Easter 1970! What can I say? The news is all bad: wars and rumors of wars; student revolts around the world; increasing immorality; more and more drug addiction; hard-core pornography on the increase. Then came the message from the honorary president and the six presidents of the World Council of Churches to their millions of adherents. “What will happen next? None of us knows.” “Nor do we, who are Christians, know what is happening to our Church or even what will happen to our faith. And with our uncertainty goes fear.” These are somber and chilling words. What can I say?

Jesus is alive. The tomb could not hold its prey. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Jesus Christ. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Must Christians live as though the light had gone out, as though fear had beaten back courage, as though Jesus were dead? This is defeatism of the worst sort. We are on the winning side. God is finishing the work he began on Calvary. He is the Lord of history and the sovereign God. We Christians should be pessimistic optimists: pessimistic that men can bring in any utopia but optimistic that Jesus Christ will come again to establish his kingdom and his righteousness and to rule over the world forever. “Lift up your eyes! For your redemption draws nigh!”

Some years ago Dr. Elmer Homrighausen, a Princeton professor, gave me a helpful idea that has served me well ever since. He pointed out in a lecture that most counselors and psychiatrists who write books of case studies tend to amplify their successes and minimize their failures. This is only human, of course, especially when a man is writing a book telling the rest of us how to do it. Naturally he wants to make the best possible case for his own case study.

The reason why this has all been so helpful to me is that my own role as counselor and guide has ended up almost every time in abject failure. I don’t seem to get the successes these other men write about (which is probably why no one ever asks me to write a book on counseling and guidance). Some of my recent forays into this field will illustrate my thesis. For the life of me I hardly know where to begin with the following:

CASE NO. 1. Our teen-ager, a sophomore in high school, takes a course entitled “World History and American History.” I would guess that the class has to move pretty fast to cover that subject in a year. Her teacher has a reputation for being a front-runner, avant-garde, and one expects that she is “up” on all the latest methods.

The students, according to the style of our day, do independent studies. The last independent study reported on by our teen-ager was a girl who researched the Broadway play Hair. Since this is a family magazine I will not review Hair for you, but I would like to suggest that it is impossible to report on Hair to a high-school class without engaging in what people used to call “indecency.”

How such a thing gets into a history class evades my mind. It might be sociology; it might be drama; it is more likely comparative anatomy. If by a stretch of the imagination it comes under the general heading of contemporary history, I still squirm helplessly over the whole educational environment that makes such an exercise even a possibility in a classroom.

So what advice does one give to his daughter? How does one support a student’s respect for her teachers while trying to voice utter dismay over what the teacher is producing in the classroom? How does one get hold of the deeper problems of the attitudes, methods, and pseudo-sophistication that make all this possible?

CASE NO. 2. I have learned from a printed bulletin, published by a school, that two teachers are beginning a course entitled: “Man—A Course of Study.” The course has been put together by “teachers, psychologists, and anthropologists,” and it is to be taught to sixth-graders. Let me quote from the bulletin.

In exploring the question, “What is human about human beings?” the first half of the course contrasts the life cycles and behaviors of three animals—the salmon, the herring gull, and the baboon to man. These studies lead students to question the significance of generational overlap and parental care, innate and learned behavior, group structure and communication, environmental adjustment, and the relevance of these to the varying life styles of animal species.

What a bunch of sixth-graders they must be! But the quotation goes on.

It is man’s ability to symbolize and his gift of self-awareness that allow him to be a cultural creature. We examine the social behavior of the Netsilik Eskimos, of the Canadian Artic [sic] in depth because their society is small and technologically simple, yet universal in the problems it faces. Netsilik society, too, is different enough from our own to reveal the extent to which our behavior is shaped by the society in which we live.

If the above quotation concerning new and exciting approaches to education makes sense to you, then I can’t help you. The loss of the idea of man’s being a child of God has repercussions we do not yet even suspect.

CASE NO. 3. I fell into a conversation with some kind of an assistant professor, who also directs dormitory life, and one of his students who has the reputation of outstanding scholarship. The question before the house was the influx, more or less, of women into the men’s dormitories. The general picture seems to be that these women come by invitation and stay as long as they like. It may be argued that what they do on long weekends is an expression of love, love, love, but I got the notion from the conversation that other women happened by to satisfy passions somewhat less than the grand passion.

What developed in the conversation was: (a) the inability of the administration to do anything about it, and (b) the conclusion that the administration had no right to interfere with the private life of a student. Meanwhile, I discovered that this student could not graduate until he had passed a swimming test of fifty yards. So my mind reeled. A first-rate university cannot interfere with fornication in its dormitories, but can make a man learn to swim—and the man doesn’t like water.

I wonder about the self-respect of college administrators who are perfectly aware of what is going on, evade it or countenance it, or even justify it, and then go on about their business of “higher” education. I hear a great deal of talk about educating the whole man. Apparently in our day this does not include the instincts or activity of a gentleman. What is even more confusing is that the college administrators themselves are gentlemen; they believe that some things are better than others (knowing how to swim is better than not knowing how to swim); but they feel they are in no position to say so or to insist on it.

CASE NO. 4. Two seminary students told me recently that they were instructed, in certain classes, not to use the Bible as a support for the positions they took. They assured me that when one man in the class argued from Scripture he was laughed to scorn. If you find this unbelievable, let me quote from a good book, which is not the Bible, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Mary Bosanquet. Some people classify Bonhoeffer as a liberal, and if he is then what he says about his American theological education is even more striking:

A theology is not to be found here.… They chatter till all is blue without any factual foundation or any criteria of thought becoming visible.… They intoxicate themselves with liberal and humanistic expressions, laugh at the fundamentalists, and basically they are not even a match for them. Often it goes through and through me when here in a lecture they dismiss Christ, and laugh outright when a word of Luther’s is quoted on the forgiveness of sin [Harper & Row, 1969, p. 83].

As a counselor I hardly know where to begin.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

To maintain interest and attention, the preacher must seek sermonic variety. This is essential in every phase of sermonizing. Here we will consider one phase: sermon strategy.

The stereotype of sermon strategy is: introduction, three points, and conclusion. Although it is a valid strategy, unvarying use may negate its effectiveness. One alternative is the persuasion strategy called suggestion. This is the attempt to establish an idea in the mind of another without logical consideration or analysis. Instead of inviting rational judgment, suggestion invites immediate acceptance.

Suggestion works on the ideomotor principle of psychology: when an idea enters one’s mind, one tends to express the idea in action. Expressing the idea in action depends upon how clearly the idea is perceived, the emotional connotations of the idea, and the counter force of opposing ideas. In awareness of these contingencies, suggestion attempts to plant ideas in the mind of a listener in a way that encounters the least possible resistance. This is done by bypassing his critical thought processes.

Common types of suggestion are: counter, positive, negative, direct, and indirect. Counter suggestion states a suggestion in such a way as to elicit a response that is the converse of what is suggested; that is, one suggests the opposite of what he desires from his listener. The danger is, of course, that if he fails, the speaker will reap the opposite of the desired effect.

To use positive suggestion is to phrase a suggestion affirmatively in order to get the listener to do some act, while in negative suggestion one phrases the suggestion negatively to get the listener to avoid some act. Robert Oliver points out that positive suggestion is to be preferred because “it emphasizes an act to be done, or the proposition to be believed; it is decisive and confident; and it presents a definite program to be adopted” (The Psychology of Persuasive Speech, p. 149).

Direct suggestion takes the form of a command or a maxim and may be either positive or negative. “Do not enter.” “Forward, march!” “Vote for Bill Green.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” The speaker’s idea is explicit, but he gives no rational explanation or support.

Probably the most valuable type of suggestion is the indirect type. The speaker attempts to plant an idea in the hearer’s mind without appearing to do so. The proposition remains implicit—rather than explicit—throughout the speech, and the listener eventually formulates the proposition in his own words. The psychological advantage is that he thinks of it as his own idea. The more indirect the suggestion, the more it can appear to the listener to be his own plan or conclusion, and thus the greater its power. For examples of the power of indirect suggestion, study Mark Antony’s funeral oration in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the method of Iago in Othello.

One sermonic method using indirect suggestion is the story form. When the sermon takes the form of a narrative, the idea is present in a structure of events and persons, rather than in mere verbal assertions.

The story form deserves more attention than preachers give it. Its effectiveness is seen in the fact that when Jesus used parables, his enemies got the point without comment, eventually killing him for it. The contemporary sermon needs more balance between general assertions and narratives; we should remember that the Gospel itself is primarily a narrative consisting of people, events, and dialogue.

The story-form sermon will suggest meaning through characters, conversations, and interaction. All points, morals, or lessons to be made are encompassed within the story itself. The preacher must not overinterpret or over-explain, lest he destroy its inherent force.

Within the form of indirect suggestion chosen, the preacher has other persuasive methods at his disposal. He may use rhetorical questions that imply answers in support of his idea. Without argument or assertion, the questions plant in the mind of the listener the conclusions the speaker wishes to establish, and allow the listener to phrase his own answer.

To persuade, one must use the right words. What words will bring the desired responses from listeners? For example, to a certain audience the statement that “sex education in public schools is a Communist plot to pervert our children” needs no logical proof. The words immediately suggest various negative aspects of sex education. Other emotive words bring forth predictable responses from other given audiences—words such as liberal, conservative, progressive, fundamentalist, and Bible-believing. Brembeck and Howell remind us that “the persuader must, within ethical limits, decide what trigger-words are needed to release the response he desires from his audience” (Persuasion: A Means of Social Control, p. 183).

Another method of communicating ideas indirectly is use of conversation. Truth may unfold from conversation that would not be evident or accepted otherwise. Conversation provides drama and identification. To be effective it must consist, not of extended speeches, but of dialogical exchange among characters. David Randolph, in The Renewal of Preaching, offers four guidelines for effective use of dialogue in sermons:

1. Start with language quite like that of genuine conversation.

2. Keep the speeches brief.

3. Make each speech advance the meaning of the conversation.

4. Be sensitive … to the interaction of the tones and the emotional elements in the speakers’ exchange [pp. 67, 68].

The preacher who develops sermons in various forms of suggestion will find that he builds into them the stimuli of attention and interest. As the sermon is prepared under the guidance of a disciplined, sanctified imagination, it can be couched in interesting, picturesque images.

There are, of course, disadvantages to indirect suggestion. Suggestion cannot explore a subject comprehensively since it is directed more to the broad attitude than to a specific point. Thus it may leave some thinking listeners with unanswered questions. Since the technique is subtle, listeners giving inadequate attention may misunderstand the point, or they may hear nothing more than the superficial action of the story and miss the point entirely. When the hearers are left to draw their own conclusions and make their own applications, their responses will vary. It is difficult to advocate a single implied proposition. Yet the astute preacher can work within the limitations to use this sermonic strategy effectively and can achieve the desired ends of interest, attention, and response.—WAYNE HENSLEY, professor of preaching and speech, Minnesota Bible College, Minneapolis.

Unless our lord’s words in the Sermon on the Mount are no longer valid, the present emphasis of the Church on poverty is a contradiction to his teachings. The problem is just that simple, and just that complicated.

World poverty and hunger are tragedies beyond description. In Biafra and India lives are wasting away through starvation and malnutrition; we all have seen on our TV screens the shriveled limbs and bloated bellies of their victims.

Poverty in America is a stark reality for many, but now that it has become a political issue there is grave danger that its alleviation will become motivated by other than compassion, and its victims will be pawns in a sociological experiment that can cost billions in waste and bureaucratic management while it destroys initiative and breeds dependence on others.

No one questions the compassionate motive that has prompted many Christians to go “all out” to abolish poverty. But one can seriously question the wisdom of the Church in aligning itself with the government in programs aimed solely at giving material aid.

A physician will use all speed to give an injection of Demerol or some other pain-relieving medicine to a patient in the throes of kidney colic. But he does not stop there; X-rays confirm the diagnosis; rest, relaxants, heat are used; and often there must be surgery and removal of the stone.

If the Church concurs with the findings of experts that poverty can be eradicated by education, better housing, jobs, and a guaranteed minimum income, it has surely turned its back on the solution God offers to all men, and in so doing is compounding rather than solving the problem.

I do not question the responsibility of the government to face up to the fact of poverty and its relief. And I would take my place at the forefront in saying that Christians have a responsibility laid on their hearts to do everything they can to help those in need. There is an immediate responsibility (like the physician’s use of a pain-relieving drug) to show our love and compassion for the poor with the food and clothing at our disposal. But to the Church and the Christian there is responsibility that is theirs alone—the message that when first things are put first in our lives, God has promised to solve the poverty problem in a clear and definite way.

Our Lord laid down a principle in economics that is infallible. It consists of a cause-and-effect relation in which God, not man, determines the outcome. Jesus, having warned his hearers against anxiety over the necessities of life—food, clothing, and a place to live—said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33). And down through the centuries millions have testified to the truth of this promise.

David wrote: “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread.” On the contrary, he says, “he [the righteous] is ever giving liberally and lending, and his children become a blessing” (Ps. 37:25, 26).

Where but in the promises of God can man find this assurance? “The LORD God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor. No good things does the LORD withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in thee!” (Ps. 84:11, 12).

To whom has this message of God’s loving provision been committed? To the Church. Shall the Church set aside the certainties of God’s promises for the inevitable failures of man-made schemes that seek solutions without reference to the God of solutions? Shall the Church be content with secular means when God offers a solution based on a spiritual reality? To put it bluntly, shall the Church sell its birthright—the promise that God “will never fail you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5), and that he “will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19)—for socio-economic solutions that do not go to the heart of the matter?

If any one thinks I am criticizing the steps being taken to meet the problem of poverty with true compassion and common sense, he has missed my point. The government should meet genuine poverty with genuine aid, but it should not accept poverty as a necessarily permanent condition, nor welfare as an unending way of life.

Furthermore, the Christian whose heart is not moved by immediate need, and who does not respond to that need with a compassion proven by deeds, is unworthy of the name he bears.

But the point I want to stress is that the Church has a message of ultimate solution. If it becomes so involved in the immediate need without facing up to God’s cure, the Church fails to honor its own message.

Only the Christian can understand that above and beyond human need, as we see it with our limited vision, there is a divine concern and a supernatural solution. If the Church ignores the supernatural nature of its message, it is missing the basic reason for its existence.

This year the major denominations are stressing “poverty” and its alleviation, using a sociological approach very similar to that of the government. In fact, year after year some new slogan and some new interest occupies the Church’s program—peace, race, reconciliation (man with man, often with little reference to man with God), and, at the moment, poverty. In a year or two it will be something else.

Who does not want peace? Christian race relations are, or should be, the outward evidence of the indwelling Christ; reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ is the foundation of man’s reconciliation with his fellow man; and helping the poor is a fruit of the Christian faith. But none of these is Christianity. To be a Christian means to have a vital, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and until that is established all other concerns are secondary. We have been busy trying to produce fruit where there are no roots, make non-Christians act like Christians.

Christ came into the world, died, and arose again to enable men to become new creatures. Are we honestly trying so to preach and to live Christ that men may be born again by the Spirit, through faith in him?

How much do many of the programs and emphases of the Church differ from secular approaches to human problems? We may be trying to steal God’s glory for ourselves by seeing how loving and kind we can be while we ignore the love of God for lost sinners.

Are there poor and needy around you? Then, for God’s sake and for his glory, do what you can to help. To the hungry, give food. For the poorly clad, make clothing available.

But above and beyond all this, give them the Bread of Life and tell them of the One who longs to clothe us in his own righteousness.

L. NELSON BELL

Sniffing, Stirring, Filling, Fanning

A colorful report carried recently by Ecumenical Press Service opens thus: “A concerted, well-financed campaign against sex education in the public schools is being pursued by ‘far right’ organizations in the United States. They are the same extremist groups that in other years have taken as their targets the United Nations, the National Council of Churches, the U. S. Supreme Court and the income tax” (is nothing sacred?).

Dr. Franklin Littell, chairman of the Institute for American Democracy, it continues, thinks the “right-wing extremists,” some of them baptized Christians, work conspiratorially like the early Nazis, misuse Christian terminology, and under the John Birch flag work “to destroy the ecumenical movement, to polarize opinion and to divert funds away from Christian causes.” All this, mark you, in the context of defending sex education. But EPS assures us all is not lost: “Here and there Protestant denominations and councils of churches are beginning to fight back.” (Other worms presumably are still not turning). NCC sympathizers are cited, one source saying that the extremists’ campaign “comes close to a religious heresy” (a word rarely heard in an ecumenical context).

The same source provides a stunner, for it has the extremists “sniffing out issues which will stir emotions and fill their coffers as they fan the fires.” And if that outrageous image doesn’t rouse the customers, “a number of steps are suggested to obtain community action” against extremists in their midst. Those menacing overtones of something-with-boiling-oil-in-it reminded me of the non-right-wing theologian who was convinced the Coming Great Church would be a persecuting one.

All this glib talk of “extremists” (who, after all, come in different shapes and sizes), got me imagining a future news item: “Outside Bethany Church last night a mob of ecumenical extremists ran amok and tried to disrupt a gathering of non-unionists. ‘We don’t object to togetherness,’ one breathless picket told our reporter, ‘but they didn’t clear it first with Head Office.’ Holding tastefully designed placards with extremist slogans (GIVE SEX A CHANCE and VOTE FOR EUGENIUS IV), demonstrators rendered hoarse snatches from a catholic repertoire of songs. Identified were ‘There’s No Place Like Rome,’ and that show-stopper from the steppes, ‘The Dream of Nikodim,’ with its haunting refrain, ‘Comrades All.’ ”

Thoroughly frightened, I decided that despite its friends and selective reporting I was for sex education after all.

EUTYCHUS IV

Genius And The Gospel

I was encouraged by “The Genius of Charles Haddon Spurgeon” (Feb. 27). I have found his writings and sermons to be very inspirational and meaty. His style of proclamation is simple, direct, and penetrating. Much proclamation of the Gospel is loaded with non-biblical baggage which confuses the hearer in responding to the Holy Spirit’s prodding.… We must realize that in preaching the Gospel, we must speak with simpleness, directness, and with parables that penetrate the heart of modern sinful man.

JAMES ARN

Apostolic Mennonite Church

Trenton, Ohio

One cannot help feeling Mr. Pitts hasn’t quite gotten to the heart of Charles Spurgeon’s genius. Professor Latourette’s statement that he was a “moderate Calvinist” is at best misleading. In his autobiography Spurgeon declares:

I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel … unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the Cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called [see The Forgotten Spurgeon, by Ian Murray, Banner of Truth Trust].

Spurgeon’s genius lay in his fervent preaching of the Gospel of sovereign grace, which the Holy Spirit used to convert thousands. We should conclude that our unchanging God will continue to bless that proclamation in the seventies.

DONALD M. POUNDSTONE

Sewickley, Pa.

The Devil In Eden

What! Conservation is at last creeping into Christianity (“Fulfilling God’s Cultural Mandate,” Feb. 27)? Over the years I’ve found church-related civic-improvement groups to be the most difficult prospects when attempting to sell the case for our diminishing environment. “This Is My Father’s World” may be sung in our halls of worship, but the words always fail their most salient purpose. The best prepared and most skillfully presented sermons on stewardship so seldom focus beyond the collection plate. Any feeling of responsibility by the modern Christian for that great garden of Eden known as the environment is left to Satan for nurture. Congratulations for getting into the act.

JOHN E. MUDGE

Professor of Biology

Farmington State College

Farmington, Me.

Most of my life I have heard the agitators moan about man destroying himself, his neighbor, or his planet. First it was the bomb, then fallout, most recently the Viet Nam war, and now pollution. It seems clear to me that there are always ulterior motives in these crusades. And it is also clear that the present crusade is not to provide a better environment for our people but stricter controls on industry through government intervention, clearing the way for eventual confiscation of the means of production by government. So it is not hard to identify who and what is really behind the new campaign. The subversive editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will one day be held accountable for their part in leading man away from God and into slavery.

JOHN D. SOWERS

Birmingham, Mich.

Lutherans’ Lent

I challenge your use of the word some in your editorial, “The Lenten Season” (Feb. 13): “… Lent, a period long observed by Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches as well as Anglican and some Lutheran churches.” I don’t want to be a nit-picker, but does anyone really know of a Lutheran church in which Lent is not observed? Beginning on Ash Wednesday, my Missouri Synod congregation holds special services each Wednesday until Maundy Thursday, when Holy Communion is celebrated. Lutherans of other synods have similar observances. Lent is vital to any church following the liturgical calendar.

LEO L. RIDDLE

Spruce Pine, N. C.

Theology’S Day In Court

In “Church Property Rights” (Feb. 13) you applaud a Supreme Court decision that civil courts lack competence theologically.… American courts have rendered bad decisions in matters where theology and church polity have been involved, but to take these matters out of their hands is not to handle church property cases like any others, for in other cases the courts do (or should) take into account the significant intentions of donors. If they cannot take into account the religious intentions of donors to religious causes they are utterly incapable of granting justice.…

For example, what if a donor leaves an endowment to uphold the teaching of the Westminster Standards and the trustees, as soon as they get this money into their power, divert it to the Black Muslims, the Black Panthers, to Mrs. O’Hair’s atheistical church, or to some other cause to which the donor is heartily opposed. The trustees could claim this to be a theological matter in which the courts have no competence. Courts have made bad decisions, but they should not fail to judge when justice requires it. If they make faulty judgments the wronged parties should endure it and pray and strive for more righteous courts.…

I agree with your implied suggestion that donors to churches and religious endowments should seek as best they can to insure that what they give will not soon fall into the hands of corrupt or careless trustees who will use it against the intentions of the donors.

STEPHEN M. REYNOLDS

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Wenham, Mass.

Listening To Mcluhan

I pounced upon “McLuhan on Religion” (Feb. 13), very impressed that my first issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY had reported him and that one portion of the evangelical world had been listening to him.…

But he does require careful listening. Even a small transposition of letters can alter his meaning.…

You made either a significant typographical error or one of misunderstanding in your paraphrase of McLuhan: “Radical theology … is in keeping with the current age’s shift from concept to precept.” Precept is no shift; McLuhan’s thesis is that we now deal in the world of percept. The new electric technology with its instant speeds have brought this to be. The young are tired of concepts; they want to feel, to experience, to be. The rational logic of doctrinal concepts must be supplemented with perceived experience—faith at work.

You also missed an important meaning when you quoted him as saying that when Christianity “becomes environmental it loses that inner face necessary for the transforming power, that resonance that occurs between the little minority and the great big dark ground.” McLuhan said “interface.” He talks much of the interval, the disjunction between things which creates resonance. This space is what he refers to in the gap a dropout sets up between himself and something else.…

I also think that McLuhan’s contention that “we are moving into a very religious age” is not “seemingly contradictory,” as you suggest, with his view of the demise of Christianity. Many of the under-thirties are indeed on an “inner trip” in search of spiritual reality; they are not looking for it within institutional Christianity. Genuine personal religion is on the upswing; the institutional brand—by whatever name—is being bypassed.

EUNICE SCHATZ

Urban Research Corporation

Chicago, Ill.

Force Confused

Your January 30 editorial entitled “Force: A Christian Option?” is confusing. It begins by charging that “in the World Council of Churches … there have repeatedly been calls for revolution, for the use of force to alter structures of society that will not yield peacefully.”

You go on to list several examples of violent change which (from your perspective) turned out badly. Do you also suggest that Christians (on both sides of the battleline) were wrong in opposing Hitler with violence? Or that the violence which gave birth to the American state was a mistake?

Unless your answer to those questions is an unqualified “No,” I would say your position is essentially the same as that of the World Council.…

Let me share the following from a statement adopted by the 1968 Uppsala Assembly of the WCC:

The building of political structures suitable to national development involves revolutionary changes in social structures. Revolution is not to be identified with violence however. In countries where the ruling groups are oppressive or indifferent to the aspirations of the people, are often supported by foreign interests, and seek to resist all changes by the use of coercive or violent measures, including the “law and order” which may itself be a form of violence, the revolutionary change may take a violent form. Such changes are morally ambiguous. The churches have a special contribution towards the development of effective non-violent strategies of revolution and social change.…

Finally, there is the confusion which results from your apparent equation of revolution, force, and violence. You don’t give us your definitions of those words. Toward the end of the editorial you point out that there is another kind of force (“spiritual power”), but that is certainly not the earlier connotation. Your prior usage, in assigning blame to the World Council, suggests that by force you mean physical force, by revolution you mean violent revolution.

CHARLES P. LUTZ

Associate Executive Secretary

U. S. Conference for the World Council of Churches

New York, N. Y.

A Highly Readable Translation

The New English Bible: The Old Testament (Oxford and Cambridge, 1970, 1,366 pp., $8.95 for Library Edition), is reviewed by Charles F. Pfeiffer, professor of ancient literatures, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

Since the publication of the New English Bible New Testament in 1951, Bible students have been awaiting the Old Testament with keen anticipation. The New Testament was given a generally favorable reception, and American Christians who were less than enthusiastic about the Revised Standard Version thought that this might be a more acceptable translation.

The New English Bible is published jointly by the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge. The American edition is printed here. Representatives of nine religious bodies in the British Isles, including the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, planned and directed the work. The British and Foreign Bible Society and the National Bible Society of Scotland were represented also. During the later stages of translation observers from the Roman Catholic Church joined the committee. The obvious intent of the committee was to produce a Bible translation that would gain wide acceptance throughout the English-speaking world.

Unlike the Revised Standard Version and its predecessors (including the King James Version), the New English Bible professes to be a wholly new translation, rather than a revision of earlier versions. Of course the translators were aware of other versions, and occasionally used them in their search for the best means of rendering the original languages into English. They did not, however, feel any obligation to follow precedent or to justify departures from it. The New English Bible must be evaluated on the basis of its claim that it faithfully renders the original texts into contemporary English.

At times the translators use a simplified English. For Exodus 20:7 they offer, “You shall not make wrong use of the name of the Lord your God”; here and elsewhere they avoid expressions that, although well known to habitual Bible readers, might puzzle the biblically illiterate. In Jonah 1:7 the sailors cast lots to determine who was to blame for their “bad luck.” They did not know the God of Jonah, though we suspect that “bad luck” had more of a religious overtone in ancient times than it does to a modern. The traditional “virtuous woman” (Prov. 31:10, KJV) became the “good wife” in the RSV. In the NEB she is the “capable wife,” a term used in 1965 by R. B. Y. Scott in his Anchor Bible translation. The Hebraist is tempted to throw up his hands and exclaim, “No translation can do justice to the original.” He is right, but the translator must continue to try to find the most suitable English words.

The “garments of skin” made by God for Adam (Gen. 3:21, RSV) become “tunics of skin” in the New English Bible. On the other hand, the “begats” of Genesis 5, which the RSV rendered “was the father of,” have become “begot” in the NEB, a usage that dates to the Jewish Publication Society translation of 1916. The “meat offering” of Leviticus 6 in the King James Version became “meal offering” to the revisers of 1881 and 1901. The Revised Standard used the rather quaint expression “cereal offering”—excellent for the classically trained reader but wholly misleading to Johnny over his Post Toasties. The New English Bible gives us “grain offering,” not very clear, but at least not misleading.

Passages dealing with sex continue to test the ingenuity of the translators. The traditional “Adam knew his wife” (Gen. 4:1, KJV, RSV)—incidentally, a literal translation of the Hebrew—becomes “the man lay with his wife” in the NEB. In the laws pertaining to incest (Lev. 18) the idiom traditionally, and literally, rendered “uncover the nakedness of” becomes “have intercourse with.”

In an attempt to indicate the patronymic as one word or expression, such a name as “Joshua the son of Nun” becomes “Joshua son of Nun” (Josh. 1:1) in the NEB, as in the Jerusalem Bible. The next, and logical, step will be to make it a full proper name and translate, “Joshua ben Nun.”

Since British English and American English are not always uniform, the American reader will occasionally be puzzled. For instance, where the American RSV spoke of “grain in Egypt” (Gen. 42), the New English Bible, like the old King James, says “corn in Egypt.”

The translators were free to paraphrase where they felt this was appropriate. Genesis 6:3, rendered in the RSV “My spirit shall not abide in man forever,” becomes in the NEB “My life-giving spirit shall not remain in man for ever.” Conjectural emendation is an accepted principle. Where the translators feel that the text does not make good sense as it stands, they alter it to provide a meaningful translation. Thus Genesis 9:26 reads, “Bless, O Lord, the tents of Shem …,” with a footnote stating that the Hebrew reads, “Blessed is the Lord, the God of Shem.” As a matter of style, the use of “Once upon a time …” (Gen. 11:1) conveys the idea that the translators regard the story (in this instance, the tower of Babel) as a legend or fairy tale.

The first words of the New English Bible suggest its departure from traditional usages: “In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void … (Gen. 1:1). Hebraists have long suggested that the first word of the Bible is grammatically in the construct state. It is so construed in the Jewish Publication Society’s translation of the Torah (1962) and by Ephraim Speiser in the Anchor Bible. In 1951, Alexander Heidel in his The Babylonian Genesis spent six pages attempting to defend the traditional reading.

Those who criticized the RSV for its treatment of Christological passages in the Old Testament will find little comfort in the New English Bible. The much debated Isaiah 7:14 reads in the NEB, “A young woman is with child.” Interestingly, the Jerusalem Bible, published under Roman Catholic auspices, reads, “The maiden is with child.” A footnote in the Jerusalem Bible states that the Greek version reads “the virgin,” being more explicit than the Hebrew. The NEB gives no footnote. Where the passage is quoted in Matthew 1:23, it is rendered, “The virgin will conceive and bear a son and he shall be called Emmanuel.”

Psalm 2:12, rendered in the KJV “Kiss the Son” and in the RSV “Kiss his feet,” becomes in the NEB, “… kiss the king, lest the Lord be angry and you are struck down in mid course, for his anger flares up in a moment.” A footnote suggests that a literal rendering would be, “tremble and kiss the mighty one,” with the further comment “Heb. obscure.” All will agree that this is a very difficult passage to any translator.

Psalm 45:6 was rendered in the KJV, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.…” The RSV reads, “Your divine throne endures for ever and ever.…” In the NEB we read, “Your throne is like God’s throne, eternal.” In the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah (52:13 ff.), the NEB reads “Time was when many were aghast at you, my people.…” The “my people” is not in the Hebrew, and is added by the translators to clarify the text in line with their presuppositions.

The familiar Tweny-third Psalm has traditionally ended, “and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (so RSV). The Hebrew idiom, literally “to length of days,” is rendered in the NEB “my whole life long.” The translators presuppose that the assurances of God’s presence and blessing in the psalm relate to this life, with no intimations of the next.

Another interesting deviation from custom is omitting the headings that form all or part of verse one of the Hebrew text of many of the psalms, and these were inserted under the psalm number and before the text in earlier versions. While certainly not a part of the original texts, these headings have a history not only as part of the traditional, Masoretic text, but in translations going back to the Septuagint—probably the second century before Christ. The five “books” of psalms are indicated in the NEB.

If headings have been dropped from Psalms, they have been added through most of the rest of the Bible. Unlike the small-print chapter summaries in some editions of the King James Bible, these headings are in large type so that they stand out. The reader should remember that they are editorial insertions, but with that in mind he should find them useful. Before Isaiah 1:1, for example, is the heading “Judah arraigned.” The next heading precedes Isaiah 6:1 and reads, “The call of Isaiah.”

At times the New English Bible is surprisingly conservative. The sacred name of Israel’s God is not Yahweh, as in the Jerusalem Bible and most contemporary scholarly literature, but “the Lord,” as in the King James and Revised Standard versions. The Israelites cross the Red Sea in the NEB, not the Sea of Reeds of the Jerusalem Bible and the JPS Torah. Although, as we have seen, the first words of Genesis 1 depart from traditional usage, “without form and void” are retained as in the King James. The reviewer would prefer something like “formless and empty,” since the six days that follow describe the process of giving form to the formless and filling the empty earth, heavens, and seas. The NEB translators use “thou” and “thee” in contexts in which the deity is addressed. In the New Testament, however, Jesus is addressed as “you.”

Changes in the second edition of the New English Bible New Testament are relatively few, and those largely matters of refining the English style. The spirit and style of the first edition are carried into the second.

In the New English Bible American Christians have one more translation to use in their studies and consider for pulpit or teaching purposes. The NEB should stimulate Bible study, and it will often bring to the layman ideas that have been discussed in scholarly circles for years but have not been available in a readable Bible translation before. We do not expect the New English Bible to gain universal acceptance, and this fact may enable contemporary Christians to consider it without emotional involvement. Like all other translations, it has its strengths and its weaknesses. It is a highly readable translation, made by excellent scholars. Unhappily, brilliant scholars sometimes let their brilliance eclipse the intent of the original writers. This is true of every translation. The New English translators attempted to render faithfully the text of the biblical books. Occasionally they missed, but on the whole the translation merits serious study.

The New English Bible is available in a variety of editions. The Library Edition has three volumes: Old Testament ($8.95); Apocrypha ($4.95); and New Testament (Second Edition) ($5.95). There is also a standard edition of Old Testament and New Testament ($8.95), and one of the Old Testament, Apocrypha, and New Testament ($9.95). The New Testament (Second Edition) is also available as a paperback at $1.75.

The Oxford and Cambridge presses have produced a truly beautiful edition of the Bible. They used a one-column page, departing from the two-column format of earlier editions, including the Revised Standard Version. The traditional verse numbers have been placed in the margin for reference, but they do not break the text itself. In a few places the editors have rearranged the text in accord with their scholarly presuppositions. An extreme example is Zechariah where we find the order: 4:1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14; 3:1–10; 4:4–10. The editors feel they have restored the correct order, but they keep the traditional chapter and verse numbers. Type is large and clear, and poetry is indicated by marginal indentation. The publishers wanted to produce a readable Bible, and they have succeeded.

Thought-Provoking Study

The Prophets, by Emil G. Kraeling (Rand McNally, 1969, 304 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Ronald Youngblood, associate professor of Old Testament interpretation, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

As in the book of the same title by a contemporary Jewish scholar, Abraham Heschel, Professor Kraeling discusses the basic teachings and unique contributions of the Old Testament prophetic literature (Isaiah through Malachi) in what he considers to be chronological order. Whereas Heschel, however, stops at the exile, Kraeling carries the story down to the end of the Old Testament account, though he gives only a passing nod (to keep the cost down, his foreword tells us) to lesser known or less significant prophets. His “Trito-Isaiah” (Isaiah 56–66), for example, receives but two pages of description, whereas “Deutero-Isaiah” (Isaiah 40–55) merits thirty-seven pages.

Kraeling is at his best when he finds extra-biblical ancient Near Eastern parallels to shed light on Old Testament passages. A lifetime of teaching and scholarship in the Bible and related areas enables him to bring to bear on the text of Scripture a wide array of stimulating and helpful observations. As a Lutheran minister, Kraeling is quick to point out it was the Church that ultimately extended the knowledge and influence of the prophets far beyond the circles of the Jewish ghettos and that the New Testament writers often displayed a remarkably profound understanding of Old Testament prophetic statements. He emphasizes also that later meaning attributed to words and phrases often become more theologically significant than the originally intended meaning. A corollary is the worthwhile comment, made also by Gerhard von Rad and others, that unfulfilled prophecy is not necessarily false prophecy: “God acts in sovereign freedom, and can adopt a different course if circumstances warrant.”

In his discussion of the prophetic consciousness, Kraeling notes correctly that attempts to psychoanalyze the prophets cannot be expected to produce fruitful results, since “the remoteness of the times and the uncertainty and incompleteness of the reporting are formidable barriers. The tests and interrogations that can be applied to living persons cannot be applied to the prophets.” One wishes that the author had used this admirable warning to temper his own skepticism about the kinds of insights that the prophets could or could not have received from their sovereign God. Kraeling freely admits that many of the prophets possessed capacities for clairvoyance, but he rarely if ever allows them the ability to foretell the future and nearly always denies that they could have foreseen specific details. This and similar considerations lead him to suspect the authenticity of numerous passages, frequently assume later interpolations, and fragmentize even the shorter books and pericopes. The snowballing effect of such an approach leads to a belittling of the unity and credibility of the Scriptures to the extent that at one point the reliability of the Gospels bows to that of Josephus.

On balance, however, The Prophets is a discerning and thought-provoking volume, and the reader equipped to separate fact from speculation will learn much from it. Kraeling’s treatment of the four Servant Songs of Isaiah, though necessarily brief and therefore somewhat truncated, was for me one of the highlights of the book. Isaiah 53, says our author, “was the trellis on which the vine of Christian dogma could climb. And who will say that it was not the will of God that it should do so?”

Who, indeed?

A Plea For Obedience

God’s Basic Law, by Kurt Hennig (Fortress. 1969, 242 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by John C. Howell, professor of Christian ethics, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.

In a day when adherence to the moral authority of biblical faith is constantly challenged as “legalism” by situationally oriented Christian ethicists, it is refreshing to read a book declaring that responsiveness to God’s mandates is the essence of true morality. Kurt Hennig, a Lutheran pastor in Stuttgart, Germany, provides such a resource in his study of the Ten Commandments as God’s Basic Law.

Much in this book is valuable as Christian guidance. Hennig’s thesis is that man’s basic failure in moral living is his unwillingness to yield his life in obedience to God. The contemporary importance of the Ten Commandments, therefore, is grounded upon the realization that “they do not call us to morality but to something much more important—to obedience.” The Decalogue is not a compendium of ethical universals that all reasonable men should agree to accept; it is, rather, “God’s call to obedience, for in them it is God himself who speaks.”

Each chapter of the book is devoted to one of the commandments, and Hennig usually relates the Old Testament command to its application in the New Testament. He also gives adequate stress to God’s mercy toward the disobedient as a balance to his emphasis upon unconditional obedience.

On the negative side: Hennig uses the commandments as a vehicle for introducing ethical concerns that are only indirectly suggested by the Exodus passages, and some one-sided affirmations.

In discussing the fourth commandment, for instance, he maintains that the disintegration of the family began when “the emancipation of women and equal rights for women were proclaimed and established,” because man’s headship over woman was thus destroyed and respect in the home lost. It is undeniably true that the greater freedom of women has altered the structure of family life, but Hennig gives no hint of the values gained in marriage by accepting the equality of personhood (Gal. 3:28) as a basis for family living.

Similarly, he declares that “no child is born apart from the express will of God.” Since procreation can occur only because God created man to reproduce himself in this way, the statement is partially true; but to declare that every act of conception is God’s express will is absurd.

Such affirmations as these tend to diminish the impact of his many very helpful interpretations of the contemporary relevance of the Ten Commandments. His basic plea for obedience is needed, but the book requires selective reading.

Book Briefs

Listen to Me!, by Gladys Hunt (Inter-Varsity, 1969, 165 pp., $3.50). The author introduces the reader to eight students, representing varied backgrounds and ideologies, who talk about their ideas on “the real stuff of life.”

The Right to Live, by Clifford C. Cawley (A. S. Barnes, 1969, 303 pp., $10). Investigates the legal problems created when a parent, because of his religious convictions, denies a child proper medical aid.

Our God-Breathed Book—the Bible, by John R. Rice (Sword of the Lord, 1969, 416 pp., $5.95). Although this defense of the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture breaks no new ground, it serves as a useful summary of the views of a number of conservative scholars. There is an emphasis upon God’s control of the environment and character of the human authors so that the words they wrote were actually God’s words.

The Rebellions of Israel, by Andrew C. Tunyogi (John Knox, 1969, 158 pp., $4.95). Studies the rebellion-forgiveness motif in the history of Israel and considers its significance for the new Israel.

The Redeeming Christ, by Peter J. Riga (Corpus, 1969, 124 pp., $4.95). A Roman Catholic theologian affirms the fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as the central event of Christian history.

Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 32:1886, by C. H. Spurgeon (Banner of Truth Trust, 1969, 708 pp., 25s). A reproduction of one of the later volumes in this classic series of Spurgeon’s sermons.

Melanchthon, Reformer Without Honor, by Michael Rogness (Augsburg, 1969, 165 pp., $4.95). Investigates the role of Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s most important co-worker, in the formation of Lutheran theology.

The Letter of Paul to the Galatians, by Robert L. Johnson (Sweet, 1969, 182 pp., $3.50). Latest addition to a series of evangelical commentaries written by Church of Christ scholars and based on the RSV Bible.

Know What You Believe, by Paul E. Little (Scripture Press, 1970, 192 pp., paperback, $1.25). A brief but most helpful survey of the main areas of Christian doctrine.

Prayer Is Action, by Helen Smith Shoemaker (Morehouse-Barlow, 1969, 128 pp., paperback, $3). The widow of Dr. Sam Shoemaker contends that prayer itself is the most effective form of Christian action.

Why Do Christians Suffer?, by Theodore H. Epp (Back to the Bible, 1970, 135 pp., paperback, $.50). Some helpful thoughts on a timeless subject.

Defrost Your Frozen Assets, by C. W. Franke (Word, 1969, 147 pp., $3.95) Explores ways in which Christians can put their faith into action by using their God-given abilities and potential to meet the world’s needs.

Miracle of Time, by Eric W. Hayden (Zondervan, 1969, 123 pp., $2.95) Lenten sermons by the former pastor of London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle.

Praise him with fanfares on the trumpet, praise him upon lute and harp; praise him with tambourines and dancing, praise him with flute and strings; praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with truimphant cymbals; let everything that has breath the praise Lord!

—Psalms 150:3–6

(The New English Bible)

Many a Christian musician has suddenly decided to take the psalmist’s inspired imperatives very literally. Strange new sounds—most of them very loud—will emanate from sanctuaries around the world this Easter Sunday. They add up to the first significantly new movement in church music in more than a century.

Evangelical churches have taken the lead in introducing a new kind of sacred music patterned after the popular folk rock. Country or Western music is also being appropriated by evangelical churches more than ever. Theologically liberal churches have been more reticent about such musical inroads, but in those congregations that allow it, these types of music as well as straight jazz are now heard. Most common are the folk and jazz “masses.”

Interestingly, the new movement is being welcomed by many respected church musicians, even those who have until now insisted upon classical forms. Others are critical. Church-music journals have generally been sympathetic, though they are publishing hot dialogues on the pros and cons.

“The Church is groping now for a new musical language,” says Dr. Donald Hustad, professor of church music at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “At the moment we go with the latest fad.” Hustad regards the current trend as secular music’s biggest invasion of the Church since about 1850.

As might be expected, the new sounds in church music are seen as symbols of liberation and are used enthusiastically by young people. They are sung at youth meetings in the church, at outings, retreats, and rallies. But soloists and instrumentalists are also being heard exercising the fresh idiom in worship services—sometimes with amplifiers perched on the altars.

Folk rock has caused a boom in so-called all-night sings, which have been popular for many years, especially in the Southern United States. These programs normally feature several quartets. Admission is charged, and the musicians bring along a supply of records to sell, too.

One such sing brought people flocking to Toronto’s Massey Hall last month and enabled a local reporter to twit fundamentalists. He recalled their aversion to nightclubs, then noted the atmosphere at the sing: “The darkened house with the sweeping spotlight, electronic sound equipment that blasted the music out into the auditorium until it bounced off the walls, and men and women in the audience wearing the latest styles. All that was missing were the scantily dressed showgirls and fast-talking MC with his blue jokes.”

Among Southern Baptists and Methodists, this phenomenon has thwarted the efforts of the musical elite to get local choirs and congregations to use more sophisticated music (represented in the older tradition by Bach and in modern style by such contemporary composers as the late Leo Sowerby of Washington Cathedral). Efforts to bring about such a switch are being temporarily abandoned as folk rock makes headway in the churches.

Says one authority: “Current religious music in folk rock style is generally superior to the cheap nineteenth-century gospel songs that were inspired by the sentimental ballads of that day.” The comparison comes from Dr. Paul E. Elbin, a United Presbyterian minister who is president of West Liberty State College in Wheeling, West Virginia. Elbin, writing in the Hymn, adds that “the simplicity and honesty of many folk-derived religious compositions surely make them more acceptable to men of good taste and religious devotion than the erotic ‘In the Garden’ and similar musical aberrations of the past.”

Another expert, writing from the Roman Catholic perspective in Music, took an opposite tack: “Historians and sociologists cannot but be aware that the worst kind of pseudo-popular ‘commercial’ music is threatening to invade the Mass. Guitar, rock ’n roll, and jazz Masses do not represent the actuosa participatio envisaged by the [Vatican] Council. The music not only lacks the devotional quality but also the particular grace of art, because it gives us in the raw those cultural traits that were not influenced by Christian ethics.”

Austin Lovelace, writing in the Journal of Church Music, declared that “as an organist I find it hard to get excited about giving up the glorious sound of a good pipe organ for the strumming of guitars. I believe every instrument has its usefulness, but the guitar (limited mostly to rhythm and harmony) seriously limits music possibilities.” He thinks many of the new songs have a message but are so commercial in both text and music “that they are bound to be ephemeral.”

Tedd Smith, veteran pianist for Billy Graham crusades, is a conscientious promoter of sacred rock. “It is not just noise, as so many people think,” he says. “It is a difficult, extremely complicated kind of music.” Not everything that is labeled rock has musical integrity, and Smith suggests that the best is that which comes out of Christian experience. This, he contends, is deeply meaningful for many of today’s young people and is not mere entertainment.

Jazz in the churches goes back a decade or more. It has come on slowly, but with the encouragement of such renowned figures as Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck, both of whom have been composing sacred music in recent years.

Sample of new sacred song.

Composer Ralph Carmichael says,

“I want neither credit

nor blame for creating today’s

musical forms. I ask only for

guidance to know how to use them

in good taste to reach

‘now’ people with a message

that never changes.”

“The Singing Nun” introduced the folk element into sacred music several years ago. Touring college groups¹Breakthroughs have been encouraged through wide popular acceptance of groups such as those from Oral Roberts University and Campus Crusade, as well as Moral Rearmament’s “Up with People” performers. Some of these have drawn criticism from fundamentalists for their choreography. have done much to help religious folk music catch on. Actually, however, folk tunes have been giving way to so-called hard or acid rock, or to combinations of folk and rock.

The use of instruments is not new to many evangelical churches. Many have always had an assortment playing along with the singing congregations.

A few evangelicals consider rock demonically inspired. Professional musicians tend to agree, however, that music cannot be intrinsically good or evil. Yet they concede that various types of music have different effects on the listener. Says Dr. Lee Olson of Nyack Missionary College, “The sensual pleasure derived from listening to music and the physiological effect of rhythms upon the listener can instill a variety of moods.” He feels that rhythm probably has done more for secularization of church music than anything else.

Musical experts note that the Church has always borrowed from the music of the secular world. This was true in Luther’s time, and in Wesley’s, and even in the last century, when many of today’s gospel songs were inspired by the kind of music written by Stephen Foster.

So far, congregational singing has not been much affected by folk rock. It normally takes a long time for new songs to get published in the standard hymnals. A number of new hymnals and supplements are now being planned, and these probably will reflect the current trend.

The hope of the best church musicians, similar to that of other Christian artists, is that perhaps in the current changing mood a distinctively evangelical music can be developed. Olson would like to see “a sanctified church music which is not of this world and through which the Christian will sense the glory of the world to come.” He quotes Olivier Messiaen, one of France’s leading contemporary church musicians, as saying that to accomplish this the Church needs “a consummate artist … who will be both a skilled artisan and a fervent Christian. Let us hasten in our prayers for such a liberator.”

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Abortion Made Easier

It’s not for us to say, some state legislators seem to be saying about whether they should legalize abortions. Last month Hawaii abolished all requirements for abortions save a ninety-day residency period and fetal nonviability. Despite strong opposition from his church, Roman Catholic Governor John A. Burns indicated he would allow the bill to become law.

Meanwhile, in a Maryland House committee, Allen B. Spector was sponsoring a similar abortion bill. “Brain surgery is more dangerous,” the delegate observed. “Yet as far as this legislature is concerned, it can be performed on a kitchen table.” Religious considerations, he added, should be the concern of the individuals involved and of the religious community, not the state legislature.

A physician reminded the committee that his profession has long regulated itself and can establish guidelines for abortion.

Abortion laws also made news in:

• Virginia. A liberalized bill got a majority of votes in the lower house.

• California. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a state court’s declaration that the law allowing abortion only to preserve the woman’s life was unconstitutionally vague.

• New York. The State Council of Churches declared abortion “properly a matter of individual conscience” and called only for “medical safeguards in a hospital setting.”

• Washington. Either liberalize the present law or refer it to a popular vote, the State Council of Churches challenged legislators. A Gallup Poll last December showed that perhaps 40 per cent of the voters would favor legalized abortion.

Personalia

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, currently editor-at-large of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, has been named professor of theology at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been a visiting professor there since last September.

Dr. Donald R. Heiges resigned his dual post as president of the Lutheran seminaries in Philadelphia and Gettysburg. He announced he was leaving less than two weeks after a decision to drop plans for merging the seminaries.

Officials of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod have blocked an attempt to appoint Dr. Richard Jungkuntz to the faculty of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Jungkuntz has been a visiting professor at Concordia since he lost his job as executive secretary of the synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations. Concordia’s Board of Control wanted to take him on as associate professor of exegetical-systematic theology.

Bob Wilcox, 26, who has been religion editor of the Miami News for one year, won the annual Supple Award of the Religion Newswriters Association this month for excellence in religion reporting in the secular press. Entries of Janice Law, 27, of the Houston Chronicle won the new RNA Schachern Award for the best religion section in newspapers published in 1969. Hiley Ward of the Detroit Free Press was elected president of the RNA at its annual meeting.

Dr. Mariano di Gangi was elected president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. Di Gangi is a former pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, where he succeeded the noted Donald Grey Barnhouse. Di Gangi is now director of the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship.

The Reverend Andrew Young, a close associate of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., will run for the U.S. congressional seat now held by Representative Fletcher Thompson of Atlanta, a conservative Republican. Young, who said he would resign this month as executive vice-president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is also opposed by candidate Lonnie King, president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP.

Deaths

ALBERT BUCKNER COE, 81, retired Congregationalist leader; former chief architect of the United Church of Christ and one-time president of the Massachusetts Council of Churches; in Columbus, Ohio.

ERNEST S. REED, 61, official of the Canadian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches; Anglican bishop of Ottawa; in Ottawa, Canada.

THE RT. REV. ERNEST SAMUEL REED, 61, Anglican bishop of Ottawa and member of the World Council of Churches’ Central and Executive committees; in Ottawa.

Religion In Transit

The Department of Commerce released figures showing that church construction in the United States in 1969 was about $951 million, down from 1968’s figure of $1.3 billion.

The Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund has registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission a mutual growth fund to be known as Harvest Fund. Sale of shares will begin in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

A grant of $220,000 has been allocated to the Interreligious Foundation for Community Development (IFCO) by the United Methodist Board of Missions; one-third of this sum is undesignated, the second such undesignated allotment made by the board since October, when $300,000 was granted with no strings.

Methodist minister Phillip Lawson testified to the House Committee on Internal Security that the Methodist Innercity Parish in Kansas City had rented a building to Black Panthers for their headquarters for $1 a year.

United Methodist mission magazine World Outlook has been merged with new, the multi-media communications package of the United Presbyterian Church, to form new/World Outlook.

Capetown, South Africa, churchmen who support apartheid were disturbed when a study commission they appointed told them racially mixed marriages were not sinful, the Associated Press reported.

The Pocket Testament League plans to distribute 500,000 Gospels of John (in fifteen languages) to visitors at Expo 70, the world fair in Japan.

The United Church of Canada expects a $1 million deficit in its operating budget this year and may be forced to abandon some of its programs.

The London (England) Bible College has opened a new branch of evening classes in Madras, India.

In the most sweeping integration order ever issued against a big school system outside the South, Los Angeles was ordered to integrate its 622 schools with 674,000 students, starting next September. To achieve full integration, elementary and secondary schools in neighboring Pasadena were lumped into four “corridors,” with busing of students planned up to ten miles within each zone. School officials said the busing could cost $1 million a year.

These actions illustrate a new dimension to the intensifying national school crisis. They reveal problems in the North that school districts in the South have been facing for years.

In a number of cities—notably in the South—a strategy used to subvert integration of public schools is the opening of nonsectarian “private” schools. While few of these schools overtly admit it, most become all-white havens for desegregation dodgers.

In the Jackson, Mississippi, area, for instance, the White Citizens Councils of America, a white-supremacy group, estimates nearly 3,000 new students were enrolled in its private schools during the first six weeks of this year. Similar reports come from Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.

Responsible Christian bodies and associations of Christian schools, though, appear to be heavily opposed to racially segregated private schools.

Dr. John F. Blanchard, Jr., executive director of the National Association of Christian Schools (affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals), spoke in an interview about the association’s 300 member schools. “We will not accept a school whose literature says it is for white children only,” he said. He estimates that two-thirds to four-fifths of the NACS schools (with a total enrollment of 53,000) have at least token integration. The association itself has grown rapidly in the past several years. But Blanchard does not think the upsurge was caused by the desire of parents to circumvent integration. Rather, they are upset over sex-education courses in public schools and are also alarmed about the general secular tone there.

“Parents suddenly are awakened to the fact that secular education—which is education without God—is undermining the faith of their children,” Blanchard believes.

Writer Joe Bayly of David C. Cook publishers, who is president of the NACS board, said the NACS’s policy is to try to determine whether a school applying for membership is founded on Christian principles or merely on segregation or “super-patriotism.” “We want schools that are Christocentric … rather than those that are trying to escape the Supreme Court ruling on a local level or to protest the lack of patriotism within public schools,” he said.

Apparently private “Christian” schools in Dixie are getting the NACS message: only one in Mississippi has become a NACS member in the past three years, Blanchard said.

The National Union of Christian Schools represents 287 elementary and secondary schools in twenty-six states and Canada. About 85 per cent of the pupils’ parents are members of the Christian Reformed Church. Perhaps twenty-five to thirty of the schools are integrated, according to John A. Vander Ark, NUCS director and editor of its magazine, Christian Home and School. Vander Ark said the NUCS urges that “there be no discrimination on the basis of race.” A revamped policy “advising open admissions” is in the works, Vander Ark added. It is in line with the strong stand against discrimination taken by the Christian Reformed Church in 1968.

Speaking about 1,236 elementary (with 154,000 students) and twenty-five community secondary schools related to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Dr. Arthur Miller of the denomination’s Board of Parish Education said: “We would offer no encouragement at all to congregations that would want to start a school to escape integration.… That would do violence to the Christian school concept.”

The denomination adopted a statement at its convention last July stating that the Lutheran school “is not to provide parents an escape from sending their children to racially or culturally integrated schools.” About 640 of the Missouri Synod-related elementary schools are integrated, according to Dr. Martin F. Wessler, the synod’s associate secretary of schools.

In addition to these three major affiliations of Christian schools, there are a number of regional associations and quasi-associations of private schools. One is the Association for Christian Schools, run in Houston by T. Robert Ingram.

Some persons acquainted with the association say it is strongly committed to segregation. Ingram simply says his organization (it has no member schools) has no statement on race: “We don’t concern ourselves with this.… The compulsory school attendance system is unlawful.… Confusion across the country has stimulated interest in the Christian school movement. Those setting up a school should run it as they see fit.”

Ingram expects about one hundred school administrators, teachers, board members, and parents to attend a three-day ACS annual conference in Houston next month. The major concern will be Creation and the public schools.

Most denominations officially oppose school segregation. At the local level, however, makeshift, hastily formed “Christian academies” are springing up. Few if any of these schools bother to affiliate with national organizations like the NACS or the NUCS.

Last January, thirty-six representatives of a black Catholic parish in Indianola, Mississippi, picketed a white sister church that had sold its old building to be used for a new, presumably all-white private school. Asked if the private school was being established to avoid integration, the white minister of the black church replied, “That’s right.” The pastor of the white parish declined to reply.

In Tunica, Mississippi, Protestants have established private schools “to circumvent federal court integration orders,” reports Evangelical Press. Some 350 white children and half of Tunica’s thirty white teachers took their public-school textbooks and crowded into the small rooms of the church schools. (Mississippi law permits the use of public-school books in private schools.)

In the wake of court desegregation orders, Religious News Service noted, sixteen Baptist churches in Mississippi’s Adams County banded to open a private school. The announcement was greeted with more than 2,400 “good faith” applications (each with a $20 deposit) from students who had previously attended public schools.

Nobody seems to know how many “segregation academies” there are, or how fast the movement is expanding. Persons familiar with the situation, like Joe Bayly, say it is a fairly serious problem. But Bayly adds quickly that some all-white Christian schools are “quietly moving toward integration.”

Although he recognizes that havens of segregation exist, Dr. William L. Pressley, headmaster of Atlanta’s prestigious Westminster Schools, advises new schools to start out with an open admission policy. The Westminster Schools—six units for kindergartners through high schoolers—were among the first private schools in the Southeast to take the integration leap. The move, made six years ago, cost them no students, Pressley reports, though a few parents recorded their displeasure. Now black students, who get equal consideration when scholarships are distributed¹Many independent “prep” schools have willingly opened their doors and scholarship funds to Negroes. Notable among such Chirstian schools is the Stony Brook School on Long Island., are considered “constructive” additions to the schools.

One private school due to start in September, 1971, with an open admission policy is Linfield School in southern California. The expensive ($3,100-a-year), non-denominational boarding school for grades seven through twelve will open the doors of its 100-acre campus to blacks, says president and founder Donn C. Odell, “if they qualify.”

Official denominational pressure has been mounting lately to support unified public-school systems and to oppose private schools based on segregation.

In Mississippi, arms of the Episcopal and United Methodist churches have gone on record declaring these principles. So have the editors of two dozen Baptist state papers throughout the nation. And a similiar stand will be proposed for adoption by the national conference of the United Methodists at a meeting in St. Louis next month.

The Mecklenburg Presbytery of the Southern Presbyterian Church has gone a step farther: it instructed member churches in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area “that no private school (grades 1 through 12) in competition with the public school system should be operated by, or housed in, church facilities.”

Segregation in Roman Catholic parochial schools presents problems not unlike those in the Protestant milieu. Opponents of federal aid to education, notably Americans United for Separation of Church and State, fear that government funding of parochial schools will produce a mass exodus from the public education system. This, foes declare, not only will cost taxpayers more; it also will make public schools a dumping ground for minority students while white students transfer to “racist parochial schools.”

In an apparent effort to calm such fears, some Catholic educators have taken recent action to halt the segregation influx in parochial schools. Several Southern dioceses have barred public-school transfer students from entering Catholic schools. In St. Paul, pupils in six Catholic elementary schools have been regrouped by age and bused among four schools in an attempt to end de facto segregation and improve inner-city education.

Nevertheless, many Christian schools will continue to have segregation or only token integration as long as neighborhoods are segregated. And tuition costs of private schools—Christian and otherwise—tend to make them accessible mainly to the economically advantaged. The doors of Christian schools are closed to many minority and lower-class children simply because their parents can’t afford to send them.

Pastoral Pilgrimage

Into the furor of the school desegregation hassle rode seventeen Alabama ministers recently, their jaunt taking them to the Washington offices of a special counsel to President Nixon (Harry Dent) and a Supreme Court justice (Hugo Black), among others.

The ministers’ purpose was: to reflect concern over the growing number of private schools popping up in the South in the wake of federal orders to intensify integration; to reflect feelings of many of their parishioners favoring freedom of choice in the public schools; and to oppose busing of school children.

One of the group’s organizers was Dr. R. B. Culbreth, pastor of Birmingham’s Huffman Baptist Church and former pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D. C. Culbreth once counted among his members South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, who helped arrange the appointments for the ministers.

All the ministers making the trip were Southern Baptist except for the Reverend Pete Clifford, a Birmingham United Methodist pastor. The group included the president of the Alabama Baptist Convention.

Ralph Feild, chief organizer of the trip, said: “This administration is in sympathy with the South. It is against forced busing and it is determined to save neighborhood schools.”

The ministers emphasized that they had not gone to Washington as segregationists. And, they insisted, most are convinced that private schools for the masses—such as many Southern churches are being pressed to organize—would be “economically discriminatory.”

Several noted they returned from Washington decidedly anti-(George) Wallace. One observed: “It’s almost impossible for the South to get a wide hearing in Washington because of the antics of Wallace and (Georgia governor Lester) Maddox.”

WALLACE HENLEY

Division = Lutheran Unity?

In a February 11 letter to the pastors and teachers of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, President Jacob A. O. Preus warned of a liberal group within the church disrupting its conservative stand on doctrine. Ten days later, some 850 conservative Lutherans heard a call to divide the church along liberal and evangelical lines.

In his “brother-to-brother” letter, Preus scored “prominent and responsible professors and synodical officials” who have circulated a document, “A Call to Openness and Trust.” The St. Louis-based group asks for greater freedom of belief relating to matters they say are not specifically considered in the Scriptures, including biblical inerrancy and the manner of creation.

“Make no mistake about this, brothers,” Preus admonished. “What is at stake is not only inerrancy but the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself, the authority of Holy Scripture, the ‘quia’ subscription to the Lutheran confessions, and perhaps the very continued existence of Lutheranism as a confessional and confessing movement in the Christian world.”

He concluded: “It would be far better for such people to leave our fellowship than to work from within to torment and ultimately to destroy it.” His message didn’t escape the notice of the keynote speaker at a Chicago testimonial for the Reverend Herman Otten, editor of the Christian News.²The 24,000-circulation, independent tabloid weekly was itself repudiated by the Missouri Synod’s Council of Presidents last year for its alleged divisive influence.

Lutheran layman Roy Guess of Casper, Wyoming, told the 850 guests that the Missouri Synod should (1) recognize and define its evident theological division, (2) outlaw liberal theology in the church, and (3) “amicably and fairly” lay the groundwork so liberals can carry on “as they see fit and we, as conservative Bible-believing Missouri Synod Lutherans, may continue in the traditional and historical faith.… This eventually means organizational realignment. I see no other Christian solution.”

Examining Black Theology

What is the meaning of “blackness” for American life in general, and theological formulation in particular? This was the question posed at the Conference on the Black Religious Experience and Theological Education, held February 20–22 at Howard University, in Washington, D. C.

The assembly had the kind of initial advantage that accrues to black-and-white dialogue when blacks outnumber whites—in this case by three to one. It was assumed that there is a typically black theological lifestyle whose justification is found, not in blackness, but in the relative nearness of its formulators to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

At this point the conference became bifocal. One pole was represented by history professor Vincent Harding of Atlanta’s Spelman College, the other by Professor James H. Cone of Union Seminary, New York. Harding proposed that to articulate a valid “black religious experience” one must bypass the formulations of historic Christianity and return to the “faith of the fathers” in pre-slavery Africa. The basic insights that make this primeval “faith” identifiable shine through the poetry and other non-rational elements of the black Christian community. But the major qualities that belong to a valid black religious experience are those of animism. Black Christianity was held to have been superimposed upon this fundament.

The more traditional posture was that Christianity can be made valid for black experience if we can go behind the tradition of Euro-American (read white) Christendom to the Christ who identified with the poor and was “friend of sinners” rather than “patron of the privileged.” Thus a typically black theology was held to be a necessary ingredient in theological education and, as well, an essential corrective to the distortions of American Christendom.

Blackness was seen as less a genetic matter than a psychological one—namely, an increasing self-consciousness of difference from the Euro-American style in life and religion. At times also blackness was equated with economic disadvantage. This led to a strong implicit element of criticism of all forms of middle-class and upper-class American life. American society was branded as being racist and oppressive to visible minorities.

It was a consensus among whites in attendance that they were on the taking end of “sock it to ‘em”—and the experience was probably salutary. It is always good to be compelled to ask, “Is it I?” Probably some forms of rhetoric and hyperbole are essential to shaking established patterns. Certainly the conference held Robert Burns’s mirror to the eyes of members of the privileged majority. Whether it will merely increase the guilt level or lead to constructive results is for the future to decide.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Money For All-Black Groups: Granting The Separatists?

In a controversy similar to the furor over Episcopal money transmitted indirectly to the Black Economic Development Conference (see September 26, 1969, issue, page 42), a new logomachy has surfaced about United Presbyterian involvement with the militant black agency. The question is whether $50,000 received by the BEDC late last year was “United Presbyterian money” by the time the BEDC got it.

Here’s the background, according to Religious News Service reporter Elliot Wright: The United Presbyterian Board of National Missions and the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations were each directed to give $50,000 to the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization at last May’s UP General Assembly. This money was to be released to IFCO when it had “approved the manner in which the money would be held and administered.”

The mission board was also instructed to “support possibilities recommended to it by IFCO, including those … of the National Black Economic Development Conference.” When IFCO’s board met last September, it agreed to accept the Presbyterian money and channel part of it to the BEDC. In early December, IFCO received the $100,000 and the BEDC got half of that sum the same month.

Ministers’ Social Security

April 15 isn’t only the deadline for clergymen to file their 1969 federal income-tax forms (many will enclose a check); it’s also the last day most of them can request exemption from social security coverage of their earnings from professional services.

Since 1968, earnings of ministers from services in their ministry automatically have been covered for social security purposes. Exemption from this requirement can be obtained only on grounds of conscience or religious principle and a minister who once gets such an exemption cannot later revoke it.

Clergymen electing this exemption must file a completed Internal Revenue Service form 4361 with the IRS by April 15. But the deadline applies only to ministers who had annual earnings in any two years before 1970 of $400 or more from ministerial services. The exemption can’t be applied to wages and self-employment earnings from other sources.

United Presbyterian spokesmen generally say that it was IFCO’s decision—not the denomination’s—to pipe the money to the BEDC, which is closely associated with James Forman’s Black Manifesto. But they add that there was no designation or restriction by the General Assembly that prohibited such action.

The whole involvement came to public light only last month, after a wire story quoted BEDC chairman Calvin Marshall as saying $50,000 had come from United Presbyterians. That money, plus $29,858 from other sources, will be used for the BEDC’s administrative development.

In another funding controversy, officials of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ insisted last month that its $1 million grant to black churchmen did not encourage racial separation. But leaders of the NAACP disagreed in a lengthy standoff debate in Boston.

The UCC voted last November to give the $1 million to the state’s Black Ecumenical Commission (BEC) by 1971; $250,000 was paid to the BEC in January. John Morsell, second in command to NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins, echoed an earlier statement by Wilkins that the church’s decision to fund the black commission was “feeding on despair and misguided guilt” and moving toward “the apostleship of black racism.” Other opponents of the grant included AME Zion bishop Stephen Gill Spottswood.

Morsell told the consultation (boycotted by BEC members) that many national religious bodies have now chosen to abandon efforts toward integration and the goals of a single society.

Among those defending the funding was United Methodist bishop James K. Mathews of New England. He called the grant “an investment in justice and human dignity, preeminent concerns of our day.”

Meanwhile, UCC and NAACP agencies entered a joint operation to break down barriers to fair employment in broadcasting industries and to help minority groups “get access to the airwaves.” The UCC’s director of communications, Dr. Everett C. Parker, was joined by NAACP official Jean Fairfax in a statement announcing the program. It asserted that the Federal Communications Commission was guilty of “a shameful, almost incredible delay” in enforcing its own fair-employment rule for the broadcast media.

A primary effort of the venture will be to get stations to hire and train blacks and other minority persons right away, especially for top management levels. Parker’s office already is participating in citizen-group negotiations with management of twenty-four Atlanta, Georgia, stations.

Tracking Down A Killer

A new killer virus discovered in Nigeria, West Africa, claimed the life of Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) missionary doctor Jeanette M. Troup, 46, of Akron, Ohio, on February 18. Her death came just one year after she had treated and diagnosed the first recorded victims of the virus. Dr. Troup, a Wheaton College alumna who served with the SIM for eighteen years, had been treating African patients suffering from Lassa fever at the SIM hospital in Jos.

The lethal virus first appeared in a missionary from Lassa, Nigeria; hence its name. Both she and the nurse attending her at Evangel Hospital died. Another missionary nurse, Lily Pinneo, came down with the fever and was rushed to the United States. After battling for life—with temperatures as high as 107—she recovered miraculously.

So far no effective vaccine has been found to combat Lassa fever. A number of Africans have died of the disease through the years, but no exact figures are available. Research was being conducted at Yale University, but two investigators there were infected with the virus. One died. The university then abandoned research on the disease, and the investigation has now been shifted to the National Communicable Disease Center at Atlanta.

Late last month Miss Pinneo was well enough (after nine weeks in a New York hospital) to return to Jos. She took with her a small supply of plasma from her blood containing antibodies that doctors in Nigeria hope will counteract this otherwise untreatable infection.

W. HAROLD FULLER