In the June 19 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY we published the Frankfurt Declaration, a document we thought then and think now has enormous potential for guiding the Church toward its proper mission as described in the New Testament. Our mailbag has brought many letters of response, most of them expressing enthusiastic assent to the basic thrust of the declaration. In Europe, especially Germany and Switzerland, the declaration has produced some polarization between those committed essentially to the goal of transforming this present age and those committed to the calling out of the eschatological community of the redeemed as we await the return of Christ. The demand of the Frankfurt Declaration, not for dialogue and consultations but for decision, runs counter to the present stance of the ecumenical movement, which has never committed itself to calling men to leave their non-Christian religions and find salvation in Christ. Perhaps the declaration is the harbinger of a new age for missions and a worldwide movement that will bring together those who forged the Wheaton Declaration a few years ago and those who now support the Frankfurt Declaration.

As readers receive this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I am vacationing in Austria and visiting some of the German professors and friends who were instrumental in producing the Frankfurt Declaration.

Christian-marxist dialogue, for many years now a common exercise in Europe, has in more recent years caught on in the Western Hemisphere. With us, such conversations have been conducted largely between liberal Christians and their counterparts in the Marxist movement. Evangelicals have been relatively little involved, because of their feeling that Karl Marx’s implacable hostility to the Christian faith made such discussion pointless.

It goes without saying that from the Marxist point of view, the principals in the discussions have not been the men who lay down policies in Moscow or Peking, nor those who command the movements of Russian tanks. But within the Red Empire there have been adherents of the general Marxist line who felt it safe to undertake some independent discussions of the ideology underlying the Communist movement(s).

Theological liberals have felt free to debate with the more “detached” representatives of Marxism, partly because of their mood of tentativeness toward new movements, and partly because of their relative lack of fear of Communism so far as our land is concerned. After all, the Iron Curtain seems psychologically remote from America, and besides—so the conventional line has been—our land has to fear only the “radical right.”

Christian leaders of broader persuasion have encountered rude shocks in their attempts to build bridges between themselves and the orthodox followers of Marx. This fact does not, however, rule out the possibility of further explorations in quest of common ground upon the part of all Christians, provided it be borne in mind that they debate with theoreticians who have little to do with day-to-day decision-making within Communist lands.

One of the major organized efforts to promote discussion between East and West has been the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference. The author has sought to follow with some care the published utterances of the CPC through the years and would venture the following observations concerning it. First, the fact of its sponsorship from within the Red Imperium made it necessary for its spokesmen to adopt an anti-Western stance if they were to continue to speak at all. Thus, denunciation of the economic and political systems outside the Communist sphere became a sort of CPC orthodoxy. Second, it was essential to play down the injustices and the suppression of freedom within the Communist world. Third—and very important—there was a tendency to consider Marxism as a whole, on the unspoken assumption that the current forms of dogmatic Marxism-Leninism might not be final.

Hope sprang eternal among the principal spokesmen for the CPC. It cannot be denied that participants on the two sides did learn from each other, though any acknowledgment of this by the persons taking part from the “socialist” lands had to be stated in a most guarded fashion.

Two events in recent history dealt shaking blows to Christian-Marxist conversations. The first was the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Christian leaders within the Red orbit managed to take this in stride. After all, the organs of official information from Moscow saw the uprising as stemming from a plot to inaugurate “reaction within the socialist camp.”

The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, was not so easily explained away. It was here that the Christian Peace Conference “fell into crisis.” We are familiar by now with the correspondence between Joseph Hromádka and Patriarch Alexei of Moscow at that time, with the forced resignation of Jaroslav Ondra as general secretary of the CPC and Dr. Hromádka’s withdrawal as its president. Most of us have read the latter’s heartbreaking letter in which he expressed his final disillusionment with Communism’s ultimate ability to humanize itself—to adopt a “human face.”

The question for those who desire continuing dialogue between East and West must now be, “Whence from here?” The evangelical will be tempted, more than ever since August 21, 1968, to shrug off the entire matter with an “I told you so.” And he did tell them so, and the outrages against the intimidated satellite lands continue. True, the dialogue did survive the shock of Stalinism and the nightmare of Hungary. Some of more hopeful outlook felt that this form of oppression and this denial of human dignity had passed. Now there is deep uncertainty at the practical level.

Today the Christian-Marxist exchange seems to be confined to a few persons on each side. Most of them are disposed to deal with Marxist theory, dissociated as far as possible from any national embodiment of it. Not only so, but there are indications of some departures from the rigid “fundamentalism” of Marxism-Leninism upon the part of some honest Marxists themselves. Roger Garaudy, for example, would scarcely pass an examination in Marxist orthodoxy administered by the Politbureau in Moscow.

The CPC seems to be in disarray, owing to the imposition of a hard line upon it by its Eastern leadership. The British representatives on the International Secretariat (David Paton, an Anglican, and Irene Jacoby, a Quaker) have ceased, for the time being at least, to participate in CPC deliberations. It seems that the conference will continue to operate, if at all, only as a front organization.

The American evangelical will ask what all this has to do with him. It is unlikely that he will have a convinced Marxist as a next-door neighbor, as his counterpart in (say) France or Italy may have. But he ought perhaps to think of a time in which he might be able to let his witness be heard among such persons. If and when this becomes possible, certainly he will not engage in the naive and uncritical form of dialogue that sometimes makes the headlines.

If and when occasion presents itself for creative conversations with Marxists, he may bear in mind certain legitimate points of contact between the two systems. Some of these are: the common desire for a better world, the concern with man’s alienation, the recognition of God’s concern with the material, and man’s irrepressible desire to seek for and move toward the Transcendent.

Above all, both seek to produce a new man. True, the Marxist seeks to produce this by the superficial method of changing man’s economic order. But he just might be touched by a vital contact with men and women who have become “new creatures” through the grace of our Lord.

HAROLD B. KUHN

America celebrated her 194th birthday with great vigor, and the high point of the commemoration was a one-hour inter-faith religious service held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.

The preacher, Billy Graham, cited the influence of “a relatively small extremist element, both to the left and right,” and called upon all Americans “to stop this polarization before it is too late.”

Thousands attended the service, and additional millions watched it on TV (all three major networks carried it live). Perhaps never before has a religious event been seen simultaneously by so many.

The service was part of this year’s special “Honor America Day” observed on July 4. It may have marked the start of a resurgence of authentic patriotism. Some critics charged that the celebration had overtones of the political right, even though it enjoyed high-level bipartisan sponsorship.

After Graham’s sermon, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen came to give the benediction but instead uttered some significant pleas. He urged the start of small prayer and Bible-study cells across the nation and proposed the erection (“either physically or symbolically”) of a West Coast counterpart of the Statue of Liberty. This new “statue of responsibility” would be to remind Americans that they have no rights without corresponding duties. Sheen also said, “We need to sacrifice, reach into our pocket to help the poor, the economically distressed.”

The service took place under a scorching sun with the temperature climbing well into the nineties. A number of youthful dissenters waded in the Reflecting Pool that stretches between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Occasionally they chanted obscenities.

Graham declared that “we have raised our hands and our voices in protest over many issues and many causes during the past few years. Why not raise them now to God?”

The 51-year-old Baptist evangelist added that “what our forefathers began we must work to fulfill.… Their vision must be our vision, and we must pursue it.” The climax came with his quotation of an exhortation from Winston Churchill that prompted a cheering, standing ovation from the crowd: “Never give in! Never! Never! Never! Never!”

Because his time was limited, Graham omitted a few portions of the address he had prepared. In actual delivery, he gave six reasons why America should be honored (see text, page 20). A seventh reason in the original text: because America “has never sought to use her tremendous power to take over other nations.”

The service included a reading from Leviticus 19 by Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. He ended the reading with verse 18, which calls for loving one’s neighbor as oneself.

Two black Baptist clergymen were on the program. Dr. E. V. Hill of Los Angeles presided, and Dr. E. L. Harrison of Washington read from Matthew 5.

The service drew support from a number representing religious traditions that do not normally feel comfortable in interreligious activities.

Pat Boone led the crowd in singing the national anthem, and Kate Smith brought back memories with her famous rendition of “God Bless America.” The Centurymen, a Southern Baptist male chorus, sang “America, the Beautiful.” The U. S. Army Band played.

Hill introduced Colonel Frank Borman as the “first man to pray publicly in outer space.” Borman, an Episcopalian, was the commander of Apollo 8, whose crew read the Genesis account during their Christmas, 1968, flight around the moon. He prayed, “Give us all the moral courage we need to stand for what is true and right.… Help us make this world a good earth and prevent us from turning it into a moon of desolation.” Also on the program was J. Willard Marriott, owner of a large hotel and restaurant chain, who was chairman of the executive committee for Honor America Day. Marriott is a Mormon.

Crowd estimates ranged from 10,000 to 35,000. The throng that gathered for an entertainment extravaganza at the Washington Monument that same evening numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The only significant reference to deity in that program was the hope expressed by comedian Red Skelton that the words “under God” would not cause the Pledge of Allegiance to be barred from the nation’s schools.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

No Consensus Among ‘Believers’

Some eighty members of a score of religious groups ranging from Landmark Baptists and Churches of Christ to Hicksite Quakers and anti-war Liberated Churches gathered late in June for the second triennial Believers’ Church Conference. The meeting took place at United Church of Christ-related Chicago Theological Seminary. Mennonites and Dunker Brethren were especially numerous; blacks, women, and members of such twentieth-century renewal movements as Pentecostalism and the Bible Churches were not.

The conference was for individuals, not official representatives. It provided a useful forum for airing divergent views. No resolutions or statements were passed, nor was any consensus obvious on the three daily topics for discussion: the disciplined church, conflict within the congregation, and tension in society. The only agreement was that the church was not intended to encompass all those born in a given territory.

Ashland (Ohio) Theological Seminary will probably sponsor another such conference in three years. Ashland is the seminary of the Brethren Church, a member of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Requartering The Sunday School

Next summer will be a short one for Sunday-school quarterlies. At present, most publishers of Sunday-school lessons break the year into quarters that begin in January, April, July, and October. In 1971, their July-August-September “quarter” will last only through August. The next quarter will begin in September; subsequent ones will begin in December, March, and June.

The new plan, which will conform the Sunday-school year to the public-school year, is “more educationally sound,” says a David C. Cook Publishing Company executive. Some denominational publishers already operate on this basis, he noted; it provides more natural breaks during summer vacation months.

One stimulus for the industry-wide rearrangement in 1971 is the National Council of Churches’ change in its International Uniform Lessons, outlines of biblical passages on which many Sunday-school curricula for all age groups are based.

The Sunday School World, one of the oldest commentaries on the Uniform outline series, will be published by the Evangelical Foundation beginning this fall. The foundation now publishes Eternity magazine and produces the radio “Bible Study Hour.” It will take over the Sunday School World and an associated publication, the Adult Bible Study Book, from the American Sunday School Union.

Turning The Tundra

Queen Elizabeth, at the outset of the first royal tour of the Canadian Arctic, broke ground this month for an Anglican cathedral at Frobisher Bay. The Queen acted as titular head of the Church of England.

The new 350-seat structure, to be named after St. Jude, will serve as the cathedral church for the Diocese of the Arctic, largest in the world (2¼ million square miles). Its modern design, appropriately enough, is patterned after an igloo.

The Queen and her family came to Canada to help commemorate the centennials of the Northwest Territories and Manitoba. Her visit serves to focus attention upon the great potential of Canada’s vast northland. Frobisher Bay, located on Baffin Island within 200 miles of the Arctic Circle north of Labrador, is the largest Eskimo community in Canada, with a population of 1,200.

Several weeks earlier the triennial Synod of the Arctic was held in the Baffin Island settlement of Pangnirtung. In conjunction with the synod, Anglican evangelist Marney Patterson held a five-day evangelistic crusade during which ninety-three first-time professions of faith were recorded. Patterson went to Pangnirtung at the request of Bishop Donald Marsh. The town has about 600 inhabitants.

New English Merger Plan

When the Church of England vote last summer was not sufficient for acceptance of the plan for union with the Methodists, there was great disappointment in establishment circles. Coupled with this was some recrimination against the alliance of Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals that had caused the defeat. “Let the dissentients tell us what their scheme is,” challenged the archbishop of Canterbury.

Four of them have done just that in the 221-page book Growing into Union, subtitled “Proposals for Forming a United Church in England” (S.P.C.K., 18s.). Two of the authors are evangelicals (Dr. J. I. Packer and the Reverend Colin Buchanan), two are Anglo-Catholics (Bishop G. D. Leonard and Professor E. L. Mascall).

In approaching unity they have as a matter of principle turned their backs on bilateral schemes; they felt they had “no particular reason for including Methodists rather than others.” Their book has been built up in the face of officialdom which has “frequently told us that those who favored the [original] scheme could never be interested in alternatives.” (Methodist willingness was further reiterated last month; Anglicans are due to discuss the matter again in assembly later this year.)

The new plan outlined by the rebel four is based on four principles: integration will result in an episcopally ordained ministry; ordination is for life; there will be a single class of ministers (i.e., opposed to the South India pattern, which provided for episcopal and non-episcopal ministries); and uniting ministries cannot be regarded as separate from uniting churches. The new united church would grow up between existing denominations, through accessions from existing congregations, and would continue to grow until participating denominations disappeared and a new English church replaced them.

The new scheme has been received so far with coolness by Anglicans and has been strongly opposed by Methodist leaders.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Religion In Transit

Some 13,500 Baptist young people paraded through Fort Worth to open a two-day evangelism conference. The city dimmed its lights for the youth and they switched on flashlights for their march.

Dr. Hycel B. Taylor has been added to the faculty of Garrett Theological Seminary with the responsibility for “integrating relevant aspects of the black experience into the total curriculum.” Taylor says the black man “must redefine English so that it can authentically express his own experience. I find this can best be done using poetry.”

A common campus will be developed by the Christian (Disciples) Seminary and St. Maur’s (Roman Catholic) Seminary. The schools are located in northwest Indianapolis, separated by the White River.

A Roman Catholic lay group that claims a membership of 12,000 has expressed opposition to state aid to parochial schools. The National Association of Laymen also seeks democratization of the church and a lay voice in financial decisions.

The eighty-first international convention of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) stressed social concern by electing three Negroes to key offices this month: the chairman and a woman (the first) member of the Executive Council, and the chairman of the Commission on Social Concerns. The 20,000 delegates also voted to join the Key ’73 evangelism outreach.

World Scene

More than 2,300 made decisions for Christ at the outset of a series of Baptist evangelistic campaigns in Asia. Rallies were held in Viet Nam, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

In a significant attempt to promote authentically biblical scholarship, a new school called the Free Evangelical Theological Academy will open in Basel, Switzerland, this fall. Its founding is attributable to the thought and enterprise of Dr. Samuel Kulling, noted scholar and outstanding proponent of the reliability of the Pentateuch. A number of well-known figures in German evangelical church life have joined in the enterprise.

The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board has designated two new mission fields: the West Indies island of Barbados, and Surinam, on the northern coast of South America. The board previously announced its intention to send missionaries to Laos and now has dispatched two couples from Louisiana to Vientiane.

Personalia

The Reverend Marco Depestre of Haiti will be presented the prestigous Upper Room Award for 1970. He is a Methodist clergyman, agronomist, and editor of the French and Creole editions of The Upper Room, said to be the world’s most widely used devotional guide. Depestre will be honored at the annual Upper Room Citation Dinner, to be held in Kingston, Jamaica, October 13.

Rear Admiral Francis L. Garrett, a United Methodist, has become Navy chief of chaplains, succeeding Rear Admiral James W. Kelly, a Southern Baptist. Garrett, 51, is a native of South Carolina and has a reputation as an outstanding preacher.

Rabbi Bernard J. Bamberger of New York was elected president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, international arm of Reform and Liberal Jews.

Dr. David K. Winter has been named dean of the faculty at Whitworth College. He holds a doctorate in anthropology and sociology from Michigan State, where he has been serving as an associate dean, and is a former faculty member at Wheaton College.

Dr. William A. Morrison resigned as general secretary of the United Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. His resignation becomes effective next February 15, but he has a leave of absence in the interim. Morrison’s resignation was said to be prompted by his desire to free the church to select the leadership that will best fit developing new structures.

Jerry Ballard has been named director of communications for World Vision. He was in charge of communications for Free Will Baptist Foreign Missions.

Chaplain Arthur Weaver of St. Petersburg, Florida, received the Dwight L. Moody Award for “excellence in Christian literature” last month at the eighth annual Billy Graham School of Christian Writing in Minneapolis. Moody Press director Peter Gunther presented the award at the closing banquet, attended by 197 writers.

Retired Episcopal bishop Henry I. Louttit was married this month to Mrs. Elizabeth S. Harms of West Palm Beach, Florida. He had been a widower for two years, Mrs. Marms a widow for five years.

The Reverend James R. Staples, editor of the Arizona Baptist Beacon, was named president of California Baptist College in Riverside. Staples is a former president of the Arizona Baptist Convention.

The first black girl to compete for the title of Miss America is a Lutheran. Cheryl Adrienne Browne, 19, belongs to St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Jamaica, Queens, New York, and attends Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She was named Miss Iowa last month and thus qualified for the annual beauty pageant in Atlantic City in September.

Dr. Arthur R. McKay, a Presbyterian, was chosen president of the Colgate Rochester Divinity School complex, traditionally associated with American Baptists. McKay has been president of McCormick (Presbyterian) Seminary for thirteen years.

“All that remains of Yungay is the white statue of Christ standing with outstretched hands in the cemetery hill,” a United Methodist relief-agency executive reported from Peru. Eighteen thousand Peruvians had died in Yungay when last May’s earthquake tumbled seventy million tons of mud, ice, and water on the city.

The scene was hardly an isolated one. Forty days after Peru rocked for forty seconds, the death count had climbed beyond 50,000. With the rainy season only two months away, religious and government agencies that had leaped to Peru’s relief (see July 3 issue, page 38) were giving priority to providing shelter for more than 200,000 victims of the massive earthquake. The Soviet Union airlifted food and bulldozers.

Church aid came from as far away as Iceland and Australia, and as near as Lima. The Nordic and Evangelical Lutheran churches in Iceland dispatched five airplanes, complete with pilots, mechanics, and spare parts. Seventh-day Adventists in Australia sent $2,000.

From Lima, Adventists provided thirty-two tons of food for quake victims, and five American Lutheran medical students and volunteer nurses trekked by truck and on foot to be the first relief workers in the Andean village of Yautan. In fact, noted a Christian and Missionary Alliance minister, the immediate response of evangelicals in Lima was an impressive number of rescue teams sent to the aid of stricken neighbors.

This month missions began assessing loss of church members, buildings, and schools. The CMA reported that the tidal wave that destroyed Chimbote and its fishing fleet also demolished a CMA church, though the main church there was only slightly damaged. Three CMA church members were killed; forty families were left destitute. The tidal wave also carried off the Roman Catholic Church of San Francisco, leaving only the altar behind, and killed two American nuns who had been working at the Society of St. James clinic there.

Donald J. Sandstrom, who was in Peru when the quake hit, reports that the SDA Church, Peru’s largest Protestant church, lost half a dozen churches, about fifteen schools and chapels, and nearly thirty church members. In Trujillo, a Salvation Army children’s home was severely damaged, and a Lima Salvationist reported thirty relatives lost.

The SDA Church, one of the three volunteer agencies recognized by the Peruvian government (the others are Catholic Relief Service and Church World Service, which expects to raise $1.5 million from member churches), has poured well over $100,000 into Peru. In the first two weeks after the quake, Adventists sent 150,000 pounds of clothing, 29,000 pounds of milk, 2,000 blankets, and 300 large tents.

The Salvation Army was also on the spot with medical aid, hot meals twice a day for as many as 600, and regular religious services. “It was amazing how happy the people were while they were singing,” observed one of the Army nurses. “It was hard to realize that they had absolutely nothing to go back to.”

By mid-July, the Salvation Army had shipped 909 tons of supplies worth more than $500,000. Though many roads have been cleared, volunteers still often travel as long as nine hours by mule train to reach mountain towns. Now that the medical emergency is over, Salvationists plan to build as many as 100,000 shelters to protect homeless Peruvians from freezing night temperatures.

By no means is all Christian concern for earthquake victims expressed through church relief agencies. A number of vacation Bible schools this summer earmarked their offerings for Peruvian relief. Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D. C., collected $1,150 to buy a bus for an Irish Baptist mission in Moquegua, Peru.

JANET R. GREISCH

The Porch From Which Paul Preached?

Archaeologists unearthed a sheltered portico dating from the sixth century B. C. in Athens last month. Professor Leslie Shear of Princeton, who led the team, identified their discovery as the Royal Stoa, or Stoa of the Basileus, where an Athenian council had condemned Socrates to death for what Plato called “neglect of the gods.”

Classicist Arthur Rupprecht of Wheaton (Illinois) College further identified the site as the porch from which laughter rang when Paul proclaimed Christ to the “Court of Areopagus” (Acts 17:19, 22, NEB) as the Athenians’ “unknown god.”

To ancient Athenians, says Rupprecht, the Areopagus commonly meant the council responsible for religious affairs and related questions of justice—the same council that 400 years earlier had convicted Socrates. The steep, uneven terrain of the hill Aeropagus and its high-velocity winds, he says, “make it hard to keep one’s balance, to say nothing of listening to a speech. Therefore it is all but impossible to conceive of sophisticated Greeks retiring to it to listen to the compelling arguments of Socrates or Paul.”

Shear and his colleagues discovered the Stoa about twenty feet below present ground level, between the Athens-Piraeus suburban railway and the Athenian flea market.

An Old Problem Arises Anew

Just how old is that wood concealed beneath the ice-encrusted slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey? A search expedition hopes to find out more this summer (see May 22 issue, page 38, and February 13 issue, page 39), but conflicting evidence from samples already recovered poses questions for the scientific world.

Tests made in California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania from carbon-14 methods agreed that the L-shaped beam is from 1,300 to 1,700 years old, far too young to be part of the biblical ark. But laboratories in Madrid, Paris, and Bordeaux indicate the wood is of “great antiquity,” probably 5,000 years old. These findings were based on the degree of lignite formation, gain in density, cell modification, and the degree of fossilization—not carbon-14 dating.

One explanation for the discrepancy is that the wood was soaked in glacial meltwater for many centuries and may have been contaminated by carbon-14 more recently formed in the upper atmosphere (by cosmic-ray neutrons) and brought down as carbonic acid in rain or snow. The more recent carbon, with its higher portion of the C-14 isotope, could have affected the radio carbon dating, according to this theory.

Another possibility, reported by the SEARCH (Scientific Exploration Archeological Research) Foundation, questions the two major assumptions of the carbon-14 method. Quoting W. F. Libby of the University of Chicago, the man who developed the carbon-14 theory, SEARCH says the assumptions are: (1) for the last 20,000 to 30,000 years the amount of cosmic radiation reaching our atmosphere has remained constant; (2) the quantity of water in the oceans has not changed during the same period.

If these assumptions are incorrect, as the ark-hunters hope, there could be major ramifications for archaeology and other sciences that now rely on carbon-14 dating. By mid-July Turkish officials were still reluctant to allow explorers to climb the mountain in search of the reported wooden structure lurking beneath the ice pack at 13,500 feet.

Open Intolerance?

The Federal Communications Commission reversed the findings of one of its hearing examiners last month and refused to renew licenses for two radio stations owned by Faith Theological Seminary (see also editorial, page 17).

Dr. Carl McIntire, Faith board chairman, immediately vowed to initiate litigation to overrule the FCC’s 6-0 decision. “This decision is a stunning blow,” he said, “but we shall fight it in every proper and lawful way. We shall take it to the Supreme Court of the United States. We shall take it to the people of the country. We shall take it to the Congress. The liberals have revealed openly their intolerance of speech and of religious differences.”

Black Churchmen: Renouncing And Denouncing

Black churchmen made their presence felt this summer in church councils and conventions, in the media, and in a blunt attack on President Nixon. Two of the major issues revolved around funds for black empowerment, and a prominent national group of black churchmen threatened to renounce allegiance to the United States in a “Black Declaration of Independence.”

In Seattle, delegates to the Unitarian Universalist Association voted 426 to 399 to cut off support to the controversial Black Affairs Council the association set up two years earlier. The UUA General Assembly had approved $1 million for the BAC in 1968, payable in four annual lumps of $250,000. But financial problems forced UUA trustees to cut that back to $200,000 a year spread over five years. The angered BAC disaffiliated, and the grant was snipped out of the budget completely (see March 13 issue, page 41).

The controversy turned on black empowerment versus an integrated approach, and the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus, which boycotted the Seattle assembly, claimed “bad faith” and “backlash reaction” to black empowerment. The black caucus and the council announced a grass-roots drive among local churches to make up the money independently.

Meanwhile, directors of the newly formed National Office for Black Catholics asked the nation’s Catholic bishops to grant it $650,000 annually to provide black Catholics an official national voice in the church. If approved by the hierarchy at their November meeting, the black Catholic agency will have one of the largest budgets among domestic agencies funded by the bishops; it already is the most independent of episcopal control.

In a full-page ad in the New York Times, forty-one clergymen and civil-rights groups of the National Committee of Black Churchmen pledged they would sever all allegiance to the United States “unless we receive full redress and relief” from “injustice … and racism of white America” perpetrated against black Americans.

“Our repeated petitions have been answered mainly by repeated injury,” the declaration said. “A nation, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a racially oppressive regime, is unfit to receive the respect of a free people.”

In an attack on national leadership, the board chairman of the NAACP charged at a meeting of the civil-rights organization that the Nixon administration is racist. “For the first time since Woodrow Wilson, we have a national administration that can be rightly characterized as anti-Negro,” asserted Bishop Stephen G. Spottswood.

Despite denial of Spottswood’s allegations later by several black administration officials, the meeting left the White House and the NAACP at a virtual impasse.

Christian ‘Pilgrimage’

The National Association of Congregational Christian Churches paid tribute to its Pilgrim ancestors at its sixteenth annual meeting. A devotional service was held on the site of the memorial to the Pilgrim dead in Plymouth. Sixty-two association representatives went on a tour of England and Holland after the meeting to mark the 350th anniversary of the sailing of the Pilgrims.

Bright sunlight shone on the glittering gold and silver robes of eight bishops and the jewelled crown of the archbishop, whose swinging censer sent a jingle of chains and rich sweet smoke toward the 3,000 people gathered in New York’s Damrosch Park. The surrounding highrise apartments and city traffic provided an unusual setting for the Greek Orthodox Divine Liturgy, normally celebrated only under the ornate, icon-filled arches of Byzantine-style churches.

It was the beginning of a week of unusual changes, all part of a new commitment to face “the American reality.” Long torn by divided loyalties to Greece and America and little understood by the general public, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America moved toward “Americanization” in two major decisions. The Twentieth Biennial Congress, meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, approved a complete translation of the liturgy into English and asked for more autonomy to solve local problems. (The archdiocese is under jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and has no direct ties with the church in Greece. Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I is spiritual leader of world Orthodoxy, which includes more than 250 million communicants.)

Changes are in response to pressures such as mixed marriages, decline in the use of the Greek language in the third and fourth generations, and general social and cultural assimilation.

The archdiocese, established in America in 1921, has an ethnic constituency of as many as two million but an actual membership of fewer than 80,000. (Membership requires payment of $20 per year, usually only by the head of the family.) A generous estimate of participating members including families is 400,000. About 1,000 official delegates gathered for the first “open” congress in church history, in which a matching number of additional women, youth, and guests participated in vigorous floor debate. Excitement ran high over the spirit of the congress and importance of its decisions. It was a “definite departure from the usual”—not just a sterile organizational meeting but a charting of the future course, according to Archbishop Iakovos, 59, who has been primate of the archdiocese since 1959.

A new and urgent stress on the archdiocese is the formation four months ago by the Moscow patriarchate of an independent Orthodox Church in America, which wants to attract other ethnic Orthodox groups now divided into more than a score of denominations. Iakovos describes the Russian action as “unprecedented” and “unilateral,” though he admits it has created a totally new situation among Orthodox in America and will hasten some sort of readjustment.

“Someday either there will be one Orthodox church in America or none at all—this is very clear,” states Archbishop Iakovos. However, his plan for unity differs from that of the Russians. In 1960 Iakovos led eleven Orthodox groups in founding the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, which sent letters two months ago to all the old-world Orthodox patriarchs asking that a date be set for another Pan-Orthodox Conference to consider forming a “provisional synod” in America. If this were to prove itself a “serious organ,” says Iakovos, it might become a regular synod, in time having its own head. This is the process through which he would like to see the growth of an autocephalous church among Orthodox in America (totally independent and electing its own bishops and archbishop).

The Greek Orthodox now seek a kind of autonomy that would have the blessing and spiritual guidance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. With the approval of the congress, Iakovos will petition Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I for authority to take an official stance on such issues as abortion, birth control, mixed marriages, and the setting of the date of Easter. This authority is now held by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but such matters “cannot be met and appreciated from afar,” explains Iakovos. “My responsibilities compel me to respond to my people.”

By far more emotional and of at least equal importance was the decision for use of the vernacular (in most cases English) for the total liturgy. “This is going to give a new image and a new synthesis to the Orthodox Church. I believe it is a turning point,” states Dr. Nicon Patrinacos, author of a draft translation which, if approved by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, could be in use by next Easter. Previously “only the most limited use of languages other than Greek” was authorized for church services by the 1964 congress, though in fact their use is now more extensive. The resolution stresses the voluntary use of the vernacular as needed.

However, news reports caused an uproar in Greece, where headlines read “Greek Language Abolished.” Even an American Greek newspaper announced: “The Glorius Greek Language … Is Driven to Golgotha!” Among American-born Greek Orthodox there is a substantial conservative element that opposes the use of English in the Divine Liturgy. A strong psychological and emotional attachment to the Greek language is the cause, as well as pride over the classical Greek heritage and the New Testament’s original Greek, according to Dr. Patrinacos. Nevertheless, the measure passed by a solid majority.

Still more controversial is liturgical change. A committee was approved to examine and restructure the liturgy, in which no change has been made since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. If approved, the reform will be one of the most extensive in the history of Orthodoxy. “Of course, this is going to be a painful job. It is painful to me. But we consider it so important we must do it at any cost,” affirms Dr. Patrinacos.

Reform is aimed at creating more participation in worship by the people, and the greatest importance is to church relations with the youth. Although the serious obstacle of language has now been removed, the young must still face the identity conflict: Greek or American? In his opening address, Iakovos pointed out the divided loyalties as a major problem of the church, saying, “It is common knowledge that this cannot be continued indefinitely.” By the end of the congress the direction of the future was set toward “Americanization,” but the issue is far from resolved.

At one point in the debate a fiery emotional appeal was made by Demetrius Tsakonas, deputy minister to the prime minister of Greece, who sat on the official dais during some of the banquets and meetings. Tsakonas opposed any kind of autonomy, saying it would weaken the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which relies on the American archdiocese for much of its support. Hearty applause followed. Later Peter Marudas, a young administrative assistant to the mayor of Baltimore, retorted that “a mentality that is obsolete has no business on the floor of this council in this day and age.… I take personal exception to being told how I should vote by a foreign emissary.” The loud applause that he too received underlined the divergence of opinion on the identity issue.

Many of the older generation want to preserve in the youth the whole Greek heritage—history, culture, language, and folk dance, as well as Orthodox faith. One man who urged this cried out, “He who is not a Hellene is a barbarian.” But for most of those who care in the younger group, the goal is a “genuine American Orthodox consciousness,” as Marudas expressed it. In the emotional open discussion, Simos Demas, a college student from New York, warned that Orthodox faith must take primacy over cultural heritage: “If we don’t do that, we are going to have children that are neither Greek nor Orthodox either.” Marietta Katehis said she once had the typical attitude of young college graduates toward their Orthodox background—“either ignore it or rebel against it.” She later came into a vital personal faith and gave a moving testimony at the congress, supporting both the movement toward Orthodox unity and the use of English as ways to reach more youth.

In asking that the church adapt to the American scene, one long-haired youth in bell-bottoms threatened, “If it doesn’t, the American Orthodox Church [i.e., the newly formed Orthodox Church in America] looks very inviting.” A strong educational program was adopted for both youth and adults, following reports that the Greek Orthodox Youth of America (GOYA) had “almost reached a total state of collapse” with only 1,000 members in fifty chapters. Junior GOYA claims 3,000 members, while Greek Orthodox college groups are growing and now number 100, reaching a small portion of the 20,000 potential students.

A folk litany demonstrated by the Reverend George Paulson, a naval chaplain, created excitement among the GOYAns and a new hope for their future. With guitarists, a simple English text, and a swinging Greek beat, he passed on to the Orthodox the folk-music revolution of Catholics and Protestants. Though he has been the only priest so to experiment, others now intend to take the litany back to their youth, and Paulson has invitations to carry it around the country.

The stir created by the folk litany is an indication of the spirit of the Greek Orthodox Church. It is still “Orthos”—untouched by any liberal theological movement. The labels conservative and liberal are applied only to the issue of ecumenical action, a sphere in which Father Eusebius Stephanou, editor of Logos, is the vocal representative of the minority conservative position.

Finances remain a major problem of the church, with its Hellenic College in Brookline, Massachusetts, currently facing a $237,000 deficit for 1969–70 alone. Having recently attempted to support a full liberal-arts program, the college was directed by the congress to return exclusively to education of the clergy. A commission was appointed to study the church’s present plan of membership by payment and alternative financial systems, reporting in 1972.

In the meantime, with a $2.3 million estimated income for each of the years 1971 and 1972, the Greek Orthodox will endeavor to substantiate Orthodoxy’s growing recognition as the fourth major faith in America.

ANNE EGGEBROTEN

Nacc: ‘Involved’

The theme was a popular one: “Involved.” Yet it represented a new step for the North American Christian Convention, which shuns “legislation” on social or political issues, “heated floor debates,” and “political maneuvering.”

Proving the potential for involvement without pronouncement, the four-day gathering in St. Louis, Missouri, tackled the problems of the black American, sex education, drugs, Christian unity, and family and campus tensions. These held ground with the usually dominant themes of faith in Christ and opposition to theological liberalism.

“We have developed an unbiblical doctrine of separation. To be separated from our world is not to be isolated from it,” declared evening speaker E. Ray Jones, a minister from Indianapolis. “We have feared contamination by our world more than we have had faith in the power of the Gospel to conform our world to the image of Christ.”

The more than 22,000 people attending described themselves as “a free and open gathering of interested persons among the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ … not a delegate convention, an agency convention, nor … a convention of churches.” Congregations related to the NACC did not join the recently formed Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), instead preserving their congregational autonomy and conservative, evangelical stance. With more than 6,000 churches concentrated in the central United States and extending overseas, they support more than 600 missionaries and contribute to thirty-seven schools.

Workshops and speakers (including William E. Pannell of Tom Skinner Associates) provided in-depth study of the problems, while application and implementation was left to individuals and local churches. The teachings of Jesus were stressed as having “power to right every wrong and to meet every human situation,” with total despair marked as unbelief in the power of the resurrected Lord.

Garbc: Debating ‘Neo-Evangelicalism’

No dissent was heard as delegates unanimously approved nine resolutions opposing such actions as “dissent that disregards the laws of our country” and the appointment by the President of a Vatican envoy, but on the tenth resolution the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches split over the decision.

“Neo-evangelicalism” was censured by a majority of the 1,700 delegates meeting in Denver, but in terms not strong enough for a minority. Neo-evangelicalism was described as supporting “the tendency to interpret Scriptures in the light of science,” the “questioning or denying of the verbal plenary inspiration,” “ecumenicity in evangelism,” and “dialogueing with the objective of being non-offensive and to win by infiltration.” The resolution upheld the GARBC position of separation.

At this thirty-ninth annual conference, forty-nine new churches were added to the GARBC, making a total of 1,400 with a membership of nearly 200,000. Almost a fourth of the total budget of the churches goes to missions: $7.1 million to five boards with 1,400 active missionaries. Dr. Joseph M. Stowell, national representative (chief executive), called for raising the number of missionaries to 2,000 in the 1970s, as well as establishing up to 1,000 new churches, doubling the literature ministry, and tripling the radio ministry.

As usual, the annual conference was devoted mainly to spiritual edification in sermons, workshops, and fellowship, with about one half hour a day spent on the business of resolutions.

Brethren Commend Draft Resistance

A “peace church” has escalated its battle for peace with a new position: support and commendation for nonviolent draft-resisters.

The Church of the Brethren voted 754 to 103 to approve equally young men choosing open non-cooperation and those choosing alternative service. The decision came at the annual conference last month in Lincoln, Nebraska, after four hours of sometimes sharp debate and an attempt to postpone action. Backing for draft-resisters had been discussed but not approved at last year’s meeting.

An ongoing program to fight racism and aid minority development was also approved with $100,000 support assured for next year.

Urging members to divorce themselves from employment and investment related to defense industries, the new policy statement on war asserted military recruitment on Brethren college campuses to be inconsistent with the church’s historic declaration against war since its founding in 1708.

The 200,000-member body pledged itself “to use its influence to abolish or radically restructure the system which conscripts persons for military purposes.”

A Pearl Of Great Price

“I am very happy to be breathing free air again,” said American bishop James E. Walsh after twelve years in a Communist Chinese prison. The 79-year-old Maryknoll missionary was arrested by the Communist government in 1958, and sentenced to twenty years in jail on charges of spying. After eighteen months of interrogation he “confessed.”

Walsh, the last Catholic missionary to leave China, was placed in a hospital to recuperate after he was unexpectedly led across the border into Hong Kong July 10. The official Peking news agency, depicting the bishop as a “convicted imperialist spy,” said he had been released because of his advanced age and poor health.

Father John McCormack, superior-general of the Maryknoll Order, flew to Hong Kong to meet Walsh. After the bishop fully recovered, McCormack was to escort him to Rome for an audience with Pope Paul, and then to his home town of Cumberland, Maryland. “I found no bitterness in him,” reported McCormack. “He is surprisingly gentle and kind toward the people who imprisoned him even though he feels that the severity of his sentence was entirely unjustified.”

Meanwhile, in a cable, the pontiff told Walsh: “With great joy we have received the news of your liberation. Assuring you of our constant prayer, we send you our warmest greetings in Christ Jesus.…” In his prison isolation, Walsh did not even know that Pope John XXIII had died, and he reacted with surprise when told upon release that the United States had recently landed men on the moon.

There were nine children in the Walsh family; two became Maryknoll missionaries to China, and two became nuns. James Walsh entered the newly founded Maryknoll society in 1912—the second of its six original students—and was ordained in 1915.

Since October 3, 1969, Communist Chinese authorities have freed fourteen Britons, seven West Germans, six Japanese, and three Americans, including Walsh, according to United Press International. Twenty other prisoners, including four Americans, are believed to be still incarcerated. Hope for the release of some brightened with the freeing of Walsh.

The bishop refused to leave China after the Communists won power in 1949. He continued to say Mass and publish religious pamphlets as the Peking government escalated its opposition to Christians.

“The task of a missioner,” Walsh once wrote from China, “is to go to a place where he is not wanted, to sell a pearl, whose value, although of great price, is not recognized, to people determined not to accept it even as a gift.…”

Cumberland Presbyterians: Tenuous Ecumenical Ties

The Cumberland Presbyterian General Assembly voted 75–30 to retain partial links with the National Council of Churches. Three of the church’s boards have been involved with NCC agencies. An earlier motion to sever the ties was defeated 65–45.

The assembly, held in Knoxville, Tennessee, took action that provides for one youth delegate from each presbytery and gives youth participation privileges but not the right to vote.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church has some 65,000 members in fifteen states, mostly in the South.

Dr. L. C. Waddle, campus minister and associate professor of religion at Bethel College in McKenzie, Tennessee, was elected moderator of the assembly.

Victory For Aba

Victory—both spiritual and military—was on the minds of members of the American Baptist Association during a three-day convention last month in Louisville, Kentucky.

Resolutions were passed expressing “support for the President of the United States in his quest to bring the war he inherited to a successful end” and calling for special prayer for the President and the armed forces.

“Win the lost at any cost” was the motto offered by Dr. Corbett Mask, ABA president, and strongly proclaimed in the two major sermons on evangelism and missions.

Dr. Mask also urged that “instead of playing party politics with this Viet Nam war we should be praying for our beloved President that he would be aided by that Divine Providence that has guided America through all of her wars and brought her victory.”

The ABA includes perhaps 4,000 “fundamental, independent, missionary Baptist churches,” largely in the South.

Lutheran Sex Code: Covenant Above Contract

A barrage of applause punctuated the end of an impassioned plea by Minnesota governor and Lutheran Church in America biennial convention delegate Harold LeVander when he warned fellow delegates in Minneapolis: “We are saying that the laws of fornication are going to be wiped off the books.… We are proposing to reestablish common-law marriages.…”

Governor LeVander and his brother, Bernard, an attorney and member of the denominational Executive Council, along with others opposed to the LCA’s liberal new statement on “Sex, Marriage, and the Family,” did manage to get an amendment added to the controversial document on the sixth of seven days of debate. But the basic provisions of the 2,200-word position paper were approved intact the following day (see News, July 17 issue, page 33).

The amendment, inserted under a subhead rather than in the preamble as originally voted, notes: “Because the Lutheran Church in America holds that sexual intercourse outside the marriage union is morally wrong, nothing in this statement … is to be interpreted as meaning that this church either condones or approves pre-marital or extramarital sexual intercourse.”

Drafters of the statement (an official ten-member committee worked on it for four years) nonetheless said the document could be interpreted as permitting sexual intercourse outside legal marriage for two persons intending a lifelong commitment to each other.

Most of the sharp debate on the section on “sexual expression” turned on just what such a lifelong commitment might be and what form it might take.

Dr. Paul M. Orso, a member of the LCA Board of Social Ministry, which commissioned the document, said the basic stance of the statement would allow a sexual relationship between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse as long as a “covenant of fidelity” was made between the two partners—even though a legal marriage contract with a husband or wife was still binding. This could happen, he explained, if, for example, legal or personal reasons prevented a divorce and the covenant of fidelity had deteriorated in the legal marriage.

The final version of the section on homosexuality turned out to be more liberal than the original presented to the convention. Homosexual activity is said to be a “departure from the heterosexual structure of God’s creation” (the original used the word “deviation”). “Persons who engage in homosexual behavior are sinners only as are all other persons.…” Floor attempts to introduce amendments suggesting that homosexuals needed to be cured through medical or spiritual help were roundly defeated.

On abortion, the statement notes that “the evangelical ethic” permits a woman or couple to “decide responsibly to seek an abortion.” Although admitting that the fetus is “the organic beginning of human life” and that the “termination of its development is always a serious matter,” the document concludes that a qualitative distinction must nevertheless be made “between its claims and the rights of a responsible person made in God’s image who is in living relationships with God and other human beings.”

Time ran out before the convention could deal with the question of whether to use the title “bishop” for the presidents of the denomination’s thirty-three synods. The matter was referred to the Executive Council.

Without debate, the delegates approved denominational budgets of $33,197,800 for 1971 and $33,790,100 for 1972; this year’s budget is $32,510,800.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Not many months ago, while parked alongside one of Amsterdam’s five canals, I faced a rather unsettling thought. Soon, I said to myself, you will be facing a number of American audiences—people who more and more expect to hear something new as the reward for putting in an appearance. What will you say? My car was still grimy with the dust of driving 5,400 miles in Britain and 3,100 miles on the continent. Memories remained from every mile, memories I have not yet been able to shake off—of the months in Cambridge, the fortnight in Yugoslavia with Christian workers from Eastern European countries, of the Red-capped border guard whose refusal of an entry visa the weekend after the Black Anniversary riots deprived me of an opportunity to fellowship with two congregations in Prague.

We see the world through our own eyes, of course; this is inevitable, if not always good.

Billy Graham, heartened by the impact on European churches of his recently concluded Euro ’70 campaign, is greatly cheered by spiritual prospects there. However in the minority they may be, many Christians on the Continent have grown weary of the unending theological speculation of neo-Protestant scholars, and long to see the New Testament Gospel permitted to speak for itself once again. Theological students in Germany turned out in goodly number for Graham’s meetings, some out of curiosity, some out of qualified respect, not a few out of genuine interest. At one theological school, when a visiting American professor went out of his way to criticize Graham, the students booed and let it be known that they had been attending the services.

In Vaux, France, the new evangelical seminary is making steady gains, and in Basel, Switzerland, a new evangelical seminary will open this fall. A year from now European evangelicals hope to gather in Amsterdam for a national congress on evangelism.

Yet the time is gone in world history when evangelical Christians can come together in major gatherings without fixing attention on specific targets and observing a convinced order of priorities. Needless to say we cannot do everything, but by coordinating our efforts we shall at least be able to do some specific things that would otherwise remain undone. The world desperately needs our best efforts right now.

There is one Christian principle that the Communists seem to have deployed to their own devices, and until evangelical Christians recover it for themselves, they will, I think, suffer needless losses in today’s ideological conflict. That principle is the conviction that truth is not simply something to be known but something to be done, that is, to be translated into definitive action. Sometimes we hear it said that evangelical Protestants are long on fellowship but short on strategy, an assessment not altogether wrong. Timely and dramatic implementation seems to be wanting.

No Communist party workers today would think of adjourning a meeting without deciding how to implement particulars. Communists do not spend time deciding which events are good or bad (that distinction is too demanding for a naturalistic philosophy); they ask, rather, which developments are most useful for their purposes. Their chief concern is to make events of the day serve their goals, to make them contribute to a Communist future. Before any gathering disperses, they accordingly ask one another: What precisely is to be done, and who is to do it?

To many evangelicals, such an approach to Christian penetration might seem a bit irreverent—might imply, perhaps, a distrust of Divine Providence, a running ahead of the Holy Spirit, or a superimposition of human wisdom on the spiritual graph of history. Is this necessarily the case, however?

On the basis of present evangelical commitments, my own interpretation is no more optimistic concerning the European scene than the American. True, the opportunity for evangelical penetration is there; whether evangelicals accept the challenge is something else. Organized Christianity in Europe and in America seems to have forfeited its opportunity. Will evangelical Christians rise to theirs?

Recently the secretary for evangelism for the World Council of Churches, Dr. Walter Hollenweger, revived the kind of slander of non-conciliar ecumenists attempted by ecumenical aides prior to the World Congress on Evangelism. Evangelicals interested in the 1966 gathering in Berlin were said to be a species of Nazi Christians who wished the churches to concentrate on their traditional routines without challenging Hitler’s disregard of human rights and his slaughter of Jewry. Speaking in the United States, Dr. Hollenweger presumed to find in present-day American Christianity a division among Christians—those interested mainly in evangelism, and those interested primarily in the social implications of Christianity. Such partisan exaggeration of the differences should be viewed, it seems to me, as little more than polemical support of the kind of political Christianity often identified with conciliar ecumenism and largely responsible for disenchanting multitudes of churchgoers with institutional Christianity.

When such ugly rumors were circulated among the Berlin clergy in advance of the World Congress, several of the congress leaders made a special trip to Berlin to assure the misinformed German clergy that American evangelicals do not idolize Hitler but are devoted rather to implementing Jesus Christ’s commission and the command of God. The late Bishop Otto Dibelius, who made a courageous stand against the Communists, in due season welcomed participants in the World Congress on Evangelism to Berlin and addressed a public meeting. He told how he had urged the World Council of Churches to throw its full weight behind evangelism, and to use Billy Graham as a model in mass crusades; but the executive committee was unmoved.

It would be well if the evangelistic arm of the World Council talked more about Jesus Christ. Hitler is dead; should his ghost reappear, it will do so because the Risen Christ has been restrained or disallowed. If my memories and impressions of Europe suggest anything, it is the imperative, priority need of widespread personal commitment to Jesus Christ, and then of the translation of this commitment into all the spheres of life and culture.

Evangelical Protestants hope and pray for a better future, and that is fine, but not enough. The time has come to chart and implement specific courses of action.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Never has the church been more tempted to heed the siren call to a specious “relevance” than today. And why not? The Church finds itself increasingly shorn of influence in a world that is perhaps more confused in thinking and chaotic in action than at any other time in history.

Accused of being “irrelevant” and anxious to remedy a situation that threatens to lead to national and world disaster, the Church reacts by preaching and teaching what the world wants to hear—food for the hungry, population control, peace at any price, economic security, political realignments, an end to pollution, and a thousand and one other matters of man’s physical welfare.

The Gospel was never intended to please man; it is to save him. For the believer it requires humility, while for those who will not believe it is foolishness. We must face up to the reason that God’s Son came into the world. If his primary mission was to make the world a better place in which to live, then the Church should design its message and activities according to the humanistic concept. But that is not the Gospel.

If, on the other hand, Christ came into the world primarily to solve the sin problem with its resulting estrangement of man from God and man from man, if he came to enable those who repent and believe in him to become new creatures through regeneration, if he came to present men an alternative to perishing in their sins, then the most relevant thing the Church can possibly do is to preach Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, as man’s one hope for eternity and his assurance of inner peace right now.

That the Church is increasingly a humanistic society rather than a fellowship of the redeemed is a phenomenon all can see. I am speaking here chiefly of the church courts where politics are adopted and slogans prepared. Thank God there are tens of thousands of local pastors and congregations who are faithfully witnessing and living in the light of their God-ordained task. But let one raise a doctrinal issue in a church court, a question having to do with the basic content of the Christian faith, and he is immediately said to be out of order. He is “irrelevant” to the needs of today’s world and the business of the court.

No Christian, no church, can meet the needs of mankind by denying or playing down the simple facts of the Gospel—repentance, confession, and conversion. Those who put to one side Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, immediately lose their own relevance to a sinning and lost world.

To the Church, and to the Church alone, God has committed the message of salvation in Christ. Compared with all the drab, sordid, and unhappy news in this world, the Gospel is indeed the “Good News.” Chambers of commerce, social organizations, the local, state, and national governments—all such groups have their functions within the framework of an orderly social system. But only the Church has the message that deals with the eternal verities, those things that reach beyond the horizon into eternity. Unless individual Christians and the Church are faithful to their divine calling, “relevance” becomes a mockery.

Furthermore, the Church is not relevant when it apes the world and conforms to the world’s standards. To reject those moral and spiritual values that are clearly stated in the Scriptures—things having to do with sexual purity and interpersonal relationships—is to destroy not only the foundations for living but the hope of Christ’s redemptive work. Man does not break God’s commandments; they break him.

For the Church to seek relevance by giving top priority to social, economic, and political issues is as ridiculous as for a man trained in the intricacies of cardiac surgery to spend his time digging ditches. But church leaders have so directed most activities that today the difference between Christianity and humanism has vanished, as far as many people are concerned.

The problem lies in a failure to differentiate between the spiritual calling and message of the Gospel and the individual Christian’s responsibility in the social order of which he is a part. The Church is called to preach redemption through Christ and then man’s obligation to his fellow man. There is a divine sequence that requires regeneration as the foundation for Christian living and witness. Otherwise the difference between Christian and pagan vanishes.

From many a pulpit the call to repentance and faith is muted. Instead, men are exhorted to become involved in the latest humanistic endeavor, with no mention of their prior personal relationship to Jesus Christ. Little wonder that as a result, the Church has increasingly become irrelevant at the very point where its message is desperately needed. No blessing can be expected where the clear admonitions of the Gospel are compromised or denied. The Apostle Paul tells us to beware lest we hold a form of religion but deny its source of power—the redeeming blood of Christ.

Many good people are unwittingly crossing the line into a humanistic concept of life. Physical and environmental needs abound on every hand. Compassion demands that we do something about the plight of those who face the experiences of our contemporary world as sheep without a shepherd. The Church is in this world to minister to man’s spiritual needs while we Christians must show our compassion by concern for the material needs of those around us, all in the name of and for the glory of our Lord.

But in all of this we should remember that we have no right to claim for all mankind those blessings God has reserved for his own. Because these blessings are reserved for the Christian, our first obligation is to heed God’s priorities by putting him and his righteousness first in all things.

I know well that some resent the recurring emphasis of this article, and I have no desire for a self-imposed martyrdom. But some Christians today must be willing to draw the opposition’s fire by shouting from the housetops the danger that the Church is being diverted from its primary mission. On every hand we hear calls to “involvement” and “relevance,” but we see little evidence of the Spirit’s blessings on those activities that make the Church a part of the dying world order or compromise its message for the sake of the world’s acclaim.

This has nothing whatsover to do with methods. It may well be that what the Church needs most today is to throw away its programs while it puts Christ at the center of its message and objectives. The Church may well get out of stately buildings and into the streets and marketplaces with the message of God’s saving power through his Son. Times change, and with them methods not only can but should change. The trouble is that today the message is being changed or omitted, and that is fatal. Christ came into the world not to please the world but to redeem it, and that message must be central to the Church’s approach to the world.

L. NELSON BELL