I have just returned from Amsterdam, where I was an observer at the European Congress on Evangelism. Reports on this impressive gathering can be found in the editorial and news sections of this issue.

It was instructive to be in Europe right after Mr. Nixon decided to let the dollar float, which meant essentially that its purchasing power was reduced. One thing is clear: traveling in Europe is no longer a bargain for Americans. Prices are generally as high as ours and even higher. Moreover, environmental abuse is as much a European as an American problem. It is no less prevalent in the socialist countries, where capitalism is the whipping boy for the multiplied ills of mankind. Maybe the time has come for Americans to rediscover their own country and enjoy the extraordinary beauty it has to offer.

This issue of Christianity Today includes the annual index and marks the end of fifteen years of publication. This period of great change has brought among other things a presidential assassination, the rise and fall of the “death of God” school of theology, a great loosening of traditional moral and ethical standards (as seen in, for example, the prevalence of overt pornography, or the drive for public approval of homosexual practices), a sharp increase in crime, the “urge to merge” in the Protestant churches, and a revolution in the Roman Catholic Church. Particularly gratifying have been the continued influential outreach of Billy Graham, the emergence of the Jesus people, the world and regional congresses on evangelism, and the increasing impact of movements like Campus Crusade for Christ. Opportunities abound, and there is a greater need than ever for a journal like Christianity Today. We begin our sixteenth year wholly convinced that Christ alone is the answer to the cry of a lost world for help and hope, and that he has a part for us to play in making that answer known.

By far the most interesting magazine that regularly crosses my desk is National Review. This, I suppose, says as much about me as about the magazine. I have to “keep up” with the magazines and journals that have to do with my studies. We subscribe to the usual run of magazines in our home, and I manage to keep up on the non-family magazines in the barber shop and on airplanes. (Magazines are enemies to books, and one has to find time for books also.) But National Review is something else. The editor, William F. Buckley, Jr., who is conservative and Roman Catholic, manages to wade through the common media mishmash to come up with remarkably interesting and astringent comments on men and events. One who is interested in keeping a balanced view on things is led to think time and again, “Well, I’d better take another look at this.” And most of what he says is irresistibly convincing. Try it on for size sometime.

In the June 15 issue the editors analyzed, by way of one hundred questions, “Opinion on the Campus.” This followed in most questions other analyses made in 1958 and in 1961–63 and gives us some understanding of the shifts that have taken place. The findings are not encouraging. For example, the students polled would rather be Red than dead. If “all other alternatives were closed save a world war with the Soviet Union or surrender to the Soviet Union,” 54 per cent would prefer surrender and 37 per cent would prefer war. “Surrender has grown in acceptability in all twelve schools. In the earlier poll, over-all, only 25 per cent preferred surrender; 67 per cent would rather fight.” At Brandeis 69 per cent preferred surrender, which raises some interesting questions about persecution of Jews in Russia at the present time.

Every effort was made to get a fair cross-section of educational institutions and to protect statistical integrity. “Private liberal arts, public land-grant and denominational schools were included; admission and academic standards range from average to very high, enrollment from a few hundred to twenty thousand. At each, only students in the three upper classes were surveyed—on the assumption that newly arrived freshmen would not have time to adjust and react to their new surroundings.” The schools sampled are Sarah Lawrence, Williams, Yale, Marquette, Boston University, Indiana, University of South Carolina, Howard, Reed, Davidson, Brandeis, and Stanford. Marquette is Roman Catholic, Brandeis is Jewish, Howard is black. Davidson, the closest to what most of us think of as a church-related college, is described in the article as “a small, private, Presbyterian men’s school in rural North Carolina; an elite institution with high academic standards.”

Early in the article the editors sum up the “spiritual and ideological baggage” that graduates apparently take with them into this confused world: “Three-fifths call themselves political liberals; fully 17 per cent are self-proclaimed radicals. Approximately half can’t identify with either member of our cherished two-party system. Three out of four feel Marxists should be allowed to teach citizenship courses in the public high schools; almost half favor the socialization of all basic industries; seven out of ten want their country unilaterally to suspend atomic weapons development. Forty per cent say American society is ‘sick’; just over half believe that organized religion is harmful or worse. Given the alternatives of war or surrender in a confrontation with the Soviet Union, 54 per cent would have the United States surrender.”

This leads us to what is said on the subject of religion—“just over half believe that organized religion is harmful or worse.” Some of the religious findings are summarized in a section headed “God Is Not Feeling Very Well.” We like to think that the home and the Sunday school and the home church affect our young people, and this hope is sustained. Only a very small fraction of the students interviewed had missed the training of some religious tradition, and 73 per cent of them believed that this early training had “very marked” to “moderate” influence on their lives. What is surprising, however, is that three-quarters of them had reacted to this tradition and that the reaction took place not in college or university but in high school. A comparison of these 1971 findings to those of the earlier surveys makes it quite evident that the reaction against religion is not only “seeping downward into the high schools” but extending “outward into society.”

Yet in the midst of this is an encouraging note: 53 per cent of the students said that after their negative reactions they had experienced a “resurgence of religious faith and interest.” Since the colleges examined are not “church related,” we can rejoice in the efforts of such organizations as Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade, for this seems to be where they have been measurably effective. A surprising number are not affiliated with any church—about a third generally, and, surprisingly, 16 per cent at Catholic Marquette. By the same token it is interesting to note that at Brandeis 35 per cent consider themselves to be Jews only by “interest in certain cultural features common to Jewish tradition.”

As to orthodoxy of the faith, questions were asked about the Trinity, the Incarnation, God as person, and the like. It was found that “only 17 per cent of our students took the position that God is omniscient, omnipotent, three-personed” whereas the earlier survey showed 30 per cent agreeable to such positions; and at present only 20 per cent agree to the “literal truth of the Apostles’ Creed,” 28 per cent to the “literal truth of the Gospel account of Jesus’ resurrection.” As to the Church itself, less than 1 per cent believed the Church to be “the one sure and infallible foundation of civilization”; at Marquette, where 61 per cent had supported that view eight years ago, only 1 per cent would hold it now.

An odd and somewhat frightful finding is what the “true Believers” do with their religious faith. We expect as evangelicals that properly laid foundations will lead to proper social action. This is not necessarily so. Seven practices that are live and “relevant” in all religious and social discussions are treated in their relation to a man’s beliefs. These practices are birth control, premarital intercourse, extramarital intercourse, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia. It was found that “at only two colleges do more than half the believers in God disapprove of anything because of their religious beliefs.”

This kind of dichotomy in the thinking of students looks like the destruction of the foundations on which such matters could even be discussed with any authority for the believer, and points up what must surely be true: the apparent irrelevance of belief to practice. What must I do to be saved? is not followed by, What ought I to do now that I am saved?

And to sum it all up, the magazines most read by the college students as they make up their minds are: Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times; the magazine least read is apparently National Review!

Three-hundred-year anniversaries are rare in a nation just approaching its own 200th birthday, so America’s Seventh Day Baptists really had something to shout about at their tricentennial celebration last month on the University of Massachusetts campus at Amherst.

The birthday party was largely a family vacation affair for the 500 who gathered at the 159th annual SDB General Conference to relive their denomination’s founding in 1671 and trace their subsequent history.

Many of the 5,300 SDBs are one big family, with recurring last names and shared ancestry. The sixty-six churches across the country are concentrated in the northeast.

Historical plays, vignettes, dialogues, and lectures took the place of the usual inspirational and devotional meetings, though time was allowed for denominational housekeeping.

For many, the high point of the week was a pilgrimage to Newport, where the second SDB meetinghouse, built in 1729, still stands. In the small white sanctuary adorned only by two tablets of the Ten Commandments, young men in white wigs and knickers and young women in bonnets and heirloom dresses reenacted their forebears’ separation from Newport, Rhode Island, Baptists over the issue of the Sabbath. Other scenes dramatized the role of SDBs in the founding of Brown University and in the American Revolution.

For a small denomination with a unique doctrinal stance, the SDBs have been remarkably active in ecumenical affairs. The group is a charter member of the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the Baptist World Alliance. One SDB leader, the Reverend Alton Wheeler, is on the 120-member WCC Central Committee, and he is a vice-president at large of the NCC, where eight fellow SDBs are part of the General Board or General Assembly.

The SDBs are also active in evangelistic endeavors, including participation in the upcoming Campus Crusade for Christ Explo ’72 program and the Key ’73 campaign. SDB young people are enthusiastic about evangelism, says SDB evangelist Mynor Soper.

American SDBs are outnumbered by their foreign-mission converts abroad. Of these 7,500, 4,000 are in Malawi. Jamaica is another focal point of mission work, and with the emigration of Jamaicans to England the long-dead SDB movement in that country has been resurrected.

Overseas growth prompted formation of the SDB World Federation, which held its first meeting in Westerly, Rhode Island, prior to the Amherst meetings. Twenty-one delegates, mostly black, from nine of the twelve foreign conferences attended, selecting target areas for mission expansion.

Since early days SDBs have adhered to traditional Baptist doctrine. Their difference is that they observe the Sabbath on Saturday and hold to the perpetuity of the Ten Commandments, though without the legalism associated with most Sabbath-keeping groups.

The Sabbath remains important, as the Reverend Paul Osborn of Nortonville, Kansas, president for 1971–72, explains: “If it does make a difference, we ought to proclaim it; if not, join the [other] Baptists.”

American SDB membership has steadily declined from a peak of 10,000 early this century. Urbanization and increased mobility are probably the major reasons for the loss in the largely rural-based denomination, according to Wheeler.

To mark the tricentennial, a special choral-dramatic production involving everyone assembled was performed on the Sabbath as a celebration before God, the “audience.” One hymn caught the prevailing spirit:

Three hundred years have come and gone;

God of our fathers, lead us on

Beyond the search for moon and space

To greater search for peace and grace.

Whether the SDB family can survive three more centuries remains to be seen, but meanwhile the “search” is on. And with the Holy Spirit out front, says Wheeler, the SDBs are optimistic.

With God And The Marxists

Significant things are happening in the religious scene in Iron Curtain countries. The latest reports come from Religious News Service writer Ewart E. Turner, who has probed around inside the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

While the Federation of Evangelical Churches and the free churches of the GDR have adopted pro-GDR statements on war and politics, they have also spoken out against religious discrimination and persecution by the state.

Fringe members are leaving the church, but offerings are increasing and young people are joining. Many youths witness openly, and faith runs deep among Christian university students. Family devotions and home Bible-study groups are increasingly evident. Parents and grandparents are learning how to deftly skirt the ban against educating children in the faith.

Federation bishop Albrecht Schoenherr comments, “Christians have found living beside and working with Marxists to be a school of God.”

Visible Unity

At its triennial meeting in a Louvain, Belgium, Jesuit seminary last month, the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission recommended that the new prime purpose of the WCC be: “To call Churches to the goal of visible unity in one faith and in one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ and to advance towards that unity in order that the world may believe.”

The 135-member theological commission offered the recommendation in response to a request from the WCC’s policy-making Central Committee. The measure cannot be acted upon until the WCC’s next world assembly, slated for 1975.

The meeting marked the first time that Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox theologians met as voting equals in the Faith and Order movement, established in 1927 and an arm of the WCC since 1948. Seven Catholic members were present, and the controversial Leo Josef Cardinal Suenens, primate of Belgium, was keynoter.

Visible unity—the stated ideal—at times proved elusive for even the ecumenically minded commission members. Suenens announced “with deep sorrow” that he could not invite the non-Catholics to participate in a scheduled mass. Three Protestants, however, walked to the altar and were not refused communion. One observer commented, “Human barriers, not human beings, were clearly the common enemy.”

Of Salary And Celibacy

Is priesthood on the way out?

In the Roman Catholic Church, one almost gets that impression. Even at Catholic University in Washington, D. C., supposedly a bastion of conservatism, controversies over salary and celibacy have had a serious impact.

The most prolonged dispute at Catholic University centered on the Reverend Daniel C. Maguire, who has taught moral theology there since 1966. The 40-year-old Maguire announced his intention to marry nearly two years ago and applied to Vatican authorities for laicization. He was determined, however, to remain on the faculty.

University authorities saw things differently and terminated his contract. Many feel that Maguire’s support of a 1968 statement critical of Pope Paul’s encyclical against birth control was a factor. There were persistent rumors that Maguire would sue the university for breach of contract.

A decree of laicization finally came through from the Vatican last month and Maguire married Miss Marjorie Reilley, a 29-year-old doctoral candidate. Maguire agreed to give up his battle to remain on the Catholic University faculty. He will be teaching at Marquette instead.

Meanwhile, two priests did sue the university, charging monetary discrimination. The two, the Reverend David J. K. Granfield and the Reverend Joseph A. Broderick, both law professors, said that the school refuses to pay them salaries commensurate with their experience and tenure because they are Roman Catholic priests. Their case has been pending in a federal district court.

Such developments have added up to a man-sized headache for Dr. Clarence Walton, the university’s first lay president, who has been trying to painlessly remove the institution from tight Vatican restrictions. He also must answer to fifteen bishops on his board, not to mention the grass roots.

Continuing tensions have resulted in reduced revenue for the school. Churches all over the country are supposed to take an offering for Catholic University once a year, but in a huff many have terminated their giving. As a result, the school has been operating under something of an austerity program for a number of months. Dozens of faculty members have been dismissed because of budget cuts.

The situation at Catholic University is perhaps a microcosm of the present situation in which all of Roman Catholicism finds itself. New controversies erupt regularly, and an increasing number seem to involve the priesthood. A new study out of the Vatican confirms that priests are leaving in increasing numbers. An official report circulated among American bishops last month indicated that two-thirds of the Roman Catholic priests in this country feel the pope misused his authority in issuing the encyclical against birth control.

There is currently considerable concern over who the Vatican will name to succeed Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington. The National Black Lay Caucus has demanded that a black priest be chosen. At the present time Auxiliary Bishop Harold Perry of New Orleans is the only black Catholic bishop in the United States, where there are an estimated 800,000 blacks among the nation’s 48 million Roman Catholics.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Religion In Transit

The fundamentalist Minnesota Baptist Convention at its 112th annual meeting went on record opposing President Nixon’s planned visit to Red China. The group also rapped the Jesus movement for “unbiblical dress, language, and conduct.”

The “organized church” in Britain will disappear within forty years if the present downward trend in church membership continues, warned Kenneth G. Greet, secretary of the British Methodist Conference, in a denominational journal.

For the first time in its history, Sweden will grant financial aid to churches other than the state Lutheran church. A $380,000 subsidy was approved by the parliament for Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and other churches.

Easing of government restrictions enabled the 80,000-member Reformed Church in Romania to import 10,000 Hungarian Bibles provided by the United Bible Societies.

More than 1,000 blacks attending a joint meeting of the national Catholic black clergy and lay caucuses in Detroit selected a committee to investigate the feasibility of forming a black Catholic church in America.

Mexico plans to give a giant statue of Jesus Christ with an observation tower in the crown of thorns to the United States in 1976 as a present for America’s 200th birthday celebration. Taller than the Statue of Liberty, it will overlook Corpus Christi Bay.

The Latin American Bible Seminary of San Jose, Costa Rica, reports the largest student enrollment in its history—eighty-two students from nineteen countries—as well as plans to open an extension in New York City for training Spanish-speaking pastors.

Personalia

Mark Sharmon, 21-year-old British university graduate who was a Communist until a Campus Crusade for Christ worker recently led him to Christ, is walking 2,000 miles from London to Jerusalem. Sponsors have promised contributions for every mile he covers. He hopes to raise $24,000 for Christian relief work in Pakistan and Nigeria.

Dr. Bruce Metzger, New Testament scholar at Princeton Seminary and president of the Society of Biblical Literature, was elected president of the Society for New Testament Studies—an international body of scholars—at a meeting in Holland.

C. T. McIntire, 31, self-styled “radical Christian” who has taken issue with his famous father, Carl, on several counts, has accepted a full-time post as professor of history at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto beginning September, 1972.

Yoshima Yamamura, a Japanese Christian minister, has invented an inexpensive speech aid enabling laryngectomees to speak and sing; although his own larynx was removed because of cancer eight years ago, he has maintained a busy preaching schedule.

Deaths

JOSEPHINE WHITE, 42, Presbyterian medical missionary; in Afghanistan, murdered by an unknown assailant.

ANGUS DUN, 79, retired Episcopal bishop of Washington, D. C., prominent theologian, former dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and chairman of the committee that censured the late Bishop James A. Pike; in Washington, after a stroke.

CLAIR M. COOK, 59, Methodist minister, writer, former head of the Religion and Labor Council, administrative assistant to Senator Vance Hartke; in Washington, D. C., of a heart attack.

JAMES F. “PROPHET” JONES, 63, flamboyant millionaire who was Dominion Ruler of the Church of the Universal Triumph and prophesied that people will stop dying in the year 2000; in Detroit, after a stroke.

DONALD BLACKWELL, 24, youth counselor who went to Death Valley to fast forty days, read the Bible, and pray; in Death Valley, of unknown causes.

There were strong reminders of John Wesley in Denver when delegates to the twelfth World Methodist Conference voted overwhelmingly to support a global, four-year emphasis on evangelism—an evangelism that stresses the importance of personal salvation but at the same time does not hesitate to speak out against the social ills of the world.

Methodism’s founder might have looked a bit askance at the apparent lack of evangelical fervor on the part of some of the more than 3,500 delegates, or their mixed notions of what the mission of the Church is, but he would have recognized strains of the tight Gospel that made Methodism the talk of Christendom for about 150 years.

The Methodists, from nearly eighty countries and almost sixty national conferences, debated the evangelism issue for two hours and with hardly more than a sprinkling of negative votes bought themselves a program of “intensified mission to the world.”

Yielding to the time-honored Methodist love for order and for independent decisions, the program, pushed strenuously by Bishop F. Gerald Ensley of Columbus, Ohio, included a timetable that would allow the national participants in the conference over two years to decide if and how they want to participate.

In 1974, if participation is approved, Methodists would join the growing list of denominations that are convening evangelism congresses. They would designate the following year for launching the most comprehensive evangelism effort in the denomination since the camp-meeting days of the Great Kentucky Revival at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Ensley and others tried to steer the program as far as possible into the context of ecumenism, cooperating with as many other churches as possible. However, the resolution added, “The human need is so urgent and the divine compulsion so great that Methodism must respond immediately.”

The Methodists, who at times showed signs of the theological variance in their ranks, said the program’s schedule called for consideration of the content of “the message to be proclaimed.” They also emphasized consideration of the needs and feelings of the people to be reached and of those doing the reaching. The mission, the Methodists insisted, must “be expressed through flexible forms as may suit each community or country.”

As somewhat of a safeguard against “foreign” intrusion into national conference territories, the proposal said evangelism must be carried out in the language “that will be readily understood by those to whom we speak.”

Despite Methodism’s recent stronger emphasis on social action rather than personal salvation, most of the messages reflected a longing to return closer to the gospel preaching that lay close to the hearts of men like the Wesleys, Whitefield, and Asbury. And the feeling was more than nostalgia.

In the only other major legislative action, the representatives of most of the world’s 20 million Methodists voted overwhelmingly to set up a presidium of eight presidents for the Council, which now has only one president plus twelve vice-presidents.

Ensley protested, saying the change was not democratic. The bulk of the power will go to third-world conferences, some of which have as few as 1,000 members. Many of the churches in the American conference, the largest, have far more than this within a single church.

Under the new plans, smaller Methodist conferences will have more representation on the executive committee than the two largest members, the United States and England. Sponsors wanted to give the smaller churches more representation to end the large churches’ ninety-year domination of the Council.

Ministers’ $$ On Ice

Church and state may be separated, but in matters of economics Caesar prevails.

Ministers’ salaries, allowances, and fringe benefits cannot be increased during the current wage-price freeze, since the freeze covers “all wages and salaries without exception,” according to A. L. Canfield, an officer of the Office of Emergency Planning.

However, neither the act nor the executive order specifically mentions application to ministers. Persons wanting information in “questionable” cases should contact their local field office of the Internal Revenue Service, says Canfield.

Raises in effect before the freeze are legal, and negotiations for higher salaries to go into effect after the freeze are permitted.

The Assemblies’ Line

Maintaining a strong front on evangelism and doctrine, the world’s largest Pentecostal body polished its spiritual armor last month in Kansas City.

More than 10,000 delegates to the biennial General Council of The Assemblies of God streamlined denominational organization, eliminating twelve major positions and transferring official policy-making power when the General Council is not in session from executives to a 200-man general nonpresident presbytery.

“This should encourage hope among the young that the organized Christian church can be a viable force,” stated general superintendent Thomas Zimmerman, calling the conference the most “strategic meeting ever in our history.”

Doctrinal questions came under close scrutiny as the Council condemned amillennialism and urged a “refrain from preaching and teaching it,” in much the same manner that it had condemned post-millennialism in 1937.

On the social-moral front the delegates considered abortion, divorce, and re-marriage. “Abortion for reasons of personal convenience, social adjustment, or economic advantage is morally wrong,” the Council affirmed. “We express firm opposition to any legislation designed to legalize abortion” except when the life of the mother is at stake or the “pregnancy results from rape or incest.”

Another resolution, which asked that homosexuality be included in the biblical definition of adultery, and that unremarried divorcees “not be deprived of responsibility and service in the local assembly,” was referred to a committee. The assembly’s position on divorce (adultery is the only acceptable grounds, with re-marriage not permitted) is the most stringent among Pentecostal bodies and has been a recurring issue in biennial meetings since the formation of the church in 1914.

Occupying center position at the Council was evangelism. “Take the Word” proclaimed the theme as delegates unanimously voted for full denominational participation in Key ’73, rising in tribute to the planned event. Their resolution applauded the “new climate of openness among Christians in many nations.”

And the Spiritual Life Committee reported, “God is moving in the earth outside the normally recognized Pentecostal organizations. Let us be careful lest we develop a wrong attitude and close our minds to that which God is doing.”

Evangelist David Wilkerson defended the “Jesus freaks,” declaring, “If God judged us as harshly as we judge this generation, none of us would be in heaven.”

After a low point a few years ago in evangelism, new churches, and membership, this biennium’s net gain of 164 new congregations was nearly three times larger than the previous period. Reported conversions were up 25 per cent. Membership increased by 20,000 to reach 645,891, with 1,064,631 enrolled in Sunday schools.

C. W. H. Scott, home missions executive, noted that the church now has ten black churches and thirty black ministers.

JAMES S. TINNEY

Rated X?

The Unitarian Universalist Church begins a new sex-education program for junior highers this fall called “About Your Sexuality,” edited by the Reverend Hugo Hollerorth. The $80 kit, published by Beacon Press, includes explicit filmstrips of copulating couples, printed materials, and recordings of young people who describe their first heterosexual intercourse experience. The Sunday-school curriculum covers all aspects of sex—anatomy, masturbation, intercourse, contraception, homosexuality, petting, slang, and deviations—with no attempt to set values. To avoid pornography allegations, everyone who buys a kit must sign a pledge to use the materials only for education.

Another religious sex-education publication is also worried about cries of pornography. Earlier this summer Herder and Herder, a Roman Catholic press, published The Sex Book, an explicit, pictorial sex encyclopedia, including such topics as frigidity, venereal disease, and the family. Unlike Beacon’s course, The Sex Book attempts to suggest certain ethics. The author, Erwin Haeberle, says, “I felt obliged to imply, without being dogmatic, certain values.… Think. Consider the consequences of what you’re doing.”

NEWS

Campuses, churches, and coffeehouses are aglow this month as hundreds of returning students and street Christians recount God’s doings during their summer abroad.

The California-based Youth With A Mission (YWAM) organization sponsored 200 youths who split into teams and went into all the world proclaiming the Gospel and mobilizing local nationals. American Don Stevens and three New Zealanders mobilized hundreds of British youths into street and door-knocking evangelism campaigns. In Mexico, fourteen YWAMers recruited hundreds to witness door-to-door in Queretaro, and a Mexican-Canadian team slipped into Cuba.

Other YWAMers went to Denmark, Germany, East Africa, Tanzania, New Guinea, and Southeast Asia. One team evangelized along the “Hippie Trail” through Southern Europe, Turkey, Afghanistan, and India, with impressive results at a university in New Delhi.

Seventy-five YWAMers marched into the hippie section of Copenhagen, their arms raised in the familiar “one way” sign as they sang “He is Lord.” Then they knelt in the street and prayed, “claiming” the city for God. After opening “The Way Inn” coffeehouse they were kept busy day and night rapping about Christ with youths who jammed in from all over Europe.

More than a dozen YWAMers reported “thrilling” experiences as they preached and sang in Egyptian cities—and met thriving local contingents of turned-on-to-Jesus young people.

Continuing an upward trend of past summers, churches and Christian colleges linked up with foreign-mission boards and fielded hundreds to work side by side with missionaries all over the world. They served as office clerks, school teachers, translators, medical aides, jungle evangelists, and even carpenters.

The Oriental Missionary Society sent thirty summer interns to the Far East and South America. One, Houghton College student James Long, rounded up $1,500 (virtually all summer workers must raise their own support) to work with missionaries in India. OMS youths who taught English in evening classes in Ecuador reported “many” decisions for Christ.

Americans aren’t the only ones who traveled for Christ. The Belgium Gospel Mission hosted forty-five from many nations who evangelized in streets, tents, parks, and homes in Mouscron, population 40,000.

Many got academic credit for their summer work—such as seventeen who went from Lancaster (Pennsylvania) School of the Bible to Haiti in one of the best-organized intern programs.

Dozens of Christian music groups sang about Jesus. Street Christians were active, too. Ex-doper Lonnie Frisbee and a team from Calvary Chapel near Costa Mesa, California, conducted weeks of street and tent meetings in Stockholm. Ex-hippies preached Christ to hundreds in Hyde Park, London, and established Christian houses in London and Amsterdam.

All in all it was a summer of fulfillment.

A Call To Duty

An eight-cent postage stamp to be issued next month portrays a pathetic youth hooked on drugs. It is a depressing reminder of one of the nation’s worst problems, but it can also remind Christians to spread the Word, says a spokesman for the Jesus culture, because Jesus has the best cure rate in liberating addicts from drug dependency.

Indeed, Teen Challenge and similar anti-drug ministries report an average cure rate of more than 50 per cent among users who accept Christ and stay in prescribed programs beyond the first few weeks. An army psychiatrist confirms a cure rate of 34 per cent in a GI-operated Christian halfway house in Viet Nam. Statistics of secular programs fall far short; lately some communities are hiring Jesus people to head up anti-drug centers.

Groups of young Christians have recently volunteered to go to Southeast Asia to work with the thousands of hooked GIs there, but church-state implications, liability risks, and logistical problems dim hopes of such travel. Besides, says a Pentagon spokesman, Christian GIs are on the scene.

Last month an army major investigated Jesus movement anti-drug ministries on the West Coast for the Pentagon. Maybe Jesus will be drafted.

The Living Bible: A Record

Within weeks of its release in late July virtually the entire 500,000-copy first printing of The Living Bible was sold out, reports Tyndale House sales manager Wendell Hawley. This was the largest Bible press run ever made in the United States. A second printing of 100,000 is scheduled this month.

The Living Bible is a paraphrased version by Kenneth Taylor, an evangelical who owns Tyndale. Profits from the record sales, states Hawley, are being channeled largely into Tyndale House Foundation to support Bible translators working in forty-two countries.

Many bookstores called at the last minute saying all copies on order had already been spoken for and they needed more. Arnold Durbin’s Baptist Book Store in Irving, Texas, depleted its supply of 1,000 within a week and had orders for nearly another 1,000.

Officials at Doubleday, marketing the Bible to the general public, say business is brisk in secular bookstores too. The firm has scheduled a full-page ad in the December 3 issue of Life magazine.

Taylor, father of ten children, began paraphrasing the Bible about fourteen years ago for use in family devotions. He did much of his initial work while commuting between his office in Chicago and his home in suburban Wheaton. When several evangelical publishers rejected his manuscript on the New Testament epistles, he printed 2,000 copies of The Living Letters himself on credit in 1962, and later founded Tyndale House.

In addition to its book and Bible line, Tyndale publishes: Church Around the World, a 120,000-circulation monthly religious news sheet for insertion in Sunday church bulletins; Christian Reader, a 160,000-copy bi-monthly digest of magazine articles; and Have a Good Day, a 300,000-circulation monthly soft-sell evangelistic tract. One large Chicago business distributes 3,000 of the latter in monthly pay-check envelopes.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Parochaid: Drawing The Lines

President Nixon has become entangled in the parochaid issue, but whether excessively or properly so is a matter of hot debate.

Speaking to the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council last month in New York, Nixon made a pledge of support for aid to non-public schools. His extemporaneous remarks followed a lengthy plea by New York’s Terence Cardinal Cooke, who charged that the denial of government assistance to nonpublic schools is “unfair, unreasonable, and discriminatory.”

While advocates of strict church-state separation howled at Nixon’s “open scoffing” at the Supreme Court rulings last June, private and parochial education leaders loudly applauded the “dramatic reaffirmation” of government aid. The Court had invalidated direct financial assistance to non-public elementary and high schools in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, even if the money is used for secular instruction (see July 16 issue, page 34).

Nixon praised parochial schools for teaching “the moral, spiritual, and religious values so necessary to a great people in great times,” and said: “As we see those private and parochial schools, which lay such great stress on those values, as we see them closing at a rate of one a day, we must resolve to stop that trend and turn it around.… You may count on my help.”

The personal promise was a surprise, though Nixon had earlier appointed a commission to study the potential for aid to non-public schools.

Quick rebukes came in editorials of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Washington Evening Star, as well as from the American Jewish Congress and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Will Maslow, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, charged that the President’s promise is a “turning aside from his Constitutional responsibility.”

While protests rose on the day after the speech, Nixon met with New York officials for a briefing on newly passed legislation providing $33 million in state aid for non-public schools for “secular” educational services, including teacher salary supplements. The program is being challenged in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

Cooke advocates state laws providing direct aid to parents of non-public school children. On the federal level, opportunities for federal assistance lie in tax-credit or voucher programs.

Though the Supreme Court has drawn the lines on the educational chalkboard, the picture is not finished yet.

Lutherans: A Matching Plan

Plans are in the air for a world fellowship of conservative Lutheran bodies to match the more liberal Lutheran World Federation.

Three hundred delegates to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) meeting in Watertown, Wisconsin, adopted a proposal to initiate consultations with orthodox Lutheran churches around the world to form the new organization.

Upon recommendations by WELS president Oscar J. Naumann—reelected to his tenth two-year term—the WELS invited the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) to join in organizing support for the new group, to be patterned after the former Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America.

Delegates also instructed the denomination to observe closely the progress of the Federation for Authentic Lutheranism (FAL), composed of congregations dissatisfied with recent developments in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). A WELS leader predicted the FAL might join the proposed world fellowship.

The WELS is displeased with the LCMS for voting altar and pulpit fellowship with the American Lutheran Church (ALC) in 1969. Reporting on the latest stage of the feud, Naumann disclosed that he had rejected without reply an invitation by Dr. J. A. O. Preus, LCMS president, to accompany him to Viet Nam to help secure humane treatment for American POWs.

The Synodical Conference, model for the new world fellowship, was founded 100 years ago and included the WELS, LCMS, ELS, and the former Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (SELC). After the WELS and ELS withdrew, objecting to LCMS joint work with more liberal Lutherans, the conference disbanded and the SELC was absorbed into the LCMS.

A record $12.4 million budget for the next two years was adopted for the 381,000-member WELS, with 1,000 congregations in thirty-five states.

From Rome, With Love

Pope Paul VI sent a message to the first Inter-American Catholic Congress in Caracas, Venezuela, calling on Catholics to include an “evangelical testimony” in their social, political, and economic endeavors. The world needs to see the certainties of personal redemption “through the merits of Jesus Christ,” he said.

Thou Shalt Not Copy, Right?

A lot of churches are breaking the law, and somebody might get sued.

That is the consensus of several music publishers. They point out that one of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not steal”—and that churches do this every time they reproduce a chorus or anthem without permission. Law prohibits the reproduction of any copyrighted music (in whole or in part, including lyrics) in any way without the publisher’s permission.

In this day of advanced mimeograph equipment and inexpensive copy machines, it is not uncommon to find even staunch evangelicals singing from illicit anthem sheets and chorus books.

At the last Church Music Publishers Association meeting the problem was aired, as it was the preceding three years. Only this time a few publishers, frustrated over repeated but apparently vain attempts to warn and inform churches, said they were “ready to get tough.” Southern Baptist music executive William Reynolds told CHRISTIANITY TODAY a lawsuit or two will show that publishers mean business. Such action, he predicted, would scare most churches away from their pirate practices.

But publishers are reluctant to do this. As Singspiration executive Jack Raisley—himself a composer-arranger—said, suing a church would create ill will and be bad for business. Besides, Raisley added, many churches are ignorant of the law.

But ignorance will not stand up in court, cautions Reynolds. Although he and others have written widely on the subject and issued warnings during ministerial and music conferences, the word either does not get around or is largely ignored.

Most of the lawbreakers seem to think that music or lyrics can be copied without permission as long as the copies are not sold. Not so, says Donald Hinshaw of Carl Fischer Company, adding that no publisher really wants to sue a church for what amounts to theft.

An Arlington, Virginia, minister whose church youth group innocently mimeographed lyrics of gospel choruses conceded that he would have to side with the publishers “if that’s the law.” He mentioned lack of adequate staff and time to write the many requests for permission needed for putting together a chorus book.

Raisley says that in most cases publishers would probably grant permission to reprint lyrics but not musical scores. Choirs that use contraband music copies, he adds, “are robbing my bread and butter.” He has offered to buy and donate any music that his own church needs rather than see the church break the law.

The copyright law is one of the most vague on the books (see Editorials, page 32). Attempts to revise and clarify have repeatedly failed. A new bill under consideration will broaden “fair use” provisions and clear up some questions. The purpose and amount of material copied without permission will be considered, as well as how this affects the “market” of the material. These new considerations could affect churches, but most reprinting of church music without permission will still be outlawed.

Meanwhile the “fair use” doctrine seems to be the only available guideline: “The line between ‘fair use’ and infringement is unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that can safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not avoid infringement.” Interpretations of the doctrine vary, and the copyright office suggests that the best thing to do is to obtain permission in all cases. This is what many churches have failed to do.

A related issue concerns the taping of phonograph records without the producer’s permission, a forbidden practice that is proliferating as rapidly as cassette recorders among young people.

In a different vein, it is also wrong to alter copyrighted music to make an “arrangement,” unless permission is secured.

Composer John W. Peterson says that a lawsuit against an individual, a church, or a denomination is now “a very real possibility,” and he hopes that pastors and other church personnel will get the facts about the copyright law. He relates that in one church he saw “neatly stacked about fifty photocopies of one of my five-page anthems.” To a composer, he sighs, this is discouraging.

How to bridge the information gap? Every publisher and musician interviewed suggested that a story in a major religious periodical would do the most good.

CHERYL A. FORBES

In retrospect the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, held in June, seems in several ways a remarkable event. Not only did it attest a pervasive rank-and-file interest in biblical prophecy, but it also indicated that many churchgoers, though in basic agreement about last things, welcome a frank debating of secondary differences more than a mere rubber-stamping of traditions. Jerusalem 1971 was a call to churches everywhere to search and to research the Scriptures for God’s authentic word about the future.

The mood of the prophecy conference was far different from expectations of unsympathetic critics, who envisioned either a gathering of fanatics assembling in Armageddon to glimpse the worst of an imminent Doomsday, or a counter-ecumenical conclave bent on expounding religio-political theses. The conference avoided both oracular politicizing and religious fanaticism; its confident expectation of the Lord’s return and of God’s impending judgment of men and nations was correlated with a summons to greater evangelistic engagement as well as to social and cultural involvement.

From the outset two notes were struck: “If this is God’s world, as we believe it is, we dare not forsake it to the despoilers, but recall our generation we must to the righteous and just purposes for which God has made man and the cosmos.… God desires a new race of men, even a new heaven and earth. But God’s new man is one on whom the Divine King will inscribe His laws, and it is to the holy image of Jesus Christ that he will be conformed.”

In short, prophecy in the Jerusalem conference context embraced both foretelling and forthtelling, and it was seen as an incentive rather than an alternative to socio-cultural responsibility and evangelistic engagement.

Conference speakers were unanimously agreed on evangelical core-commitments, such as: the inspired prophetic-apostolic Scriptures convey God’s authoritative Word about the future; Jesus of Nazareth is God’s decisive messianic revelation; the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the hinge of human history and hope; in connection with the soon-approaching return of Christ, the Living God will consummate history in a final and irrevocable judgment of men and nations. Debated issues concerned the prophetic significance of the regathering of Jewry, the Israeli reoccupation of Jerusalem, the millennial question, reconstruction of the temple, and so on.

That echoes of the conference are now being heard in thirty-two lands from which the 1,500 participants came promises a renewal of prophetic interest in many churches. Interestingly enough, the prophetic conference was no conclave of bearded patriarchs; many young and middle-aged persons took part.

From the very first the conference had been projected—perhaps wrongly—not as a study congress for the systematic investigation of biblical teaching about eschatology but as a high-level expository program for tourists who could correlate four days of Holy Land sightseeing with more than three days of inspirational teaching and preaching. The travelers, as might be expected, were mainly Americans, and the speakers mostly from the United States and England, though there were noteworthy exceptions. Any future prophetic conference, if seriously ventured, must recognize that Christianity is an Asian religion, and must therefore reflect Asian leadership more fully. Program content would also need to be correlated for systematic and comprehensive Bible exposition.

Perhaps such hopes cannot be fully achieved on the edge of tour parties, and must be augmented by the churches at home. The possibilities of serious evangelical dialogue with modern Jewry on prophetic themes also remain to be pursued; Israelis invited to participate in panel discussions at the Jerusalem conference were indisposed to accept. Evangelicals must learn not to seek all ends from every means, and it is probable that Holy Land travel ought to be correlated only with popular and dramatic programs. If that be the case, the 1971 conference, while attaining less than would a study congress, nonetheless achieved much more than any similar future Jerusalem conference is likely to do.

The serious follow-up of prophetic interest must depend world-wide upon the local churches. The sad possibility always exists, of course, that such local prophetic interest will deteriorate into hairsplitting. Evangelicals have much in common to offer the world; it would be tragic were they to erode their energies in further subdividing themselves. Obviously there is a time and place to explore and emphasize differences, but only by keeping in the forefront the great eschatological affirmations of the apostolic kerygma and the historic creeds of Christendom will we prevent a distorted impression of the evangelical faith.

All the modern gods have failed contemporary man. Neither secular science nor Communist ideology nor revolutionary anarchy has produced its promised millennium. Even in affluent America the soaring seventies have soured into widespread unemployment and runaway inflation; faith in democracy suffers under an enlarging credibility gap. In his history of World War II Winston Churchill wrote of “the awful unfolding scene of the future”; in our more recent day even the most trusted world leaders find it increasingly difficult to predict what is to come.

No generation heretofore has been so besieged by end-time talk of the imminent destruction of mankind, be it by thermonuclear explosion, environmental pollution, or global famine. “Preserve more lives” and “Prevent more births” are battle cries of our age. The pervasive assumption seems to be that if ingenious modern man tries hard enough he can forestall any crisis that threatens human destiny.

Absent from this secular apocalyptic concern is any real understanding of God’s end-time. After all, the final chapter of human history is solely God’s decision, and even now he is everywhere active in grace or judgment. Never in all history have men spoken so much of end-time, yet been so shrouded in ignorance of God’s impending doomsday.

For the evangelical Christian, discussion of the end is neither a matter of entertainment (as it is for the apocalyptic movie-makers of Hollywood) nor a matter of dread (as for the doomsday secularists). It is, rather, a joyous expectation of the regathering of Christ’s disciples into the presence of the Coming King.

There is only One, namely God, who can confidently declare the future; there is only One, namely the Risen Jesus, who can speak authoritatively from the other side of the grave.

During the spring of this year, there were some weeks when that grand old hymn “Amazing Grace” was among the top ten songs heard on radio across the nation. This was in itself an illustration of the grace of God, for through the secular medium of hundreds of radio stations, the story of God’s redeeming love was heard by tens of thousands who otherwise might never have heard it.

The more one grows in Christian understanding and experience, the more amazing and precious the grace of God becomes.

We are saved by grace and kept by grace, but few of us realize this marvelous fact. We are confronted with an ever recurring temptation to attribute our salvation and any growth in Christian maturity to our own efforts and accomplishments.

The pride of self-accomplishment is a deadly sin. It stands between many people and a saving experience with Jesus Christ. Our salvation depends solely on the grace of God, and our continuing peace with him has been bought by our Saviour at unbelievable cost.

Without an understanding of this saving and keeping grace from God, we are engaged in an unending struggle to attain. But when we come to realize that everything we are or hope to be is the result of God’s unmerited favor, then our hearts are filled with love and gratitude toward the One who has made this possible.

As we deepen in our Christian faith and experience, we become increasingly aware of the innate sinfulness of the human heart. The knowledge that our salvation is a fact, despite repeated failures, comes from an understanding of the implications of divine grace.

The grace is an attitude on the part of God toward sinners that can in no sense be deserved. It rests entirely on the merits of Jesus Christ, and, so far as mankind is concerned, it is made operative through faith alone.

The mercy and forgiveness of God are received completely apart from human endeavor, and the faith by which we receive this is in itself a work of the Holy Spirit—a matter of divine grace.

Grace means exemption from a penalty that we deserve, forgiveness where punishment is justified. It is divinely given assistance to the weak.

Not only are we saved by grace through faith, but we are kept by the continuing grace of the One who has begun a good work in our hearts.

For some of us who have been brought up in Christian homes and who have enjoyed the blessings of a godly heritage, conversion came as a gentle breeze—a change so quiet that we cannot remember the day when we said in our hearts a conscious and final “yes” to the Saviour. Because we have grown up in the church, we are inclined to feel that our own goodness is woven into the warp and woof of Christian experience. We forget the most vital and precious truth, that the finest Christian is just a sinner saved by grace.

Others have traveled a different road to the Cross. They have tasted the depths of human depravity and have known the misery of conscious separation from God. Seeing themselves in the light of God’s holiness, these persons have recognized both the fact and the wages of sin. Conversion to them has been a climactic experience, and the loving grace of God a wonderful thing.

John Newton, author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” had experienced the soul-searing effects of sin in the flesh. But when he came to know the precious truth that God had descended in human form and had taken that sin on his own sinless body, he gave expression to his wonder in the words:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

No matter how cultured, educated, and sophisticated a man may be, he needs to realize this saving grace as much as any criminal on death row in Sing Sing, or ignorant savage in the jungles of Ecuador.

How dangerous then is self-satisfaction, which is an offense to a holy God and a barrier to our becoming acceptable to him through the work of the Spirit.

Grace is a matter of God’s forgiving and cleansing undeserving sinners. But it is more than that. By God’s grace we can continue to be his children after we have been redeemed.

A quiet examination of our own lives shows us how far short we come of fulfilling God’s will after we have received salvation. Day after day we continue to be guilty of sins of the flesh and of the spirit, sins of omission and commission. Except for the grace of God we could never remain his children. Were it not for this unmerited favor, we would still find ourselves standing condemned to judgment before him.

What a difference grace makes! The Christian is but a sinner over whom the spotless robe of the altogether lovely One has been cast. The Chinese character for “righteousness” is most interesting. It is composed of two separate characters—one standing for a lamb, the other for “me.” When “lamb” is placed directly above “me,” a new character—“righteousness”—is formed.

This is a true illustration of the grace of God. Between me, the sinner, and God, the Holy One, there is interposed by faith the Lamb of God; and by virtue of his sacrifice, he has received me on the ground of faith and I have become righteous in his sight.

In his hymn of praise, John Newton continued:

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed!

Many of us fail to appreciate the grace of God because we do not perceive the awfulness of sin as it must appear in the eyes of a holy God.

An often neglected theological truth is that even the ability to come to Christ is a gift of God’s grace. Our Lord said: “No man can come unto me except the Father which has sent me draw him.” We are all familiar with Paul’s words, “By grace are you saved through faith: and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Any boasting of our own achievements is an offense to God and is a denial of his grace.

Paul, in writing to the Roman Christians, said, “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”

This justification is an act of God’s grace, and the faith to believe is also his gracious gift.

In these days when serenity of mind and security of heart are so hard to find, we need only turn to the grace of God. There we can find everything necessary for our lives—now and for eternity.

SNAKES ALIVE

You could’ve fried eggs on the pavement—which made it a typical July day in south Georgia. We had made a special side trip on our vacation to see the Okefenokee swamp that straddles the Georgia-Florida line.

Having walked over the grounds of the park and peered at the totally motionless, sleeping alligators, we were now seated in the open pavilion waiting for the scheduled 2:30 talk by the naturalist-in-residence.

In all honesty I expected the “naturalist” to be a young college student type with a memorized message about the swamp’s animals.

To our delight the young man who appeared turned out to be a very knowledgeable student naturalist with a mind of his own.

He opened his talk by explaining, “Well, you all came here to see the alligators. Now you’ve seen ’em. What did they do for you? Nothing.

“People come here from all over the country. They rush into the park and say, ‘Show us the alligators!’

“At least the alligators are smarter than people. Some of you drove hundreds of miles to see them but they won’t even open their eyes to see you.

“Well, you’ve seen ’em—the ugliest, laziest creature God ever created. If you watch long enough (about ten minutes I estimate) you may see one of ’em take a breath.

“You came to see alligators but I came to talk about snakes. So if you want to leave now you can. It doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to me, although you ought to know about snakes because snakes, unlike people, do mostly good.”

His role as serpent’s advocate suited his personality. “I try to be as obnoxious as possible,” he admitted. “I was a Jew for one whole day last week—we had a group here from Germany.”

Our host continued to demythologize snakes. He pointed out that while people claim to have actually seen milk snakes suckling at a cow’s udder any such cow would have to be “udderly insensitive.”

“The snake’s bite isn’t nearly so bad as the fright people get from it. Most people who die from snake bite,” he assured us, “die from fear.”

He went on to dispel at least a dozen other snake myths.

I got to thinking later that the snake indeed has suffered a bad press. Beginning with Moses, the writers of Scripture seem to suffer from herpetophobia.

It was a serpent who deceived Eve, we are continually reminded. David describes the wicked as having venom like the serpent. Isaiah pictures the day of judgment as one in which the Lord will punish the fleeing serpent with a strong sword. John sees God’s triumph partly in terms of his imprisoning “that ancient serpent, who is the Devil.”

Our naturalist-host added as an afterthought, “Oh yes, some people’s religion teaches them to be afraid of snakes. If your religion teaches that, then be afraid of snakes!” He didn’t need to add, “you idiots”; it was in his tone of voice.

It’s doubtful that your garden variety snake descended from the subtle beast of Genesis, which just goes to show that symbols are what you make them … I think.

A WARMING BLEND

I have just finished reading rather thoroughly … your August 6 issue. I simply want to say that … I must write and thank you for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I take a number of religious periodicals and journals, some extremely conservative and others extremely liberal. I personally favor neither extreme. However, I find that your own magazine, which is certainly conservative, is not extreme, nor is it anti-intellectual but rather blends a dignified, intellectual approach with a warm evangelical spirit.

I especially appreciated Carl F. H. Henry’s “A Question of Identity” (Footnotes). However, I found the other articles and editorials both excellent and stimulating. Thank you very much.

The Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church

Tampa, Florida

Carl F. H. Henry is right—and right on! There is an “emerging evangelical vanguard” of radical Christians who (1) profess unswerving allegiance to the historic faith and (2) believe the New Left’s social and political analysis best shows how sin has infected our society. Thank you for his accurate and sympathetic article. (May I remind your readers that Arthur Gish’s The New Left and Christian Radicalism and Dale Brown’s The Revolutionary Christian also give an exceedingly helpful introduction to the Movement?)

Let me add however that I find no evidence in this movement that some naïvely believe “that the program of the political left is identifiable with the content of God’s New Covenant” or that they “have been taken in by a Marxist antithesis of personal and property values.” Henry should know that a specific “program” is precisely what the New Left lacks—and what Christian radicals can supply in the hope of the coming Kingdom. As for the Marxist question, no one I know has been “taken in” let alone to the point of depreciating personal property. These were misleading statements.

For us the “question of identity” is actually settled: with the “great cloud of witnesses” of Hebrews 12, we confess we are “strangers and exiles on the earth” who are looking for a “better country, a heavenly one,” while “fixing our eyes on Jesus.”

We genuinely appreciate the visibility you have given us. Now if you will just continue to hear and print us, perhaps you will be instrumental in bringing us together into a true Movement that will both serve the Lord and serve the people.

Highwood, Ill.

OR VICE VERSA

“Right Answers, Wrong Questions,” by Maurice Blanchard (Aug. 6), says that the Greeks asked, What is man’s relation to God? Why this is a wrong question, even though asked by Greeks before the time of Christ, is not clear. The answer, however, seems to be wrong.

According to the article the Greeks answered that “Man is finite, God is infinite; man is temporal, God is eternal; man is weak, God is almighty.” Later on, after the Gospel came to Greece, there was difficulty in adapting Jewish answers to Greek questions.

The answer quoted is wrong, [although] not in an absolute sense: it is a good question and a relatively good answer. But it is wrong in the sense that the Greeks never made this answer. Did the homeric Greeks say that God was infinite and almighty? Did the presocratics? Heraclitus and Anaxagoras may have come close to saying that God is almighty, but neither of them made God infinite. Plato subordinated his Demiurge to the World of Ideas—which itself was neither infinite nor almighty. Aristotle’s God was ignorant of much or even all that goes on here below. Surely not the Epicureans. What about the Stoics? Who were the Greeks that gave the answer the author assigns to them?

Professor of Philosophy

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

THE PULSE OF APPRECIATION

I want to write a general word of appreciation for your magazine which I have been reading for about as long as it has been published. It fills an important place in the circles of evangelical witness. I depend on it to help keep me posted on throbbing currents of thought.

Second Baptist Church

Isleboro, Maine

THE CHURCH AND THE FLAG

I am responding to the editorial entitled “United Presbyterians and Angela Davis” (July 16).… I am a seminarian attending Princeton who is taking a summer of field education in Newburgh. When I arrived here, the Angela Davis controversy was gathering momentum. A New York state senator had denounced the UP church on the floor of the legislature for taking such action. Needless to say, this was most inappropriate. However, what he did serves to illustrate what I am about to say, namely the draping of Jesus Christ in the American flag.

Your editorial is another expressions of this mind set. To the Church of Jesus Christ what is the significance of Angela Davis’s ideology? The editorial argued that she would oppress the very system and church that had given her support in her time of need. Is this a determiner of action on the part of the Church? Another way of putting it is, is the love of God limited to those most like those in the Church? It is interesting to note that Christ did not turn off those opposed to him. As a matter of fact, he loved them with the love of God which earnestly seeks the welfare of the other person. There are no qualifications to God’s love. One need not be white, middle class, conservative, and American or non-communistic. One need be only a person. Let’s not forget “that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Remember, Christ was crucified by the very people he came to save and heal. Note that this did not stop him.… Ultimately, I believe the issue is not racially or politically oriented. Rather, the question has become whether or not Angela Davis is a worthy object of God’s love or not. What other agency does the Lord have for expressions of his love for people but the Church? What greater act of love than for Miss Davis to be given funds from the Church? Not to back her politics and religion but to help her defend herself in a system that has been unjust to blacks in general. What does this say to the world? It says that the God of the Christians—some Christians anyway—is a God of love who, while not condoning sin, loves people no matter what their political leanings. It has shown just what Christ’s love is all about.

Princeton, N.J.

PROJECTING SMILES

In your July 16, 1971, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY we noticed the editorial “Why Smile?” along with a little smiling face. We want to let you know that we think it’s important to spread smiles in this world of problems and difficulties.

Our youth group has undertaken the project of selling bumper stickers and buttons. Our bumper stickers and buttons have been distributed not only in the United States, but all over the world. Constantly we have people write for additional bumper stickers to give friends. Blessings to you. I enjoy your publication very much.

Redeemer Lutheran Church

Wayzata, Minn.

THE RANGE OF COLOR

James Daane should be commended for his perceptive comments regarding the exercise in spiritual narcissism which the synod of the Christian Reformed Church performs from year to year (News, “Christian Reformed Synod: ‘Mirror, Mirror …’ ” July 16). For me, especially, it has been a sad experience to realize that on this point the synodical deliberations are a rather accurate reflection of what is true of the CRC in general.

Six years ago I left the CRC with very mixed feelings: not so much for doctrinal or personal reasons, but because of the negligence and refusal of CR ministers in the Chicago area to witness against a growing tide of racism there. As I see it, the synod of the CRC has again spoken with beautiful, yet cheap words, but has refused to follow up with meaningful acts in the case of the black children who are kept out of Timothy “Christian School.”

There have been moments when I have longed to return to the church in which I grew up, but as long as the CRC almost exclusively caters to the third and fourth generation of those who are of Dutch descent, and my Christian brothers are kept out of even one of its institutions because of the color of their skin, I cannot be part of it in good conscience.

I am colored too. During this season of the year my skin ranges from pink to red, and I am red-faced all year around, when I consider the way in which even Christians are willing to hurt one another.

Westport, Mass.

HOW NOT TO SUCCEED

Your annual contest and awards for unpublished books (July 16) is nothing short of brilliant. I hope you will write a book giving fullest details of the contest and containing sample sentences, paragraphs, and perhaps even whole tasteless chapters as examples of how to succeed never getting into print. You could see that it would never get into print, but just have the typewritten manuscript mailed to all would-be unwriters, much like a chain letter. You might well walk off with the first year’s first prize, and the whole venture could have you retiring in style to busy yourself with editing a newfounded “Reader’s InDigest.”

Maui, Hawaii

EDITORIALS

“The laborer is worthy of his hire,” Jesus said, but when making out the pastor’s paycheck, many Bible-believing churches do not seem to believe that Jesus really uttered those words.

We don’t know anyone who went into the ministry thinking he would get rich there; if anyone did, the joke is on him. But how can a man do a wholehearted job for the Lord and for His Church if he can’t pay his bills on time? Most ministers and their wives are willing to sacrifice materially; should not the members of the church sacrifice a bit too?

The fact is, most of them don’t. One minister spoke to us recently about his not uncommon monetary experiences. He had recently received a call from the chairman of the pulpit committee of an independent church that was bursting at the seams and, on its $15,000 annual budget, building a new sanctuary. When the discussion got around to salary, the caller offered $5,400 per year plus parsonage without utilities. “A man with three children could not live on that,” our friend observed. “He could exist, nothing more.”

“My wife and I became engaged the night of my ordination,” he continued, “and were married while I was pastoring my first church. One family there offered my bride and me an old iron bedstead they were throwing away. Believe it or not, they were offended when I refused it! When we moved to another church the salary offered was $5 per week less than what we could get by on. The salary was increased by that amount, but the chairman of the board, who was earning $20,000 a year, held that increase against us the entire time we were there. He felt we should have taken the initial offer and lived by faith, but it struck me rather forcefully that there was no evidence of that kind of faith in his life!

“During my next pastorate, although we had our third child, our salary was not increased for several years. Our dining-room rug, which was made of a twisted paper material, was ripped, and we had to tack its curling corners to the floor. Our budget did not permit us to buy even a bottle of soda. One of our deacons offered to increase his giving through the church so that our salary could be raised $10 a week, but the finance committee did not accept his offer because they felt it would obligate the church at the next budget time. Providentially, the next day I was asked to teach a class in a Christian school for $10 a week. In such ways the Lord has always met our basic needs. But there have been few luxuries. For the first nine years of marriage my wife and I could not afford to eat out or even to exchange gifts (though I spent $100 a year on books, which, I realize now, wronged her and hurt our relationship). For vacations we always visited (read sponged on) my parents. One year when we returned our neighbors told us they had been taking bets that our car wouldn’t get us back. Some testimony for the Lord and the church! I am thankful that our present church has increased our salary each year by at least the percentage of annual inflation, and sometimes the raise has been more than that.”

Many churches are taking a long hard look at their pastor’s salary in the light of the current cost-of-living index, and they deserve commendation, but many more need to think green. Studies show that the salary for most ministers is below the Bureau of Labor Statistics “moderate” income for a worker’s family. Although the minister has three or more years of post-college study, he is at an economic level lower than that of most inexperienced beginners in industry or government. A chemist with an educational background comparable to the clergyman’s now earns at least $4,000 more than the minister. And studies made in 1963 indicate that the financial plight of the minister is getting worse. Forty per cent of the wives of clergymen now work outside the home—double the 1963 percentage. Even allowing for the influence of women’s lib, that’s an astounding increase.

Many churches augment the minister’s income by providing his home. But this is a mixed blessing. If a pastor is not building equity in a home, where will he live when he retires? One church solved that problem by giving the parsonage to its pastor of many years even before retirement came. Other churches now give a housing allowance so that the minister can buy his own home. Some churches at least buy annuities for their pastor, in addition to paying his Social Security.

And what about the minister’s car expense? Other employers requiring travel provide vehicles or reimburse the driver for using his own car. The pastor should be reimbursed a fair amount (the government pays ten cents a-mile) for the mileage driven in church affairs. A concerned church will also want to cover hospital insurance, make provision for convention and conference expenses, and provide a book allowance for its minister.

Responsible laymen simply must not take advantage of their ministers. If a church cannot adequately support a pastor, it would be better for that congregation to elect one of its own members to do the preaching or to merge with another Bible-believing church nearby. Christian love demands that the congregation make certain their clergyman’s hire is worth his labor. They might begin by asking themselves if they would work for that kind of money.

Who Cares For Earth?

A Chrysler executive says that of 15,000 pollution-control kits sent to dealers last year, only about 50 have been sold. A total of 13,000 kits, which retail for only twenty dollars and which significantly reduce emissions in cars without air pollution control equipment, have been returned by dealers.

Even if we allow for Chrysler’s inadequate promotion of the kits, these are appalling statistics, suggesting that the man in the street has been moved very little by all the alarms of our ecology crisis.

This is an issue in which Christians have the chance to lead the way. Those unwilling to help set the pace in preserving the environment say in effect that they lack respect for the works of God’s hands.

A Court Writes Theology

Many of Hawaii’s residents are indignant about the appointment of Matsuo Takabuki as a trustee of the fabulous Bishop Estate. According to the will that set up the estate, trustees are to be chosen “from among persons of the Protestant religion.” Takabuki, however, has had no publicly known connection with Protestantism and even is thought by many to be a Buddhist. His appointment by the state supreme court touched off a major controversy.

While Takabuki himself remained silent, some interesting arguments for his Protestantism were circulated. Some said that he attended a chaplain’s class while in the military service. A columnist reasoned that every Christian not a Roman Catholic is obviously a Protestant. Others proposed an even wilder syllogism—anyone not a Roman Catholic is a Protestant.

Gilbert and Sullivan could have turned this situation into an ingenious, hilarious farce; yet it’s no laughing matter. The Bishop Estate is one of the most valuable in the world, with assets reported to approximate $400,000,000, and owns nearly one-tenth of Hawaii’s total land area.

But no matter how great the value, tampering with a Protestant trust surely is an obstacle to the free exercise of the Protestant religion. If indeed there is a reliance on a new, unhistorical, and ultimately meaningless definition of Protestantism, truth is being sacrificed to linguistic artifice.

A Vision Realized

In America parents may choose between public and independent schools, an option not permitted in all countries. Independent schools have full liberty to teach religion, though not all of them elect to use this freedom. In the last fifteen years, however, the Christian school movement has increased dramatically. Yet long before the present burgeoning of evangelical elementary and secondary education, an independent college preparatory school for boys at Stony Brook, New York, was correlating its program with Christ and the Bible in a way that set a pattern for the integration of faith and learning.

This month The Stony Brook School begins its fiftieth year. Founded by a group of conservative evangelical leaders headed by Dr. John F. Carson, who had been moderator in 1911–12 of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the school began on September 13, 1922. Though Presbyterian in background, it has never been denominationally affiliated. Its doors are open to students irrespective of denomination or race. The organizer and first headmaster, Frank E. Gaebelein, served for forty-one years until his retirement in 1963. It was primarily his vision and zeal that brought Stony Brook into reality, and won for it great distinction down through the years. Among his books, two—Christian Education in a Democracy and The Pattern of God’s Truth—are definitive contributions to educational philosophy. (Many readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY know Dr. Gaebelein as its co-editor from 1963 to 1966.)

Beginning with twenty-seven boys, The Stony Brook School has grown to a student body of 230 with a faculty of twenty-seven The study of the Bible, required of all students each year, stands at the center of the curriculum. The faculty has been built upon the principle that Christian education can be accomplished only by committed believers, and it exemplifies the compatibility of faith and scholarship. Continuously accredited by the Middle States Association since 1928, Stony Brook has sought excellence for the glory of God; in doing so it has gained an acknowledged place among the finest independent schools. Among the graduates are leaders in missions and the ministry, education and the law, medicine and science, business and industry, government service, and writing and the arts.

While private education has sometimes fostered social exclusiveness, from its inception Stony Brook through far-reaching scholarship aid has attempted to maintain a robust democracy, having in its student body, boys from several different foreign countries.

At the call of the trustees, Donn M. Gaebelein, a graduate of Princeton and Columbia, succeeded his father in 1963. His thirteen years of experience in teaching and administration included heading the boys school at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. Under his leadership the Stony Brook enrollment and plant have grown. The curriculum has been enriched, the spiritual life of the school continued in accord with the present needs, and the program of scholarship aid enlarged, making possible more help for students from minority groups. Few if any evangelical educational institutions have more effectively made black students a part of their life than has Stony Brook in recent years. Now, as its fiftieth year begins, the school is responding to necessary change, moving into coeducation with the admission of girls as day students.

We congratulate this school for its consistent Christian commitment and for the quality education it offers. We look forward to further progress at Stony Brook.

A Freeze In Late Summer

President Nixon has shaken the nation and the world twice in a short time. Not long after he announced his forthcoming trip to mainland China, he imposed wage and price controls, added a 10 per cent import duty, and let the dollar float on the world currency market. The full meaning and effects of his decisions will certainly not be known for some time.

The reaction of well-known economists to the new policy was quite diverse. That a number were at odds with Mr. Nixon and with one another on many points is a fact some churches might ponder. If expert economists take opposing positions, how can church leaders who lack economic expertise make authoritative pronouncements on complex economic matters: Should they not stay within their own bounds, where they can speak from Scripture with certainty and authority?

The President’s action has hurt many people, among them those who expected a cost-of-living pay raise in the next few months. But whenever wages are frozen, some people suffer more than others. Many will consider their sacrifice well worthwhile if the controls help to halt inflation.

Mr. Nixon’s decision is a clear affirmation that his previous policies have failed. We applaud him for having the courage to admit this and try something new. We only wish he had acted more promptly to remedy a situation that he did not create but inherited from previous administrations.

To suppose that this or any other legislation will magically solve our economic problems is, of course, naive. Underlying much of our predicament is the urgent need that Americans truly earn their high wages, salaries, and profits by so increasing productivity and excellence that our goods and services are in great demand both at home and abroad. For too long we have coasted on our reputation and the advantage we had in emerging relatively unscathed from World War II. Hard work, ingenuity, and competence are required as never before if our high incomes are to be real instead of inflated.

Will Mr. Nixon’s new policy work? At this point no one can say. There are too many unknown factors in the equation, such as the possible actions of other countries. We take courage from the fact that Germany and Japan, who lay prostrate in 1945, have recovered and assumed places among the world’s economic giants. The United States can find the way out of its economic morass if it has the will. Only time will tell whether it does.

Multiplied Theft

The widespread availability of photocopying machines provides another means of stealing—as if there weren’t already enough ways to break the eighth commandment. The problem involves the laws of copyright, established to protect the rights of individuals to monetary income for their labors. Writers, composers, and illustrators, for example, support themselves and their families not by creative work itself but by selling the product of their creativity. Moreover, their income is usually a few cents on each sale; it’s the large number of copies sold that enables them to make a living.

But the culprits—those who would never think of stealing another’s tangible property, or who would never think of taking copyrighted material and typesetting it, printing it, and selling it for themselves—misuse the photocopying machine. They will buy, for example, one copy of an anthem for the choir to sing, and then photocopy enough copies for every choir member to have his own. No conscientious person should engage in such an obviously illegal action (see News, page 44).

But there’s one other culprit: the highly unrealistic state of copyright law in view of modern developments in photocopying and information storage and retrieval systems. According to copyright law it is a violation either to make one photocopy of one page of a thousand-page tome or to make a hundred copies of an entire piece of music. Until the writers, publishers, consumers, lawmakers, and other interested parties come up with a rational, equitable, enforceable set of laws to bring copyright and technology into reasonable alignment, individuals and groups should avoid photocopying multiple copies or single copies of significant portions of a work without permission. We will be glad, however, to give you permission to reproduce without payment as many copies of this particular editorial as you wish!

Time’S Tricks

Once again time has fooled children and men. Vacation-time seemed to stretch far ahead with the arrival of spring and early summer. Students buried their books beneath tennis rackets and swim suits while adults planned to spend time away from work and pressure. But suddenly we are on the threshold of another school year as an over-ripe summer bursts irito a full fall. Vacations get shorter, the school year gets longer, work piles up; “And time that gave doth now his gift confound,/Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth/And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.”

Children become adults and adults too quickly become old, observed Shakespeare as he warned men of time’s tricks. Paul, too, reminds men that time disregards men and their plans. He admonishes us to “look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time … understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:16, 17). Whether in school, at work, or on vacation we must use our time wisely for God, or we may find that time has used us and made us fools.

True Grit For The Gospel

A young man of twenty-six arrived in Philadelphia in 1771, sent by John Wesley to be a preacher to the few hundred Methodists and to the hundreds of thousands of non-Christians in the colonies. When Francis Asbury died forty-five years later he left behind a denomination with over 200,000 members. Today, two hundred years later, the bearers of the tradition of Asbury are divided among scores of denominations, only some of which bear the Methodist name.

Regrettably, the Gospel that Asbury proclaimed is no longer heralded from the pulpits of many churches that acknowledge institutional ties with the “Father of American Methodism.” But we join with those who do still preach the same saving message in commemorating his coming to our shores. And we wonder whether God is raising up in our times men who will, like Asbury, be willing to forego marriage and comfort and undergo hardship (Asbury rode horseback an average of more than fifteen miles a day through all kinds of weather, over all kinds of terrain) for the sake of the Gospel. The challenge of reaching the hardened inhabitants of our cities today is every bit as great as that which faced Asbury as he surveyed the cocky conquerors of the colonial wilderness. To meet this challenge, the Church today needs men every bit as tough as he was.

God-Talk Is News

For many years daily newspapers avoided analysis and commentary on religious issues. The taboo was overcome in the 1950s largely through the enterprise of Louis Cassels of United Press International and George Cornell of Associated Press. Their weekly columns and spot coverage of religious developments persuaded many a newspaper editor that theological and ecclesiastical news was too hot not to handle. Interpretative reporting of religious affairs was welcomed by readers.

Cassels and Cornell are still on the attack against religious illiteracy. Mr. Cassels, forced to suspend his column this past summer because of illness, hopes to resume writing this month. Both men were raised as Southern Baptists but now are active lay Episcopalians.

Interestingly, an Episcopal priest also has joined the ranks of nationally syndicated religious news analysts. He is the Reverend Lester Kinsolving of San Francisco, whose weekly column is now picked up by dozens of large daily newspapers. Once an outspoken exponent of radical causes, Kinsolving has turned into a reporter of considerable repute. He doesn’t mind putting people on the spot in pursuit of a story. His reportage contains highly opinionated elements, but these are readily apparent and seldom misleading.

Kinsolving’s admirable bent for candor was well-illustrated in his coverage of Billy Graham’s Oakland crusade. Many a reporter, perhaps thinking he’s doing Graham a favor or assuming the general public is not interested, plays down the evangelist’s theology. Not Kinsolving. He echoed the sermon emphases authentically. One story began, “Billy Graham affirmed the existence of the Devil last night.” Another, “Nearly 41,000 people in the Oakland Coliseum yesterday afternoon were warned solemnly by Billy Graham that they will be ‘cast into the Lake of Fire,’ if ‘you are not listed in God’s Book of Life.’ ”

That is refreshingly straight reporting—and the world needs more of it.

Estranged From The World

Scripture characterizes Christians as pilgrims and strangers in this world (Heb. 11:13). But too many Christians either are unfamiliar with this teaching, or, if they do know about it, compromise their lives to live peacefully with the world. Paradoxically, those who consider seriously the role of pilgrim and stranger often withdraw from the world. These ascetics seem unaware of Jesus’ command to be in the world but not of it.

The majority of Christians live and act as strangers of heaven but citizens and friends of this world. For example, materialism grips many believers; they are trapped by possession of houses, lands, or cars, losing life’s abundance by trying to find it in ownership of things. Ornate, expensive churches and cathedrals also display Christians’ materialism. Some of Europe’s most famous cathedrals are meccas for tourists rather than temples for worship. They remind us of such famous castles as Versailles, built by Louis XIV. With their hundreds of ornate rooms whose occupants have long ago returned to dust even as their royal lines have perished with them, these structures are monuments to the hopelessness of man’s materialism trap.

The call to God’s kingdom is the call to a new relationship in which our citizenship is in heaven while we remain on earth. As long as we live in the world we must be keenly aware that as pilgrims and strangers we can never feel fully at home here. We are travelers in transit spending a short time on earth en route to our ultimate destination. The glory of that pilgrimage lies in the assurance that our estrangement from this world will yield to complete harmony and full fellowship in the world to come.

The Church’S Mission: Let The Laity Do It

Chosen and Sent: Calling the Church to Mission, by Theodore Eastman (Eerdmans, 1971, 143 pp., $2.95), and Laity Mobilized: Reflections on Church Growth in Japan and Other Lands, by Neil Braun (Eerdmans, 1971, 224 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by John E. Wagner, attorney, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Here are two books written from entirely different theological perspectives that yet say some very similar things about the plight of the institutional church and its mission in our time. And the two authors prescribe in broad outline similar remedies.

Theodore Eastman, a pastor and former executive secretary of the Episcopal Overseas Mission Society, analyses what he sees as the two paramount defects in the life and mission of the modern Church—inadequate motivation and insufficient flexibility. Although he uses the farewell discourses in John’s Gospel as the text for his critique, as in so much current preaching the Scripture appears to serve as a mere garnishment rather than an authoritative framework.

Evangelism, to Eastman, does not mean “rechurching lapsed or migrant Christians” or “gathering converts as an ardent hobbyist collects coins.” Rather, the Church’s call is to participate, through Jesus Christ, in God’s continuing action of making the creation whole. The manner of fulfilling this mission in our time is to be that of the foot-washing servant our Lord portrayed in John 13.

The Church as a community of slaves is intended to be an agent of revolution—the revolution of change for the better. This essential part of the continuation of creation is one in which God and man cooperate. To carry this out, man needs the co-efficient of love-obedience, and this is bestowed by the Holy Spirit.

In this partnership effort with God, man will incur opposition. To avoid escaping either through pietistic withdrawal or through total identification with the world is difficult, and Jesus himself offers no easy solution. Each citizen of the kingdom must search out the frontier of demarcation for himself, using whatever references “the Christian tradition provides.”

Eastman then reviews the historical ways in which the Church has sought to carry out the mission of its partnership with God in “creating and perfecting the world,” concluding that a new strategy is needed in our time. The modern notion of a paid clergy pastoring established congregations does not hold promise for future growth. The new style of mission must utilize the whole people of God.

Eastman opts for a secular style portrayed by the good Samaritan—a total commitment to human need. But he does not believe it is necessary to be overtly “religious.” Rather, one is called to an “evangelism” of Christian presence.

The “new Christian” will be one who comes to a fresh appreciation of the activity of God’s Spirit in the world and to a commitment to the central issues of the faith, which will vary from place to place and from culture to culture. He will be concerned more with communication than with conversion, and will search for more thorough theological education, as well as deeper appreciation of community. Eastman says little, if anything, of the Word and prayer, or the sacraments, as means of spiritual growth, and he ignores the evangelical lay-oriented ministries that have blossomed during the past decade.

Neil Braun’s Laity Mobilized speaks more directly to the matter of church growth per se—evangelism in the traditional biblical sense. As a missionary to Japan since 1952 and recently a student at Fuller’s School of World Mission, Braun persuasively argues for a new style of mission that will bring men to saving faith in Jesus Christ in diverse cultures and nations.

Braun’s impressive statistical and historical documentation of missionary evangelism—including that of the American frontier—takes off from a scriptural launching pad very much like Eastman’s. Both men tell us that the whole Bible speaks to the whole people of God in the matter of mission. But Braun’s understanding of the call is that of gospel proclamation as distinguished from Eastman’s vision of a socio-theological community immersed in worldly problems; social justice and Christian action are in Braun’s view an outgrowth of calling men to conversion through Jesus Christ. Although he recognizes the possibility of distortion that limits the vocation of the laity to prayer, Bible study, church work, and evangelism, an even greater danger, he says, is that the Church will so emphasize social action that it commits spiritual suicide.

Braun argues boldly for new modes of ministry and for a mission of the laos, rather than the “one-paid-pastor-per-church” system. Citing examples from a wide variety of groups in different parts of the world and drawing on the experience of great missionary leaders, he builds a solid case for unpaid preachers drawn from the laity—persons filled with the power of the Spirit and sustained by Word and prayer and committed fellowship, reaching out to ever-growing populations potentially responsive to the Gospel.

The sign of a good church, he says, is not a large attendance and budget but the ability to “establish viable new congregations in its vicinity.” Reproduction of believers is the prime business of mission, and from this will flow Christian love and social concern. This, it seems to me, is the answer to the current plight of the institutional church.

Braun, like Eastman, closes his book with the balanced vision of a church that mobilizes the believing layman in the total ministry, subject only to the oversight and light-handed counsel of fully ordained, theologically educated ministers. In contrast to Eastman, however, he emphasizes spiritual growth rather than theological education for the layman.

In brief, then, the two books are amazingly similar in their diagnosis of present institutional church problems, as well as in their call for a flexible new style of ministry involving the mobilization of lay people. Both recognize the necessity of the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish these new styles of mission. But Eastman’s answer—the so-called evangelism of Christian presence—is in sharp contrast to Braun’s focus on proclamation, persuasion, and teaching in order to bring men into a personal relationship with Christ. Eastman’s neglect of gospel proclamation and person conversion is a common malady afflicting current secularized theology and the mode of mission it projects. Perhaps Eastman’s new style of mission needs Braun’s as its predicate and Braun’s vision needs some of Eastman’s insights for its amplification in the life of the believing community.

Idyllic Relations?

The Trial and Death of Jesus, by Haim Cohn (Harper & Row, 1971, 419 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

Haim Cohn, a justice of the Israeli supreme court, has expanded a provocative article published in 1967 into a sizable book. His is but the latest of a series of books on the trial of Jesus (see the reviewer’s article, “Historical Notes on the Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 9, 1971, pp. 6–11).

Like S. G. F. Brandon and Paul Winter, the distinguished jurist starts out with the premise that the Gospels were theological and apologetic rather than historical in character, and that the Evangelists retrojected the fully developed hostility that existed between Christians and Jews in the late first century back to the time of Jesus. “It should be remembered,” he warns, “that the author of John was an implacable and uncompromising blackener of Jews and whitewasher of Romans.…”

Cohn’s novel theory is that the Sanhedrin met at night, not to prosecute or even to examine Jesus, but to save him from the Romans. To establish this interpretation, Cohn seeks to demonstrate that “neither Pharisees nor Sadducees, neither priests nor elders, neither scribes nor any Jews, had any reasonable cause to seek the death of Jesus or his removal.”

Jesus’ cleansing of the temple could, according to Cohn, have caused no offense to the temple authorities at all. The fact that Jesus acted without formal jurisdiction “would scarcely have irked the authorities.” On the contrary, the Jewish leaders are depicted as being concerned, if only for their own sakes, to protect “a Jew who enjoyed the love and affection of the people.” Therefore when the Sanhedrin met at night they sought, not to find false witnesses, as the Gospels would have us believe, but to prove that the witnesses against Jesus were false.

Jesus’ claim that he was the Messiah or even the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven could not have been offensive. All the passages, particularly in John’s Gospel, that emphasize the divinity of Jesus and the attempts to stone him for such a blasphemous claim Cohn dismisses as late constructions. The rending of the high priest’s garment at Jesus’ confession was a sign of grief at his inability to save Jesus rather than a reaction against blasphemy.

Unfortunately for Cohn’s picture of “sweetness and light” in the relations between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, such an idyllic situation is completely contradicted by the Gospels and by our own perception of human nature. That the Pharisees and Sadducees in power, who were rebuked and threatened by Jesus’ preaching, should have actively sought to save him is indeed a noble conception, but one that is unhappily contradicted by human nature. And how shall we explain away the rage and fury of the sincere Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, against the early Christians if the teachings of Jesus were as inoffensive as the author claims?

Cohn concedes that the “most compelling argument” against his thesis is the total lack of any support for his theory from the Talmudic sources. On the contrary, the Talmud contains traditions in which the Jews take full responsibility for the judgment of Jesus. Cohn seeks to argue, quite unconvincingly, that some of these traditions were originally references not to Jesus of Nazareth but to some other Jesus.

The attempt to free Jews from any liability for the crucifixion is largely a modern undertaking, motivated by the justifiable revulsion against centuries of anti-Semitism and especially by the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. The Talmudic sources and the Jewish Toledoth Jeshu of medieval times viewed the execution of Jesus as a justly deserved punishment and the condemnation of Jesus as a Jewish and not a Roman responsibility. According to William Horbury, “many passages from Jewish texts would, if found in Christian sources, certainly be ascribed to anti-Jewish sentiment.”

Whatever differences of interpretation we may have with Justice Cohn over the intent of the gospel passages, we must wholeheartedly agree when he writes: “Jesus himself had asked God to forgive them that had crucified him, and it would seem axiomatic that his followers should join in his prayer and, where called upon, practice the same forgiveness themselves.” And with him we must be sadly indignant that so many professed Christians have failed to follow Christ’s example.

Persecution In Cuba Justified

Religion in Cuba Today, edited by Alice L. Hageman and Philip E. Wheaton (Association, 1971, $7.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial representative, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In his foreword Harvey Cox says that “thanks to the dogged determination of the editors of this book, we can at last read and think for ourselves” about the Cuban churches. Dogged determination had nothing to do with it: anyone set on producing this kind of book would be warmly welcomed in Cuba.

This impressive piece of propaganda makes good mileage out of the darker side of the Batista regime. It cites some favorable economic statistics for 1970; plays the Bay of Pigs incident for all it’s worth and then some; and goes through all the predictable hoops about Yanqui neocolonialism.

The twelve contributors will get into no trouble in Havana for their treatment of the more religious subjects: the great adversary is not the devil or sin, but counter-revolutionary thinking. The Christian’s commitment is to the revolution. Those who could not come to terms with the revolution were “unable to separate their commitment to the Church of Christ from their loyalty to the United States.” Evangelism is proselytism. Any hint of world-rejecting is to be condemned: “this seal of ethical negativism and social quietism has left its mark and even today is hard to eradicate.”

There are contrived interviews, and what purports to be a tape-recorded account of a discussion with “a dozen Protestant leaders, enthusiastic revolutionaries” who had volunteered for work in the canefields.

All the Cuban authors are male and white, and all accept “the beautiful words and intentions of Fidel Castro.” There is no real treatment of what happens when Marxist policies clash headlong with the Christian Gospel, but rather a tendency to identify the latter with the American social ethic, to be rejected as inappropriate for transplanting. In its place is put something that squares more with “our history, idiosyncrasy, and the character of our people.”

The game is given away when one Fidelista churchman discusses some dissidents who judged the revolution “with a simplicity bordering on idiocy” but who stayed in the country and are termed “spiritual exiles.” Adds the writer: “They were exiles from the moment they became Christians.” No one is in the slightest danger of putting this book in any other category than that suggested by the fact that Fidel Castro is one of the contributors.

Newly Published

Man Without God, by John Reid (Westminster, 306 pp., $9.95). An excellent, comprehensive survey of the widespread phenomenon of atheism, intending to open the way toward dialogue between believers and unbelievers. With a profound understanding and respect for the unbeliever, the author, a Catholic theologian and philosopher, examines the historical and philosophical roots of unbelief, its forms and manifestations, and its contemporary humanistic thrust. Secularization is placed in Christian perspective and direction is given for a distinctly Christian humanism. Although written for the believer this book will command the attention of the atheist as well.

Invitation to Joy: A Personal Story, by Eleanor Searle Whitney (Harper & Row, 195 pp., $5.95). A girl from the midwest marries into one of the richest, oldest, most influential families in America and begins a life of excitement, glamor, and emptiness. Not until her conversion to Christ did Mrs. Whitney’s existence “come alive.”

Neither Black nor White, by David O. Shipley (Word, 164 pp., $4.95). A black evangelical, who directs an experimental church ministry, outlines a dynamic program to serve the individual of any color in his total development. Both practical and autobiographical, this book offers detailed suggestions for carrying out a worthwhile ministry and also gives insights into the black situation.

The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, edited by Charles M. Layman (Abingdon, 1,386 pp., $14.95 until Dec. 31 [then, $17.50]). For discerning users, a helpful compendium of mainstream biblical scholarship. If you own the doctrinally more reliable New Bible Commentary: Revised, this can supplement it.

The Albigensian Crusades, by Joseph R. Strayer (Dial, 201 pp., $7.95). A Princeton professor brings cruel and significant persecution of medieval dissenters to life for the ordinary reader.

The Search for Meaning, by Alfred Stern (Memphis State, 367 pp., $12.50). A collection of diverse, insight-filled essays by a non-Christian philosopher. Rejecting complete relativism, the author asserts that man is the creator of his own meaning through projects—artistic, religious, scientific—that go beyond and survive himself.

Theology and Contemporary Art Forms, by John P. Newport (Word, 131 pp., $3.95). Intends to promote understanding of the artist and the theological possibilities of his work. However, it fails to live up to its promise; it discusses too wide a variety in too brief a compass, bewildering the reader.

Basics for Communication in the Church, by Irene S. Caldwell, Richard Hatch, and Beverly Welton (Warner, 224 pp., paperback, $2.95). An interesting and practical study guide on teaching for group or individual use.

Adam Among the Television Trees, edited by Virginia R. Mollenkott (Word, 215 pp., $4.95). This collection is to what’s often called “Christian poetry” what a chewy chunk of whole-grain bread is to the fluffy, flat, supermarket stuff. Mrs. Mollenkott says, “No amount of piety will sanctify shoddy workmanship.” Defining a Christian poem as a poem written by a Christian, she selects forty-one Christian poets and from them gets 201 poems. Some are difficult, many are not, all are worth reading.

The Berrigans, edited by William Van Etten Casey and Philip Nobile (Praeger, 253 pp., $6.95). Essays biased in the Berrigans’ favor, reading like mere propaganda. The excellence of objectivity is missing.

Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, by T. H. L. Parker (Eerdmans, 208 pp., $7.95) and Calvin’s Commentaries: The Gospels, by John Calvin (Associated Publishers and Authors, 936 pp., $15.95). Parker, who has contributed to the in-progress Torrance translation of Calvin’s commentaries, has written about the work of one of the greatest of all commentators. Associated Publishers and Authors has begun to issue an eight-volume edition of the century-old Pringle translation. (One more volume will complete the New Testament). One need not be a calvinist to profit from the master exegete’s work.

The Purple Pulpit, by Richard L. Keach (Judson, 128 pp., paperback, $2.95). A changed pulpit, communion table, and lectern—from white to purple—symbolized the new thrust in the ministry of the Central Baptist Church, Wayne, Pennsylvania. Mortgaging church property in the amount of $100,000 and using the money to help Philadelphia’s urban crisis put this church and its belief in the full Gospel—preaching salvation plus social action—in the front lines of society’s war on ghetto problems.

The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 241 pp., paperback, $4.50). Intended to help pastors help “students face the challenge to their faith presented in their classes on science, philosophy, and religion,” but it is basically a critique of Aquinas, Kant, Tillich, and a few others. Look elsewhere for help in facing our foes in the forms in which they currently appear.

What the Religious Revolutionaries Are Saying, edited by Elwyn A. Smith (Fortress, 154 pp., paperback, $2.95). Not on the “Jesus Revolution” but rather mostly Episcopal-Presbyterian types talking on blacks, drugs, cities, police, and the like.

Christian Social Teachings, by George W. Forell (Augsburg, 492 pp., paperback, $3.95). Selections for the general reader from some fifty theologians from Paul through Augustine to Barth. An excellent panorama, but regrettably no evangelical made it after Jonathan Edwards. First published by Doubleday five years ago at half the price!

The American Shakers: From Neo-Christianity to Presocialism, by Henri Desroche (Massachusetts, 357 pp., $9.50), Torches Together: The Beginning and Early Years of Bruderhof Commentaries, by Emmy Arnold (Plough, 231 pp., $3.50), and The Cotton Patch Evidence (Harper & Row, 240 pp., $5.95). Religious communes seem to be “in” again. Their adherents as well as others should welcome the appearance of these authoritative studies of some long-lived exceptions to generally short-lived experiments. The Shakers, who believe Ann Lee was the feminine equivalent of Jesus, date from colonial times and are not yet extinct. The Society of Brothers began in Germany in 1910 but are now living in three communes in America. The wife of the founder tells their story up to 1937 when they had to flee their homeland. Koinonia Farm was founded by the late Clarence Jordan in Georgia in 1942. He is best known elsewhere for his “Cotton Patch” paraphrase of the New Testament into southern idiom and issues.

Social Responsibility and Investments, by Charles W. Powers (Abingdon, 224 pp., paperback, $3.50). A wide-ranging,’ informative work aimed at stimulating discussion on what it means to be the investing church in contemporary America.

Kierkegaard and Consciousness, by Adi Shmueli (Princeton, 202 pp., $8.50). Provocative study by an Israeli scholar who seeks to demonstrate the coherence of Kierkegaard’s thought through the latter’s own delineation of the structure and behavior of human consciousness.

Rebels in the Church, edited by Ben Campbell Johnson (Word, 131 pp., $3.95). Personal experiences of eight ministers who admit their unwitting dedication to the institutionalized church rather than to Christ. They discover that honesty with self is vital for effective ministry to others and that the church must be daring in order to carry the Gospel to everyone. Encouraging reading.

Basic Patterns in Old Testament Religion, by John D. W. Watts (Vantage, 162 pp., $4.50). A Southern Baptist seminary professor presents a scholarly description of the three distinguishable forms of Israel’s worship associated with Abraham, Moses, and David.

The End of Religion, by Dom Aelred Graham (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 292 pp., $7.95). Benedictine monk hails the end of distinctive ecclesiastical structures and, partly through dialogue with Hindu and Buddhist thinkers, attempts to answer the question of the end or “abiding goal” of religion itself. He sees this goal as the “existential self-understanding” arising through one’s response to the word of God, proclaimed by Jesus, and to other religions.

An Exposition of the Gospel According to John, by George Hutcheson (Sovereign Grace, 439 pp., $5.95). A classic Puritan commentary.