I know what you are doing; I know that you have the reputation of being alive, even though you are dead! So wake up, and strengthen what you still have, before it dies completely.

—Revelation 3:1–2, TEV

John’s divine message to the church at Sardis was appropriated by Ralph Abernathy last month as a relevant word for the American religious establishment. Abernathy told the General Board of the National Council of Churches that failure to press more vigorously for social justice is a fatal symptom.

The board members gave Abernathy a warm welcome to their two-day meeting in Washington and expressed their gratitude for his prodding address. Actually, however, they didn’t need to be reminded of the moribund condition of American conciliarism, for the main item on the agenda was an attempt to rescue the perishing.

A fifteen-member task force had been named in January to come up with alternatives to the present NCC. The group, “after two intensive two-day meetings,” came up with a thirty-five page report giving four options. The Reverend Arie R. Brouwer, an executive of the Reformed Church in America who serves as chairman of the task force, said the report “was generated almost entirely in the meetings of the group. Through it all we kept scrawling ideas and observations on pieces of newsprint which were then taped around the walls.… The material thus generated was put into the hands of Dr. David Hunter.… From it he compiled the report.”

Hunter is deputy general secretary of the NCC and is considered by some to be heir apparent to the American conciliar throne.

Perhaps more important than the options suggested (the final plan will doubtless be an adaptation with features from two or more of the proposals) were these recommendations from the task force: that the General Board establish “a probable trend” at its September meeting in Phoenix, and that a “National Ecumenical Consultation” be called during November or early December of this year “to be attended by accredited representatives of member churches and their boards and agencies, non-member churches eligible for membership and all interested church-related agencies and recognized special-interest groups.”

The recommendations were endorsed by the board along with a proposal that the board commit itself to a particular plan for a new conciliar structure by next January.

The options developed by the task force were simply labeled A, B, C, and D. Option A seeks the widest possible membership potential at the expense of continuing programs, with “para-ecclesiastical bodies” eligible along with churches. Option B is also a decentralized approach, but only churches would be eligible for membership, and programs would be operated more along present lines. Option C is the most radical, inasmuch as it ties the ecumenical concept entirely to social action. Option D is described as the most flexible plan, with the General Board given more power and member communions expected to increase their undesignated giving substantially.

The only action or reaction the board took on the options was an informal straw vote that showed that denominational staffers tended to favor Option A, pastors went for Option B, while laymen seemed to prefer Option D.

The board meeting was held on the weekend of Father’s Day, which also was the longest day of the year. That fact provided a coincidental contrast to the day on which the task force first met, because on that day, Brouwer noted, the sun went into eclipse.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Board Actions

The new shape of American conciliarism could conceivably preclude pronouncements on social issues. But until that is decided, the National Council of Churches is continuing to crank them out. The NCC’s General Board, at its June meeting in Washington, urged the U. S. government not to sell military planes to Israel and criticized labor unions that bar minorities.

The board, noting that some California grape-growers have signed union contracts, lifted its boycott on table grapes but recommended that church agencies and “men of good will” buy only those table grapes that come in boxes with union labels.

A first reading was given to a new policy statement entitled “Responsible Family Planning.” The document asserts that “voluntary sterilization and abortion have been made safe through new medical techniques. Every decision for an abortion is a heavy responsibility, because potentially human life is present. It is always better to prevent unwanted conceptions. However, when unwanted conception occurs and the woman strongly feels she cannot or will not accept responsibility for a child and is unwilling to bear a child to be placed for adoption, she must be free to decide in consultation with her physician.”

The Board approved a number of personnel separations necessitated by declining revenues and dissolved the NCC Division of Christian Unity for the same reason.

Lamenting The Tie That Binds

The “frightful irrelevance” of the Church of England was mourned by one of its own bishops in a television interview seen by millions last month. The Right Reverend Trevor Huddleston, bishop of Stepney in London’s East End, advocated severing the link with the state that gives his church “a bogus security and a position in society and opportunities which it has not earned.” Disestablishment would not create a spiritual revival, he said, but it was a necessary first step.

“Basically,” went on the 57-year-old Anglo-Catholic, “the Church of England has never thought it necessary to give. It is a very unsacrificial church to live in.” All the paraphernalia of the institutionalized church and “the clutter of legality” sap much of its energy, he said.

Huddleston, a former bishop in Tanzania, had earlier been declared persona non grata in South Africa for his vocal opposition to apartheid, expressed also in his best-seller Naught for Your Comfort.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Religion In Transit

Two noted evangelical leaders, Harold J. Ockenga and W. A. Criswell, have issued a call for a Conference on Biblical Prophecy to meet in Jerusalem June 15–18, 1971. Carl F. H. Henry is chairman of the program committee.

New York voters, in a primary election last month, defeated both the senate sponsor of the state’s liberal new abortion law and the assemblyman who cast the deciding vote for the bill.

Richmond College, Canada’s first independent Christian liberal-arts college, graduated its first class. One of the ten students awarded bachelor of arts degrees was Antonio Pulla of Ottawa, who scored in the upper 2 per cent among 30,000 Canadian college seniors who took comprehensive examinations.

Washington City Presbytery is closing its experimental Market Place Ministries in suburban Virginia. The experiment was a highly-touted effort aimed at showing the church’s relevance for apartment dwellers. It included a theater and child care programs. The closing was reported as having left the presbytery with debts of $845,000.

Decision, the monthly periodical published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has passed the 4,000,000 mark in circulation in the United States and Canada. The total, largest of any religious publication in the world, does not include additional circulation for British, Australian, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese editions.

Evangelical Christians in Turkey are enduring continued persecution for their faith. A German, a Turkish, and three Finnish Christians recently were held and beaten by the police for distributing Christian literature near Izmir. The foreigners had come to Turkey as tourists, confident that Turkish law would guarantee freedom of religion.

The U. S. Supreme Court announced it had agreed to rule on the constitutionality of federal construction grants to church-related colleges.

Coburn Hall Chapel of Virginia Union University, Richmond, was badly damaged by fire. Although the cause of the fire was not immediately determined, officials expressed confidence that it was not the result of student unrest.

Ninety-three arrests were made at the Pentagon last month as the Episcopal Peace Fellowship attempted to hold a series of five daily masses there. Among those taken into custody was the Rev. Malcolm Boyd. The fellowship may seek a court test.

The National Labor Relations Board reversed a longstanding policy last month and asserted jurisdiction over labor relations in private colleges.

The four-year-old Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, was notified last month that it has been accepted into associate membership of the American Association of Theological Schools. The move is the first step toward accreditation.

Deaths

ROBERT W. ROOT, 55, noted professor of religious journalism at Syracuse University and more recently at Eisenhower College, and onetime public relations director of the World Council of Churches; in Seneca Falls, New York, of a heart attack.

A. A. ALLEN, 59, controversial head of a noted faith-healing ministry; in San Francisco, as a result of “acute alcoholism and fatty infiltration of the liver,” according to a coroner’s report.

Personalia

Dr. Allix B. James, president of Virginia Union University, was elected president of the American Association of Theological Schools. He becomes the first black ever to be elevated to the post.

Dr. S. T. Jacobson of Saskatoon was elected president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada. He was chosen on the fourth ballot to succeed the retiring Dr. Karl Holfeld.

Dr. Orley R. Herron, Jr., was named president of Greenville (Illinois) College, operated by Free Methodists. He is a 1955 graduate of Wheaton College and has been serving as assistant to the president of Indiana State University.

The Reverend David J. Draewell will become president of North American Baptist Seminary on September 1. He will replace Dr. Frank Veninga, who has resigned to become executive vice president of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

A 43-year-old Jesuit priest, the Reverend John McLaughlin, won the Republican nomination for the U. S. Senate from Rhode Island. The Democratic candidate will be incumbent Senator John Pastore, also a Catholic.

Check one:

□ The Lutheran Church in America is moving toward greater unity with other Lutheran bodies in the United States.

□ The LCA is rapidly pulling away from its more conservative sister Lutheran churches in this country.

□ The LCA is moving toward greater unity with Roman Catholics and certain liberal, non-Lutheran Protestant denominations.

Answer: Probably all three are correct, judging from action taken at the LCA’s fifth biennial convention in Minneapolis June 25–July 2.

The 695 delegates representing the 3.2 million members of the nation’s largest and most liberal Lutheran church: shattered a tradition in American Lutheranism by overwhelmingly voting to allow the ordination of women; appeared by mid-convention to be moving toward the adoption of a liberal position statement on sex, marriage, and the family that would be the first such document officially approved by a major denomination acknowledging that under exceptional circumstances sexual relations outside legal marriage may not be sinful; became the first of the three major Lutheran bodies in the United States to approve a far-reaching report on confirmation that departs from tradition by allowing communion for children before the rite of confirmation; and heard a report endorsed by a team of ten Lutheran and ten Catholic theologians expected to signal a breakthrough in ecumenical relations because it could lead to intercommunion between the two faiths for the first time since the Reformation.

Further, in authorizing a commission to analyze the function of the LCA’s structure, the convention provided that the study is to be coordinated with similar studies in the Lutheran bodies. (The Church Council of the American Lutheran Church, meeting the week before the LCA convention, proposed that the ALC, the LCA, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod develop common organizational structures or administrative lines that would lend themselves easily to joint activities.)

That decision and the one permitting the ordination of women are likely to be viewed favorably by the ALC when it holds its national convention in San Antonio this fall (the ALC Church Council voted 24 to 4 in favor of the ordination of women; the convention will vote on the matter in San Antonio).

But the trends within the LCA apparent at Minneapolis during one of the hottest June weeks on record will doubtless distress many within the Missouri Synod Lutheran church—the most conservative of the three.

The vote on ordination, approved quickly after short debate and with only several baritone “nays,” drew immediate fire from Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, president of Missouri Synod. Preus, who awaited the verdict in the hall of the auditorium, told reporters that he was surprised by the lack of opposition to the move, and that he felt it would be “detrimental” to inter-Lutheran unity.¹It wasn’t until July, 1969, at its convention in Denver, that the Missouri Synod granted woman’s suffrage in the church. Preus indicated that the Missouri Synod probably would discuss ordination of women at its 1971 convention but not vote on it.

There are already several women candidates for the ministry enrolled in LCA seminaries, and at least one could be ordained this year, according to an official. Ordination of women has been permitted in several European Lutheran churches for some time, and Presbyterians and Methodists, among other American denominations, ordain women.

The Roman Catholic-Lutheran dialogue report caused the Reverend John Reuman, a Lutheran theologian and a member of the dialogue team, to remark: “It’s been said facetiously that Lutherans and Catholics could have intercommunion before all Lutherans could.”

The LCA and the ALC have declared pulpit and altar fellowship allowing intercommunion. Last year the Missouri Synod approved pulpit and altar fellowship with the ALC, after that body had approved it, but the relationship does not exist between the Missouri Synod and the LCA.

The Lutheran-Catholic dialogue report was made by a Catholic theologian who is an authority on Martin Luther, Dr. Harry McSorley, currently a visiting professor in Toronto, and Dr. Warren A. Quanbeck, professor at the Lutheran Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

McSorley said it is now “theologically possible and ecumenically desirable” for the Catholic Church to recognize the validity of Lutheran ordination. The dialogue report is not yet complete, he added, but he intimated that it would be ready for discussion by the nation’s Catholic bishops at their November meeting in Washington, D. C.

The traditional Catholic view has been that the Lord’s Supper is not a sacrament within the Lutheran church because Lutheran priests are not validly ordained by a bishop in the historic episcopal succession. But, said McSorley, “although ordination of ministers of the Eucharist by bishops was the almost universal practice in the Church from very early times, it is impossible to show that such a church order existed … from the earliest times.”

“Furthermore,” he continued, “there have been several well-documented cases during the Church’s history in which priests—not bishops—have ordained other priests to serve at the altar.” He added that Vatican II refused to accept a report of some 100 bishops who contended that Protestant Christians “simply do not have the true sacrament of the Eucharist because the ordinations of their ministers are defective.”

The consensus of the dialogue team is that Lutheran-Catholic intercommunion could take place in “pastoral emergencies.” Quanbeck and McSorley agreed, however, that full communion between the two bodies would not be an immediate consequence of this new recognition.

The statement on sex, marriage, and family evoked lively debate, and several amendments were introduced before final voting. The statement is akin to study papers recently introduced by the United Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ. Spokesmen said that while information had “passed freely” among drafters of the three papers, the LCA statement was written independently.

The LCA statement begins theologically but lets situation ethics determine the rightness or wrongness of sexual acts. The section on marriage stresses a “covenant of fidelity—a dynamic, lifelong commitment of one man and one woman in a personal and sexual union.” The statement also recognizes the need of the sanction of civil law or marriage, but notes that it is not a complete criterion for marriage: “The marital union can be legally valid yet not be a covenant of fidelity, just as it can be a covenant of fidelity and not be legal contract.” An amendment added: “The existence of a true covenant of fidelity outside marriage as a legal contract is extremely hard to identify.”

The statement: does not condemn homosexual expression but does recognize it as “a deviation from … God’s creation”; approves abortion; says that in divorce and remarriage the church should be concerned with the “potential” of a new marriage; affirms that there is “no theological reason for opposing a marriage between persons of different racial or ethnic backgrounds.”

Dr. Robert J. Marshall, 50, of New York, was reelected to a four-year term as president of the denomination on the first ballot. Marshall was first elected LCA president in 1968 to fill the unexpired term of the late Franklin Clark Fry, the first president of the LCA, which officially emerged as a denomination in 1962. Also reelected on the first ballot was treasurer Carl M. Anderson of Rahway, New Jersey.

In his president’s report, Marshall noted that disagreement over social issues had brought a “complete switch” within Lutheranism in a century’s time: “Some Lutherans who wish to consider themselves as conservative tend to align with revivalism rather than with the Lutheran Confessions [while] … those who want to consider themselves as liberals may align with social-action projects of other denominations.…”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

A Reformed Pact

Representatives of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the International Congregational Council released the wording of an “act of covenant” which will merge the two groups into a new structure. The formal union is to take place on August 20 in Nairobi, Kenya. The resulting organization is to be known as the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

The text of the covenant is as follows: “We, the representatives of Reformed, Presbyterian and Congregational churches in all the corners of the earth, holding the word of God given in the Bible to be the ultimate authority in matters of faith and life, acknowledging Jesus Christ as head of the church, and rejoicing in our fellowship with the whole church, covenant together to seek in all things the mind of Christ, to make common witness to His gospel, to serve His purpose in all the world, and, in order to be better equipped for the tasks He lays upon us, to form this day the new World Alliance of Reformed Churches. Lord, keep us faithful to yourself and to our fellowmen. Amen.”

Conservative (Progressive) Baptists

Conservative Baptists heard one speaker at their annual meetings last month at San Jose, California, suggest: “Let’s be progressively conservative.” Delegates seemed agreeable enough.

They toned down a law and order amendment. While opposing violence, they asked for understanding of “those who riot” and for the relating of the Gospel to them. Delegates also opted for “biblical” rather than “unstinted” loyalty to government leaders. They also decided to censure President Nixon for his appointment of a Vatican representative. And they unanimously approved a floor resolution calling for greater involvement of “younger men” at policy making levels. After emotionally charged appeals from young delegates, they also turned down a move by some critics to vote disapproval of a convention youth musical program.

The delegates started machinery to merge their home and foreign mission units. Both groups showed progress. Last year’s income was $1.6 million for home missions (100 missionaries), $3.5 for the foreign agency (478 missionaries).

EDWARD PLOWMAN

Christian Reformed: A Classis In Contempt?

The 1970 Synod of the Christian Reformed Church indicted its Classis Chicago North for failure “to bring its policy and practice into harmony” with the denomination’s race policy. A 1968 decision declared that no persecution or disadvantage to self or institution warrants the denial to any of the church’s members of full church fellowship and full privilege of the church’s related schools because of race or color.

The 1970 ruling was a response to an appeal from the Lawndale Christian Reformed Church, which arose out of mission efforts among Chicago’s blacks. For five years the all-black congregation had tried unsuccessfully to enroll its children in Timothy Christian School in nearby Cicero. The board of Timothy had repeatedly refused admittance on the ground that racism in Cicero would bring violence on pupils and buildings. The church membership of board members—though not the board as such—is within the disciplinary jurisdiction of Classis Chicago North.

The 1970 decision that “failure to comply will cause Classis Chicago North to be considered in contempt of Synod and in open disregard of the judgment of the Church of Jesus Christ” was adopted by a 120-to-20 vote in a secret ballot. It came after four hours of discussion in which the delegates were warned that if black children enter Timothy Christian school in all-white Cicero “the people of Cicero will not hesitate to bomb it.”

The 148 delegates from the United States and Canada, meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 9–20, rejected a request that the denomination’s blanket exclusion of lodge members from church membership be altered to leave the question to the decision of each congregation. The Synod did recognize, however, that some of its longheld objections are no longer valid and appointed a study committee to formulate its anti-lodge position more adequately.

In a significant decision, approval was granted to the formation of a Calvin Graduate Studies Association, a corporation that will offer graduate degrees in various fields. Although independent, the Graduate Association will supplement denominationally owned Calvin College, which offers no advanced degrees.

Recognizing the realities of homosexuality, the Synod set up a committee to study the matter in an effort to help the church formulate a definitive position.

A request from a youth group of the church to address the Synod during its official sessions was rejected. The students in turn rejected the proffered permission to speak in the student commons to those delegates who cared to hear an after-dinner speech. It had been ruled that no delegate was obligated to remain to listen.

Through its fraternal delegate to the Synod, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church warned that its relationship to the CRC might break off if the CRC did not arrest its liberal tendencies. One such liberal tendency mentioned was the “propriety of even considering affiliation with the World Council of Churches.” The Synod expressed its own concern in a letter to its sister church, De Gereformeerde Kerken of the Netherlands, over that church’s easy tolerance of such views of Scripture as those taught by the Dutch theologian H. M. Kuitert. One delegate pointed out to the OPC fraternal delegate that the CRC also had its concerns and pleaded for OPC patience.

In other actions the Synod: elected the Reverend Henry De Mots of Chicago Synod president, denied candidacy to a Calvin Seminary graduate more for his Pentecostal views than for his practice of such views; chose the Reverend William P. Brink to succeed Dr. Ralph Danhof as stated clerk; and appointed Dr. Melvin Hugen of Honolulu to teach pastoral psychology at Calvin Seminary.

On the second time around, Dr. Dewey Hoitenga was appointed guest lecturer in ethics at Calvin Seminary. Hoitenga, a pacifist, is committed to the search for a Reformed peace witness.

JAMES DAANE

Paisley Does It Again

Of the forty candidates contesting the Northern Irish constituencies,” said a commentator just before Britain’s elections last month, “at least half have no business in the twentieth century, far less the House of Commons.” The electors of Antrim North made their own comment on that when Ian Paisley, Protestant Unionist, again beat the party machine and won the right to represent them in the Westminster parliament. His three colleagues (one each in Ulster, England, and Scotland) fared rather less well and averaged only 10 per cent of the poll.

When the result was announced, Paisley postponed the traditional courtesies to election officials by first giving thanks to Almighty God. At Westminster he will join the Roman Catholic Bernadette Devlin, who, to her own admitted surprise, was reelected for Mid Ulster with an increased majority. The confrontation was delayed when her appeal against a six-month jail sentence for her part in Londonderry riots was dismissed. Her imprisonment touched off a new wave of riots in Ulster.

Paisley’s triumph was only one in a night of surprises as votes were counted in the 630 seats. Opinion polls had given Conservative leader Edward Heath²Heath served as news editor of the Anglican Church Times in 1948–49. as little chance as they had given Harry Truman in 1948; sitting premier Harold Wilson, 55-year-old pipe-smoking Yorkshire economist, had romped jocularly through the campaign as though it were a formality.

Instead of a renewed mandate for Labour, however, voters gave the Conservatives a thirty-seat overall majority in the legislature. Ironically the last result, from the far-flung Western Isles of Scotland where Calvinism is still a formidable force, rejected both the incumbent who had served them for thirty-five years and his Tory opponent in favor of a Scottish Nationalist. In the lowlands a Free Kirk minister, representing the same party, achieved a mere 6 per cent of the votes.

Generally the small parties did badly. Liberals lost more than half their Commons members. Communist support, never great, continued to decline, and nowhere obtained more than ludicrous results; in what was formerly their most promising constituency (West Fife) their votes amounted to less than 3 per cent.

It was no night for independents either. Colin Jordan, leader of the Nazi-style British Movement, failed miserably in Birmingham. In a neighboring district a spinster lady with the label “Independent for Jesus and His Cross” did only fractionally better. Pop idol Screaming Lord Sutch, making his third attempt at a time when eighteen-year-olds had just been given the vote, gathered a paltry 142 votes.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Covenant Church: Smooth Sailing?

Sailing through volatile issues in a “very healthy interchange” among older and younger delegates, the Evangelical Covenant Church of America approved four resolutions on Christian social action and elected Dr. Lloyd C. Ahlem of Turlock, California, to the presidency of North Park College at its annual meeting there in Chicago.

Ahlem, head of the psychology department at Stanislaus State College, succeeds Dr. Karl A. Olsson, who resigned after 10 years as president to become director of leadership training for Faith at Work, in New York.

Representatives of the 68,000-member church issued two resolutions reaffirming their “anguish over the continuation and expansion of the war” in Indochina and encouraging “all belligerents” in it to conform to the Geneva agreements concerning prisoners of war.

The validity of both conscientious objection to war and conscientious objection to a particular war were upheld in a statement expressing support for any of its members who hold such convictions. The Reverend Clifford W. Bjorklund, secretary of the church, declared that this does not mean denominational approval of selective conscientious objection.

Two resolutions encouraging environmental stewardship and caution in the use of drugs and alcohol were adopted also.

In other decisions, a Sunday was set for an appeal for funds for black Covenant members, and 300 acres of land no longer being used were voted to be returned to Indians of the Thlinket village near Yukatat, Alaska. A program of combined evangelistic and social action was initiated, making September through December, 1970, a special period dedicated to emphasizing these concerns.

Southern Presbyterians: Cooler In Memphis

During the first business session of the 110th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., the retiring moderator, Dr. R. Matthew Lynn of Midland, Texas, was given a gavel and plaque in recognition of his service. The plaque had been broken in shipment. “This,” teased the new moderator, Dr. William A. Benfield Jr. of Charleston, West Virginia, “is symbolic of the church you passed on to me.”

“I hope you have greater success than I did in putting the church back together,” Dr. Lynn responded.

Big “Benny” Benfield—he’s six feet four—apparently did. Unlike the 1969 assembly at Mobile, Alabama, where arguments got acrimonious, this year’s six-day meeting in Second Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, was characterized by heated words but not by bitter feelings. “There is no yielding on the part of either wing of the church, but there is improved understanding,” conservative spokesman Dr. Robert Strong of Montgomery, Alabama, reflected after adjournment. And much of the credit goes to Benfield, commissioners of all camps agreed, for his fairness as presiding officer.

The issue to which many commissioners devoted round-the-clock attention up until the moment it was settled—for now—was a proposed restructuring of the church’s fifteen synods into eight larger synods. Most of the present synods are statewide governing units. By a vote of 213 to 203, after nearly three hours of debate, the assembly put off a decision on restructure until 1971.

So crucial was the issue that many ultra-conservatives had said they would start a withdrawal from the 953,000-member denomination if synod restructure was implemented this year.

Many saw the need for larger synod units for more effective operation of the church. The objection was to alleged inequities in the proposed plan that some opponents contended would strengthen the so-called liberal camp’s control of judicatories. For instance, the proposal would have given the 24,000 Southern Presbyterians in Missouri or the 32,000 in Kentucky more votes in the General Assembly than 42,000 in Alabama or South Carolina’s 71,000.

The assembly returned the restructuring matter to a special committee for “restudy in its entirety,” for further consultation with individuals, local congregations, presbyteries, and synods, and for resubmission to next year’s General Assembly at Massanetta Springs, Virginia.

Other issues that generated considerable debate were abortion and drinking.

“Willful termination of pregnancy by medical means on the considered decision of a pregnant woman may on occasion be morally justifiable,” the assembly decided. A paper prepared by the denomination’s Council on Church and Society noted, “There is no consensus in the Christian community about when human life begins,” and emphasized that the rights of the mother, her family, and society, as well as the rights of the fetus, should be considered in each case.

Possible justifying circumstances, the assembly said, would include the “socio-economic condition” of the family (which apparently meant a state of poverty in which another child would be a financial burden), medical indications of physical or mental deformity, conception as a result of rape or incest, and conditions under which the physical or mental health of either mother or child would be threatened. At one point, the “socio-economic” reason nearly was knocked out by the assembly.

High overhead a skywriter etched a pair of American flags against the bright blue heavens. Down below, a crowd was filing out of Shea Stadium, where Billy Graham’s five-day crusade had just ended. The aerial artistry provided one of several interesting sidelights during the evangelist’s return engagement in New York and offered an appropriate if unscheduled prelude to “Honor America Day.”

The crusade on the home field of the baseball Mets and football Jets came off without any disruptions. The only “dissent” came in a trickle of applause when Graham spoke of Woodstock and referred to the possibility of a marijuana “smoke-in.” Graham later suggested to newsmen that the reaction merely indicated that there were indeed young people in the audience who needed to be reached with the Gospel.

The crusade apparently attracted an even greater percentage of young people than Graham’s ten-day Madison Square Garden effort last year, when up to 70 per cent of the audience was under twenty-five. He attributes the increasing appeal to young people to their “vast and desperate search.” He says that today they are “more interested in religion, probably, than any generation in history.”

A total of about 137,000 heard Graham at Shea Stadium. Of these, some 6,000 responded at the close of the services to make decisions for Christ. This is about the same ratio as last year, but more of those who responded this time were young people.

More black people also turned out last month than in 1969. Graham said that checks showed about one-fourth of the total audience was black.

As usual, Graham chose simple sermon themes. On the opening night he issued a national call to repentance. “I believe that we Americans have a choice to make,” he said. “I believe we’ve reached another point in the history of this nation where we’re going to have to choose. And the decision we make is going to decide whether we remain a free democratic society. Are we going to continue to serve the strange gods in our midst, the gods of sex, pleasure, materialism, drugs, these other gods to which we’re giving our allegiance instead of the true and living God?”

Graham came to New York well aware of the acute conditions¹Advertisements for the New York State Lottery currently appeal to the problem syndrome, deceptively holding out the promise: “Hit it once and your troubles are over.” that plague the city’s eight million residents. He cited figures that show that in horse-and-buggy days traffic moved across Manhattan at eleven miles an hour, compared with seven now. He urged a change of heart as the initial step to social recovery, but added that the challenge does not end there. “You may have to help remove your neighbor’s garbage,” he said seriously.

Graham told reporters in a precrusade news conference that there were so many big ethnic blocs in New York that he was amazed that the city managed to live together under any kind of political leadership. (One psychological factor in the unity that does exist is probably the diversion provided by the city’s professional athletic teams. The day the crusade opened, the world champion Mets, after a slow start this year, seized the lead in the East Division of the National League.)

The June 24–28 crusade operated on a $500,000 budget. Some $140,000 had been left over from last year. The finance committee ran into a bit of a bind when a steady, drenching rain kept most people home one evening (some 7,200 did sit out a brief service). The committee had counted on a good offering that Friday night.

Four of the services were put on videotape in color and will be shown across North America in September.

Music for the crusade was provided by the Graham team regulars (soloist Bev Shea, pianist Tedd Smith, organist John Innes, and choir director-song-leader Cliff Barrows) plus a number of guests: Ethel Waters, Norma Zimmer, Myrtle Hall, and Anita Bryant. The choir numbered between 2,000 and 3,000 voices.

Graham appeared to be in full vigor and spoke easily and well. He said he is finding it easier to get his message across these days and suggested that the eagerness of today’s youth may have a lot to do with it. A young woman reporter asked the 51-year-old evangelist if he was letting his hair grow, and Graham said it was merely a matter of his not having seen his barber for a while. Before he left New York, however, a television makeup man sheared a few locks.

The opening service at Shea Stadium was plagued by the roar of jets taking off from nearby LaGuardia Airport. Thereafter, thanks to a change in the wind, they operated in the opposite direction and were not nearly so distracting. The noise of subway trains also was something of a problem in some parts of the stadium.

The local sponsoring committee had debated whether to rent Shea Stadium or go back to Madison Square Garden. Graham said afterward he was glad the committee agreed to go outside. Although the stadium, which could hold 60,000 or more, never was full, for four of the five services it did attract nearly twice as many people as the Garden can seat.

One enterprising group spotted an opportunity in the empty seats of the huge upper deck. They folded up particular seats whose colored undersides then spelled out “God Lives.”

The closing service included a minute of silent prayer for peace. All during the service a line was emblazoned across the bottom of the big stadium scoreboard: “Pray for Peace.”

Among dignitaries who sat on the platform during the last service was Marvin Watson, former U. S. Postmaster General and White House aide to then President Johnson. Graham also introduced Bill Brown, who has been the key team man on the New York scene for the past two years, and crusade chairman Fred Russell Esty. Esty, chairman of the United States Banknote Corporation, told the crowd that “during these past few days we have seen thousands respond to the invitation to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. For them it is just the first step toward a life filled with meaning and purpose. As individuals they can never be the same. The new life they live in Christ will affect their families, their churches, and their communities.”

Some 1,000 churches in the metropolitan area participated in the crusade, and according to Graham about 400 of these “worked real hard.” Hundreds of local ministers gave active support.

Several New York reporters questioned Graham about his association with President Nixon. One wondered whether the identification tended to hinder the evangelist’s efforts to reach youth, and Graham replied he did not think so. Another asked whether Nixon’s appearance on the program at Graham’s Knoxville crusade in May gave a “political tone” to the meetings. Graham declared “it would be tragic” if a president could not make a public appearance without its being considered political.

After the New York meetings Graham left for Washington to take part in this year’s special Independence Day celebrations in the capital, and from there he was to fly to Tokyo for the Baptist World Congress. The evangelist said he planned to take several speaking engagements on university campuses this fall, and vowed to preach the same message.

“I do not have any new message to bring,” he said. “The message of the Gospel is unchanging in any generation. And an evangelist especially is narrowed as to what he can say—very limited—because he’s limited to the proclamation of the Gospel … the kerygma, which is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and man’s response to the love of God. It has to be said in a thousand different ways and put in different contexts, but it’s still the same message.… Many people have said that this message is irrelevant and out of date, and yet thousands of people are coming.…”

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Extra Messages

An anti-abortion group distributed mimeographed literature outside Shea Stadium before the closing Sunday-afternoon service of Billy Graham’s New York crusade. The literature charged that the evangelist had “hedged” on the abortion issue. It said “the hour of decision is here” and called on him to “make a decision for Christ.” The group, which calls itself “Christians for Life,” cited Exodus 20:13; Job 31:15, and Luke 1:43 in support of its stand against abortion.

Graham had been asked about abortion at a news conference prior to the crusade. His reply was that he was against abortion except in cases of incest or rape, or where the life of the mother is in jeopardy.

A group of young hippie types passed out literature that urged support of the grape strike, but made no reference to Graham.

Blessitt Is The Cross-Bearer

“It blows people’s minds” to see someone carrying a six-by-ten-foot, eighty-pound cross through town, says the Reverend Arthur Blessitt. The young, mod minister to hippies on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip has been walking since Christmas—at a rate of one conversion per mile—to dramatize his burden for the nation’s spiritual needs.

The seven-month march will end this month in Washington, D. C. There Blessitt and the thousands of “concerned Christians” he expects to join him will march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol and back for twenty-four hours of prayer and fasting on the monument grounds, the scene of many recent demonstrations.

There will be no program, he says—“Christians have been programmed to death”—just prayer for national revival. Soon after noon on July 19, when the prayer day will end, Blessitt will lead a brief service to challenge Christians to “share Jesus” during an intensive, forty-day evangelistic effort.

Along the way, Blessitt has been holding evangelistic rallies and urging Christians to meet him at the monument—but not with empty hands. “Everyone comes to Washington wanting something,” he says; “Christians need to come and give something.” So he is asking Christians to bring—or send—two gifts for the nation’s needy. Those who reach the capital may find a bloodmobile available for a third gift.

Blessitt began walking against the advice of three doctors who said he’d never make it (he’d had four minor strokes in three years). When a fourth gave him a fifty-fifty chance and said the worst end would be death, Blessitt decided “that ain’t so bad” and set out.²His wife, with their three children (the youngest was six months old when they started), is driving a ’55 Ford pulling an Airstream trailer; four members of his rock group, the Eternal Rush, help carry the cross.

Blessitt’s ministry to young people at rock festivals (see December 19, 1969, issue, page 34), His Place (a “gospel nightclub” on the Strip), and halfway houses prompted his concern for their parents—“You gotta reach parents to catch the kids ahead of time”—and for national leaders. The government sets up committees to study national problems, Blessitt says, but their reports never offer the “solution found in changed men, new hearts, new birth.” He hopes his cross-country walk will publicize that solution.

JANET ROHLER GREISCH

Revolution In Korea

With about 20,000 new professions of faith made in three weeks, Dr. John Haggai’s speaking tour through Korea has earned its name of the “Seventh Decade Spiritual Revolution Crusade.” The Atlanta-based evangelist’s meetings drew a total of 270,000 persons, creating crowds too large to permit walking forward at the invitation. Instead, follow-up cards were distributed, resulting in an overflow of local churches. Seoul’s Yung Nak, largest Presbyterian Church in the world, reports more than 2,000 new members from the campaign.

University and college students were the most responsive in professions of faith, with over 13,000 of the decisions coming from a campus attendance of 88,000. Haggai spent a week each in Pusan, Taegu, and Seoul, ending June 14.

A Christian Passover

Most Christian evangelistic organizations readily admit that their outreach to Jewish people is sadly lacking. Beth Sar Shalom, a Hollywood, California, branch of the American Board of Missions to the Jews, has developed a fascinating new means of reaching Jews with the Gospel and also of showing Christians their Judaic heritage.

This new ministry is built upon observance of the traditional Jewish Passover service and is held in churches throughout the Los Angeles area. The Passover commemorates the night when the angel of death took the lives of all the first-born in Egypt, sparing only those households over whose doors the blood of a lamb had been sprinkled. The observance prefigured the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper.

Plotters In The Pews

After six nights of rioting in the University of California at Santa Barbara collegiate community of Isla Vista, two hundred angry student leaders and professors rallied in the United Methodist University Church to plot strategy for continuing their protest. Nearly three hundred dissidents had already been arrested after indictments against fifteen persons and two John Does for burning the Bank of America branch February 24 brought renewed fire-setting and rock-throwing antics.

Demonstrators accused police of brutality ranging from billy-clubbing to knocking down doors to appprehend curfew-violators. University Methodist pastor, the Reverend Dan Kennedy, said, “We’re getting documentation and I can tell you we’ve got plenty of lulus.…” Police officials claimed that only necessary force was being used to enforce the law.

The church sanctuary rally resulted in an overwhelming vote to defy the 7:30 P.M. curfew with a sit-in in Perfect Park, adjacent to the Bank of America building. That evening one thousand demonstrators taunted 300 khaki-clad law-enforcement officers surrounding the park and cheered as 375 protesters were escorted, dragged, or wrestled to buses bound for jail.

Aware of the presence of television and press representatives, the students yelled, “The whole world is watching!” Many made obviously phony grimaces of pain for cameramen as they were carried off, flashing the peace sign. “Make the World Safe for the Bank of America,” cried the crowd. They sang the theme from Marat/Sade, “We want our revolution and we want it now!”

The sheriff’s men methodically made arrests until darkness necessitated use of a tear-gas fogger to disperse the remaining activists and observers on the park’s fringe. A din of obscenities, a hail of three-inch white patio rocks, and a series of trash-can and automobile fires continued until roving patrols cleared the street by 11:30 P.M. A CHRISTIANITY TODAY reporter saw no improper conduct by law-enforcement officers during this particular four-hour confrontation.

ROBERT L. CLEATH

Scripture In Public Schools

Back to the Bible may be Washington’s answer to the rising crime rate. The District of Columbia school board is considering proposals for a “character-building” program to begin this fall. Teaching the Bible as literature in English courses and instituting an elective comparative-religion course are prominent parts of the package. The plan has a “very good chance” of passing, according to Director of Curriculum Mrs. LuVerne C. Walker.

“Our ideal heroes have been wrong—somehow we have to reverse this process,” states the Reverend Andrew J. Fowler, chairman of the Committee of 100 Ministers, which originated the proposals as part of an anti-crime campaign involving police, parents, churches, schools and news media. “Unless we can do that, they may as well stop talking about more police,” says Fowler. “We produce more criminals than the guards can arrest.”

Approval is certain for such aspects as studying the lives of “heroic individuals,” memorizing wholesome poems, using more religious music, and teaching “eight positive attitudes.” “We plan to revitalize and reactivate the character-building which is actually inherent in all parts of the curriculum,” affirms Mrs. Walker.

The textbook committee is expected to add The Bible Reader (Cromwell, Collier, and Macmillan, 1969) to its approved text list to increase use of the Bible in English courses. However, the comparative-religion course will be more difficult to adopt because of administrative and financial problems.

The D. C. drive is one of a number of efforts at teaching religion being explored across the nation. Extensive field testing of other programs will begin this fall in Pennsylvania and Florida, and a revised curriculum is already under way in Nebraska.

Senate chaplain Dr. Edward L. R. Elson observed, “My mail indicates a great host of people across the land are fed up with battles going to the minorities. They want a return to the theistic presuppositions on which they feel our country was founded.”

ANNE EGGEBROTEN

Oppression In Southern Africa

Lesotho, the small black nation (formerly known as Basutoland) within white-ruled South Africa, used to be a refuge for the suffering political and religious leaders of South Africa. Not any more. The politicians have been arrested and may soon be sent back to South Africa. And churchmen in Lesotho, whose populace of nearly a million is predominantly Christian, are no longer at ease.

Straining of church-state relations began early this year when Christian leaders strongly opposed the prime minister, Chief Leabua Jonathan, for seizing power. The chief had declared invalid the results of an election that favored the opposition. He also arrested the opposition leaders, put the king under restriction, declared a state of emergency, and suspended the constitution.

In mid-February, five men representing the Christian Council of Lesotho handed the chief a protest note, but also offered their services in bringing about reconciliation between him and King Moshoeshoe II. The chief flatly rejected the reconciliation plan. He promised, however, that the state of emergency would not last long and that the constitution would soon be restored.

But by Easter things seemed to have moved from bad to worse, and Christian leaders were ready for a more drastic step. A strongly worded statement, signed by Protestant and Catholic leaders, was to be broadcast over the government radio. The government refused. The statement was recently published by Seek, the house organ of the Anglican Church of South Africa.

After declaring that they represented “the great multitude of Christian believers in Lesotho,” the leaders said: “We feel the deepest pain and grief and have a sense of shame on account of all the forms of brutality and cruelty which in recent days have scarred the good name of our … nation.”

The statement continued: “We express what we believe to be the spirit of Christ, and the conscience, in Christ’s name, to bring to an end all such forms of cruel and violent handling of our fellow human beings.

“We beg all Christian people to pray earnestly that this will be done. And this we do solely in the name of him, our Saviour and Lord, who declared that the way we treat our fellow men is seen in his eyes as the way we are treating our Lord himself.”

ODHIAMBO W. OKITE

An Essay In Fantasy

When the book first appeared, many considered it an elaborate hoax, though it had come from one of Britain’s most respected religious publishers and had been serialized in the country’s largest-selling daily. Then a group of evangelicals threatened prosecution for blasphemy, the newspaper (probably under pressure) published a reply from a prominent critic, and the whole thing blew up.

The volume was The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, the author John Allegro—who until this year lectured in inter-testamental studies at Manchester University. He is a onetime Methodist lay preacher.

His latest thesis, which runs to 350 pages, is based on the assumption that Christianity was a colossal deception to hide from all but the elect few the erotic and narcotic mushroom cult. Veneration for Amanita muscaria in the ancient Near East, declares Allegro, was combined with phallic fertility rites, a point he pursues at inordinate length.

Leading linguists, historians, botanists, and other scholars have scoffed at the book, some calling it an “essay in fantasy.” Doubleday will introduce the book in America next month.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A Chaplain Resigns

Prayers were said last month in his former Church of England diocese of Southwell for the Right Reverend Gordon Savage, who resigned last Easter for health reasons. The bishop thereafter took up a one-year appointment as chaplain in Tenerife, Canary Islands, but controversy followed newspaper reports that accompanying him to Tenerife as housekeeper was Miss Amanda Lovejoy, 31, former topless dancer in a London club.

Bishop Savage flew home for several meetings with the archbishop of Canterbury, whose “pastoral advice” he had sought, at the same time protesting that it was an innocent friendship. He subsequently resigned his chaplaincy.

In a statement issued through his lawyers, Bishop Savage said that his choice as housekeeper of Miss Lovejoy, “with whom and with whose mother I had been closely acquainted for some years, appeared then, as it does now, to be a matter which was the private concern only of myself.” Bishop Savage, 55, is a former secretary of the strongly evangelical Church Society.

Roadside Murder

Early last month two men in civilian clothes and apparently under the influence of alcohol stopped a panel truck in Lucena City, Philippines and fatally wounded the 40-year-old missionary driving it. One of the assailants shot Nolan Willems in the abdomen for blocking his attempt to approach the two Filipino pastors riding with Willems.

The alleged assailants were later identified as the local police chief and a companion who fled after firing the fatal shot.

Willems and his wife had been missionaries in the Philippines with Far Eastern Gospel Crusade since 1961. He was a graduate of Wheaton College, with a degree in sociology, a member of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Fresno, California, and the father of four children.

“I have been everywhere for help and have found none. Now I have come to the church. If you can’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll do.” This was the plea uttered by the intoxicated man as he stood in the church office, his clothes wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his face revealing deep distress. The church did help him, and arranged to reunite him with his family. But too often the churches have shown a judgmental or condemning attitude and have closed their doors in the alcoholic’s face, pretending his problem was none of their business.

The American Medical Association has defined alcoholism as a disease, and no one who encounters a person with an advanced case of alcoholism can have any doubt that the person is sick—physically, psychologically, spiritually, socially, domestically. The Church has believed, since the time of the apostles, that Jesus came to make men whole. Certainly the alcoholic is in desperate need of that wholeness.

A simple working definition of an alcoholic is: a person who is dependent upon alcohol. Or to put it another way, he is a person who has lost control of his will in the matter of drinking. A non-alcoholic can choose not to drink; but for the alcoholic, it is not at all that easy.

Today we have an estimated 6½ million alcoholics in the United States, and alcoholism is one of the nation’s major health problems. I do not see how any church can any longer ignore it. It is high time that we look upon the alcoholic not as a hopeless problem but as a human being who is ill and treatable. He is not necessarily a moral delinquent.

When a man or woman who has failed in some other way turns to the church, usually that person is received with Christian love and forgiveness. Should not this same consideration be offered to the alcoholic? He desperately needs help, not condemnation. Love and understanding can help him; scolding only drives him further into his frustration.

According to information released at the Utah School of Alcohol Studies, 70 per cent of all victims of alcoholism seek help from clergymen. In dealing personally with an alcoholic, if the pastor does not feel qualified to give counsel, he can at least assure the person of God’s love and forgiveness and then refer him to other sources of help in the community.

A church can become involved in the work of local agencies that deal with education and information on the problems of alcohol and referral of people in need. Many churches support financially the program of the American Council on Alcohol Problems, which has state affiliates.

The church can help in other ways, too. It can furnish a meeting place for Alcoholics Anonymous and similar groups. It can accept alcoholics in worship services and fellowship groups, and place known alcoholics on the congregation’s responsibility and prayer lists. The use of Scripture can prove invaluable to both the alcoholics and those who attempt to help them. The church has a particular opportunity not always available to other helping agencies in that it can take the initiative in offering help to those in need.

After the church makes known its interest and offers help through counseling and referral, many people who need help and who otherwise would be very difficult to reach with the Christian message will come to the pastor’s study. Attention must first be given to the hurts and problems that led a person to seek help. Later the counselor can probably turn easily to spiritual matters and present the message and claims of Christ. I have seen two alcoholics enter the Christian ministry after they were helped and had committed their lives to Christ.

Help can come to the alcoholic through various religious approaches. One is the sudden confrontation with Christ resulting in conversion, which, of course, brings a definite change in life and attitude. When the power of Christ is brought to bear on a willing and ready heart, there is deliverance. Many churches, and all gospel missions, are able to cite examples of this deliverance. Another approach is a combination of applied Christianity and modern healing techniques. A third approach is through the self-help groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Another such group now being effectively used is Alcoholics Victorious, which deals not only with sobriety but also with spiritual growth. The home address of this Christian organization is 28 South Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois.

Every church library should have good books on alcoholism and methods of prevention and help. Examples are: Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic, by Howard J. Clinebell, Jr. (Abingdon), Ministering to Alcoholics, by John E. Keller (Augsburg), Marty Mann’s New Primer on Alcoholism (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), Helping the Alcoholic and His Family, by Thomas J. Shipp (Prentice-Hall), and God Is for the Alcoholic, by Jerry G. Dunn (Moody). In a long-play record entitled “God Is Not Dead” (Word Records), Gertrude Behanna tells an exciting story of her deliverance from enslavement by alcohol. The credit she gives her Lord is refreshing and inspiring.

Each year there are summer schools on alcoholism to which a church may send its pastor or interested lay persons. Outstanding are: the Utah School of Alcohol Studies, held at the University of Utah; the Rutgers Summer School of Alcohol Studies (formerly the Yale School), held at the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and an International School held at the University of North Dakota. There are others; last summer there were three in North Carolina alone. Local councils on alcoholism will be glad to furnish information on educational opportunities like these. Information is available also from the National Council on Alcoholism (2 East 103rd Street, New York, N. Y. 10029) and the American Council on Alcohol Problems (119 Constitution Avenue Northeast, Washington, D. C. 20002).

Obviously, programs of prevention are also very important. Young people must be instructed about the dangers of alcohol.

A church that is spiritually alert and ready to meet its evangelistic responsibility will offer its love, understanding, facilities, and services to persons whose unmanageable desire for alcohol has enslaved them, and who cannot attain permanent sobriety by mere resolution. We would do well to follow the example and spirit of Jesus, who said: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me; he has sent me … to proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to let the broken victims go free.”—CARLTON C. BUCK, pastor, First Christian Church, Eugene, Oregon.

Not long ago i was visiting in a modern city hospital. Looking for the pathologist, an old friend of mine, I found him performing an autopsy. A little later I went to the surgical department, where, in various rooms, surgeons (most of them friends and former colleagues of mine) were performing operations.

What a vast difference in these two departments! The difference was evident in equipment, techniques, and objectives, but most of all in the persons central to the drama: those in the autopsy room were dead; those in the operating rooms were alive.

In the autopsy room the pathologist wore gown and gloves to protect himself. In the operating rooms the surgeons and nurses took every aseptic precaution possible to protect the patients. In the one room, all hope for life had been extinguished. In the others, life and hope still existed.

In all the world there are but two kinds of people, those who are spiritually dead and those who are spiritually alive. The spiritually dead have been born but once. Those who are spiritually alive have been born twice, the first time physically, the second time by the power of the Spirit.

In the autopsy room there were no vital signs—no pulse, respiration, blood pressure—and all efforts directed toward beautification of the body had long since ceased. In surgery, on the other hand, every effort was being made to maintain those bodily functions that are vital to life while the surgeon carried out his work of correction and restoration.

Jesus came into the world primarily to make it possible for the spiritually dead to become spiritually alive. He made it plain that the new birth is an absolute necessity if man is to enter his eternal Kingdom. The matter of this second birth, or regeneration, is the very heart of the Gospel.

Why, then, do we spend so much time trying to beautify the spiritual corpse? Why do we attempt to make non-Christians act like Christians?

The answer should be obvious. We either do not understand or do not accept the fact that until men have received new life through the Spirit of the living Christ, they are dead, “dead in trespasses and sins.” For physicians to spend their efforts on the dead would be to waste time and deny their primary calling. But much that goes on today in the name of “Christian” activity is simply an attempt to beautify and dress up the dead. For often the Church, called to proclaim new life in Christ, is proclaiming reformation instead of regeneration—a transformed society without transformed people. This cannot be achieved.

This is not the whole problem. The failure of Christians to grow and develop spiritually is the burden and heartbreak of conscientious ministers and a continual drag on the church. Regeneration is the first step, but sanctification (growth in grace, and knowledge of God, his Word, and his will) is a vitally important second step.

But the primary reason for this particular article is to stress that vast difference between the spiritually dead and those who have been born anew. Paul tells us that the spiritually dead drift with the world, conform to the world, obey Satan, do not respond to God’s truth, follow evil impulses and imaginations. They stand under the wrath and judgment of God, are dead in their sins, are aliens to God’s kingdom, and are the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:1–5).

For the spiritually dead there is but one hope: to be born again into a new life. This depends solely on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

When the troubled women gazed in fear and perplexity at the empty tomb, they were asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Similarly we may well ask ourselves today, Why are we ignoring the one source of life, the living Christ? It is he who has defeated death. It is he who has the power to change the spiritually dead into living believers who can say with the Apostle Paul “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Why is this truth of a new life in Christ ignored by so many, even within the Church? Perhaps the answer is spiritual blindness—“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God” (2 Cor. 4:3, 4).

Life from the dead is the outcome of the Cross for all who believe. Regeneration is the objective of the gospel message. The new birth is an imperative, not an elective. If we reject or ignore it, the Gospel has no significance.

Let’s face it: without regeneration the world is at best a vast morgue with connecting autopsy rooms. Our Lord’s words, “Leave the dead to bury the dead,” has deep significance for us today when there is so much pressure to make the Gospel “relevant” by denying the necessity of the new birth and thereby denying the reason for the Cross and the validity of Christ’s death.

For every person there comes a time when death calls and loved ones are left behind. Confronted by death and the grief death carries in its wake, Jesus said to the sorrowing Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25, 26).

This is the same One who spoke to Nicodemus of the new birth, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). He is the One who again and again said that his mission was to give eternal life to repentant sinners. This truth of spiritual life from spiritual death, of a new and everlasting life to be found in Christ, is the very heart of the Gospel—and we are selling it for a mess of secular and materialistic pottage!

Jesus, soon to leave his disciples, prayed for them, “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15). They were to be in the world but not of it—salt amidst decay, light in the world’s darkness. It is to this task that Christians are called: to be men and women who show by their lives that something wonderful has happened to them, a supernatural transformation that brings life from the dead. The analogy between spiritual and physical death breaks down completely at the most important point. Those in the morgue are irrevocably dead, but for the spiritually dead there is the offer of life now and for eternity—life from the dead, life through Jesus Christ.

That is the gospel message!

L. NELSON BELL

Where Have All The Pirates Gone?

Last week I rediscovered a poem called “God’s Funeral,” in which Thomas Hardy pictures the passing mourners who

Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: …

“How sweet it was in years far hied

To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,

To lie down liegely at the eventide

And feel a blest assurance he was there!”

An unblest assurance-company agent (forgive the allusion; the point comes later) happened to call that evening. My needs were modest: a policy against fire, flood, burglary, and personal accident. The agent decided that, bless my innocent heart, I had set my sights too low, and with an earnest altruism rare in the knockabout world of commerce threw in other exigencies at no extra charge.

I am now protected against (pass the magnifying glass) thunderbolts and earthquakes, civil commotions and labor disturbances, and much more besides. Included is a splendid and sonorous cover against “Malicious Persons acting on behalf of or in connection with any political organization” (are you thinking what I’m thinking?). Oh yes, and my servants may breathe easily in case of “personal injury, disease or damage to grooms, coachmen and gardeners, but excluding chauffeurs.” A sour note, that—what if my driver is struck down by a wasting pestilence?

Finally, I will lose nothing in the event of “military or usurped power.” It should comfort me, but it makes me vaguely uneasy. Do they know something we don’t? Have they done a deal with the coming junta? And why, I demanded of a dazed agent, was I being given no protection against pirates? Everybody in the old-fashioned policies lived in mortal dread of them.

But more than pirates had been downgraded. Gone too were those explicit references to “Acts of God.” It seemed that my upstart company, having heard testimony from Altizer and Hamilton, had pronounced that no longer was there an Almighty actuarial hazard.

Even Thomas Hardy, anything but a stout believer, was stunned by the thought of a divine demise, and in his poem had bystanders looking on disbelievingly at the cortege, and crying:

… This is a counterfeit of straw,

This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!

I’m toying with the idea of picketing that insurance company’s headquarters. Any reprisal by its atheistic executives and my burliest grooms and coachmen will cause a civil commotion. May as well make use of that insurance.

EUTYCHUS IV

Thrills From Frankfurt

I have just now read “The Frankfurt Declaration” (June 19). I am amazed. I am thrilled. I am excited. I am thankful.

I am amazed at the apparent widespread doctrines being refuted in this declaration. While I knew these existed, I had felt they were held by only a few people. I am thrilled because men have taken the stand on world missions advocated here.… I am excited because I feel such a stand as this will increase mission activity all over the world and our Saviour will be glorified as men come into a personal relationship with him. I am excited, moreover, because I had felt that too few people were keeping the Great Commission in perspective, but I see that it is being done here. Finally, I am thankful because God is using men of such influence to take the stand these people have taken. I am thankful because I know that God will use efforts born out of this kind of conception.

JAMES FORTINBERRY

Turkey Creek First Baptist Church

Plant City, Fla.

The joy with which I read Dr. McGavran’s introduction to the Frankfurt Declaration was followed by a deep disappointment as I read the text—disappointment that a statement so excellent, so timely, and so necessary for this day was marred by so devastating an error as the proclaiming of baptismal regeneration.…

The fourth [and] … sixth declarations … are explicit in their proclamation of baptism as an essential step in the salvation of an individual. The third and fifth declarations imply the same thing. If these statements referred to the baptism with the Holy Spirit by which we are placed in the body of Christ, they would be entirely proper. However, the context of the fourth declaration makes it obvious that the reference is to baptism with water.

ROBERT H. MILLER

Blacksburg, Va.

In my judgment this is a very crucial matter. I should like very much to have many of my friends see this article, and I fear they might not have access to it unless it is made available in some fashion.

CLAUDE H. THOMPSON

Candler School of Theology

Emory University

Atlanta, Ga.

• It is available from Dr. McGavran at Fuller Theological Seminary, 135 North Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, California 91101.—ED.

Anatomy Of Cure

The editorial “America on Its Knees?” (June 19) is one of the finest I’ve read. The diagnosis is accurate and the cure apparent.

GLEN H. SCHISLER

Orlando, Fla.

“America on Its Knees” is a masterpiece.

A. B. MIZELL

Warner Memorial Church of God

North Little Rock, Ark.

Forward, March!

Your magazine is rendering a service in calling attention to the growing apostasy in Christendom. It is rendering a disservice in some of your editorial remarks of personal viewpoints that are certainly not representative of most evangelicals. What troubles me is your failure to give a balance on our military posture.

From Eutychus (June 19): “So the honest youngster seeking a career, even if he doesn’t mind killing, must turn sorrowfully away from the armed services.” Is he implying the alleged dishonesty is greater than in our advertising business world, and that killing under constituted authority is wrong? From the editorial, “America’s Young People”: “When they cry out for the ending of the war and the beginning of peace, and label American participation in Southeast Asia immoral, they are doing the cause of evangelical Christianity a service.”

These unfortunate remarks are mistaken, probably unrepresentative, and undoubtedly have the wholehearted approval of atheistic Communism. The Lord himself sanctions our armed forces in Luke 11:21 and 22, and the Apostle Paul enlarges on it in Romans 13. Since when is it “immoral” for the strong to help the weak?

PAUL F. LOIZEAUX

Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired

Parkton, Md.

Who’s Who?

“Billy Graham in ‘Big Orange Country’ ” (June 19) emphasizes the reason why many of us who once followed and supported Graham with enthusiasm have become almost totally disenchanted with his ministry. Graham has in the past number of years become so closely identified with the American government that he has lost his ability to speak with any prophetic power at all. I cannot conceive of a situation which is more a denial of the Gospel of Christ than to remove the biblical witness of “Thou shalt not kill” and then encourage sympathy and understanding for national leaders who go directly in the face of Scripture.… One wonders if Graham has been blinded to a whole area of biblical truth and in what order he places the priorities of Jesus Christ vs. the American war policy.…

A black evangelist friend of mine recently commented, “It is very dangerous to have Graham and Nixon together, because when they are Nixon becomes an evangelist and Graham becomes a campaigner in support of him, using the Bible to whip support for the President. It makes us wonder if Nixon knows how to be President, and if Graham knows what evangelism is!”

DON BLOSSER

Akron Mennonite Church

Akron, Pa.

Switching The Blade

John Evenson’s review of The Cross and the Switchblade (June 19) both disappointed and disturbed me.

First of all, “New York’s Finest” are neither portrayed as “buffoons,” nor do they run around like Keystone Cops. Their actions and words, to be sure, show a callousness and disdain toward the people of the ghetto and toward anyone who would help them without a police baton in hand but Chaplinesque—never.

Secondly, Mr. Evenson casts a scornful eye on Pat Boone’s representation of Dave Wilkerson. He suggests that Mr. Boone’s clean-cut image is inappropriate and that his lines resort to simplistic formulae. And yet, anyone who has ever seen the real Dave Wilkerson in action knows that the screen’s portrayal of the man corresponds to reality, however disappointing this is to Mr. Evenson.

Thirdly, and certainly most importantly, your critic flatly states that “the film will probably not communicate the reality of God’s love to today’s movie audiences who happen to be young, hip, and at least honest about their unbelief.” He bases his contention on his feeling that the conversion of Nicky Cruz and others like him lacked reality credibility, and attractiveness. But again I must disappoint Mr. Evenson, for the scene was shot the way it happened with Dave Wilkerson and Nicky Cruz looking over the director’s shoulder. To say that it lacks credibility is to say that the Reverend Nicky Cruz—the former gang warlord—is not really an example of the way God transforms lives.

ROBERT D. DOOLING

Sherman Oaks Presbyterian Church

Sherman Oaks, Calif.

My real concern about the piece is the schizophrenia with which CHRISTIANITY TODAY is so obviously plagued. Whoever hires staffers or makes assignments surely ought to brief their people on the official stand which I thought the magazine took as regards the authority and power of the Word. Evenson’s ridicule of “magic words” seems incompatible with much of the content of the editorial pages.…

Mr. Evenson will no doubt be disappointed to learn that Loew’s Theaters has just released a story to the effect that The Cross and the Switchblade finished its first week at Century 21 in Anaheim, California, breaking all records of the four-year-old house with the exception of one set by The Sound of Music. It also outgrossed Hello Dolly, Patton, and Paint Your Wagon at Hollywood first-run houses for the same week.

Furthermore, half the audience is youth right off the boulevard, whose comments about the picture repudiate the conclusion that “the film will not communicate the reality of God’s love to today’s movie audiences.”

DICK ROSS

President

Dick Ross & Associates

Hollywood, Calif.

Bridging A Moat

In “The Inspiration of Scripture” (June 5), it appears that breadth of treatment confused a narrow field of inquiry.…

Since inspiration is wholly on the divine side of the Word, the whole fields of textual criticism, transmission, and translation are extraneous to the subject, as important as they are. God was, and is, surely at work in these fields too, but that work is not inspiration but preservation.

And since on our side of the autograph Scriptures, the extant manuscripts (of the New Testament) peter out around the middle of the first century, we can only bridge the few remaining years by faith. But this is true of every discipline which seeks to know God. Every approach to him comes to a moat with which God has surrounded himself—only to be crossed by faith.

ELDON W. KOCH

Hillcrest Heights, Md.

“A” From Abc

I want you to know that I very much appreciate the careful way in which James Adams has reported our convention (“American Baptists: A Conservative Mood,” June 5). I think that you have given a good interpretation of it.

We are much better off for having had Tom Kilgore for our president for the past year. Roger Fredrikson will be another good president, and we are grateful for him.

R. DEAN GOODWIN

Executive Director

Division of Communication

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

A strange phenomenon has overtaken much of Christendom in the past ten years. The churches are being acted on by both centripetal and centrifugal forces: the one is bringing the churches together into union schemes such as COCU; the other is dividing the churches over matters of dogma, ethics, politics, and social action. At stake is the direction Protestant Christianity will take in the seventies and its ability to remain an effective evangelizing agent in a world gone mad.

Probably no other movement expresses more strongly the centripetal urge than COCU. The nine major denominations (African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ], the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.) now involved in this merger effort would together form the largest Protestant church in the United States.

Tragically, the union arrangement is a jumble of conflicting and dissonant elements. The Plan of Union must be judged a document of expediency in which major precepts are diluted. The new church could turn out to be a sterile hybrid if its proposed form is not changed substantially. The price of the merger may be the integrity of the denominations that enter it. (It can be argued, however, that some of the denominations involved in the merger have already squandered their heritage so recklessly that little is left to be lost through union.)

The doctrinal commitment of COCU is fuzzy and weak, and what it fails to say is even more important than what it says. Some non-negotiable tenets of the Christian faith have been sacrificed to facilitate union. For example, in the COCU view of Scripture the Bible “witnesses to God’s revelation.” It is not called God’s revelation—it merely “testifies to God’s mighty acts.…” It is “inspired writing bearing witness to God’s acts in history.” The failure to speak prophetically and decisively on that which must undergird all other doctrinal beliefs virtually guarantees that the new church would not have a sound theological foundation.

The mood and movement toward union are offset by intradenominational struggles. These have set in motion a centrifugal force that could stop COCU’s advance or result in a number of strong continuing churches outside the united church. In recent years the “establishment” of most denominations has been controlled by theological liberals. Of late, that control has been challenged in several denominations as concerned laymen and some clergy have become alert to the dangers and prompted to action. At the United Presbyterian General Assembly, for instance, the liberals were unable to defeat a motion that sought to acknowledge that “lust, adultery, prostitution, fornication, and the practice of homosexuality are sin.” (But the vote margin was razor thin—356–347). On the COCU document there was “the most significant dissent to date by any participating COCU body.”

At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., the new moderator, a strong proponent of COCU, slid into office by only a narrow margin. A proposal that the denomination drop its approval and support of Colloquy magazine, an increasingly offensive, sexually oriented, and morally debilitating publication, was turned back by a ten-vote difference. Both actions indicate a strong, if not decisive, groundswell against humanistic and liberal policies.

These meetings of the northern and southern wings of the Presbyterian church reveal the deep cleavages that divide the churches into two almost even parts. The cleavages are not limited to matters of sexual ethics: generally the advocates of COCU are the same people who voted for Colloquy and against the United Presbyterian statement that adultery and the practice of homosexuality are sin.

It appears that laymen in many denominations are reacting to the unfortunate trends in their churches by asserting what they believe, by withholding financial support, and sometimes by bypassing the institutional church. They will not be satisfied unless there is a swing toward biblical orthodoxy. If this does not come about, then the united church that is the goal of COCU, if it eventuates, will probably find itself considerably short of its projected 20–25 million adherents. For many will stay out of the new denomination, either to join other churches or to form continuing bodies of their own for the preservation of their historic witness.

The New Ecumenical Road

Before long, the National Council of Churches will become something other than what it now is. A special NCC task force has proposed four possibilities for a successor organization (see News, page 37). As part of the restructure process, a National Ecumenical Consultation will be called late this year. The time-table that the fifteen-member task force has suggested calls for a definite proposal to be formulated by next January and responded to by member churches by next June.

Thus far, there has been no evidence that the conciliar planners will take biblical priorities into account any more seriously than do the present prime movers. The task force seems to be laboring with the same old presuppositions that have alienated millions of American Christians during the last twenty years. Why don’t conciliar proponents realize that Christian unity is an illusion unless it is grounded genuinely on the revelation that defines that unity?

A Place To Stand

Some criticize Billy Graham for not being involved enough in the great problems of our time. Others are now saying that his identification with President Nixon makes him too much of a partisan on the issues that separate the American people. Where is he to stand?

Despite his spectacular evangelistic successes in the last twenty years, Graham makes his share of errors in judgment. One error he has not made, however, is to divert his attention from his calling, that of proclaiming the Gospel. Unfortunately, Americans today are so absorbed with problems that one can hardly say anything without being labeled a representative of this or that political viewpoint. Graham is a victim of this situation: no matter what he says or does, he will be accused of tipping his hand.

Graham does not want anyone to feel sorry for him because of this “fate,” but his friends, at least, ought to be aware of the pressures that are upon him from all fronts. His most expedient course would be to let up on evangelism to cater to this or that cause.

A particularly gratifying aspect of his five-day crusade in Shea Stadium last month was the large proportion of black people in the audience. One authoritative estimate was that they numbered as high as 25 per cent. The closing service was held, perhaps appropriately, on “Black Liberation Sunday.” As Graham told newsmen before the last service, “the only truly free people in America are those who know Christ.”

Defining Conscientious Objectors

The Supreme Court has opened the way for a spate of legal suits filed by citizens who would like to escape the rigors and hazards of military service. The court decided that the ethical and moral views of Elliott Welsh II, based not upon religious convictions but upon “reading in the fields of history and sociology,” entitle him to exemption from military service. The chief justice and Justices White and Stewart dissented.

Once again it seems that the Supreme Court has assumed legislative prerogatives that belong only to Congress. Justice White in his dissent pointed out that Welsh is “one of those persons whom Congress took pains not to relieve from military duty.” The draft law clearly says that exemption must be based on “religious training and belief” and that this excludes “essentially political, sociological, and philosophical views, or a merely personal code.” If the Supreme Court thought Congress erred in this legislation, it could have declared the draft law unconstitutional. This it did not do. Instead it interpreted the law to make it say what Congress did not intend it to say.

Formerly draft boards found it difficult to determine which men were genuine conscientious objectors on a religious basis. Now the court is asking the boards to determine, without adequate guidelines, whether thousands of additional young men who seek deferment deeply and honestly hold the convictions they claim. Draft boards have no special insight by which they can discern the honest from the dishonest.

We are deeply troubled also by the fact that intelligent, articulate students will gain an advantage over less well educated, less articulate, less well read men whose pleadings will be in vain. Members of minority groups, especially, are likely to be disadvantaged.

Although the court has closed the door to further rulings in this murky area until fall, we hope it will speedily remedy the ambiguity of the present situation either by nullifying the draft law or by upholding what Congress intended and plainly said in that law.

The Hard Hats

The latest polarizing symbol on the American scene is the hard hat. Designed to protect the heads of construction workers, these safety helmets have now come to represent a state of mind as well as a class of people. “Hardhattism” took a violent turn when construction workers in New York, provoked by an anti-war demonstrator who spit on an American flag, went on something of a rampage in the name of patriotism.

Hard-hat workers need to be better understood. By and large they do not originate in the more affluent sector of American life, as do so many radicals.

They usually come from homes where the pay check was earned by the exercise of the hands as well as the head. In short, they have struggled for what they have. They respect the system because it has rewarded their efforts and they are not about to risk its demise at the hands of a few experimental free-loaders.

More, however, needs to be said. Is their real motivation pure patriotism? Or is it a love of country plus a bent toward materialism? Christians need to see that hardhattism is understandable but not excusable when it, like the “new left,” uses force. If there is to be a resurgence of patriotism, Christians for their part ought to try to ensure that it is a wholesome expression based on divine strength rather than human weakness.

Wanted: Optimistic Christians

Events of recent days have set off new waves of despair and frustration. People are once again wondering what our world is coming to.

Let thinking evangelicals, young and old, grasp the opportunity of this hour and not be swept along by the tides of gloom. We can be thankful that people are aroused, that apathy is being overcome. How to channel the rising involvement and deepening concern is a tough problem, but a good one for us to tackle energetically.

The Old Testament shows that God used people in unusual ways in alien environments—Joseph in Egypt, Esther in Media and Persia, Daniel in Babylon. May the Spirit keep stalwart Christian men in our own times from yielding to pessimism. Instead may they speak out intelligently and make their influence felt. As perhaps never before, the world is searching anxiously for a way out, and Christians with insight and convictions ought to be serving as guides.

Whither Angela Davis?

The California Regents under the leadership of Governor Ronald Reagan have clipped the wings of Angela Davis, UCLA’s Communist professor of philosophy, by refusing to renew her teaching contract. The decision brought a furious backlash from some professors and the predictable claim that academic freedom is being bludgeoned to death. The case is of particular interest to Christians because the principles it involves are of paramount importance to Christian educational institutions and to the Church at large.

Angela Davis is a protegée of Herbert Marcuse, the Communist theoretician, who is an advocate of “repressive toleration.” Why she was employed in the first place is an unanswered question. One can hardly suppose that those who hired her were unaware of her Marxist orientation and propagandist stance.

It is plain that if Miss Davis were retained at UCLA, she would sabotage the democratic processes, and that if her ouster is maintained, she will continue to charge repression and infringement of academic freedom. It looks as if there must be a choice between sabotage and unqualified freedom of speech (a freedom that even the Supreme Court has limited by its classic decision that no one is free to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater).

All this bears hard on a problem very live in church circles today. Do freedom of speech and academic liberty give those within the churches and Christian colleges the right to undermine the purposes for which these churches and colleges were created? Or do churches and their institutions have the right, indeed the compelling necessity, to exclude from their fellowship those who refuse to support their basic aims and objectives? An equally thorny question is: When does free speech cease to be a means for expression of opinion and become a tool for indoctrination and subversion? When it becomes this, has not the concept of freedom of speech been perverted and does not the one who irresponsibly claims such freedom forfeit his right to it?

Communists in America demand freedom of speech, because that is democracy’s principle; but when Communists are in control, they deny freedom of speech, because that is not their principle. Perhaps Miss Davis would like to exchange places with some of the Soviet citizens who have been sent to labor camps and mental institutions for daring to challenge Communist oppression; surely they would welcome the freedom she has, and perhaps she would enjoy the “liberation” they are experiencing in their prison wards.

Wheeling In Grandeur

Some commuters, we hear (and see), are biking instead of driving to work this summer in an effort to impair the progress of pollution and repair flabby physiques. They arrive smudged from soot blowing in the wind, but on the way they hear the chatter of children and even the songs of birds instead of the rock tape the kids left in the car stereo last night. They smell noxious fumes from buses, cars, industries, and dirty rivers—but also, occasionally, a rose bush.

Replacing a few cars with bikes forges only one link in the chain of conservation—a worthy link, but one with weaknesses of its own. Besides man’s smudge on God’s grandeur, bikers must contend with raindrops falling on their heads, dogs nipping at their heels, heavy-footed drivers and light-fingered bike-nappers. In addition, girls must consider whether many skirts will provide maximodesty.

Biking may be a small cog in the struggle against smog, but it can be a big wheel in the fight against fat. A bicycle might be just the thing, for example, to carry a clergyman to church dinners and calls on his congregation’s best cooks. For that matter, a lot of lay people might also profit by wheeling away waistlines and pollution, and we could all enjoy parts of creation that remain relatively unsmudged if we took next Sunday afternoon’s ride on a bike.

Papal Infallibility

On July 18, 1870, the bishops assembled at the First Vatican Council approved a formal statement of the infallibility of the pope. There were only two negative votes. In the hundred years since then this principle has been one of the biggest obstacles to Christian unity. Ironically, the bishops gave as one of their reasons for affirming papal infallibility, “that the occasion of schism might be removed, the whole Church preserved as one, and, secure on its foundation, stand firm against the gates of hell.”

To be sure, the statement of papal infallibility did not go nearly so far as some bishops wished. It was limited to ex cathedra statements of the pope, that is, those in which, “acting in the office of shepherd and teacher of all Christians, he defines … doctrine concerning faith or morals.” There is considerable uncertainty and ambiguity over just which of the innumerable papal statements are to be considered ex cathedra and therefore infallible. (Ex cathedra statements made before 1870 are involved also, for the decree was retroactive and included the assertion that the “See of St. Peter always remains untainted by any error.…”)

Nevertheless, so traumatic was the effect of the pronouncement—generally welcomed by Catholics—that the papacy waited eighty years, until 1950, to make use of this power in a completely unambiguous ex cathedra declaration. It is worth quoting the supposedly infallible truth that earned this honor, which has not been awarded again since then: “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” Anyone who so much as calls into doubt this doctrine (on which the New Testament writers and all evidence from the early centuries of the Church is silent) is notified that “he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic faith.”

Since Roman Catholics themselves are extremely and deliberately hazy on just what papal infallibility means in practice, it is hardly fitting for Protestants to try to define it. The Second Vatican Council saw fit to reaffirm explicitly the principle without clarifying its ambiguities. But whatever it means, it is something that is not a part of true Christianity.

Roman Catholics used to say that having a living, ultimate arbiter of all theological disputes gave them a clear advantage over Protestants. Those Christians who assert that the Bible alone is the infallible source of doctrine on faith and morals are indeed notorious for their differing, and hence fallible, interpretations of this infallible source. However, Roman Catholics no longer make such a claim for it is now very obvious that they themselves disagree considerably not only on what the infallible statements mean but on which statements are infallible.

Logically, the idea of an infallible interpreter of divine revelation makes good sense. We submit, however, that this interpreter is not the supposed vicar of Christ who is bishop of Rome, but the only Vicar whom Christ actually appointed, the Holy Spirit himself. It is his function to lead us into all truth and to the extent that we follow him, he does. To desire infallible pronouncements by some human person or organization, is to reveal a basic discontent with the certitude that God himself, in the person of the indwelling Holy Spirit, implants in the hearts and minds of those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and the Scriptures as the inspired and infallible testimony to him.

‘For They Deal Honestly’

There are many ways to deal dishonestly. Many people do it deliberately, with malice aforethought. Many others defend their dishonesty by some form of rationalization. Some people take home from the office stamps, pencils, and various other small but useful articles. Some claim exemptions they’re not entitled to on tax returns. Some steal from stores—by actually taking an item without paying for it, perhaps, or by changing labels or packages so they get more than they pay for. Some do not report a bank or accounting error made in their favor. Some deliberately give their employer less than he is paying them for, while others refuse to pay employees what they can and should pay. Some take liberties with expense accounts—or maybe even clergy discounts. Other examples come readily to mind.

It would be gratifying to be able to assume that all professing Christians are scrupulously honest, but experience tells us otherwise. Some hold a very narrow view of the commandment “thou shalt not steal,” though they may be quick to condemn Rachel, who stole her father’s household gods, or Jacob, who stole his brother’s birthright, or David the king, who stole his subject’s wife.

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he said that those who steal live according to the principles of the Gentiles. “Let the thief no longer steal,” he counseled them, “but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands.”

The Scriptures also record for us a shining example of men who did just this. Josiah, one of the few good kings of Judah, had money collected from his people to repair the Temple. He ordered that this money be given directly to the workmen responsible for the job. These carpenters, builders, and masons are not named in the scriptural account, but they are identified by something more deserving of remembrance. Josiah said of them: “No accounting shall be asked from them for the money which is delivered into their hand, for they deal honestly” (2 Kings 21:7). What a commendation!

These men dealt honestly. Do we?

Toward A Balanced Christianity

Christian Manifesto, by Ernest T. Campbell (Harper & Row, 1970, 114 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Cary N. Weisiger III, pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, Menlo Park, California.

Ernest T. Campbell, senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York City, is a convinced evangelical with a burning social concern, and his book is a fresh attempt at a synthesis of the individual and social elements of the Gospel. He is gifted with keen insight, balance, courage, wit, and eloquence.

Two concerns govern his treatment: one is a look at Christians as they have tended to fall off one side or the other of the horse of a whole faith; the other is a statement on reparations as a justifiable ethic for white Christians in regard to black people.

Dr. Campbell pays tribute to the churches that produce candidates for the ministry because they confront young people with the claims of Jesus Christ. He believes in the necessity of an individual act of faith for salvation. At the same time he deplores the spiritual casualties, young people trained in the Bible but not for the world, who have to be counseled back to spiritual health. He pleads for a view of the Lordship of Christ that takes the whole world and all of history seriously. He finds Arend Th. van Leeuwen and Hendrikus Berkhof to be reliable guides and bases his ethic of the need to change the structures of society upon Berkhof’s exposition of Paul’s theology of “the powers.”

In my opinion, Campbell’s gift of facile thought and expression betrays him into easy generalizations about man’s now taking responsibility for history. Is this really a great new fact of our time? What about William Carey’s contributions to culture and social reform in the early 1800s in India? What about Livingstone’s concern to take Christ and civilization and healing for the “open sore” of slavery to Africa? What about Timothy L. Smith’s impressive treatment of Revivalism and Social Reform in mid-nineteenth-century America?

To go back to the beginnings of Christianity, the author thinks that when Paul had the opportunity to rally the Church against the institutionalized evil of slavery, he did not come through. Yet Holmes Rolston in The Social Message of the Apostle Paul quotes Troeltsch at length in the radical and conservative principles in Pauline thought that constitute an essential inner dialectic of the Christian social message from the beginning. The baffling inertness of fundamentalists in the face of social problems is best explained, in my opinion, as a failure to be truly and pervasively evangelical.

Campbell illustrates his power in the pulpit in chapter twelve, “The Case for Reparations,” a sermon that he preached after the appearance of James Forman and his “Black Manifesto” in the Riverside Church on a Sunday morning in May, 1969. Campbell rejects utterly the Communist-inspired appeal for revolution, but he is sympathetic to the idea of reparations. Using the story of Zacchaeus as his biblical base, he says that he espouses restitution as his (not necessarily everyone’s) Christian response to the defrauding of the black man.

I find reparations an unsatisfactory ethic. Using Aristotle’s four categories of justice, which Campbell describes in chapter five (commutative or one-to-one; distributive or the many to the one; contributive or the one to the many; and corporate or the many to the many), I see it as a hopeless task under category four (the many to the many) to measure the restitution that a white Christian should pay to blacks today. If a white Christian just came to this country, what should he pay? If his father and mother came in 1920, what should he pay? If his ancestors fought slavery or freed their slaves, what should he pay?

The ethic of neighbor love is sufficient for motivation to struggle unending through a lifetime to work with blacks for justice and better opportunity.

Beyond all this, any preacher will find this book timely, stirring, helpful, and packed with homiletical material from a very gifted prophet.

Christianity Asleep

While Men Slept, by L. Nelson Bell (Doubleday, 1970, 247 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by C. Darby Fulton, retired executive secretary, Board of World Missions, Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Here are fifty-four short essays by the popular writer of the regular column in CHRISTIANITY TODAY called “A Layman and His Faith.” The collection as a whole presents a comprehensive view of the contemporary status of Christianity in the Church, in society, and in personal life.

The title suggests the dominant theme of the volume, that “Protestant Christendom has been asleep, and during our sleep the enemy of souls, under the guise of scholarship and advanced knowledge, has sown the seeds of doubt and unbelief.” The book deals forthrightly with the prevalent heresies of our day. It offers a direct and powerful answer to those who have proclaimed the death of God and the defeat of his Church, and affirms the author’s unshakable faith both that God is and that he is sovereign.

Dr. Bell exposes the emasculation of Christianity by those who would accommodate it to secular trends in order to insure its “relevance,” and deplores the resulting erosion of faith, theological confusion, ethical relativism, and sociological humanism, which are the symptoms of modern unbelief. He finds the basic cause of these ills in a profound ignorance of the Bible even within the Church and in a low view of its authority that precludes its acceptance as the Word of God. His answer to these problems is a return to true Christianity.

There is a remarkable welding of Scripture, logic, experience, and common sense in the truth this book presents. The author’s personal involvement is evident in every paragraph. This makes for a presentation that is alive and gripping. There is a complete absence of the theological jargon beneath which many writers obscure their views in ambiguity. The book is clear, concise, abounding in example and illustration, saturated with Scripture, and strong in its reaffirmation of the basic tenets of our Protestant heritage. It will put iron in the blood of any Christian who will read it.

A Universal Problem

The Meaning of Loneliness, by Richard Wolff (Key, 1970, 132 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by J. Murray Marshall, pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Flushing, New York.

Loneliness is a universal malady. No one is fully immune, and while suggested cures abound, none has either instantaneous or permanent or total results.

Richard Wolff has contributed significantly to the subject. First of all, he recognizes the magnitude of the problem. Quotations from and references to a wide range of literature show his extensive study of the matter and his sympathy with the plight of the lonely. He exposes the superficiality of many of the popular palliatives.

In the second place, Wolff examines the causes of loneliness from the viewpoint of Christian theology. Psychiatric analysis, historical perspective, and sociological conjectures he sets aside as inadequate. The fundamental problem, he says, is an alienation from God coupled with man’s futile insistence on his independence from God. “When a man turns to God he disavows the lie, the falsehood of human autonomy.” And the man who places his faith in Jesus Christ is given the stability and assurance to conquer “essential loneliness.”

But the strength of Wolff’s treatment is that he does not leave the matter there. He freely admits that “when someone enters into a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ … the problem of loneliness is not automatically solved.” Recognizing that many Christians are lonely, he stresses that in Christ “essential loneliness” is handled and that upon this firm basis Christians are enabled to handle the specifics. He faces candidly the loneliness of godly men, the problems of the single life, the capacities and limitations of friendships, and the difference between solitude, which is periodically essential, and loneliness.

Wolff writes effectively, with a crisp, short-sentence style reflective of his broadcaster’s background. His book is of certain value to the professional who ministers to the lonely and of potential value to the lonely person who, having intellectual capabilities to analyze his problems, is willing to seek a solution through Jesus Christ.

Today’s American Jew

The Jewish Mystique, by Ernest van den Haag (Stein and Day, 1969, 252 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Ludwig R. Dewitz, professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

The Jews are certainly a theme in the history of mankind that comes to the fore in all keys, both major and minor, with a never-ending set of variations. Dr. van den Haag, a university professor well versed in psychology and sociology as well as a practicing psychoanalyst, here adds his own distinctive note. Although in acknowledging his indebtedness to various writers, he singles out “above all, the authors of the Old and New Testaments,” he sees his subject throughout from the perspective of psychology, with the Bible remaining very much in the background.

Once this is understood, the book can be of real value to the Christian reader. Often an imbalance occurs in biblically oriented circles: the focus is too narrow, either on the Jews of the ancient past or on a futuristic picture of Israel’s final mission and vindication. The Jewish Mystique is concerned with the puzzling situation of the Jew in the United States right now. Why are Jews so smart and what are Jewish hippies like? What about Jewish snobs and, would you believe it, Jewish anti-Semites? And what about the attitude of American Jews to the State of Israel? Dr. van den Haag has a charming, humorous, and convincing way of dealing with these and many other themes.

One of the most thought-provoking chapters discusses “two kinds of discrimination,” that against Jews and that against Negroes. The point is to establish the relative position of the two minorities in relation to justice within society. Did Jews achieve leading positions despite the fact that they were Jews, and will Negroes do so because they belong to a group that has suffered injustice? “Love discriminates,” writes our author, “in favor of preferences, and charity discriminates in favor of needs. But in promotion for any one rank, the public virtue of justice must prevail.”

There remains, however, the discrepancy between van den Haag’s acknowledgment of his indebtedness to the biblical writers and the way he wholly ignores the biblical dimension. There are references to Abraham and Moses, circumcision and election, but they are practically all psychoanalyzed, usually on a Freudian basis. Take, for instance, this reference to the God of Israel: “Unlike the gods of others, who represented and accepted all parts of the human personality as they co-existed, fused, or struggled with each other, the God of the Jews came to represent a stern, dominating, and demanding paternal Superego—long before one of His chosen people invented, fathered (or at least baptized) the superego.” In discussing the reasons for the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, the author says: “Even if Freud’s speculation is no more than Freud’s own fantasy, it seems a fantasy that meets, articulates, and explains, if not the facts, the conscious and unconscious fantasies of mankind and certainly of the Jews. The idea of parricide, and of expiation by the guilt-ridden sons through sacrifice of one of their own, was widespread.…” That the author’s acquaintance with the prophets is not of the closest kind is further evidenced by the fact that he attributes to Isaiah Zechariah’s reference to ten non-Jews who take hold of the robe of a Jew to join in acknowledging God.

For those who know something of the biblical setting of the Jewish mystique, van den Haag’s book will furnish an additional valuable source for fruitful dialogue with and about Jews.

Antitheses In Luther

Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, by Gerhard Ebeling (Fortress, 1970, 287 pp. $5.95), is reviewed by Carl S. Meyer, professor of historical theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Zurich’s Ebeling has added to his stature as a thinker and scholar by his work on Luther, published in German in 1964 and now available in a generally fluid English translation. The title is deceptive. It may lead the reader to think he will find an elementary sketch of Luther’s theology, arranged perhaps under the common theological loci, but he will not. Ebeling indeed does treat basic theological concepts in Luther. However, he pairs these concepts in contrasting antitheses, showing their conjunctions and their conflicts. He points out that in Luther contradictory and non-contradictory antitheses were developed and extended through numerous different forms. Among the fifteen chapters are chapters on these antitheses in Luther: Philosophy and Theology; the Letter and the Spirit; the Law and the Gospel; Faith and Love; Freedom and Bondage; God Hidden and Revealed.

According to Ebeling, theology must discuss man from the theological point of view and not speak only of God. He points out that Luther referred to the theology that discusses God and man in theological terms as the theology of the cross in contrast to the theology of glory. “The theology of the cross, [Luther] tells us, speaks of the crucified and hidden God.” Ebeling quotes Luther: “We know of no God excepting only the incarnate and human God.… To seek God outside Jesus is the Devil.” The nature of faith, nature, the Church, the love of God, are topics that belong to the inner dynamics of Luther’s thought.

In a chapter on “Luther’s Actions,” Ebeling points up the importance of preaching for the Reformation; this preaching was based on the Word. Without an understanding of the essence of Reformation preaching, one cannot understand the distinctive nature of the events of the Reformation. The essence of Christian doctrine is, nevertheless, the distinction between faith and love. Luther wrote: “Oh, faith is something living, busy, active and powerful, and it is impossible that it should not unceasingly bring about good.” Sola fidei excludes love as the basis of justification, but it is also a battle on behalf of pure love.

Perhaps enough has been said to indicate Ebeling’s approach. It is stimulating and penetrating. The thoughtful reader will gain new insights into Luther.

Book Briefs

Piety in the Public School, by Robert Michaelsen (Macmillan, 1970, 274 pp., $6.95). Sees the public school as the vehicle for creating awareness of religion in history without favoring one religion over another.

Rainbows, by Laurence N. Field (Augsburg, 1970, 134 pp., $3.75). Writing for older Christians, the author explores the problems of retirement and shows how this time of life can be richly rewarding.

Christian Liberal Arts Education, Report of the Calvin College Curriculum Study Committee (Calvin College and Eerdmans, 1970, 103 pp., $2.50). Discusses many of the problems confronting the Christian liberal-arts college today.

Ecumenicity and Evangelism, by David M. Stowe (Eerdmans, 1970, 94 pp., paperback, $2.45). An attempt to reconcile evangelicals to the “evangelism” of the NCC and the WCC.

The Layman’s Introduction to the Old Testament, by Robert B. Laurin (Judson, 1970, 160 pp., paperback, $2.95). Stresses the importance of the cultural and historical backgrounds in understanding the Old Testament.

Minister on the Spot, by James E. Ditten (Pilgrim, 1970, 138 pp., paperback, $3.95). The author warns ministers to reject the fear of involvement that often wastes and frustrates potentially fruitful ministries.

Decide for Yourself: A Theological Workbook, by Gordon R. Lewis (Inter-Varsity, 1970, 174 pp., paperback, $2.25). “For people who are tired of being told what to believe,” this book offers a systematic approach for a solid grasp of the Christian faith.

Amos, by Ray Beeley (Banner of Truth Trust, 1970, 117 pp., paperback, 5s.). The author discusses the text of the prophet, contending that Amos’s day was not unlike our own.

If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem, by Robert Silverberg (William Morrow, 1970, 620 pp., $12.95). The story of the building of the State of Israel and the part that the United States and American Jews played in its formation.

Unto His Own, by Jacob Gartenhaus (Christian Literature Crusade, 182 pp., paperback). A book that will help Christians understand the Jewish people and aid in an intelligent and sensitive presentation of the Gospel to them.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, by Anita Bryant (Revell, 1970, 159 pp., $3.95). The author’s story of her rise to stardom and of her faith in God.

General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture, by Charles Augustus Briggs (Baker, 1970, 688 pp., $8.95). Reprint of a classic work by a controversial nineteenth-century scholar.

Will the Old Bob Turnbull Please Drop Dead?, by Bob Turnbull (David C. Cook, 1970, 93 pp., paperback, $.95). The testimony of a movie actor turned minister.

Issue One: Evangelism, edited by Reuben P. Job and Harold K. Bales (Tidings, 1970, 116 pp., paperback, $1.75). Contends that evangelism is the most important “happening” for the world and the primary issue facing the Church in the seventies.

The Church Responds, by Joan Thatcher (Judson, 1970, 160 pp., paperback, $2.95). Shows how several churches across the United States are responding to the need for renewal.

Christ All in All, by Philip Henry (Reiner, 1970, 380 pp., $3.95). In this new reprint, the father of Matthew Henry discusses the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Advance: A History of Southern Baptist Foreign Missions, by Baker J. Cauthen and others (Broadman, 1970, 329 pp., $4.95). An account of the past and present activities of Southern Baptist foreign missions.

As Far as I Can Step, by Virginia Law (Word, 1970, 157 pp., $3.95). The author shows how sorrow over loss of a loved one can result in a more mature understanding of God.

What About Horoscopes?, by Joseph Bayly (David C. Cook, 1970, 95 pp., paperback, $.95). The author examines the phenomenon of spiritism and seeks to discover why the interest in it is mounting.

Spirit in Conflict, by William Walter Warmath (Word, 1970, 112 pp., $2.95). Explores seven areas where misdirected love creates conflict and shows how this conflict can be resolved through faith in Christ.

The Dynamics of Grief, by David K. Switzer (Abingdon, 1970, 221 pp., $5.50). An exploration and definition of both potential and actual grief, with practical suggestions for dealing with this powerful emotion.

Alexander Campbell, by Alger Morton Fitch, Jr. (Sweet, 1970, 134 pp., $3.95). The author portrays Campbell, not only as a preacher of first-century Christianity and reform, but also as a reformer of preaching.

We live in a period in which the emphasis on fashions is extreme. Some of these, being recurrent phenomena, are not worth serious attention. Who really cares that within a few years we have swung from wide necktie to narrow and now to still wider ones? Length of skirt is in the same category. That beards are ephemeral is obvious to anyone who has studied history. In Washington’s day it was difficult to find a man with a beard, while in Lincoln’s administration it was difficult to find a man without one.

The particular fashion of dealing with social issues by involvement in protest demonstrations came upon us with great suddenness. We understand how radical the change has been when we note that some now living never even heard of such a phenomenon in their youth, while millions of other people have been so accustomed to it that they accept it as a normal feature of living. For great numbers, the idea is accepted uncritically. If there is something you don’t like, start a demonstration! Thus the method was automatically adopted by those who recently became frantically aware, apparently for the first time, of the pollution of air and water. Marches were organized, as a matter of course, though it was harder to sustain enthusiasm because there was practically no one to march against. It would have been so much simpler if there had been some group actually favoring pollution.

Because there is serious danger that the protest mentality may be accepted uncritically, there must be some, and especially Christians, who are willing to challenge the popular expectation. We must not allow the world to squeeze us into its own mold (Rom. 12:2). The more we consider, the more we realize that it is not the purposes of the protesters that are damaging but the method. Nearly all organizers claim, in the beginning, that they propose to stage a peaceful protest, but serious thought as well as experience can show us why this hope is fundamentally naïve. The peaceful protest is a rare and short-lived phenomenon. This is not because the protesters, when they promise to eschew violence, are insincere, but because there is something in the very procedure that sooner or later produces violence.

We have seen many examples in the last few months of how the protest pattern deteriorates. These words are being written in western Massachusetts, where the student reaction to the Cambodian crisis was marked by mass hysteria. One evidence of deterioration is that of the so-called vigil. If a vigil is really devoted to prayer, it is potentially noble, but the integrity is spoiled by the universal practice of lining up on the main street in front of the college. There is only one reason for this choice of location: it is to be seen by passers-by! Every hand is raised to attract attention.

How many recognize that here is the exact antithesis of what the New Testament is teaching? The words of Christ apply with terrible pertinence: “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand … at the street corners, that they may be seen by men” (Matt. 6:5). Then Christ adds, with a subtle touch of humor, “they have their reward.” They are, indeed, seen, but if this is the purpose, then the whole idea of the vigil is consequently debased.

The protest mentality seems, inevitably, to undermine all rational discourse. No one listens, because there is so much shouting. In the colleges that I know best there has not been one speech upholding the position of the President of the United States. The absence of debate indicates the victory of irrationality in the very places where reason is supposed to reign. There is undoubted idealism, but when the wrong method is employed, idealism turns to bitter denunciation. As we look back now, with the advantage of hindsight, we can see that some of the deterioration was inevitable. From the start there was a tragic flaw, and this has widened perceptibly.

The essence of the tragic flaw is the excessive moralism that is intrinsic to the protest pattern. It is not surprising that the protester exhibits an extreme form of self-righteousness, for everything about the method encourages this. We, of course, are the good people because what we are condemning is manifestly evil! We are, by definition, in favor of justice and of peace. With the mass enthusiasm engendered by the marching and the cheer-leader kind of shouting, it is very hard to remember that the people who are not marching may also be committed to justice and to peace.

It may seem paradoxical that harsh judgment of others can bring enjoyment, but there is no doubt about the truth of the observation. Demonstrations make people who demonstrate feel better. They feel that they are doing something with others for a worthy cause. Pleasure there undoubtedly is, but in the long run it is costly.

The temptations to indulge in excessive moralism are accentuated by the almost universal practice of carrying placards. The placards, of course, are carried in order to convey a message to anyone who is willing to look, but the consequence is inevitable distortion, because nothing either important or true can be said in this fashion. Some of the people carrying slogans might prefer not to be harsh, but they seem to have no alternative. Most of their signs are in the imperative. Since there is not space, on a carried placard, for a reasoned statement of the truth, we settle for “Go home” or “Out now.” All the fine shades of communication are thereby lost. It is the same with shouting. No sentence of any depth or significance can be shouted. Every thoughtful person is well aware that the truth about any important matter is complex. Should America, for example, sell fighter planes to Israel? This is an extremely difficult question, having to do with the balance of power in the Middle East, with the politics of Zionism, with the plight of Arab refugees, with the real continuation of the fighting over the Suez area, and much more. Such a situation cannot be handled with intellectual honesty by a brief imperative on a piece of cardboard or by a slogan shouted in unison.

Another inherent weakness in the demonstration pattern is that it is antithetic to the emergence of humor. Even as we watch on television we soon note that the mood is grim. If there are any jokes at all they are bitter ones. The decline of laughter is one of the saddest results of over-acceptance of protest as a style of life.

Worst of all, the protest mentality tends to kill the thing it loves. The method of denunciation produces a backlash among many who would otherwise be in essential sympathy with the purposes of the protesters. This is especially true when the protest gets out of hand and involves senseless destruction. A striking example of this occurred in Boston and Cambridge during the anti-war demonstrations of April 15, 1970. After the rabble-rousing speeches on Boston Common and the march to Harvard Square, the breaking of windows and looting began. Two days later I was personally able to view the damage, which was estimated at $100,000. Perhaps the most serious damage was that these undisciplined people succeeded in making peace a dirty word for thousands of their neighbors. The Boston Evening Globe, a strongly liberal newspaper, pointed out editorially, on April 17, that the Harvard Square stores and banks would be repaired, but it went on to ask the question, “Will the peace movement recover from the damage thus done to it?” No doubt it will, but it will not if it continues under the leadership of those who, by cultivating a method which leads to violence, show that they really believe in war rather than peace.

Not long ago we experienced the confrontation on Wall Street in which the men in hard hats, the construction workers, made a counter-attack on student protesters. Those who started with denunciation ended by fleeing. The obscenities of the students were answered by the blows of those who were outraged. If such a pattern of demonstrations and counter-attack goes on and becomes general, our entire fabric of civilization is bound to be torn, perhaps beyond repair. The practicing Christian has the vocation of doing all that he can, before it is too late, to guide public opinion into the ways of true peace. Perhaps the most pertinent of all biblical texts today is the seventh beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Are your colleagues at work seeking you out for the words of life? Are your neighbors pestering you to tell them about the Gospel? Are you being bombarded with requests by people who want to attend church with you?

If you are in the same boat with most of us evangelicals, these questions are ludicrous! Most of us are haunted by an overwhelming sense of ineffectiveness in this task called evangelism. We are becoming increasingly aware that our lives are not drawing people to Christ. Our message is just not getting through.

Some Christians, of course, are not conscious of their ineffectiveness. They are so busy in their church work and evangelistic campaigns that they haven’t noticed the obvious—that, for example, probably 99 per cent of those who attend an evangelistic service already profess to be Christians. These Christians who are unaware of their ineffectiveness deserve our pity (though I must admit that once in a while I get the urge to bestow on them a few other things, to wake them up).

In an attempt to become more effective in evangelism, some evangelicals have decided that what they need to do is to give their presentation of the Gospel the light touch, a flair, a bit of Hollywood—Christian showmanship, we could call it. But it is tough to compete with Hollywood and television. Sensationalism has a short sell, anyway; you have to keep peddling gaudier and gaudier forms to keep up interest.

It seems to me that such approaches to evangelism have a superficial and egotistical ring. Neither the Gospel nor the problems of human existence can be dealt with so glibly. Crooning singers, trumpet trios, and good looks don’t do justice either to the problems of man or to the profundity of the Christian answer. The world today, following the lead of Sartre and Camus, is too impressed with its problems and the depravity of man to be sold an easy answer and “rah, rah” songs and sermons. It is indeed a strange day when many popular tunes and ballads are more profound in their view of man than the so-called gospel songs designed to point to the remedy for man’s needs.

Other evangelicals take a different approach; they are concerned with the “right” methods and techniques of witnessing. And so they organize conventions and workshops on “How to Witness.” Or they distribute articles on “How to Make Soul-Winning Easy” (as if soul-winning were ever easy) or “Ten Steps to Winning Souls” (as if all persons’ approaches to Christ were identical). Such techniques are often subtle (or blatantly obnoxious) attempts to manipulate and exploit others.

Some Christians realize that a good salesman of the Gospel must be an attractive one. Now, what could be more attractive than a professional football or baseball player? Or maybe a millionaire or a beauty queen. Madison Avenue has long been alert to the selling qualities of fame, fortune, and sex. But don’t these characteristics seem to be a long way from the attractive qualities of Jesus or the “fruit of the Spirit”? What really is being sold?

Many Christians who have tried all these methods and more, seeing that the world is still unimpressed and not buying, conclude that the problem is not in the message or the medium but in modern man himself. The observation is made that people today just don’t recognize their sinful condition, their need of the Gospel. Or that affluence keeps people from seeing their needs.

But to arrive at such a conclusion is either the height of naïveté or just plain hardness! Seldom have men been so aware of their lostness, so preoccupied with their problems, so sensitive to their needs. And not only are people aware of their problems; they are desperately seeking help. Psychological clinics have waiting lists up to six and eight months. Many people are willing to pay thirty to fifty dollars an hour to pour out their woes, their unmet needs, and their inner conflicts, even to a stranger. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that more hospital beds are taken up for reasons of mental illness than for all other illnesses combined. One out of twelve persons will be institutionalized sometime during his life because of mental ill health. And we in the evangelical church have the audacity to say that people today do not recognize their needs or are unwilling to acknowledge their problems. How blind can we be?

What is our problem? Why can’t we see and acknowledge the obvious? I think the answer is quite simple. We as evangelicals have been in the business of proclamation, and rightly so, but it has been a proclamation without a passion. Our words are just that and little more. Our proclamations have become something of a whistling in the dark, encouraging only ourselves.

All around you at work and in your neighborhood (dare I say even in your church, maybe even in your own home?) are broken hearts and lives, people suffering from deep-felt needs. There are hurting, lonely people with whom we all rub shoulders daily. Oh, they aren’t about to let all this show, if they can help it. Not unless they have evidence, firm evidence, that the other guy honestly cares about them, or has enough compassion to involve himself in their lives at least enough to find out that the problems exist.

I fear that we evangelicals are all too capable of singing “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave” while our lives are like flashing neon signs reading, “I couldn’t care less.” People who are in desperate need dare not reveal it to us because they have no evidence that we care.

What if God had been only a glib purveyor of words? Would the “good news” have reached through to us? No! Mere proclamation would have meant nothing to us without the suffering and compassion of Christ. He showed to us, proved to us, that he cared. He took a servant’s form, the life of a transient, and died a criminal’s death to proclaim in living words his concern for us.

Why is it that we who have assumed the name of the compassionate one are so lacking in compassion? Why is it that we who claim to walk in the steps of the “man of sorrows,” who was “acquainted with grief,” are so afraid of suffering for others? How can it be that we who sing songs like “Oh, to be like him”—him who, moved with compassion, went about meeting the personal needs of others and “doing good”—are so long on song and swift with words and short on concern?

Without compassion, witness in all its varied forms is ineffective, flaccid, and at times obnoxious. The motivation for evangelism must be compassion. “Being moved with compassion” is the only force that will move others.

I’m by no means implying that this is some easy path to effective witness. It is quite the opposite. If you are going to involve yourself in the lives and problems of others, you will get your heart broken. You will have to suffer yourself—and not just a little bit! Involvement will mean real personal sacrifice. It will necessitate an admission that you don’t always have an answer. You won’t be able to knock people over with a bumper sticker that says, “Christ Is the Answer.” You may get hurt. “For it is given unto you not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.”

In witnessing, many Christians are motivated by all kinds of things beside compassion. Some act out of hostility. Their so-called witnessing is actually a means of saying, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Or it is an attempt to put the other guy down, let him know what a contemptible creature he is. Such Christians give the impression that their mission is to destroy and degrade others. They seem to be unaware that Christ “came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” A good check for the presence of hostility as a motivation for witnessing is to see how many of your evangelistic attempts end up in debate and argument.

Some Christians reveal their hostility by the anti-this and anti-that thrust of their expressions of faith. This is the kind of Christian faith that majors in minors. The main concern is with sin rather than grace, the sinner rather than Christ. In contrast to this stand the sermons of the Book of Acts, which, though they point out the futility of sinful acts, are more concerned with the beauty of Christ and his redeeming grace.

Other Christians are motivated to express their faith out of obligation. They have been raised in church and home settings that have impressed upon them the Christian’s obligation to witness to his faith. They may even have learned the obligation before they had anything authentic to witness about. When the motive is obligation, that is just the way it will come across to others.

Some who witness appear to be motivated by fear. Their own faith is so precariously based that the slightest challenge sends them into fits of defensiveness. These types, like Peter, are apt to lop off an ear as they flail around. Watching such furies, one is tempted to say, “Relax, man, relax. God doesn’t need your protection. The Christian faith isn’t going to stand or fall with your defense.”

Probably the most sinful motivation for witnessing is self-aggrandizement. For some, winning others to the Christian faith becomes a means of supporting their own religious ego and buttressing their self-righteousness. At prayer meeting such a person can drop the news that he led someone to Christ, so that all will pay due respect to his effectiveness and acknowledge his zooming spiritual status. A nastier form of egoism would be hard to find.

What is your motivation for expressing your faith? Is it hostility? Obligation? Fear? Self-aggrandizement? Or is it a genuine compassion for others? It was compassion that caused God to send Christ into our world. It was compassion that caused Christ to hang from a tree in bitter suffering and agony. And it is compassion that should catapult you and me into the world of personal and social problems that swirl around us.

Had gospel rock or a handsome speaker or an artistic poster been enough to do the job, Christ would not have struggled as he did in Gethsemane. He knew that the way of compassion was the way of suffering, and that it was the effective way. Do we dare?

Some will think they are seeing here a rehearsal of the social-gospel emphasis of our time. And certainly broken, bleeding hearts filled with compassion for the vast and unrelenting social problems of our day are greatly needed. But let us not miss the vast, unrelenting personal problems that surround each of us every day. We need a personal and a social Gospel.

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience.”

When were you last “moved with compassion”?