unemployed couldn’t afford food stamps once unemployment compensation ended.

During 1971 NiN distributed more than $1.5 million worth of goods, often spending as much as $10–12,000 weekly. Churches and farms in the area donated some of the foodstuffs, said the Reverend Harold Perry, a United Methodist and administrative director of NiN. There have also been gifts from churches and organizations throughout the country—from New York, California, Florida, and the Midwest, he said.

Now foreign churches are getting involved. Five tons of rice was donated by Japanese Christian churches and organizations through NiN. The Japanese YMCA co-ordinated the gift with the Seattle-area YMCA, and the Reverend Sadao Ozawa of the United Church of Christ of Japan traveled to Washington on what Perry called “a mission to the various food banks throughout the state to dramatize the need for food.” Ozawa also made a symbolic donation in Seattle of the actual gift.

The Japanese gift is the first foreign aid to the depressed Seattle—and the first for the nation. But, Perry said, “there have been other inquiries. Soon we may be receiving gifts from other foreign churches.”

CHERYL A. FORBES

NEWS

Youth for Christ International has gone a long way since its founding in 1945 with Billy Graham as its first fulltime staff evangelist.

Into thirty-eight other countries, to be exact. And negotiations are under way to establish YFC ministries in twelve additional countries soon, reported YFC president Sam Wolgemuth at last month’s annual staff convention in New York—the largest such meeting in YFC history. Nearly 800 staffers and 100 wives from various nations, predominantly the United States, gathered for training, updating, and swapping of notes.

Old-timers remarked about the striking youthfulness of the majority of staffers, many of them sporting long hair, mustaches, and mod apparel. They reflected YFC’s apparently successful attempt to keep abreast of the times. As one speaker noted. 52 per cent of the world is under 25. Indeed, more than half of Hong Kong’s four million population are teen-agers, many of them still in the city’s 315 high schools, declared Daniel Ee, YFC’s man in Hong Kong.

YFC’s overseas work is almost as old as its domestic operations, and relies heavily on national leadership. Nationals have been in charge for the last thirteen of YFC’s twenty-five years of work in northern India. Director Gaston Singh is assisted by a full-time staff of forty. There are YFC Campus Life clubs in 116 high schools, and each club has about 150 members, says Singh. Additionally, there are clubs for older, Western-oriented youths in twenty cities. Two-thirds of the budget is raised within India, he adds.

Indians established YFC in West Pakistan in 1964 and more recently in Nepal. Witness and training teams travel regularly into Burma; up to 4,000 have turned out for rallies. In 1965 one hundred young Ceylonese received YFC training in India, then returned home and set up a thriving ministry that is today self-supporting and led by thirty staffers.

Australia, another early YFC target, has twelve full-time and fifty part-time workers. They sponsor two dozen rallies, including YFC’s biggest worldwide: a Melbourne rally that consistently attracts thousands.

YFCers in Holland recently bought an old barge and turned it into a floating coffeehouse to reach young people in towns along the many canals.

Arab YFC witness teams based in Lebanon have carried the Gospel to Syria and Jordan and even as far as Afghanistan. Beirut YFCers have banded together with other Christian groups in an alliance known as Ichthus and next month will mount a citywide outreach campaign.

In 1968 an international YFC council was formed on a “one nation, one vote” basis, thus “cutting our umbilical cord to the U. S.,” says Jim Wilson, executive director of the Geneva-based council. The well-liked Wolgemuth, however, was elected international president at both the 1968 meeting in Jamaica and last year’s triennial on Cyprus. He also heads U. S. YFC.

One Way, Brother

Bob Ross of Pilgrim Publications in Pasadena, Texas, came across this photo of a long-haired 19-year-old youth with uplifted index finger. The youth is not one of the contemporary Jesus people flashing the “one way” sign but famous preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon in 1854 when he was pastor of New Park Street Chapel in London.

Some budget and staff ties to the U. S. remain unbroken, and other forms of cooperation exist. The Michigan YFC unit and its counterpart in France have sort of adopted each other. Last year Michigan sent Freeway, a music-witness team, to France for three months. The team rapped and performed in high schools, averaging three a day, reportedly the first evangelical group to gain such success.

YFC “Teen Teams”—forty-eight so far—have been traveling abroad since 1961. A racially-mixed team known as the Vital Union, led by staffers Bruce and Mitzie Barton, recently returned from a four-month tour in northern Europe. The team held forth in high schools by day, in churches and rallies by night, sometimes sparking chain reactions.

The student body president of the Narvik, Norway, high school received Christ in a team meeting, says Mrs. Barton. He led six others to Christ within two months, formed a singing group, and is now touring in Sweden.

Germany, however, was something else, she says. Many students the team rapped with in religion and English classes were Marxists who criticized the Americans. “We had to keep telling them we were representing a person—Jesus—not the church, Christianity, or America,” she explains.

The integrated teams are chosen on the basis of ability and Christian commitment. Rules of conduct are tough: no dating, conform to local customs and eating habits, keep cameras out of sight, write home often. Pay is $25 per week, and members must raise their own support. The Vital Union’s trip cost each member about $1,800 in expenses.

Meanwhile, things continue to hum on the home front. There are 1,000 full-time workers, 2,500 part-timers, clubs in 2,000 schools, an award-winning magazine (65,000 circulation), and a budget of $2 million. Top-rated music teams, complete with rock repertoire, reach 500,000 students a year each. Increasingly, emphasis is more on persons and less on rallies and programs, with extensive involvement with delinquents and ghetto youngsters.

Perhaps YFC’s biggest headache is organizational. Power is vested at the local level in autonomous boards, sometimes resulting in policy clashes—and setbacks. Older hands around YFC tend to hold out for autonomy, but the young are pressing for centralization, claiming it will help the cause of progress. Insiders predict the young will win their way. Several veteran staffers quit this month over the issue.

Top News

In the annual Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) poll, members rated “emergence of the Jesus people” as the top religion news story of 1971.

The next four choices, in order: defeat of the congressional prayer amendment; the U. S. Supreme Court decision banning direct aid to parochial schools by several states; the synod of Catholic bishops at Rome; and use of religious themes in music and drama (Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell for instance).

Experts reviewing 1971 religious events on the CBS “Year in Religion” television show concurred. They said that a “yearning for religious values” by young people keynoted the year’s religious news, and that it would continue.

Trinity’S Red Ink Evaporating

There are signs that Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and its undergraduate counterpart Trinity College, both in Deerfield, Illinois, will survive an acute financial crisis that has caused a lot of floor-pacing by school officials for months. The crisis was brought on in part by rapid expansion over the past few years, according to a Trinity financial officer. To make matters worse, he says, President Nixon announced his tighter economic policy on the day before the kickoff of a Trinity fund drive.

There were other reasons too, say insiders. The schools, related to the Evangelical Free Church (EFC), have attracted many non-EFC students, and certain segments of the EFC membership complained about having to subsidize the competition, in effect. Also, there was a backlash against the mildly radical People’s Christian Coalition, a small unofficial campus group that recently published a controversial newspaper, the Post American.

Facing a projected deficit of nearly $1 million for the current academic year, and feeling that his denomination did not recognize the severity of the crisis, Trinity president Harry L. Evans resigned early in the fall quarter. His move jolted the EFC’s governing boards into a series of huddles. Under the leadership of EFC president Arnold T. Olson they resolved to keep the schools open, to prod the churches to fulfill lagging pledges of support, and to seek other funding. Evans withdrew his resignation.

Early this month seminary dean Kenneth S. Kantzer reported in an interview that more than half the money needed to erase the deficit has already come in, with the academic year less than half over.

She was standing over by the wall, alone, while the rest of the congregation mingled about after the evening church service. The pastor moved over to her side and gently said: “It’s really getting you down, isn’t it?” That was all the encouragement this teen-ager needed to pour out her confusion and fears. Then, through counsel and prayer, the pastor was able to help her toward emotional and spiritual healing. Others in the youth group soon heard about the incident, and the message spread quickly: “The pastor really cares—you can talk to him.” The secret of this man’s increasingly effective youth ministry is simple: he is available. Or, as the young people in his church express it, “He knows how to hang loose.”

Pressed by a demanding schedule and a demanding congregation, many pastors miss valuable opportunities to reach out to the confused, questioning young people in their church family. The minister who rushes around doing “church work” often communicates to the young an impersonal attitude that turns them off. And so at an important decision-making time of their lives, teen-agers who need their pastor’s counsel and concern hear a busy signal that tells them, “He hasn’t time; try later.”

Most young people will not force themselves on their minister, particularly to talk about problems that are not clearly defined in their own thinking. It takes time to talk about feelings, and they would rather say nothing than be pressured by a hurried “get to the point” attitude.

Pastors who talk a lot about their youth programs, but don’t take time to listen to a struggling teen-ager soon lose their young people. But a pastor who takes the time to measure young people’s feelings, stated or not, will find he has a growing youth ministry—and the cooperative prayer support of young people who come to care about him.

Without cutting into the hours needed for sermon preparation, pastoral calls, denominational work, and administrative details, a busy pastor can generate an aura of interest and relaxation that will open many worthwhile opportunities for teaching and counseling the young. Availability is the key, and there are several ways to communicate it.

Stop the “going through the line” ritual, at least for a few Sundays. Going to the foyer to greet people at the close of a worship service may elicit nice comments like, “I enjoyed the service,” or “That was a wonderful sermon, pastor,” but it seldom provides opportunities for constructive pastoral care. “Keep the line moving” is an inviolate part of the ritual, and people will not hold up the line to talk to the pastor. They will be polite and say the right words, no matter how they feel inside.

But when a pastor occasionally stays at the front of the sanctuary or stands off to one side, he says by his action, “I’m free to talk.” Young people will notice this (so will adults who feel that they shouldn’t be taking the pastor’s time) and come over to talk with him. They can relax, knowing they are not holding up a line. And they will feel a sense of privacy, even if only to make an appointment.

It’s good experience, anyway, for the church members to be responsible for seeking out visitors and inquiring about the welfare of one another. People can be encouraged to see this as part of their ministry, instead of designating Christian care as the minister’s job.

Another way to tell teen-agers you have time for them is to attend their meetings simply out of interest, not as an answer man or a special guest. One pastor thought his church needed to hire a youth director to help hold the young people. He felt his own Sunday afternoons should be spent on the preparation of his evening message, not at the young people’s meetings. But when he did start attending the meetings, just to relax and listen, his relationship with the young deepened, his pastoral ministry to them became more effective, and he still got his sermons ready on time. When a youth director was hired, it was to help with a growing youth ministry, not to stop an exodus.

Whenever young people congregate before or after meetings, a pastor need not hesitate to join them and share something of himself. If he listens thoughtfully, comments understandingly, and above all is genuinely loving, he will find that the young people want to talk to him. A word of caution, however: the minister who thinks he is fun to be with or is really as young at heart as they are will soon lose his young people’s respect. Without putting on professional airs, he should realize that he is older—and maturer—than they and act like it. Flip statements and jokes may get laughs but won’t get teens to respond to him as a pastor.

When calling on a young person, the pastor should be relaxed. This is easy if he enjoys being around young people. But even if he finds them hard to understand, a quiet, casual manner communicates, “I have time for you.” He can get immediately into the reason for his call because his attitude has communicated the sense of relaxation that most people try to accomplish with small talk.

When speaking, the pastor should look at the young person, not around the room or at others. He should try to understand what the youth is saying and sense what he is feeling, then speak directly to that. If there are others around, he should concentrate on one person at a time. One pastor had to turn his back on a very vocal mother in order to talk to her son. By doing that, he communicated to the boy, “I’m interested in you.” Another pastor learned to say, “I hope to be able to visit with you and Mr. Smith some evening soon, but right now I want to talk to Mike.”

Being available is a “right now” kind of ministry. Adults may be willing to wait until next week for an appointment with the pastor, but young people’s problems are immediate. They are growing and changing, and they need to make psychological and spiritual adjustments as questions and problems arise. A teen-ager’s problem that could be cleared up in five minutes now may crop out more severely later on and take months to resolve. A pastor can neither effect nor communicate a “right now” availability when he is also implying, “I am very busy.”

Some pastors feel they must show the church members just how busy they are doing the Lord’s work and earning their pay. Those who are able to overcome this need to demonstrate busyness, communicating instead a relaxed attitude of availability, find that the response from young people and adults alike is far more impressive than a frantic pace. Pastoral results in the lives of people builds a strength into the church that no amount of programming can give.

Hang loose, pastor!—ROGER C. PALMS, American Baptist campus minister, East Lansing, Michigan.