For years evangelicals known for their emphasis on personal piety, including Bible study and prayer, have been accused of lacking a social conscience. This sweeping accusation has often been disproved (see editorial “Surprised by Piety,” page 27), but we can be sure it won’t soon die. Stereotypes are not easily overcome.

With this in view, I hope readers will enter with empathy into the experience of Virginia Mollenkott (“Up From Ignorance”), who has a deep heart concern about the racial situation. And Claude Thompson’s essay on “Social Reform: An Evangelical Imperative” sounds the biblical note of James that faith without works is dead. Although the Church must make evangelism its major mission, the redeemed saints as members of Caesar’s as well as God’s kingdom must, in addition to evangelizing, work to improve the social order, bringing it more in line with what God intended it to be.

Turning to that supreme act of love that supplies the motivation for all our loving acts, Robert Meye discusses “Mark’s Special Easter Emphasis.” His essay will prod preachers who have bypassed Mark in selecting material for a resurrection sermon.

I hope everyone interested in organic union and especially COCU will read and ponder the questions posed by one clergyman (see “How Will COCU Resolve the Church’s Real Problems?,” page 16), who concludes that it is “a plan born out of an obsolete hope.” I do not endorse the status quo, and the unity of the Church is important. But if what we get will be worse than what we’ve got, it’s better to stay as we are for the time being.

No word in the English language seems to frighten people more than radical. It shouldn’t. The word has the same root as radish and simply means root. So a radical is any man who gets to the root of the question. Since radicalism now seems to be the mark of higher education and since youth is supposed to be radical, suppose we examine a few roots.

It seems to me that a great many problems would disappear if we could remind ourselves that higher education is an opportunity and not a requirement. A man no more has to buy college or university education than he has to buy a suit or a car. And the opportunities of choice are almost endless. A certain amount of learning is being offered in a certain way in a certain place, and a man simply avails himself of that opportunity.

Although the Middle Ages were “dark,” they were not so dark that this educational principle was not clear as the universities of Europe began to get under way. Individual professors set up shop here and there, and students gathered to hear them. In time the professors clustered together, perhaps just to save money on food, and in time parents who were worried about their sons asked if the professors wouldn’t take them in and look after them. Thus a few young men were brought into the “college” of the professors. Universities were so professor-centered that one of the colleges at Oxford still has no students, and another one has only eight.

Universities have traveled a long way from such roots. A radical approach to university education might again be simply to say to young men and women, “Here it is—come and get it. If you don’t like it, leave. Meanwhile, if you want to be a member of this community, this is the way we happen to like to live: we bathe, we shave, we study, and we like to associate with other people who have good manners. Stuffy, isn’t it? But if this isn’t what you want, there surely must be other places where you can spend your time.”

The so-called radical students are not radical enough. They have been so anxious about the fruit that they have forgotten the root. What has probably virtually destroyed them meanwhile is that they have made the adolescent mistake of believing their own press releases. They are young and energetic, almost tireless, effervescent, generally undependable, and not very well educated. Their lack of education shows particularly in the way they have been “taken” by the media. They have such an unsophisticated view of things that they don’t know that newspapers and magazines and radio and TV stations have an absolutely desperate need to fill up space and time every day. Where then will they find enough human-interest stories? They can always get action pictures of students, and students will always sound off in quotable quotes.

Radical students have been led to believe that young people are smarter today than they have ever been before. So far this has been unproven, and I am of the notion that it is unprovable. They are full of information and can talk up a storm about a lot of subjects, and it sounds as if they have done a lot of reading; but under a little pressure all this hardly holds up. When you are in the educational environment for a while, the superficialities scrape off and you are amazed at the ignorance of high-school and college students in any number of areas. If we are going to talk about wisdom or understanding or judgment, we have to move into a whole new area of learning.

The young have been sold on the idea that they are very honest. “That’s one nice thing about the youth—they’re so honest.” But I think that many of them are not being honest with their parents, who pay the bills for their education and have a right to expect something besides mere parasitism. They are not honest with the society that gives them the free ride. The whole honesty bit seems to be related to the frankness with which they will discuss sex, and even at this level they are not honest because they share with one another cheapened goods, giving bargain-basement stuff as an expression of love. A prostitute is more honest than that. They are dishonest in their refusal to give the time and the energy to study all sides of the subject men have been thinking about for centuries. Looking at a problem from only one viewpoint, they are ready to blast off.

Campus after campus has worked away at the question of faculty-student relationships. I have been in this game for a long, long time, and I have noticed that faculty members often knock themselves out to be affable and receptive only to be treated with ingratitude and condescension. Even conversationally, when the faculty member tries to meet the student on his own ground (sports, Camus, X movies), does the student even make the effort to do some outside reading to meet the faculty member on his grounds? Why are the universities right now engaged in a one-way courtship? It makes a very poor marriage.

It may be that things have quieted down. If so, it is because the majority of students have become bored with the whole thing and the news media are shopping around for something else. This time the media have landed on women’s lib, and this time I am staying out of the conversation. Not because I don’t believe in men and women and all the lib they can have, but because I think the discussion itself is stupid.

“Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place …” (Isaiah 13:13).

The shaking started at forty-two seconds, after 6 A.M. February 9, and the earth in the greater Los Angeles basin was jolted out of place for nearly a minute. Left in the wake of the devastating earthquake that rocked all southern California were more than sixty dead, 40,000 at least temporarily homeless, and 2,065 heavily damaged and 7,700 moderately damaged buildings. Total damage was estimated by the end of last month to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars; some said the figure would eventually reach $1 billion.

Churches were among the casualties, but structural damage varied widely from total destruction to none at all. Much of the damage appeared to be done by the toppling of heavy, old-fashioned towers, reported Los Angeles Times religion editor Dan Thrapp. Generally, churches with newer, lightweight towers survived with only minor damage.

Church losses, according to reports gathered by CHRISTIANITY TODAY, were especially heavy in the communities of Glendale, Sylmar, Newhall (nearest the quake epicenter), Pasadena, and, to a lesser extent proportionately, the city of Los Angeles.

Hardest hit in Glendale was Glendale Presbyterian Church. The $800,000 structure was considered a total loss. The huge old clock tower, seven stories high, had to be torn down (it buckled in the middle) at a cost of $800 a day. Interestingly, the Sunday after the quake attendance at that church (meeting in a hall at Forest Lawn Memorial Park) was up considerably. “The quake has brought the church together,” said administrator Ainsworth Hastings.

Glendale First Methodist was also badly shaken. The new, ultra-modern sanctuary remained solid, but an old part of the complex was a total loss after toppling towers fell through the roof. Church officers there had voted the night before the quake to modernize the old section but declared God cast a vote the next morning that took precedence.

The all-brick building of Gospel Light Publications in Glendale, built in 1924, had to be torn down, scattering writers and artists to temporary offices in homes.

In nearby Pasadena, some damage was reported at Pasadena Presbyterian and the Episcopal Church of the Angels. Tower minarets at the Presbyterian Church crashed into the balcony of the sanctuary. And the tower of Eagle Rock Presbyterian Church also caused extensive damage when it plunged through the roof.

Churches in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley, suffered heavy damage. That community is the location of the Veterans Administration hospital where more than thirty persons died. Only the hospital chapel remained unscathed. One wall of Foothill Baptist Church (General Baptist Conference) gave way, and all its windows were broken. The pastor’s secretary and her husband fled as their house was engulfed in flames moments after the tremors, 6.6 on the Richter scale, rumbled beneath.

European Congress

Planners expect 1,000 participants from twenty-four nations in Europe to attend the European Congress on Evangelism, meeting at the International Congress Centre in Amsterdam August 28 to September 4.

Congress chairman Gilbert Kirby of London Bible College announced that evangelist Billy Graham, the only non-European on the program, will give the keynote address on August 29. Other speakers include: Gerhard Bergmann (Germany), Jose Grau (Spain), and John Stott (England). Twenty different seminars will be featured.

The congress is one in a series of conferences spawned by the World Congress on Evangelism, held in Berlin five years ago. The European Evangelical Alliance is sponsor of the Amsterdam meeting.

The Lutheran Church of the Master (ALC) at Sylmar was damaged, and several parishioners were seriously injured. Christ Lutheran at Newhall remained almost completely isolated for days. The local district of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod reported only slight damage, but Pacoima Memorial Lutheran Hospital, a 200-bed LCA institution, was partially evacuated, reportedly because of damage.

In Los Angeles itself, forty-two-year-old skid row Midnight Mission came tumbling down. One man was killed when the roof of the $130,000 structure collapsed. Grandview (Southern Baptist) Church was hard hit, as was St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church. Towers fell on Holy Cross Catholic Church. About 100,000 volumes were knocked off the shelves of Central Library; most of them, oddly, were from the religion and philosophy sections.

Other Southern Baptist congregations reporting substantial damage included First Baptist, Sylmar (condemned); First Baptist, Newhall (library destroyed); First Baptist, Saugus (beams and a gas main broken); Mountainview Baptist, Sunland (light fixtures, plumbing and gas lines broken); and First Baptist of San Fernando Valley (manse damaged).

There, the historic San Fernando Mission, built centuries ago by Franciscans, was severely damaged. Tremors fractured the five-foot-thick walls of the chapel, said to be the oldest building in Los Angeles. The statue of its patron saint—Ferdinand—toppled to the floor. The adjoining Convento, opened in 1822, was also damaged when an interior adobe wall split in half, dumping bricks through a fireplace into the library. That room and the kitchen were a shambles—waist-deep in rubble—and adobe dust coated the entire building. Nearby Holy Cross Hospital was severely—possibly irreparably—affected, and an archdiocesan junior seminary in San Fernando also suffered extensive damage.

Other churches reporting moderate to heavy damage included St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, Los Angeles; St. Stephen’s Episcopal, Valencia; and Methodist churches in San Fernando, Northridge, Granada Hills, and Tujunga. A Burbank Methodist retirement home was damaged beyond repair (a loss of $450,000), but the fifty residents escaped without a scratch reported. The auditorium of First Unitarian Church, Los Angeles, lost its ceiling and west wall.

Lives were undoubtedly saved by quick-acting Red Cross, church, and other relief groups. Salvation Army personnel were on the scene aiding victims thirty minutes after the shock waves heaved through the area. The Army disaster teams evacuated two hospitals and fed 400 patients from Olive View Sanitarium in Van Nuys. They also set up a disaster center at San Fernando City Hall and one in downtown Los Angeles. A referral and information center was operated, and activities were offered to help pass the time.

The Church of the Brethren launched a five-point relief program, including clothing and food supply throughout the area. The Brethren also provided money, dishes, and first-aid facilities. Other groups working with the Red Cross were the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, the National Catholic Disaster Relief Committee, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Church World Service.

Evangelical Press correspondent Norman Rohrer reported that the government apparently will pay to repair public buildings but not private dwellings. Some persons figure it is cheaper to leave their wrecked homes, abandon them to the loan companies, and start anew, he said. Some are getting tax relief. Others are moving out of the state as quickly as possible.

Were the quake and its aftershocks a sign of the last days? Pastor Guy P. Duffield of famed Angelus Temple was noncommittal: “There are times when God can use earthquakes for his purposes, but not every earthquake should be considered meaningful. We can’t know whether this one means anything biblical.”

The Reverend Francis J. Weber, archivist of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese and resident of quake-stricken Queen of Angels Seminary in San Fernando, was more outspoken. “The giant temblor,” he said, “was a sobering and possibly very necessary object lesson for a world so proud of its human accomplishments and so unmindful of its spiritual obligations.”

How Young Can You Get?

Church boards throughout the nation are not despising the youthfulness of their newest members. In fact, young age seems to be at a premium as a qualification for governing bodies. Consider these recent announcements:

Twisters Rip Mississippi Delta Lands

As workers cleared away debris in southern California following the disastrous earthquake last month, nature dealt another heavy blow—this time to the Mississippi-Louisiana area. Late Sunday afternoon, February 21, a series of perhaps fifty twisters ripped through the Delta lands.

Three days later, only sketchy reports were available of damage and loss of life. Communications lines were still down in many places. Four Salvation Army canteens were on duty immediately, operating out of Greenwood, Mississippi, in the center of the disaster area. Divisional commander Leslie Hall said the death toll was expected to reach 100, and insured property damage in the two states was predicted to exceed $7.5 million.

Baptist Press reported at least four Southern Baptist churches in Mississippi “destroyed or heavily damaged.” These include First Baptist, Inverness (where the three largest churches in the quiet cotton town reportedly were destroyed), Delta City Baptist, Central Baptist in Little Yazoo, and Tillatoba Baptist in Tillatoba, said to be “heavily damaged.” The homes of the pastors of all four congregations were either damaged or destroyed, according to early reports. A deacon of Central Baptist Church was killed.

The tornado ripped through Tillatoba during the Sunday evening training hour, but the pastor reported that no one was injured. Churches of other denominations, particularly United Methodist, sustained losses.

The tragedy was described as “the worst tornadoes to hit Mississippi in three decades.” On-the-spot newscasters interviewed one woman who said the tornado had caused her to wonder “What have I done wrong?” Another victim, however, said the harrowing experience had increased his faith in God and improved race relations in the small community.

Terry Daniels, 17, a senior coed at Minnetonka High in Minneapolis, has been elected an elder at St. Luke Presbyterian Church in Minnetonka, along with James Angrist, 19, a freshman at the University of Minnesota. He also was elected a vice-moderator of the Minneapolis Presbytery (United Presbyterian). Mike Mathes, 16, of Westover Hills Presbyterian Church (U.S.) in Little Rock, Arkansas, is believed to be the youngest deacon in his denomination.

Meanwhile, Barry Gruebbel, 16, is a deacon and head usher at the United Church of Christ’s Church of the Master in Dallas, and sidekick Eddie Cowand, 19, a junior at Dallas Baptist College, is an elder at the same church.

But the “youngest” honors probably belong to a slender slip of a lad named Fred Hartwick, who has been named to the twelve-man vestry of the $75,000-a-year-budget St. Francis Episcopal Church in San Francisco. At 14, he is said to be the youngest church official in the United States. Fred beat out formidable competition: two attorneys, an insurance broker, and a prominent, active laywoman were among twenty candidates.

By contrast, virtually middle-aged Ann Muilenburg at a ripe 19 was elected the youngest elder ever at prestigious La Jolla Presbyterian Church in southern California. The UC, San Diego, sophomore started the “who-is-the-youngest-board-member-of-all” ripple when she was elected to the post without her knowledge and her picture appeared widely in the press.

If this is the wave of the future, will there be deacons in diapers?

Bullet Stops Short

Lay Catholic Joseph Boener of Kansas City told police he was only trying to be a Good Samaritan but “almost got knocked off doing it.”

Boener said he walked into a trap when he responded to cries for help from two women in a parked car. A man with a small caliber pistol in the back seat demanded his money, then fired when Boener balked. A small address book in his breast pocket saved him; the bullet stopped at the page where he had placed a photo of his daughter, a credit card, and a card containing a Bible verse.

“I wouldn’t normally take that book with me,” he said, “but something told me I might need it.”

Boener, a communicant of St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, credits his protection to God. He cannot recall what verse was on the card but says: “I believe God watches over all of us, especially those who trust him.”

JAMES S. TINNEY

Cure Of All Souls

Church of England bishops have decided that four theological colleges should be closed and six others should amalgamate in three new colleges. They consider this drastic action necessary because of the sharp drop in candidates for the ministry. A leading English newspaper attributes this to “the decline in religious conviction.”

Declining also are some of London’s famous “nonconformist” pulpits of yesteryear. The City Temple has a Sunday average of 250 in its 1,300 seats. Westminster Chapel, where Martyn Lloyd-Jones ministered for so long, has seen smaller congregations also since his departure, though not to the same extent. The Methodists’ Kingsway Hall, where not even Lord Donald Soper could muster more than 100 in recent times, has put up shutters and been sold.

Topping the London attendance polls, on the other hand, according to an authoritative source, is All Souls, Langham Place, where rector John Stott has for many years exercised a remarkable ministry to a varied congregation that includes many of Harley Street’s medical specialists. A well-known evangelical who is also a royal chaplain, Stott claims that his is the best church in which to be ill.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A Royal Heretic?

Queen Mother Frederika of Greece, now living in Rome in self-imposed exile, found herself the center of an ecclesiastical earthquake last month. At issue were statements attributed to her by American journalist C. L. Sulzberger in an interview ten years ago.

The queen mother was alleged to have said that the historicity of Jesus Christ was unimportant and that “what counts is the idea Jesus Christ represents.” Sulzberger, in his recent book The Last of the Giants, also quoted her as saying, “All our priests are bad—except our favorite one in the palace.” That one is now Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens.

Publication of the statements prompted another Greek bishop to demand that the queen mother clarify her remarks or face possible excommunication. One of her aides promptly responded with a letter to Greek bishops, who expressed satisfaction and declared the issue closed. The letter said she “had never thought of hurting the feelings of the clergy of the Orthodox Church in Greece.” It also declared that she “most certainly believes in the existence and the Divine Substance of our Lord Jesus Christ and his spiritual teachings, especially those on love and morals.”

The queen mother, a German, is said to be a reader of liberal theologian Rudolf Bultmann, which may account for some of the statements attributed to her—if indeed she ever said them. Some observers, however, discount the theological significance of her remarks. They say the uproar may have resulted simply from an attempt to discredit the royal family in the eyes of the Greek people.

Youth Lead (More) Revivals

Enthusiastic young people, youthful evangelists who laid it on the line, and well-planned preparation and follow-up netted record results in two similar but unrelated Southern Baptist Church revivals recently.

In Houston, Texas, 4,011 persons—about 95 per cent of them teenagers—made commitments to Christ over a period of several months during the First Baptist Church crusade; more than 600 were then baptized. And in First Church, Niceville, Florida, more than 1,500 decisions were registered during an eight-day revival sparked by the youth of the 726-member congregation. About 460 professed faith in Christ.

The Houston crusade, led by evangelist Richard Hogue, 24, racked up 2,950 conversions and 604 baptisms during a two-and-one-half week series of nightly services, believed to be a record for faith commitments during an SBC church revival. Called “Spireno” (acronym for “spiritual revolution now”), the campaign involved four phases, according to the Baptist Press. First, Hogue spoke during assemblies at about forty-five junior and senior high schools; this was followed by rallies led by Hogue and his Christian folk group. Phase three was the crusade at First Baptist, featuring beauty, sports, and entertainment stars. Huge turnouts swelled attendance out of the church and into Sam Houston Coliseum the last four nights. On the final night, some 3,000 singing, placard-carrying teens marched from the coliseum to the church for a mass baptism of 145.

“The crusade was characterized by short, difficult to accept, low-key invitations,” said the church’s director of ministries, Harvey Kneisel. Phase four, follow-up, involves ongoing Spireno clubs in the schools, Spireno Bible classes, and special activities for converts. The youth club at the church reportedly has doubled to 400 persons.

Evangelist Hogue moved his headquarters from Oklahoma to Houston for follow-up work. Meanwhile, it was Houston evangelist Freddie Gage who led the Niceville revival. There, services spilled out of the 600-seat church auditorium and into the 1,000-capacity high-school hall.

Youth led an auto cavalcade (billed as an “Inner-Peace Parade”) through the twin cities of Niceville and Valparaiso and played “crash”—a game in which church youth would invite a friend to the revival that night and stay at his house until time for the meeting. Many of the converts were “crashed” young people without prior church affiliation, according to pastor Fred Steelman.

Gage, a former gang tough, spoke to daytime assemblies at local schools, and personal workers from the church are now contacting converts. A committee of 135 youth picked to “pack the pews” at the crusade was scrubbed on the second night when it became obvious Gage was speaking to SRO crowds.

California Capitol: Revolution On The Steps

Sacramento’s stolid, glaring white capitol building held its ground as wave after wave of shouting, sign-bearing demonstrators flowed up its steps. Revolution was their cry—spiritual revolution. More than 5,000 (but far fewer than anticipated) “Jesus people” were on the march, a living stream of colors from all over California and the Pacific Northwest: whites, blacks, Chicanos, Orientals, well-scrubbed teens and bushy street types alike.

The rally was the outcome of action by state senators in a unanimous declaration making February 13 Spiritual Revolution Day in California. The resolution was introduced last summer by state Senator Albert Rodda.

Exit Ramp For Merging Presbyterians

If a proposed merger of the United and Southern wings of the Presbyterian Church goes through, congregations of either branch may keep their local property and stay out of the new denomination, according to the final draft plan of union (still subject to revision).

A joint committee of the United Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church, U. S., completed the document and announced its provisions at St. Petersburg, Florida, last month. General assemblies of both bodies will receive the plan this spring with the recommendation that it be studied at all levels before 1972 assemblies.

Congregations opposed to the proposed Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) would also be permitted to petition synods and presbyteries to divide with them properties on those levels. The higher judicatories would have final authority in deciding such cases, however. No disciplinary action would be taken against congregations or clergymen that decided not to enter the union but instead to seek ties with “others of like mind” before the merger. The United Presbyterian Church has 3.2 million members in fifty states; the Southern Presbyterian has about one million in sixteen.

Speakers included leaders in the California street Christian scene: flamboyant Arthur Blessitt, hip minister of Sunset Strip; Al Hopson, no-jive black drug addict turned preacher; Jack Sparks, former Penn State professor now leader of Berkeley’s Christian World Liberation Front; Duane Pederson, editor of the Hollywood Free Paper; Larry Norman, rock gospel singer; and Richard Weaver, suave middleman and organizer of the happening. Norman and two rock groups entertained.

Weaver, president of the three-year-old Students for a Spiritual Revolution group, summed up the demonstration’s two-fold purpose: to radicalize Christians into giving visibility to their faith, and to dramatize at the seat of government its inadequacy in handling today’s problems and thus its need to turn to God. Unlike other demonstrations on the capitol steps, this one neither denounced nor supported government leaders—but advocated prayers for them.

The Jesus people had met at a ball park and marched eight abreast in a mile-long file to the capitol. They waved colorful placards and banners (such as, “Uncle Sam: Jesus Wants You,” “You have a lot to live—Jesus has a lot to give,” and “You can take Jesus out of the loving, but you can’t take the loving out of Jesus”) and sang until they reached Capitol Mall, where they burst into loud chants of “One Way!” with index fingers raised.

Why had they become involved in such a demonstration? Explained long-haired, soft-spoken Mary Martini of Santa Monica shyly: “I came because it’s inside and I want people outside to know about it.”

The mood was festive and triumphant, but the speakers’ words were far from soft. Hopson cited instances of racial hatred and declared: “The Jesus we are serving has a lot of sorrow in his heart.… I’m afraid of people turning Jesus into just another thing, like the ecology thing.… God is calling for discipleship, baby!”

Blessitt injected a light note in encouraging Christians to witness everywhere, to the point where gas-station attendants would ask, “Do you want your tank full or your heart full?” He envisioned an angry victim of a flat tire removing the hub cap and finding, “Smile, God loves you” stickers and tracts put there by a Christian garageman.

State Assemblyman Newton Russell, a member of Hollywood Presbyterian Church, also addressed the crowd. He carefully documented the state’s ills, such as budget deficits, welfare and Medi-Cal problems, and pollution. The crowd, at first wary (“I thought he’d come on with the standard glad-to-have-you-in-our-capital line”), warmed to him as he repeatedly called out, “What’s the answer?” and they roared back, “Jesus!” After expounding the solution he called for revival. “Hallelujah!” cheered the listeners.

Sparks presented a twelve-point proclamation from the demonstrators. It included a call for Christians to organize revolutionary marches and rallies, and asked the United States to demand the release of Christians tortured for their faith in Communist countries.

Weaver led the crowd in a voice vote declaring July 3 as Spiritual Revolution Day in the nation to be observed with a march and rally in Washington, D. C.

ANNE EGGEBROTEN

Jesus Freaks Move Right On

A hundred “Jesus freaks” of the Christian World Liberation Front crashed the liberal-oriented annual Earl Lectures sponsored by the Pacific School of Religion last month in Berkeley.

Following a one-hour address by Christian Century associate editor Martin Marty to the hundreds of ministers and Graduate Theological Union seminarians jammed into First Congregational Church, the CWLFers, who described Marty’s speech as “out of it,” took over the microphone. Five new converts gave testimonies, and CWLF leader Pat Matrisciana preached.

Surprisingly, the audience responded with a standing ovation, and several seminarians said later they had accepted Christ. When the CWLFers left, Marty was reportedly still defending his viewpoint to dissenting students.

Also surprisingly, First Congregational’s pastor—noted liberal leader Browne Barr—invited the CWLF to take over a Sunday-morning service. Matrisciana says that CWLFers are planning gospel confrontations at “big liberal churches all over America,” and that in May they will visit the United Presbyterian General Assembly in Rochester, New York, with “certain demands.” CWLFers also plan to press leading seminaries to schedule “Primitive Street Christianity” courses—taught by leaders of the movement. Currently, the CWLF holds several rallies a week on Sproul steps of the UC Berkeley campus, and baptizes new converts in the nearby fountain.

Last month CWLF founder Jack Sparks, a former Penn State professor, announced the formation of “Jesus News Service International” to link together the nation’s upsurging Christian underground-type newspapers. Three West Coast papers already have circulations greater than their radical underground counterparts. The news service will be manned by Jewish evangelist Martin Rosen at Box 4309 in Berkeley.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Africa: Independent Churches Thrive But Face Hurdles

Africa’s independent churches—at first referred to as separatist movements or “schismaniacs,” then as breakaway sects, and nowadays commonly known as “renewal” movements—are growing in importance and respectability in politically independent Africa.

With this confidence and opportunity, the churches are thriving. Their membership is increasing at a rate that puts to shame the evangelistic efforts of the old churches, and they are giving Christianity a truly African flavor. This may have far-reaching consequences for the Church in this continent.

There are, of course, many independent religious movements in Africa. Professor David B. Barrett, the foremost student of church independence in Africa, in 1967 analyzed 6,000 of them and by no means are all of them Christian. A significant number, however, not only have their roots in the recognized Christian denominations from America and Europe but also subscribe to the basic Christian beliefs, practice the sacraments, and uphold admirable codes of ethics for members.

Scholars have assumed that in the days before political independence, “colonial” politics was a key factor in church independence. Yet in politically independent countries, many churches still separate from the old ones. Politics becomes a factor of independence only when the old churches become so submerged in a political situation that they fail to see evil in it. This is a problem for a vast number of churches where political leaders appear to some church leaders to have more authority in human affairs than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Economics, too, becomes a factor, not only at the national level but (more commonly) at the local level, when churches refuse to participate and operate within the poverty of Africa. The missionary or the national church executive, paid from abroad, running a big car, and living in a luxurious house, cannot demand sacrificial living and giving from his flock without planting seeds of schism.

There are also cultural factors, ranging from painful decisions churches must make over customary practices, to tensions, suspicions, and problems within the new society. This is going to create even more trouble because, while Africa is becoming more interested in its cultural heritage, the old churches are hardly stirring to find a new approach to traditional Africa.

There also are factors of religious expression involved in church independence. The new religion, coming from the West, stressed meditation, quietness, individuality; traditionally, Africa’s religious expressions were loud, emotional, communal.

Perhaps the most common of all causes of schism in Africa is human folly and arrogance—men’s desire for power and prestige, and lack of patience and tolerance. Interestingly, unlike American and European church quarrels leading to schism, African schism has been relatively free of theological debates. But once there is division, the historical and cultural circumstances surrounding the new churches force them into new theological formulations and religious expressions.

For example, the new independent churches naturally adopted an African world-view, in which all human events are seen to be controlled by spiritual powers. Birth, health, harvest, road accidents, and thunderstorms are not mere physico-natural phenomena but purposive acts of spiritual powers, evil or benevolent. This accounts for the very central place that prayer, prophecy, spiritual healing, dreams, and visions play in the life of these churches.

Another characteristic of these churches is their vigorous community life. In some cases identification becomes so strong that members wear uniforms. In the face of general breakdown of the family system in Africa, the new churches have become, for their members, the new social units where the individual can find his roots. The new churches are also giving key leadership positions to women.

All the churches are ready for worship at any time, wherever a congregation can be gathered. The services are lively and are accompanied by instrumental music, and the congregation is encouraged to participate fully. The new churches are, on the whole, devoted to Bible reading and Bible study; translations into local languages and dialects help give the Bible its immense prestige as the Word of God for anyone, everywhere. Moreover, members of these churches see in the Bible a world-view not much different from their own, and in the biblical characters faith in its simplest form.

Nevertheless, the churches have some grave problems. One is the apparent lack of control of excessive emotions. Another is a certain “holy exclusiveness” that prevents effective fellowship with other churches. The new churches lack long-range planning. They have no programs for nurture, no facilities for leadership training, and no tools for evangelism and teaching other than personal witnessing. Most are yet to develop clear, written constitutions and statements of faith; in the highly emotional atmosphere, this is dangerous.

Another problem: the national Christian councils and the old churches do not seem willing or able to share their experiences and facilities with these new churches. Little is being done to establish bridges of understanding and reconciliation. Without this cooperation, it is difficult to see how the new churches will manage to stabilize their theologies, standardize their structures, and slough off some of their extreme practices and beliefs.

ODHIAMBO OKITE

Lateran Leverage

The Vatican may soon be forced to acknowledge that one of St. Peter’s keys is rusting away. The forty-second anniversary of the Lateran Pact between Italy and the Vatican was noted in the circles that count last month, and 1971 may well be the last year the Holy See enjoys its place of privilege gained when it concluded a concordat with Mussolini on February 11, 1929.

The Vatican is smarting from two recent defeats handed it by the Italian Parliament: A 30 per cent tax on dividends, retroactive to 1963, was levied on all Vatican investments in Italian business, and a bill legalizing divorce on a limited scale passed Parliament last December.

Luther, Brotherhood Stamps

West Germany will issue a commemorative postage stamp March 18 marking the 450th anniversary of the convening of the Imperial Diet of Worms. The momentous parliamentary meeting in 1521 considered the reforms demanded by Martin Luther and his supporters.

The reformer refused to retract his criticisms of the Roman church and uttered his famous words: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” The stamp, bearing the inscription “450 Jahre Wormser Reichstag,” depicts Luther appearing before Karl V and church dignitaries, surrounded by copies of his writings, during the Diet. Thirty million copies of the stamp will be printed.

Meanwhile in Vatican City last month the Vatican Post Office issued four stamps. Two are the work of Italian sculptor Corrado Ruffini and bear the inscription “Every Man Is My Brother.” One shows a black angel, symbolizing racial equality before God; the other shows a crucifix surrounded by flying doves.

Now waning temporal power seems likely to meet with even further travail on the Vatican’s very doorstep. In a conference, Leopoldo Elia, professor of constitutional law and intimate legal counselor to the Italian minister of foreign affairs, urged the Christian Democrats, the political arm of the church, to hurry preparation of a diplomatic confrontation with the Holy See. Elia proposed a “total revision of the church-state relationships, a renewal that will end in a very simple concordat text, one that is devoid of all the trappings that were once necessary in order to satisfy a totalitarian state and a preconciliar church.”

Elia’s rapport with Minister of Foreign Affairs Aldo Moro cannot be overlooked; Moro’s affinity with the Vatican is also well known. Moro is a front-running contender for the presidency of Italy in next year’s elections and a major power in the church’s political party. His view of the concordat is imposing, and in recent years his views have often reflected—far in advance—a more liberal turn in Vatican policy.

For Italy’s Protestant minority, revision of the Lateran Treaty could very possibly mean that the Roman church’s stranglehold on religious education in the public schools will be broken. Recognition of the clergy may pass from state authority to the churches involved, thus enlarging the opportunity to conduct state-recognized marriages (under the present concordat only Catholic clergy are automatically granted this right). Another outcome could be that Protestants would no longer risk fines or jail for publicly offending the official state religion (because of suggested changes in the official status of the church). And expriests, many of whom are members of Protestant churches, might no longer be denied employment that brings them in contact with the public.

In any case, the Vatican is being forced to reinforce its spiritual influence over the Roman flock if it hopes to exert future political influence.

ROYAL L. PECK

Personalia

Veteran Missionary Aviation Fellowship pilot Paul Weir and passengers James G. Johnson, a MAF board member, and Honduran evangelistic singer Dennis Mata were killed last month when their single-engine Cessna crashed on a ridge in Honduras.

Dr. Robert W. Lazear, previously a veteran missionary to Colombia, South America, and until last month associate pastor of the Bel Air (southern California) Presbyterian Church, has become pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Bogota; he is one of the few American ministers to be called to a Latin American church without an affiliation to an American mission board.

Dr. John W. Snyder, 46, president of Westmont (California) College since July, 1969, resigned last month to be vice-chancellor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Lutheran seminary graduate and Presbyterian layman, who came to Westmont after a short stint as chancellor of the main Bloomington campus of Indiana University, said he feels unsuited for the “rigorous task of fund raising so essential for colleges today.”

The Reverend Norman Pell, director of the Leighton Ford Crusades for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has resigned to become general superintendent of the Baptist Union of Victoria, Australia.

Washington, D.C. police chief Jerry V. Wilson became the first U. S. police official last month to receive the National Brotherhood Citation of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Wilson, 43, has been hailed for recruiting more blacks to augment the city’s police force.

William J. Krutza, managing editor of Power for Living magazine since 1964, has been named director of publications for the Christian Business Men’s Committee International.

Dr. William H. Kadel, head of the Southern Presbyterian Board of Christian Education since 1968, has been named president of Pittsburgh Seminary.… The Reverend Vincent E. Taber has been appointed president of Berkshire Christian College in Lenox, Massachusetts.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent Leslie K. Tarr of Toronto has been named contributing editor of the Enquirer, a tabloid newsmonthly slated for 17,000 national circulation next month. Most evangelical ministers in Canada will receive it.

In an emotion-charged decision, the highest court of the United Church of Canada this month voted to reinstate the Reverend Russell D. Horsburgh in the church from which he voluntarily resigned in 1964 after conviction on a charge of contributing to juvenile delinquency while he was pastor of Park Street United Church in Chatham, Ontario. Horsburgh served 107 days of a one-year jail term, but the Canadian Supreme Court ruled a mistrial had occurred. The new hearing acquitted him.

Religion In Transit

A ten-part ABC television series called Religion in America Today began on successive Sundays February 28. Featuring religious spirit at the grass-roots level, the network production is touted as “the most comprehensive study of its kind ever.…”

Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, now boasts the world’s first hanging pipe organ. Most of the 4,019 pipes, weighing about fifteen tons, hang from the roof of the $600,000 building in two sections thirty feet above the pews. The organ cost about $150,000.

A new graduate program in religious studies, the only one in the nation to focus entirely on American culture, will begin at Pennsylvania State University this fall. The master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees will be offered.

Abilene (Texas) Christian College will merge with Christian College of the Southwest in Dallas and Fort Worth Christian College this fall. A major result will be the full accreditation of the Dallas and Fort Worth centers.

Deaths

ROBERT E. BURNS, 61, president of the United Methodist-related University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, since 1946, and originator of the “cluster college” concept in the 1960s at this first-chartered campus in the state; in Stockton, after a brief illness.

NELSON GLUECK, 70, famed biblical archaeologist and president of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, who discovered the site of King Solomon’s mines in 1934; in Cincinnati.

RONALD MACLEOD, 93, a leading figure in the 1925 formation of the United Church of Canada, and the first minister in Canada to broadcast radio church services; in Toronto.

JAMES CASH PENNEY, 95, noted Christian layman who founded the department store chain; said to have “touched as many lives with his simple Christian faith as any layman of the twentieth century”; in New York.

Alarmed by the 2 million cases of gonorrhea and more than 75,000 of syphillis diagnosed in the United States last year, assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Roger O. Egeberg has appointed a National Commission on Venereal Disease.

Merger of the Brazos Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., with the Gulf Coast Presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church failed last month when Brazos delegates fell thirteen short of the two-thirds majority vote needed to combine the overlapping east Texas regional units.

The Sunday-school Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has adopted guidelines for church-literature writers acknowledging the “possibility of more than one interpretation of certain Scripture … theological doctrines, and current issues.”

World Scene

Toronto’s People’s Church plans to launch a full elementary and secondary school program this fall to accommodate 300 students. The step is being taken, according to pastor Paul Smith, because of “agnostic and atheistic” teaching in public schools. The church, with 3,500 members, is said to be the largest Protestant congregation in Canada.

The Vatican announced last month that the term “heresy” will no longer be applied to “doctrinal errors” by Roman Catholic teachers and theologians. In a related development, the Conference of German Bishops declared that the position of rebel theologian Dr. Hans Kung (who maintains in a recent book that only God—not the Pope—can be infallible) is outside the conference’s competence. Thus excommunication of Catholic scholars on doctrinal grounds now seems virtually impossible.

An examination of ruins found in the heart of Nazareth recently by Franciscan archaeologists indicates that the biblical town was settled about 1,000 B.C.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is threatened with bankruptcy and the prospect of curtailing severely or shutting down operations by this September.

The Polish government, in an apparent concession to the Roman Catholic Church, has acted to give title to church lands in territory won from Germany after World War II. The lands formerly belonged to the German Catholic Church but were only leased to the Polish Church after they passed to Polish control.

NEWS

What did the furnishings of the Old Testament Tabernacle really look like?

Meir Ben Uri, 62, Israel’s foremost religious artist and synagogue designer, feels that the illustrations commonly used are based upon sketches drawn during the Middle Ages to catch the eyes of children. They bear scant resemblance, he says, to the actual objects the ancient Hebrews carted around the desert.

A painstaking scholar and a devout, Orthodox Jew, Ben Uri set out to correct the misimpressions. After three years of work he came up with replicas of the golden altar and priests’ laver (see illustrations). He regards these as accurate models based upon specifications given to Moses by God. (Ben Uri earlier recreated Noah’s Ark: see March 29, 1968, issue, page 42.) He says: “I have profound belief in the literal correctness of the Hebrew text and as given, I might reconstruct the entire Tabernacle and all of its holy furniture.”

To Ben Uri, such work is much more than mere sentiment for antiquity. He feels that ancient Israel has a unique message to other nations through architecture. Affirming a theological dimension in architecture, he contends that “to build without divine mandate is to create disorder. Much of the sickness and chaos of today’s megalopolis is a direct result of ‘unauthorized’ architecture.”

Ben Uri stresses simplicity and small structures. He estimates that Solomon’s Temple could be built today for the relatively small sum of $1 million. “To build a tabernacle is a primitive thing,” he says. “We are in great need today to rediscover this simplicity. In our world God wants us to have Shkenah (the divine presence), but instead we have shkunah (tenement house).”

A few weeks ago Ben Uri was called to the home of Israel’s president, Zalman Shazar, to talk about his model of the golden altar. Shazar, who is said to follow the progress of Ben Uri’s studies, spent forty minutes with the architect.

In recreating the Tabernacle furnishings, Ben Uri kept in mind that Moses was well educated in Egyptian architecture. He also tried to forget the popular embellishments of artists strongly influenced by Byzantine models and ideas. But most important, he tried to follow meticulously the instructions given in Scripture. He contends that through a system of Hebrew letter and word values, any object that God commanded to be built can be reconstructed.

For the altar, Ben Uri used the 56 Hebrew words and 236 letters in God’s instructions to Moses (Exod. 37:25–28). In the process he believes he corrected an error in translation concerning the way the altar was fitted to be transported. Contrary to the interpretation that poles were slipped through two rings on opposite corners, Ben Uri says they passed through square housings. (He translates the Hebrew batim as “housings” rather than “rings.”) These housings, he declares, made for better balance and resemble those on Egyptian chair thrones.

For the bronze laver, Ben Uri used the 49 Hebrew words and their 225 component letters in the three sentences of the Exodus text (30:18,28). His design also was benefitted by his extensive study of ancient water installations and fittings (the tabernacle laver was used for purification rites). Its footing consists of two large triangles that suspend a rod attached to the water bowl. As the priest tipped the laver, a a stream of water would emerge from a spout. The laver has previously been pictured with four sturdy legs supporting a basin fitted with valve-type spigots, which, according to Ben Uri, did not exist 3,000 years ago.

Heart, Mind, Soul—And Will

The Arizona State Supreme Court has no heart, murmured some Arizonans after a recent decision that could have driven the Barrow Neurological Institute, a Catholic hospital branch involved in studies of the human nervous system since 1862, right out of its corporate mind.

In reversing a lower-court ruling, Chief Justice Fred Struckmeyer indicated that Barrow was not engaged in the kind of soul-searching that would qualify it as the beneficiary of a will by copper miner James Kidd (see November 10, 1967, issue, page 51).

Kidd was not kidding, implied the judge, when he willed his $175,000 estate (worth $250,000 now) to anyone who could prove scientifically that the soul survives the body after death. Wrote Struckmeyer, an Episcopalian: “Kidd was not deluded by modern secularism into assuming that the Christian view of the world is so dull and pointless that it is not worth investigating.” He instructed Superior Court judge Robert Myers to award the soul money instead to one of four psychic parties.

Barrow’s lawyers have served notice they will appeal to higher powers if necessary, which may someday force the U. S. Supreme Court into some soul-searching of its own.

The gradual retirement of God from the arenas of nature and history, and his consequent exile to man’s inner life, has been a distinguishing feature of modern thought. Once God is internalized, and shorn of all significance for the outer world, the step is very short indeed to a correlation of the God-idea merely with subjective decision and personal preference. Further down that road lies the notion that the Living God is dead.

For almost a century, much of continental European theology has expounded the reality of God on the tenuous premises that history and the cosmos can be explained without any reference to divine activity, and that the case for theism rests wholly on extra-historical and extra-cosmic considerations. In this speculative context arose the appeal of Ritschl to religious value-judgments (in distinction from scientific-theoretical judgments), Barth’s emphasis on personal revelation encounter and super-history, Bultmann’s suspension of God’s reality solely on inner existential response, and even Cullmann’s salvation events, which as a sphere of divine disclosure are to be contrasted with all other history. Moltmann’s downgrading of the biblical past in his vigorous appeal to the future may dimly mirror these same controlling prejudices, despite his commendable insistence on the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ and his call for an end to the baneful influence of Kantian criticism on contemporary theology.

It is to Kant indeed, and behind him to Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, that we may trace shaping influences that have obscured the Living God of the Bible—the God who acts personally and purposively in creating and preserving the cosmos, and in the affairs of men and nations, and who has revealed himself redemptively in the history of the Hebrews and in the promise and provision of messianic redemption in Jesus of Nazareth.

In his 1953–54 Gifford Lectures, The Form of the Personal, the Edinburgh personalist John Macmurray stressed that Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” subdivided reality artificially into the objective world known in mathematical formulas and the subjective thinking self. In identifying the observable outer world in terms of mathematically connectable events, this contrast of subjective/objective realms in principle—by concentrating solely on the sequence of observable events—deletes from the objective world any role for personal decision, activity, and purpose.

The exclusion from our knowledge of nature and history of all personal intelligence and agency—whether human or divine—is extended by Kant’s theory of knowledge. For although it stressed the universal validity of human knowledge, Kantian criticism denied its objectivity; according to Kant, the observable outer world is known to us solely in terms of causally connected events (causality being a mental category), and the categories and content of man’s knowledge are not to be considered constitutive of the objectively real world. Contemporary empirical science, while aware that its perpetually revisable readings do not inform us how reality is objectively constituted, has shied away from description of the observable world in terms of causally connected events to report instead predictable sequences.

In a noteworthy book titled “Secular Christianity” and God Who Acts (Eerdmans, 1970), a New Zealand scholar, Robert J. Blaikie, points out the costly erosive consequences of empirical secularism, which exploits this state of affairs. Conferring on scientific observational methods the sole right to delineate the observable objective world, it presumes to describe external reality adequately and comprehensively without any reference whatever to personal decision, activity, purpose, intelligence, reality. The absurdities to which this approach leads are increasingly acknowledged by incisive contemporary critics. M. Polanyi, for example, in a massive work on scientific method, Personal Knowledge, emphasizes that the restriction of knowledge to predictable observable magnitudes—which now dominates much of twentieth-century thought—threatens to stultify science itself through internal inconsistencies and ludicrous consequences. Not only does the secular empirical approach leave no room in the objective world for personal selves and acts, but it exiles the scientist himself as a free agent from the supposedly real world.

Blaikie is at his best when he critiques the Cartesian-Kantian subject/object split to show that it speculatively and inexcusably bans personal activity and decision—God’s or man’s—from the objective world, and warns Christians that any accommodation of God only in the dimensions of subjectivity leads to the evaporation of the God of biblical faith. He rightly calls for an alternative that reflects the God who acts in nature and history no less than in the inner life of man.

Building on Macmurray’s observations that “the long argument which Descartes initiated has moved decisively in the direction of atheism” and that “the emergent problem of contemporary philosophy”—i.e., a necessary revision of its subject/object presuppositions—“will instead tip the argument toward theism,” Blaikie espouses the Edinburgh philosopher’s view that action is the primary reality in the objective world. The self is to be regarded as Agent rather than as Subject (Descartes’s “I think” is replaced by “I act, therefore I am”); the world is denominated Other rather than Object. A personalistic philosophy of action is here welcomed as nourishing and confirming (beyond Macmurray’s hesitancies) the biblical view of the Creator-Redeemer God active in the cosmos and history.

Blaikie’s emphasis may be welcomed not simply for its intention of getting God back where the action is but for its recognition that the decisive action occurs where God is personally involved.

But Blaikie’s exposition nonetheless has serious weaknesses as an evangelical alternative to the secular option he effectively criticizes. While as a Presbyterian minister Blaikie emphasizes the priority of God’s self-revelation and the authority of the Bible for Christian faith, this criterion is broken and compromised in several ways. For one thing, he thinks it necessary to attract the world to faith through a personalistic philosophical prolegomenon, rather than solely in view of God’s Word and Act. For another, he approves biblical doctrines by a selective test; divine foreknowledge of human acts is repudiated as logically necessary to the rational acceptability of what is identified as the main biblical thesis, the essential freedom of personal relationships. Additionally, he champions a dialectical form of logic appropriate to the dynamic freedom of persons, and in this speculative context disowns conceptual propositional divine disclosure and the propositional errorlessness of the Bible.

A God who is active in nature and history, but whose articulate Word is so much muffled, unfortunately lacks the precision of prophetic and apostolic disclosure.

EDITORIALS

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster, said Jonathan Swift.

Evangelicals today should follow the lead of that initial oyster-eater. If we look about us, we see all kinds of potential for more effective proclamation of the Gospel. We must transcend our timidity and take that first bite.

The greatest danger posed by today’s radicals is not that Christianity might be overcome but that it might be rendered ineffective. Cries of revolution, instead of goading us into fresh initiatives, sometimes intimidate us into quiet retreat. We cower in the corners of our sanctuaries, hoping that the storms of change will pass by and leave us unscathed.

This kind of reaction is clearly not that prescribed by the New Testament. From the Gospels through the Epistles, boldness is a recurring theme. The Greek parrhesia appears at least twenty times in one form or another. It means candor and plainness of speech, and a confident courage. The leaders of the early Church, facing vastly more serious reprisals than Christians in the West today, nonetheless prayed and talked and acted with a kind of joyous fearlessness. They would have balked at the modern idea that Christians ought not to cultivate an image of authority but ought rather to appear as mere fellow seekers, beggars telling other beggars where to get bread.

Peter and John are illustrious examples of the kind of daring that ought to characterize believers of all ages; the ecclesiastical establishment of their day marveled at their boldness (Acts 4:13). The Apostle Paul, who continually did exploits for the Gospel that involved a high degree of risk, told his proteges that the spirit of fear was not of God.

The word meek in Matthew 5:5, appearing in the context of the especially profound Sermon on the Mount, has perhaps had a dampening influence upon would-be Christian initiators. Virtually all scholars would attest that the Greek praeis did not have anything like the connotation now attached to the English meek. It really suggests something more like gentle strength. The Interpreter’s Bible notes that the Greek word has “sinew,” and That it decidedly does not suggest “sad resignation.” The word was that of Jesus himself, who could hardly be called a milquetoast.

Some might say that boldness brings out pride. What is more likely is that pride can keep us from being bold. We let our fear of failure and error (and the resulting embarrassment) keep us from undertaking new ventures. We would rather leave well enough alone, protecting whatever reputation we already have.

The timidity syndrome is not confined to the ecclesiastical realm. The business world is in the midst of an infatuation with “scientific management,” which sees management as a precise discipline. In problem-solving, computers are replacing people, and the decision-makers who are left are increasingly afraid to go out on a limb. Many seem to think if they wait long enough, the risk will evaporate. But delay itself is a decision, and is often detrimental.

There is, of course, the danger of being too adventurous, or of regarding boldness as an end in itself. These are temptations, partly because boldness is admired no matter what cause it serves. If we are to err, however, this is probably the preferable direction. Christian history seems to bear out an observation Dryden made, “rashness is a better fault than fear.”

To encourage boldness, we may have to become more tolerant of honest mistakes. We ought at least to distinguish between mistakes that result from laziness and those that come out of creative and imaginative effort. Mistakes are part of learning. If a decision made after thorough investigation proves wrong, the maker is still ahead. At the very least his knowledge has been stretched beyond that of his hesitant colleague.

Christian proclamation calls for a holy boldness with a piety appropriate to the day in which we live. It may well be that the so-called Jesus People and Street Christians are the evangelical avant-garde. They are the kind who would be the first to eat an oyster if they thought it was the Christian thing to do. They are not afraid of confronting people with divine demands, of casting aside traditions that have lost meaning, and their methods seem to fit rather well the idea of “gentle strength.”

Is this perhaps what charisma is? Not merely a glamorous image but a creative boldness, a determination to see the potential in new situations and to act decisively. This is the biblical mandate, and indeed the only course for Spirit-sensitized evangelical leaders at every level who seek to make an impact for the Gospel upon our confused culture.

A Penney To Heaven

His middle name suggests his business success but not where his heart was for most of his ninety-five years. James Cash Penney, founder of the well-known department-store chain, slipped away last month to keep an appointment with the Lord whom he loved and served in life.

Penney’s father, a farmer who doubled as a Primitive Baptist minister on Sundays, introduced him in boyhood to the application and worth of Scripture in dealings with others. The Golden Rule became the name of J. C. Penney’s first stores, and the principle to which he pledged himself and his business. He introduced profit-sharing and made his employees “associates.” He held out against automation and self-service because they “depersonalized”; his feel for human values made him seem more a character from Disneyland’s nostalgic Main Street era than a man of our own day.

In 1931, at age 56, Penney was a broken man in deep personal crisis in a Michigan sanitarium. He had lost everything in the depression. One morning he heard the strains of “God will take care of you” coming from the chapel. He went in and someone read Matthew 11:28. Penney committed himself completely to Christ and experienced a “miracle … a dawning sense of rebirth … that joy and peace of mind which comes with the certain knowledge of the everyday and everlasting love and power of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

As he rebuilt his business he also gave himself in service to Christ as never before, from speaking at rescue missions to leadership in the Laymen’s Movement for a Christian World and generous acts of Christian philanthropy.

The New York Times eulogized, “He seemed too good to be true, but he was as he seemed and others recognized it.”

J. C. Penney was a Christian businessman.

A Memorable Woman

Although black people have contributed more than their share to American culture, the gift is seldom acknowledged or appreciated—even in this day of black consciousness. The tourist in Washington, D. C., for example, must look long and hard to find any memorials to black people. As part of a long-overdue corrective, a monument is planned in the nation’s capital to the late Mary McLeod Bethune.

Mrs. Bethune is a happy choice for this symbolic tribute. Through it she will become better known, an honor she richly deserves, for she perhaps more than any other woman in this century provided hope, encouragement, leadership, and inspiration to black people in America. It was partly her great determination to get a better deal for them that paved the way for recent achievements in civil rights.

Mrs. Bethune was a devout Christian believer. And to read her biography is to realize that it was only her unwavering faith that brought her success against awesome odds. She was reared in Methodism and as a youngster attended a Presbyterian school for poor Negroes in South Carolina. A Quaker dressmaker in Denver gave her life’s savings to finance Mrs. Bethune’s later education, and she graduated from Moody Bible Institute hoping to be a missionary to Africa. When a Presbyterian mission board turned her down, she went south again to work in education. She bought land for what is now Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, with a five-dollar down payment on property that had been part of the city dump and was known as “Hell’s Hole.” She earned the money selling ice cream and sweet potato pies to construction workers. With the growth of the school she gained esteem and worked for Negro rights. She served as advisor to four American presidents before she died in 1955.

Her Christian zeal enabled her to overcome repeated rebuffs. “No matter how deep my hurt,” she said, “I always smiled. I refused to be discouraged, for neither God nor man can use a discouraged person.”

Ailing Seminaries: Unfit To Be Tied?

When he was president of San Francisco Seminary a decade ago, activist Theodore A. Gill remarked: “The seminary is the knot in the end of the church’s thread.” Apparently the United Presbyterian knot is not only slipping—it’s almost untied. United Presbyterian seminaries are in big trouble. In fact, they will be “out of business” and the denomination “up for grabs” unless the schools are drastically changed, according to a scathing report.

The study, made by the Washington, D. C., research firm of Douglas Trout and Associates, has been under wraps since it was submitted to the church’s Council on Theological Education in Louisville last November. It’s time the report was made public. The malaise of the six United Presbyterian seminaries is shared by other mainline denominational schools. Their officials ought to read the Trout findings.

The report sharply attacks the shaky financial base of the seminaries. It accuses the schools of wasteful program duplication and lack of innovation. It charges that they ignore the influence of contemporary life styles and counter-culture movements. “This apparent disregard for and waste of resources is unconscionable,” the report says. Though resources are adequate now, they “are indefensibly and unsupportably inefficient and unbearably uncertain” for the future.

Dr. John W. Meister, executive secretary of the Council on Theological Education, described the 130-page report as “devastating.” The council commissioned the study, funded by an anonymous donor, three years ago.

One of the report’s sixteen recommendations is that the seminaries become “specialist institutions,” rather than offering traditional courses “training traditional pastors for traditional churches.” If the seminaries can’t move quickly in this direction, the report warns, “they will be left to … continuing isolation, ridiculously costly duplication, and eventual and certain bankruptcy.”

The Trout report gives a perceptive analysis of seminary sickness. Its recommendations, however, are mere patching plaster. A major theological restoration is needed. The report finds that the institutions studied have shifted to the left from their original theological positions. These seminaries should return to those sure biblical foundations so articulately defined by the seminary founders. One of the report’s most telling observations is that “the church has made no official recent statement of what is the nature of the ministry—even for the present—much less for the 1970s. Even the costly and extensive Study of the Nature of the Ministry conducted between 1962 and 1966 with a churchwide series of 145 seminars, attended by some 5,300 ministers and 4,800 laymen, did not result in any … definition of ministry because a consensus could not be obtained.” A church that doesn’t know why it exists or where it is going is bound to founder!

We are not picking on the United Presbyterian Church; its problems are simply illustrative. Most churches need to recapture a specific understanding of their mission and ministry. Their seminaries have a key role in this—they are the knot in the end of the thread. But the seminary should serve as the agent—not the initiator—of mission and ministry. The seminary ought not to determine what the church should be. Rather, it should train men for what the church already is, to carry out the goals the church has already established.

Seminaries can lose their sense of being guardians of the “eternal deposit of truth.” Then they become like untied knots, unable to hold fast against the unraveling seams of time.

Mexico For Christ

Last summer the United States’ northern neighbor was the scene of a Congress on Evangelism in which concern was expressed for reaching all of Canada with the Gospel. Now its southern neighbor is the object of an ambitious scheme to bring the good news to the fifty million people in that country. Approximately 7,000 Mexican churches and more than forty denominations are involved in the effort to mobilize all believers in an Evangelism-in-Depth type of campaign that will run until March, 1972.

The Mexican evangelicals are not wealthy, and raising the projected budget of nearly a million dollars will test their faith and determination. The leaders of this evangelistic outreach have called on their fellow believers in the United States and around the world to form prayer groups to intercede for them as they work toward the goals they have set. We urge Christians to accept this challenge.

Beyond Mexico lie the smaller Central American republics and the great continent of South America. If the Mexican program succeeds, it will challenge many of the other countries of Latin America to similar programs of complete saturation and especially those where the churches have grown by leaps and bounds and now have a task force that could evangelize to a finish.

Water Beds

The popularity of the new high-priced water beds may merely show how many desperate insomniacs there are. More likely it signifies a high level of sexual dissatisfaction in our culture. Actually a large, flat plastic bag full of heated water, the bed provides an undulating motion with the movement of the occupant(s). Some makers and retailers play down the sexual implications, but others coyly advertise them. Says one: “Two things are better on a water bed. One of them is sleep.”

We suspect that the so-called new freedom in matters of sex may have made its practice more frequent but not more satisfactory. There is a basic incongruity in the attempt by the “liberated” to make sex more pleasurable by separating it from love. The young bride of Canticles cries, “Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves.…”

The sexual drive finds its highest fulfillment when a man and a woman are committed to one another in that kind of soul relationship described by Christ as making them one flesh, one that the word of God compares to the tie between him and his people. It was God who made sex to be one of our greatest physical experiences. It is most truly rewarding when used according to his rules—water bed or no.

The Therapy Of Lent

Nowhere in Scripture is the Lenten observance explicitly prescribed, but there are principles behind it that are clearly biblical. One is the need for repentance, which Vance Havner discusses in this issue, beginning on page 12. Modern pilgrims invariably want to take a short cut to avoid repentance.

Another Lenten principle we tend to overlook is the human need for occasional periods of austerity and isolation. Scholars differ on the contemporary relevance of fasting as a condition to spirituality. But there is little question that fasting can be a factor in spiritual therapy, not to mention possible physical and mental benefits.

Then there is the need to get away from it all. If there were ever an age that should heed this principle, ours is it. Yet despite the example of a number of biblical characters, we simply do not make room in our lives for genuine retreats. Often what we call retreats are short periods that are more taxing than our routine. Little wonder so many are uptight!

Many of the troubles and sorrows found in the world today are due to someone’s inability to say “no.” The Christian religion is a positive affirmation of faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures, and for that reason a true believer can never be accused of following a negative religion. Still, just as there are positive and negative poles to a magnet, so too there are positive and negative aspects to being a Christian.

The positive side has to do with faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to his will. The negative calls for a rejecting of the blandishments and devices of Satan, which can only end in misery and defeat.

We are living in a permissive society, in a time when much that is evil goes unchallenged. It is not easy to go against current mores and to stand up and say no when one is convinced that something is contrary to the holy will of God. But exactly that is necessary.

The Bible offers many examples of men who were able to say no at a crucial time in their lives. Abraham said no to the natural desire to stay in his own home and with his own people when God had called him to go out, not knowing where he was going. He said no to the natural impulse to spare his son, Isaac, “accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Heb. 11:19).

Moses said no to the impulse to stay in the affluence and security of Pharoah’s household, “choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Heb. 11:25).

Joseph said no when tempted by a beautiful woman who offered her body and her companionship to a lonely young man. His response was, “How … can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9).

Daniel said no when confronted with a preferment that included turning from a Spartan way of life to eating food from the king’s table. With strong conviction he “resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s rich food or with the wine which he drank” (Dan. 1:8).

Daniel’s three companions said no to the temptation to save their lives by bowing before the image Nebuchadnezzar had set up. They answered with the challenging affirmation, “We have no need to answer you in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O King. But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up” (Dan. 3:16–18).

Later Daniel again said no, confronted this time with the temptation to buy safety at the cost of compromise by obeying the king’s decree against public worship. We read that “when Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open towards Jerusalem; and he got down upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before God, as he had done previously” (Dan. 6:10).

Our Lord tells us, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself [say no to self] and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24)—and that is not easy! All of us face the seemingly overwhelming temptation to trim our sails in these days of permissive living. When temptation comes, it is so much easier to compromise a little to avoid criticism or even reprisals.

The pressures of this world are so pervasive and persistent that Paul warns against letting the “world around you squeeze you into its own mold” (Rom. 12:2, Phillips). The soul that succumbs to the pressures of the world, the flesh, and the devil is in a desperate state.

One problem today is that many parents have failed to say no to their children. The welfare of those children demanded a firm attitude in moral and spiritual matters that the parents were unprepared to exercise.

We are often inclined to forget that the Ten Commandments contain both “You shalls” and “You shall nots.” We often fail in both directions. In a day when “anything goes,” it is necessary for Christians to swim against the tide by saying no to evil and yes to what is good.

Parents must say no to their children at times, being careful not to “over-correct” them, but remembering the neglected truth that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15).

Young people must learn the meaning of the injunction, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent” (Prov. 1:10). In this day of mobs and demonstrations, they should heed the warning, “You shall not follow a multitude to do evil” (Exod. 23:2).

Living in the shadow of God’s moral balances, we must learn not only the danger of compromise but also the blessing that comes from saying no to temptation. This is no onetime decision, of course; we must keep making it all through life. However, as the old hymn says, “each victory will help you some other to win.”

God does not call Christians to live as hermits in a sin-dominated social order. But he offers the means whereby they can act as salt in a putrefying society and lights in the midst of spiritual darkness. This requires the positive witness of a committed spirit and the equally positive witness of an unswerving rejection of any compromise with evil.

By what criteria shall we decide? How can we be confident that we are within the will of God in a particular circumstance? The answer must be found in the revelation God has given us in his written Word. I believe that there is no contingency of modern life that is not dealt with in the Bible and that the Christian who seeks the guidance of the Holy Spirit will know the course of action he should take if only he will wait for God to speak in his perfect timing.

Many years ago I came face to face with the claims of science and modern scholarship. I had to decide, either to accept the “assured findings” of men that went counter to the clearly stated truths of God’s Word, or to believe God’s revelation of truth regardless. A yes to faith and a no to unbelief brought peace of heart and later vindication of the decision. The same decision confronts each succeeding generation.

The grace to say no must be exercised with the assurance that God has not left his children to grope in darkness. Rather, he has made plain a way of life that is alien to this world but just as real as the air we breathe and the food that sustains our bodies.

The grace to say no is one that must be cultivated, not with a hard, unyielding stubbornness but with the joy of knowing that God is a personal God, that he is deeply concerned with every detail of our lives, and that he will surely open up the way he wants us to take.

Piety In The Flesh

A Call to Christian Character, edited by Bruce Shelley (Zondervan, 1970, 186 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John A. Baird, Jr., vice-president, Eastern Baptist College, Saint Davids, Pennsylvania.

Ralph Keiper, one of the contributors to this forceful book, says that some Christians think of the Holy Spirit as a sort of mother-in-law. His statement reflects the contemporary distaste for piety. The word itself and the concept behind it are unpopular. Many people confuse piety with piousness and think it refers to a rigid and hypocritical stance. In such a climate, how can much be achieved by a volume with the audacious subtitle “Toward a Recovery of Biblical Piety”?

Bruce Shelley’s introduction affirms the need for believers to recapture a significant personal devotional life and to understand what true piety is, realizing that it has a dimension of its own between mechanical social action and characterless identification with the culture of success. This study proposes to show piety as a life-style featuring Christianity in the flesh, one based on personal discipline that includes prayer, Bible study, and public worship. First Peter 1:15 provides the pivot for this plan for quality living: “As he who called you is holy, so you must be holy in all your conduct.”

The eleven articles in the book are based on chapel talks given by faculty members at the Conservative Baptist Seminary. Shelley, who is professor of church history, pairs piety with the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophets, and other parts of the Bible. Other chapters relate piety to psychology, theology, home, and church. One of the best concentrates upon piety and Christ with a skillful approach to the Sermon on the Mount. The writers maintain a strong biblical foundation, making some 470 references to Scripture.

Piety is shown to be a present possibility, though the godly man has always been a person ahead of his time. God’s people are attacked today in a variety of ways. The personal commitment of many seminarians is weak. Contemporary substitutes for spirituality abound, and “Brand X” religious experiences press upon us with unending beguilement.

Piety is handicapped by being partially negative (unrighteous means and ways must be avoided); in our Dale Carnegie culture this becomes a significant obstacle. Many think that negative thoughts indicate improper motivation, and tolerance has become the most admired Christian virtue.

How honest is this book? Does it include a frank admission of the shortcomings of some evangelicals? Is there acknowledgment that piety may skirt close to pharisaism? Will the reader learn that holiness and good health are not always concomitant? The answer to each question is yes, and rank assertions like these give the messages a wholesome integrity. There is a candid acknowledgment that too much church business may separate families instead of bringing them together, and that expository preaching may fail when unrelated to current problems.

This collection is a creditable achievement. Varied writing makes an engaging blend with unity of purpose, and piety comes alive as Spirit-controlled maturity in Jesus Christ throughout all aspects of life.

The Apostolic Church, Inside And Out

Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times, by Leonhard Goppelt, translated by Robert A. Guelich (Harper and Row, 1970, paperback, 238 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by George Eldon Ladd, professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Dr. Guelich has done a great service to the English-speaking Christian community by making available one of the best fruits of German critical scholarship in a thoroughly readable and idiomatic translation. In terms of scholarly output, German biblical scholarship constantly puts American scholarship to shame. Goppelt’s work appeared in German as the first volume of an eighteen-part history of the Christian Church.

German theology has often been noted for vigor and novelty rather than for sound conservative scholarship. It is refreshing to have a work embodying the best of German scholarship that is not hostile to traditional positions. Goppelt rejects the “purely historical” (i.e., naturalistic) perspective which is that of a modern philosophical world view rather than the perspective of the Church itself. “The picture of primitive Christianity is just as impossible to ascertain ‘purely historically’ as is the picture of Jesus.” The Church was born under a twofold stimulus: Jesus’ messianic proclamation and the Easter event. Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God had the purpose of gathering a redeemed community through faith that would respond to the God of Israel. The resurrection appearances cannot be reduced to mere visions. Paul had visions when the Exalted One disclosed himself through the Spirit; at Easter, Christ appeared bodily, i.e., in person. The empty tomb is no later legend but had to be interpreted through the appearances when the disciples encountered the Risen One in person.

The Church began as a religious party within Judaism, similar to, yet different from, the Qumran community. The Essenes considered themselves the true Israel; the Church thought of itself as the new Israel, the people not of the end time but of the new eon that had dawned with the resurrection. Goppelt regards the early sermons in Acts as embodying trustworthy traditions, accurately reproducing the outlines of the earliest apostolic kerygma. He outlines the life and thought of the Church in Palestine, the development of Hellenistic Gentile Christianity, the inner and outward separation of the Church from Judaism, its mission in the world of Hellenism, its conflict with syncretism, and its consolidation in the Roman Empire down to 135 A.D.

The book skillfully weaves together the external history of the church and the internal development of its life and thought. It constantly interacts with alternative solutions, particularly in German scholarship. Goppelt believes that Hellenistic Christianity arose before Paul, and that while its kerygma reflects the influence of Hellenistic thought, it embodies a common tradition with Hebraic thought. Paul’s essential message was not fundamentally different from that of Jerusalem. Goppelt treats not only factual history but the history of theology, and of church organization, and life.

The book is well documented by references to contemporary literature. The translation has added books available in English. All in all, in my judgment this is one of the best histories of the apostolic age ever written.

New Light On Freud

Theology After Freud, by Peter Homans (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, 254 pp., paperback, $4.25), is reviewed by Glenn R. Wittig, reference librarian, Speer Library, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

Peter Homans, assistant professor of religion and personality at the University of Chicago Divinity School, has attempted to create, not another psychology of religion, nor another pastoral psychology, but a framework for a psychology of Protestant doctrine—specifically that of transcendence—on the basis of an “iconic” reading of Freud, a reading that supersedes the common mechanistic and dynamic understandings. The result of his efforts (arranged as theological responses to, and post-Protestant theological experimentations with, Freud) is a penetrating analysis and synthesis of psychology and theology.

Homans is equally at ease in the two disciplines and has drawn testimony from writers in both groups. He is also a persistent inquisitor. He analyzes and interrogates all viewpoints, and extracts from the various positions connecting links toward new paradigms. The images he finds most fruitful toward reclaiming the lost dimension of transcendence are fantasy, nostalgia, hope, and especially distance.

At this point a similarity with the death-of-God theologians can be detected. Homans, who is not to be classed with the radicals though he may be sympathetic with their cause, works on a psychological plane in a fashion similar to what Altizer does with the history of religions. His talk about abandoning the concept of the object so it can become once again a “transcendental guide” presents a dialecticism similar to that employed by Altizer.

Homans succeeds in giving Freud a new day in court. Freud is no longer a villain to theology. He can be read in a new way; psychoanalysis can be construed as a theory of cultural interpretation as well as a therapy. Freud, rather than being only reductive, can offer a way of mediating between the “gaps” created by a deficient theology.

The effectiveness of Homans’s work is, however, lessened by a poor presentation of several key concepts. His interpretation of transcendence is presumed throughout Part One. When he does explain the term, he gives it a predominantly psychological, self-aspiring connotation, with no acknowledgment of the place and function of revelation. Transference, likewise, is shrouded in an obscure and circuitous discussion of Freud’s thought.

Furthermore, after Homans has won a case for a higher reading of Freud, and has examined Norman O. Brown, David Bakan, and Phillip Reiff as ingenious post-Protestant experimenters with Freud, his implication that Jung’s work embodies the necessary constructive approach to the present task is perplexing.

Yet Homans has accomplished more in the synthesis of theology and psychology than anyone else. He has indicated the value of psychology for a post mortem dei theology, and has provided a feasible structure for further investigations. This important work should be studied.

Newly Published

Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments, by Germain Grisez (Corpus, 1970, 559 pp., paperback, $6.95). A comprehensive, well-documented investigation by a philosophy professor at Georgetown University. It is intended not only for reading but for reference, and demands consideration by all who would speak to the issue.

Marriage in Black and White, by Joseph R. Washington, Jr. (Beacon, 1971, 358 pp., $7.50). An outstanding book by a religion professor at the University of Virginia. Fully documents laws, opinions, and practices regarding interracial sex and marriage. Illumines hypocrisy. Urges that black-white marriages be fully acceptable though the author doesn’t expect them en masse.

The Two Natures in Christ, by Martin Chemnitz (Concordia, 1971, 542 pp., $12.50). A major writing by one of the greatest sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians is finally offered in English translation by J. A. O. Preus.

Church Cooperation and Unity in America: A Historical Review 1900–1970, by Samuel McCrea Cavert (Association, 1970, 400 pp., $15). Traces, in a reasonably objective way, how Christians in the United States have worked together in such fields as missions, evangelism, education, research, and social action. Specialists in these fields collaborated with the author, a gentlemanly ecumenist of considerable renown. Includes a forty-two-page definitive bibliography.

Let’s Know the Bible, by John W. Cawood (Revell, 1971, 152 pp., $3.95). The style and structure make this a good book for introducing late grade-school and early high-school children to the Bible. Adults with little knowledge of the Bible also might benefit from this study.

Can Man Hope to Be Human?, by Wallace E. Fisher (Abingdon, 1971, 160 pp., $3.95). Without forsaking biblical principles, the author examines the problems facing the majority of those “outside the Church,” those who in no way claim to be Christians. He offers sound guidelines for winning those people—the first one being listen.

The Song of Songs, by Arthur G. Clarke (Walterick, 1971, 112 pp., paperback, $1.95). A popular, conservative commentary that sees Solomon as trying to come between a Shulamite and her shepherd-lover. Refreshing.

Christian Baptism, by B. F. Smith (Broadman, 1971, 180 pp., $4.95). A documented survey by a Baptist of the history of baptism from the first century to the present.

A Reader’s Introduction to the New Testament, by Addison H. Leitch (Doubleday, 1971, 160 pp., $5.95). A simple, sparkling book-by-book survey intended to lure the reader into encountering the New Testament for himself. The author teaches at Gordon-Conwell.

The Suicide of Christian Theology, by John Warwick Montgomery (Bethany Fellowship, 1970, 528 pp., $7.95). Montgomery’s admirers will welcome this collection of more than twoscore of his essays and lectures of the sixties (many first appeared in CHRISTIANITY TODAY). Even those who don’t admire him can find food for thought (and to choke on).

Elizabethan Puritanism, edited by Leonard J. Trinterud (Oxford, 1971, 454 pp., $11.50). An outstanding collection of sixteenth-century documents, divided into three groups by the degree of activism of those seeking reform. Important for understanding the origins of a major influence in Anglo-American history.

Historic Patterns of Church Growth: A Study of Five Churches, by Harold R. Cook (Moody, 1971, 128 pp., paperback, $1.95). The favorable responses to the Gospel of the ancient Armenians and Irish and of the modern Hawaiians, Karens, and Bataks are summarized and then compared. A valuable aid to discussing missions strategy today.

The Spirit of the Reformed Tradition, by M. Eugene Osterhaven (Eerdmans, 1971, 190 pp., paperback, $3.45). Frequent quotations from Calvin and his spiritual heirs do not keep this book from being one man’s view of what ought to be instead of what actually is. More often than not one feels that the Christian tradition as a whole is what the author is speaking for. When distinctively Reformed views are presented, the discussion is too brief.

The Third World and Mission, by Dennis E. Clark (Word, 1971, 129 pp., $3.95). An important discussion of the problems of missions and the Church in the third world, a term that is used “to refer to the independent nations of Asia, Africa, and South America who increasingly want to determine their destinies apart from the influences and pressures of the so-called great powers.” The author combines description of the problems with narration (italicized) of situations that have actually occurred.

Christ Matters!, by Joe Hale (Tidings, 1971, 87 pp., $1). An apologetic for the complete Gospel—social concern and action fused with the preaching of salvation through faith. The author is a United Methodist evangelism director.

Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union 1917–1967, edited by Richard H. Marshall, Jr. (Chicago, 1971, 489 pp.). An indispensable work on the subject. Eighteen authoritative, documented essays by specialists on such topics as Khrushchev’s religious policy and anti-religious organizations and on most of the various groups, such as Muslims, Mennonites, Lutherans, Catholics. Jews, and Orthodox.

Christ the Crisis, by Friedrich Gogarten (John Knox, 1970, 308 pp., $7.95). A translation of the final book by one of the more influential academic theologians. Intended as a prolegomenon to a Christology for our times.

The Great Debate Today, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1971, 239 pp., paperback, $4.50). To quote from the conclusion: “The great debate today concerns the question: Who and what is Christ? Is he what the traditional Protestant creeds … say he is, or is he what modernist and neo-orthodox theologians say he is? We have discovered that these two positions stand squarely opposed to one another at every point.”

Gospel Radio, by Barry Siedell (Back to the Bible, 1971, 158 pp., paperback, $.75). Hardly exhaustive, but the best overview yet of evangelism via the air waves. Chief failure is insensitivity to the potential of Christian proclamation within the context of secular programming.

Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation, by John F. Walvoord (Moody, 1971, 317 pp., $6.95). A major commentary by the president of Dallas Seminary, understanding Daniel as supporting a premillennial eschatology, but considering alternate views.

Integration and Development in Israel, edited by S. N. Eisenstadt et al. (Praeger, 1970, 703 pp., $20). Twenty-eight previously published articles providing an excellent overview of the socio-economic situation in Israel.

Our Rebel Emotions, by Bernard Mobbs (Seabury, 1971, 127 pp., $3.50). An excellent study that should be helpful to most people.

Beyond Feminism, by Marilyn Brown Oden (Abingdon, 1971, 112 pp., $3.50). The Christian feminist recognizes responsibility beyond the fight for rights. “The woman of faith speaks with authority, listens with sensitivity, and responds with love.” This author has done just that.

Some of the above books will later be reviewed at greater length.

FARE COMMENT

Taxicab drivers will universally tell you they are father-confessors to the world. That hasn’t been my experience. When I hop into a taxi desiring a quiet, meditative ride to my destination, I invariably get a loquacious driver who either wants to unload his frustrations with life or to impart some words of wisdom.

Some time ago I boarded a cab in an eastern metropolis driven by a lightskinned Negro of middle age. His license showed the name Harold James. After the normal exchange of pleasantries about the weather and traffic we gravitated to the subject of race relations.

“You know, we didn’t make this problem,” my modern Jehu said. “You did. It was your people that brought my people to this country. We didn’t ask for any visas. Man, there wasn’t no quota on us. They just stacked us up like cord wood and brought us over.”

I had the sinking feeling that it was going to be an emotionally exhausting ride. “Well, that’s true,” I said, “but that’s all done now. We’re both here and we’ve got to live together.”

“Not only that,” he continued, undeterred, “your ancestors weren’t exactly on the up-and-up about this whole race thing. Matter of fact, they were hypocrites.”

Not wishing to challenge the point I replied, “How’s that?”

“Well, you take a look at my skin.”

I did. It was decidedly milk chocolate.

“God didn’t give me that skin color. You folks did. That segregation massa preached was all right for the living room, but it didn’t make it back to the bedroom!”

I was relieved to hear him chuckling as he repeated his point. “No sir, it didn’t make it back to the bedroom.” Then he asked, “You know what the Bible says?”

“I know some things it says.”

“Well, the Bible says we’re the same race. Did you know that?”

“Does it really?”

“Yessir, the Bible talks about two races, Jews and Gentiles. We’re both Gentiles. And you know what else it says?”

“What?” I was beginning to be intrigued with Mr. James.

“It says even that don’t make any difference. In Galatians it says that ‘ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed.’ So you see, my skin may be black, but the Bible says I’m Abraham’s seed. And every Christian in the world is my brother, right?”

Right on, brother.

PAYING DUE ATTENTION

I would like to express my personal appreciation to you for publishing “The New Evangelism” (Jan. 29) by Professor Kenneth Hamilton. I had the privilege of hearing Professor Hamilton’s address at the Canadian Congress on Evangelism and expressed the hope at that time that it would be published in a place where it would receive a wide audience. Thanks to you, his message will have the attention which it deserves.

Asst. Prof. of New Testament

Regent College

Vancouver, B.C.

HIGH THEOLOGY LOW

The only thing high about “High Theology in the Andes” (Jan. 15) is the location of the meeting. I believe you report some of the saddest news of 1970. When the reputed cream of evangelical theologians from a continent we have been led to believe is almost the private domain of conservative theology meets for the first time and capitulates to the “Inter-Varsity bloc” with its errant Scripture, it is indeed sad news.… One can almost hear the cries of “gringo theological imperialism” if anyone this side of the Rio Grande questions the theology put forth at Cochabamba. Nevertheless, this decision to get rid of the offending word “inerrant” clearly puts the signers on the far side of the continental divide in theology, where the only direction is down, increasing numbers of errors admitted and theology gradually deteriorating.

In addition to the basic bad news, there are two other very ominous signs in the report. We can only guess why those who hold to an inerrant Scripture were willing to sign a document that deliberately left this out. I’m sure the motive was a good one.… But it is a dangerous ploy. Theological deterioration in a group rarely starts with rejection of a basic doctrine but rather with indifference as to the importance of significance of that doctrine. Compromise usually begins at the point of silence.…

The second very ominous element had to do with the motive given for choosing the compromise wording—“to aid communication with the grass-roots churchman.” Surely this doesn’t mean what it seems to say? Surely we would not follow the strategy of liberal theological wolves who dress themselves in theologically conservative sheep’s terminology in an effort to keep non-theologians in the dark about what is actually happening to their heretofore “simplistic” theology?

Columbia Bible College

Columbia, S. C.

RETREAT TO FORTRESS U.S.A.

I have just read Eric Fife’s article “American Leadership in World Missions” (Jan. 29). The point he makes is true enough—the Lord has plenty of leaders besides Americans—but misleading. Obeying the Great Commission has nothing to do with “leadership.” It has a great deal to do with faithfulness.…

Fife’s article says that a decline in number of American missionaries might be God’s will, and hints throughout that the missionary movement has peaked and nationals will now take over the task. This is most unfortunate. Two billion have yet to hear the Gospel. With the greatest admiration for the nationals and hearty agreement that where national Christians exist they should evangelize their neighbors, I doubt whether it is God’s will for the powerful churches of America (highest GNP ever, $10 billion spent for liquor, professional football at an all-time high) to retreat to Fortress U.S.A.

Dean

School of World Mission

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

I [am dismayed] over some of Fife’s emphases. I would he had told us who is contending for “American” leadership in the worldwide task of the Church. What I hear at missionary conferences these days is the call to American Christians to go overseas to serve, not to rule. No one in his right mind is advocating paternalism. Or the right of Americans to dominate. The missionaries I know rejoice in the growing effectiveness of national leadership in the churches overseas.

But what of Fife’s highly speculative thesis that a decline in the number of American missionaries might be “the will of God for this time”? Grant the remote possibility, but how is God’s worldwide cause to be advanced by hoisting such a dark flag? Cut it down!…

What is the scriptural or factual warrant for Fife’s negativism about missions? Throughout the world today people are more winnable than they have ever been.… Nothing is … more peripheral to the current debate on missions than taking potshots at such straw issues as American Leadership or American Extravagance. Better to focus attention on the biblical mandate to Christians to be at work in the midst of this receptivity, gathering in the harvest that God is granting his Church.… Let us stand with him; resist the negative and accent the positive.

Associate Dean

School of World Mission

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

BIBLICAL EVIDENCE FOR ECONOMICS

Your lead editorial on economics (“Capitalism vs. Communism,” Feb. 12) is incredible! In pure fact it errs grossly. In capitalism at least as much as communism, the economic decision-makers represent a very tiny, self-perpetuating minority. By no honest stretch of imagination can the little old lady who owns a share or two of General Motors, or the man whose company pension plan has invested in ITT, be called economic decision-makers.

Whether credited to the ingenuity of Marx or CHRISTIANITY TODAY, use of the Mosaic “Thou shalt not steal” as biblical proof for capitalism is one of the most amazing pieces of exegesis I have ever seen. Some scholars believe the correct translation of that commandment should be, “Thou shalt not kidnap.” But suppose the traditional translation is correct; it hardly proves capitalism. Ownership of personal possessions is permissible under communism as well as capitalism (though prohibited in some tribal economies). Furthermore, one should not steal from the government, and/or that which the community holds for the common good. Indeed, the commandment could be understood to prohibit exploitation as being a form of theft. “Thou shalt not steal” should mean one must not take from any man that which is rightfully his. Such as human dignity.…

It is as patently ridiculous to hunt biblical evidence for modern economics as for modern science. But if one does so, it is amusing to speculate the effect biblical economics might have on modern capitalism. The semi-centennial jubilee when all loans and debts were simply forgiven, for example, or the biblical dislike of interest.…

The Bible does, however, give some principles which individual Christians should apply in their businesses and in their families. It says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; it tells us to pray for our daily bread; it warns us against striving to lay up riches on earth.… None of these principles were evident in your editorial.

Teaneck, N. J.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TELEPHONE?

Shame on Mr. Tiffin (“Education: The Good Old Days That Never Were,” Feb. 12). Or should it be the New York rioters? They had no business tearing down “telephone wires” because Mr. Bell was only thirteen years old at the time and living in Scotland. Give the man a break—that telephone will never get invented if rioters knock it off before it arrives.

Hammond, Ind.

This scribe has wasted considerable time watching television panels where experts pool their ignorance discussing the fix we are in and what to do about it. Like Omar, I usually come out the same door I went in. God is writing on the wall these days, but the soothsayers and “smoothsayers” cannot decipher the heavenly hieroglyphics. (Witness, for instance, a seminar on the Middle East!)

Likewise, I read the speeches of churchmen in our religious conclaves trying to arouse the brethren about evangelism or social action. The audience reaction is usually, “I move we accept this as information and be dismissed.” It will take more than highly promoted conventions with a parade of celebrities to meet our problem of a sick church trying to minister to a sick world. If God ever rends the heavens and comes down again in real revival, he may begin in some obscure country church where a little band of nobodies in holy desperation prays like Jehoshaphat, “We know not what to do but our eyes are upon thee.”

One of England’s best preachers has said:

I am never tired of saying that what the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, what is the secret of this?

Evangelism is the outflow and overflow of the inflow of the Spirit in a normal New Testament church. By “normal” I do not mean average; the average today is subnormal. Nor do I mean perfect, for there are no perfect churches. There can, however, be healthy churches, blameless though not faultless, mature though not perfectly so. When we try to pressure half-hearted and indifferent church members into soul-winning drives, it is an admission that we have failed in the New Testament pattern of faith in Christ, fellowship with Christ, faithfulness to Christ, and fruitfulness for Christ. If we abide, we shall abound.

If the time, money, and effort spent in trying to work up evangelism in lukewarm churches were spent in calling the churches themselves to repentance, confession, cleansing, and empowering, evangelism would be a natural result. We are trying to produce the results without the cause, the fruit without the tree. The New Testament epistle-writers concentrated not on stirring up Christians to evangelize but rather on developing healthy Christians through spiritual food, rest, and exercise. Healthy Christians are naturally soul-winners, by life and by lip.

God ordered the human race to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth and then put within man the instinct to mate and carry out the divine commission. Our Lord said, “Go, make disciples.” As someone has said, the fruit of a Christian is another Christian” and the Holy Spirit has been given to motivate us in carrying out the Great Commission. Trying to organize and stimulate Christians to evangelize without the urge is an exercise in futility. Pep meetings are not necessary to urge young people to fall in love, marry, and raise families!

Which comes first, revival or evangelism? This is not a chicken-or-egg question. Scripture, reason, and experience teach that God begins with his own people. David must have the joy of salvation restored before he can teach transgressors God’s ways and see sinners converted. And Peter must be converted himself before he can strengthen the brethren and feed the sheep.

But revivals should not be necessary. God meant that we should grow in grace continually. Springtime is often used as an illustration of revival, but Christian growth should be continuous, not seasonal. Periodic backsliding and repenting are not normal Christian experience and should never be so regarded. When we have a vigorous daily Christian experience, revival is unnecessary, for a glowing fire does not need rekindling. But because our condition is subnormal, revival is necessary to get us back to normal. Then it has served its purpose. Revivals are not supposed to last; to try to live at revival pitch all the time would make Christians and churches abnormal. Excesses have followed some revivals because some dear souls attempted to live on the mountaintop all the time.

Nevertheless, just now the number-one item on the agenda is repentance in the Church accompanied by confession and forsaking of sin, reconciliation and restitution, separation from the world, submission to the Lordship of Christ, and the filling of the Spirit. Finney said, “Revival is a new beginning of obedience to God.” It is not an emotional binge, although of course it affects the emotions because it affects the whole man. Nor does it begin happily; it starts with a broken and contrite heart. Evangelism is happy business because we are getting out the Good News, but revivals do not begin with singing choruses and working up a good feeling as one might do at a Rotary Club.

As I read report after report of great church congresses and conferences and conventions that spend all their time on peace, poverty, and pollution and leave the primary need, I long to read of one session where programs are thrown into the waste basket and the assembly goes to its knees. We have passed enough resolutions. God’s people must be called to repentance, and the repenting must begin with the delegates! Our Lord’s call to repentance in Revelation began with the angels of the churches, not the backsliders out on the fringe. To recruit a Gideon’s Band we must begin with a Gideon.

If someone objects that we do not have time in our great meetings for this, the reply must be that we don’t have time for anything else! The time is too short, the need too great. There is of course the element of divine sovereignty in revival. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” but God has never failed to visit his people when they call on him in desperate, prevailing prayer. But as long as we feel we have a few tricks up our sleeves, however, he will leave us to perform them. Laodicea was rich, flush with goods and in need of nothing. Nothing much will happen until we realize that we are wretched, miserable, blind, poor, and naked in the sight of the Lord of the Lampstands, the Christ of the Candlesticks.

It is going to take some robust and rugged preaching to sound this trumpet blast. Are we afraid to call the Church to repentance? Is popularity too precious to risk? Do we fear the threats of Jezebel if we call for a showdown on Carmel? Are we unwilling to offend church members who give checks to the church while they live for the world, the flesh, and the devil? True revival is no bargain-counter proposition; the price is high for the preacher who preaches it and the people who respond. So we politely dodge it. We substitute evangelistic pep rallies and social-action crusades. We put on shows and call in the world to popularize the Gospel. If God ever grants us a visitation, we will be red with embarrassment because of the pitiful ways we have tried to promote the work of God in the energy of the flesh.

So this scribe still longs to read of a meeting held somewhere for the express purpose of calling the Church to repentance. How many would come I do not know. Of course, it could be worked in typical American fashion, with committees and fanfare and the governor there to make a speech. It would have little use for our boasted expertise and know-how. The publicity might come later, as in the Welsh Revival. Nowadays we try to create the revival before it happens. Pentecost was its own publicity! The crowd came after the Spirit came! If what we need comes, it may put to shame our pet projects, the programs that we set up on our own and then ask God to bless. We cannot make it happen or regulate it by our stopwatches. God is not promoting religious extravaganzas, and the minute flesh begins to glory in his presence, the Shekinah fades and “Ichabod” is written over the door. But there is hope today if a few hungry hearts, unwilling to be satisfied with the good, will press through as Elisha did with Elijah, unwilling to stop at Bethel or Jericho though schools of the prophets line the roadway, determined to make it to Jordan and God’s very best.

We thank God for present-day evangelism in all its forms, for every gospel sermon preached, every soul saved. But the good can be the enemy of the best. The hour is too late and the need too desperate for halfway measures. Ought we not to concentrate on church revival, since that precedes and produces all else that we seek? There is no use working on Item 2 or 3 or 4 until we have attended to Item 1. When the channel has been cleared to the inflow of God’s Spirit, the outflow and overflow will be assured. Why not start at the beginning?

Vance Havner is an evangelist who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was orddined by the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of some twenty books.