Giver$ Revolt

A “givers’ revolt” appears to have been all but cut off at the pass by bishops of the Episcopal Church, who quickly issued pastoral letters of “clarification.” Fear that a $200,000 grant would go to the Black Economic Development Conference, sponsor of the Black Manifesto, touched off the backlash last month (see September 26 issue, pages 37 and 42).

On September 25, the Episcopal Executive Council approved the National Committee of Black Churchmen, which many consider a pipeline to the BEDC, to receive the grant “with no strings attached.”

One collection-plate rebellion (St. Dunstan’s in Seattle) was squelched by Bishop Ivol Ira Curtis, who told dissidents their concern that the money would be used irresponsibly was unfounded. The vestry (along with others in Virginia) had vowed to withhold funds from the diocesan budget. St. Dunstan’s reconsidered. Presiding Bishop John E. Hines and House of Deputies president John B. Coburn sought to smooth ruffled feathers over the issue. They, and other bishops, made these points:

(1) The money will be from extradiocesan sources and voluntarily raised. (2) No group advocating violence can qualify. (3) The church is responding “in trust” to blacks, not to reparation demands.

Meanwhile, a five-man committee was set up to raise the $200,000 plus another $100,000 for Indians and Eskimos. By midmonth, $83,000 had been pledged. But grass-roots rumblings persisted, and white critics contended the Episcopal Church, by appearing to give in to threats, had undermined the position of responsible Negro organizations and created the impression that violent, disruptive tactics are the best way to obtain racial justice.

‘Holy Emptiness’ At Expo ’70

History’s largest world fair will be held in Osaka, Japan, next year—and already its major Christian pavilion is sparking unusual displays of both unity and controversy.

The unity shows up in the fact that Japan’s Roman Catholics and Protestants are uniting to build a $278,000 structure called simply “The Christian Pavilion.” “It marks the first time,” said a Vatican spokesman, “that the Holy See has participated in an event of such ecumenical significance.”

The controversy centers among Japan’s liberal young pastors and seminarians, especially those in the United Church of Christ of Japan. For several months they have been protesting to church leaders that large sums should not be spent on Expo ’70 while national problems of poverty, housing, and health care still exist. They also have assailed the fair as a government ruse to divert attention from the controversial U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, up for review next year.

UCCJ moderator Kiyoshi Ii has pledged that he will call an assembly of the church to reconsider participation, but so far officials have replied that the pavilion will give the 30 million fair-goers a chance to see an ecumenical interpretation of “the progress and harmony of mankind.” They note too that the Socialist party also is participating in the fair, even though it violently opposes the treaty.

Protests, thus, have not slowed work on the modern all-wood pavilion, which will house the Raphael Tapestries from the Vatican, as well as pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. The structure will attempt to create a feeling of “holy emptiness” by means of a photographic montage. It was designed by Akira Inatomi, one of Japan’s leading architects. A proposed film of the atomic bombing at Hiroshima was vetoed by the Japanese government.

The only other Christian group planning a display at this world fair, the first ever held in Asia, is the Japan Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Their pavilion, to cost $200,000, will present the theme “Man’s Search for Happiness.” Two movie theaters as well as frescoes and statuettes from Salt Lake City will explain church doctrines.

Japan’s evangelicals have made no special plans for the fair, though several groups expect to distribute tracts. The Moody Institute of Science and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, both of which had displays at Expo ‘67 in Montreal, will forgo similar efforts in Osaka. Costs and time involved, they explain, would be too great in Asia.

Cross And The Switchblade: Boon For The Cinema

“Go to New York and help those boys,” a voice seemed to be telling country preacher David Wilkerson as he pored over a Life magazine story telling about members of the notorious Dragon gang in trouble.

He did, and what followed resulted in Teen Challenge and the best-selling book (five million copies) The Cross and the Switchblade. On September 25, cameras began grinding to turn the story of one man’s vision for the asphalt jungle into a full-length color movie starring Pat Boone.

The two-hour film—to start a five-month road show in 200 major metropolitan areas next February—is being produced by Dick Ross Associates. Film star Don Murray (the “hoodlum priest” in The Outlaw) is directing the shooting on location in inner New York City.

Ross was founder and president of Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures for fifteen years before leaving four years ago to prepare a “broader base of operations with a more commercial approach to reach the outsider.” He intends to release two pictures a year, beginning with The Cross and the Switchblade. Next will be The Late Liz, based on the book by Gertrude Behanna, to be ready by the fall of 1970.

Ross also has acquired—or is acquiring—film rights to Through the Valley of the Kwai, by Princeton University’s chapel dean Ernest Gordon, and Devil at My Heels, the story of Olympic track star Louis Zamperini.

The Cross and the Switchblade will be shown in commercial theaters through advance ticket sales promoted by church, civic, and service organizations; later, it will be moved through normal theatrical channels, according to Ross. The film’s budget is $500,000, and Ross said he acquired the film rights from Wilkerson, John and Elizabeth Sherrill (co-authors of the book), and publisher Bernard Geis for a “per cent of the box-office income.” He did not elaborate.

Most of the cast are off-Broadway minority persons (blacks and Latins) from the New York ghettos. Besides Boone, who plays Wilkerson, another major character will be a young Latin “with a striking resemblance to Nicky Cruz” who plays the part of Cruz, the converted gang leader of Run, Baby, Run fame.

Teen Challenge spokesmen said the film will focus on the first part of The Cross and the Switchblade, climaxing with Wilkerson’s breakthrough at a citywide youth rally in St. Nicholas Arena in the summer of 1958.

Ross believes Boone will have considerable pull at the box office, and he says the velvet-voiced singer has “tremendous faith in the product” (the Wilkerson approach) and “Christian experience” to back it up. Boone, the author of a book on teen-agers, Twixt Twelve and Twenty, tried to acquire screen rights to The Cross and the Switchblade but was unable to, according to Ross.

Christian Faith And Beauty: Congenial Terms

Congeniality is a gift from the Lord.

So believes Jane Briggeman, 21-year-old Miss Nebraska, who received the title “Miss Congeniality” at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City last month. Miss Briggeman, a senior music major at the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Seward-Concordia College near Lincoln, Nebraska, frankly acknowledged the part God played in her attainment of the honor during brief testimony on coast-to-coast television September 6.

“What an ideal time to give credit to the right Person—I did want to give that credit to my Lord,” the vivacious beauty declared in an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Miss Briggeman is a resident of Iuka, Kansas, and a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in nearby Preston.

Her close friend and fellow music major at the four-year teacher-training college, Lois Koth, 19, also competed in the pageant, as Miss Iowa. And Dulcie Scripture, 20, a music major at Judson College in Elgin, is Miss Illinois. Her father is pastor of First Baptist Church in Hamilton, Ohio.

Miss Briggeman said the Miss America pageant had been “the most unique opportunity to communicate the love of God with some very precious people. I realize that I cannot do this by myself, but I must allow God’s Spirit to really use me. This is what is so beautiful in living and working with God.

“Actually, it’s not enough to give a pious profession, but I must touch him in faith and continually keep in touch. I know that Christ has redeemed me; I just want to express this love toward others and bring Christ to my neighbors and friends. This is done in loving, forgiving, and accepting—just sharing Christ as a whole and total personality.”

Boone’s Christian witness has at times disappointed evangelicals, but he may indeed have found new spiritual power recently from daily Bible study, as Ross and others claim.

For whatever reason, the star has undertaken a project (Pat Boone-Dan Hansen Productions) that will film the whole Bible “without embellishment” in animation. Filming will take three years, produce twenty hours of original music and require 800 speaking parts.

Don Hansen told United Press Internation: “We are not rewriting the Bible; we are going to tell it like it is, but we will have to put the Old and New Testament into script before art can be applied.… Any enhancement of the prose, and poetry of this best-seller will be done by … art and animation.

Religion In Transit

Delegates of the United and Southern Presbyterian Churches met quietly late last month in an Atlanta airport motel to hammer out reunification plans, the third such attempt this century. Barring snags, voting on merger could come as early as 1972, although those present suggested it wouldn’t be before 1974.

The Netcong, New Jersey, board of education resourcefully got around (at least for the moment) the Supreme Court ban on organized public-school prayers by using prayers from the Congressional Record each morning before classes last month. The first “reading” was originally recited by U. S. Senate chaplain Edward L. R. Elson August 8. School-board president Palmer Stracco said he could see no difference in the right of Congress to say a prayer and the right of school children to do the same. State American Civil Liberties Union director Stephen Nagler called it “simply a dodge” and said the ACLU would sue.

Some thirty state governors and their wives attended a J. C. Penney Company-sponsored prayer breakfast early last month during the National Governors’ Conference in Colorado Springs.

Lutheran Church in America secretary George F. Harkins told a conference of American Lutheran Church pastors in Lakeside, Ohio, that the nation’s Lutherans should begin “talking openly, candidly, energetically, and optimistically” about a single united Lutheran Church. He also said LCA participation in state councils of churches was “unmatched” among all U. S. denominations, with twenty-eight of the LCA’s thirty synods belonging.

A Louisville police-court judge ruled that Kentucky’s Sunday-closing law was unconstitutional and dismissed 142 citations against local merchants for Sunday sales. Judge William G. Colson asked: “Is it a reasonable and natural distinction to say that a tavern can sell beer on Sunday, but that a dairy cannot sell milk?… We think not.”

The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization has accepted two new members: the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, and the Indian Task Force. A regional office will be opened in Detroit, and a national training base is slated for New York City.

Sophomore students at Wheaton College no longer are required to take ROTC courses. First-year students still must take the training, instituted at the school seventeen years ago. The student government had asked that ROTC be voluntary for all four years.

Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Ridgecrest, California, and pastor Paul C. Neipp severed ties with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod “because of the false doctrine being tolerated.…”

The Church of the Crossroads in Honolulu declared a moratorium on giving sanctuary to AWOL servicemen there after a military police raid took eight of them into custody.

“Irreconcilable differences” between representatives of Our Sunday Visitor, the nation’s largest Roman Catholic weekly newspaper, and Twin Circle, of the National Catholic Press, caused merger negotiations between the publications to fail, according to the publisher of Twin Circle.

The progressive branch of the embattled Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters is accepting “affiliated members,” including former IHM nuns who have gone secular. The order fears the Vatican may remove its canonical status because of its experimental renewal programs.

There are 596 Protestant credit unions, including 492 in the United States, 52 in Canada, and 52 elsewhere, according to statistics recently published in the 1969 International Credit Union Yearbook.

Ninety New Jersey clergymen have formed a committee to work on drug abuse in the state.… In Camden, two American Baptist leaders charged people “are being physically and spiritually hurt” in connection with an alleged police raid and $15,000 in estimated damages to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Christian Center. Police said weapons and narcotics were found at the ABC settlement house.

Deaths

JOSEF NORDENHAUG, 66, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance; one-time editor of the Commission, a Southern Baptist mission publication; in Arlington, Virginia.

BERNARD J. SHEIL, 81, founder of the Catholic Youth Organization, known as the “fighting priest” of Chicago and the “apostle of youth”; in Tucson, Arizona.

GIOVANNI CARDINAL URBANI, 69, Patriarch of Venice, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference; in Venice, Italy.

Personalia

Black Methodists for Church Renewal president James M. Lawson, pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, has been admitted to Vanderbilt University Divinity School for graduate study nine years after he was expelled there for his civil-rights activities, according to the Nashville Tennessean.

Roman Catholic priest Damien Boulogne, the longest-surviving recipient of a heart transplant, will give “spiritual advice” on a Radio Luxembourg program.

Pope Paul VI has contributed $10,000 to further the work of Southern Baptist medical doctor Robert A. Hingson and his “Operation Brother’s Brother” drive to inoculate the masses in underdeveloped countries against disease.

George Christian Anderson has retired as president of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health.

Dr. Richard T. Sutcliffe left his post as associate director of the Lutheran Church in America’s Commission on Press, Radio and Television to become director of university relations for Southern Methodist University.

The president and general secretary of the worldwide Christian Endeavor Union, the Rev. Clyde W. Meadows, who recently retired as a bishop of the United Brethren in Christ Church, has joined the staff of the Pennsylvania Sabbath School Association in Harrisburg.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s head of voter education and registration, the Rev. Hosea Williams (he was city manager of Resurrection City in Washington, D. C., in 1968), was arrested in Decatur, Georgia, last month on charges of drunken driving. He is listed as getting $12,000 yearly salary plus $1,000 pension from the United Presbyterian Board of National Missions.

The Chicago Presbytery cleared controversial United Presbyterian minister John R. Fry of ten sensational charges (ranging from condoning sex and marijuana parties in church to relaying a street gang’s murder order) after a year-long investigation. A 1968 U. S. Senate inquiry probed his association with the militant Blackstone Rangers (see July 19, 1968, issue, page 54).

Ingo Braecklein, a member of the Council of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia, was named president of the newly formed Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic.

The Pentecostal Holiness Church elected the Rev. J. Floyd Williams of Franklin Springs, Georgia, as its top officer, ending the nineteen-year tenure of Bishop J. A. Synan.

World Scene

Three missionaries of the Gospel Missionary Union have been denied permanent residence visas in Morocco, thus becoming the first GMU personnel to be expelled from that country.

In an unprecedented suit, an organization long opposing the plan of union between the British Methodist conference and the Church of England has challenged the Methodist Conference’s authority to approve the union plan. First steps toward merger of the two bodies were defeated by the Anglicans, who failed to give the needed 75 per cent vote of support last July.

More than 3,000 persons registered decisions for Christ at a series of evangelistic meetings led by Hermano Pablo in the Dominican Republic last month.

A plan to convert eleven redundant churches in one small area of northern England into hotels, restaurants, and other profit-making ventures to augment tourist trade was rejected by the York Church Commission. The centuries-old churches will be restored and remain open but will seldom be used for services. They are typical of hundreds of little-used churches throughout England’s dwindling rural centers of population.

More than 4,000 persons attended a two-day rally led by Overseas Crusades and set up by Central American Mission radio station TGNA to celebrate its anniversary.

A Norwegian law passed last summer now permits religious groups to claim regular financial support from Norwegian state and municipal governments in order to provide religious education to children exempted from religion courses in public elementary schools.

Because of volatile Protestant-Catholic tensions, the Baptist Union of Ireland has postponed visits of evangelistic teams to fairs and markets in the predominantly Catholic province of Connaught this year, according to a Baptist spokesman. Most of Ireland’s 7,000 Baptists live in the north; Baptist Union headquarters are in Belfast.

The U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis was a thrilling experience. The Holy Spirit was present in power to bless, and all of us were moved. Our readers should take note of the lead editorial (p. 32), in which we evaluate the results of the congress. We call attention to another editorial also in which we ask President Nixon to call for a day of prayer in connection with the war in Viet Nam. We think this would be a significant step in the right direction.

Billy Graham’s campaign in Anaheim, California, will be in full swing when this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY arrives in subscribers’ homes. We hope all our readers will pray that God will pour out his blessing on that effort—in reviving his people as well as in converting sinners. There are hopeful signs in the midst of spiritual decay. We rejoice that more and more of God’s people are praying for a great spiritual awakening.

The next issue will carry an essay by Harold O. J. Brown on “Rome and Reformation Today.” This appears on the edge of Reformation Sunday. Also in this issue will be “Evangelism in an Age of Revolution,” Leighton Ford’s position paper delivered at the U. S. Congress on Evangelism. The enthusiastic reception delegates gave to this challenging address suggests that our readers will have more than ordinary interest in it.

A few weeks ago my wife and I were guests at a meeting in Baltimore that introduced us to a promising development in evangelical circles. There has come into existence an organization known as the Fellowship of Christians in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment. Spark plug for the organization and the movement it represents is Irving S. “Shorty” Yeaworth, aided by his brilliant and energetic wife, Jeanne.

For some years now the Yeaworths have been making movies, both sacred and commercial, and have been involved with drama and TV. At present they have a large operation in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge, with three different producing organizations: Sacred Cinema, Good News Productions, and Valley Forge Films. Although Yeaworth is identified with sacred films and primarily committed to bringing excellence to such media, his enterprises are really carried by the commercial market, in which he is well established.

The purpose of the organization is to bring together at national meetings those who are engaged in the arts. Painters, writers, musicians, artists, film-makers, TV programmers, script-writers of all kinds, choreographers—all these are asked to join up, the prime requirements being that they make their living from what they produce in the arts, and that they be committed Christians of the type generally called “evangelical.”

A large and enthusiastic group was gathered in Baltimore. There is no question that the fellowship of like-minded people was one of the chief benefits. The Christian artist finds it hard to believe sometimes that there are others who “care.” And he finds it easy to get lost in a sea of secularism. This must be agonizingly true when the pressures of financial success play an important part in one’s creative efforts.

The chief difficulty in the Christian arts seems to center around what is called Reality. The question was posed over and over again. The consensus seems to be that in a “Christian” novel or film, there are certain things that have to happen to satisfy the Christian reader: a bad man is saved by the love of a good woman and after that their children don’t even need braces on their teeth; or a man’s business is falling apart but after he is saved everything goes well and even his partner sees the light; or a man begins to tithe and soon he becomes a millionaire. So it goes.

But Christian writers and artists just don’t believe that this is Reality. In terms of Reality, a Jeremiah can end up in a pit; a saint named John can end up in a lonely exile on Patmos. How things worked out for Hosea are quite unclear, and why the Holy God told his man to marry a harlot raises all kinds of questions. The fact that Job had all kinds of good things at the end of his life hardly erases the excruciating loss of loved ones along the way.

Artists generally believe that a non-Christian like Camus, for example, because of his integrity and his freedom from special pleading, is more likely to “tell it like it is.” Right there is the hang-up: How does a Christian tell it like it is and still make it sound Christian? That men and women everywhere are saved by grace cannot be denied, but such bliss as may follow such an event may well have its fulfillment in the next world rather than in this. There is also the hard question of “timing”; that a man is justified in 1966 does not mean that he is sanctified in 1976. The Old Adam, not to mention “that Ancient Foe,” is not downed in the first round. Even when the victory is assured, the battle is not over, and the mopping-up operations can be very painful indeed. Should a Christian artist portray saints or sinners? If he portrays saints only, he finds that saints are in very short supply for close study. A “bad” Christian on the way up is essentially in better shape than a “good” pagan on the way down. Just how does one rightly portray either man?

This leaves the artist with the problem of how to deal with sinful, fallen humanity and still make his writing sound “decent.” What shall be done with ugliness, brutality, vice, and plain meanness? Is it art to have a sand hog speak King James English, and if he was saved just last night has he quit swearing today? There are many broken-hearted alcoholics who continue to have troublous times, and reformed gamblers who slip now and then, and that all-time favorite, the golden-hearted harlot who supports her invalid mother and who worries nice Christians when she appears in print. All these are a part of Reality. The artist has the seeing eye and the understanding heart and the talent to enable us to see almost what he sees and hear almost what he hears. But what does he really see and hear? We must allow him his integrity.

Another concern is the battle Christian artists constantly wage against the trivial and the cheap. They simply cannot stomach the portrayal of the sublimity of their holy faith in tawdry forms. The pursuit of excellence in many other fields has somehow bypassed much of Christianity, so that often there is the quiet assumption that Christianity must make allowances for unworthy media because at least the wonder of the subject is somehow being portrayed. Poor writing, poor music, and poor pictures may be bad means, but since they serve good ends, all may be forgiven. One expects the film to break at a church movie; a cheap window can be forgiven because the people who donated it are so nice. All this sort of thing bleeds out eventually in a general sloppiness of dress, table manners, and housekeeping. That there is an essential blasphemy in all this is a deep concern of Christian artists.

Meanwhile I have a concern or two myself about Christians in the arts. When they tell it like it is, they seem to be too plain (or maybe too anxious) in depicting sin and entirely too vague (or maybe too apologetic) in depicting redemption. For example, that peerless observer of humanity, Flannery O’Connor, whose Christian and Roman Catholic devotion no one can doubt, insists that there is grace at work at some crucial point in all her studies. I must confess that the grace is sometimes very hard to find. Meanwhile one gets the impression that in order to make our total depravity plain, she makes too many of her characters bizarre. For example, in one of her great stories a woman with a wooden leg and a Ph.D. is seduced by a Bible salesman. That is not the sort of Reality I run into with any great frequency, which makes me wonder if that’s the way it really is. I know there are subtleties that I miss in every art form; there are deeps in the parables of Jesus, for example, that I never plumb. But it seems to me that sometimes, just sometimes, artists should tell it like it is on the side of the angels.

Maybe the Christian artists are running just a little behind in the sin business these days. That things are just plain bad all over is no great discovery since the depression and Hitler; everyone is aware of the Reality of the Mafia. To those who have never known Christ, the total picture is absurd, of course. What I need desperately is for someone who knows the Lord to make vivid for me, as only an artist can, that there really is truth and light and especially hope. I think the Prodigal’s Father can be portrayed just as well as the Prodigal Son. Let’s have a little more Paradise Regained.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

Any place for God here? one might wonder, as he sits in a cluttered, hectic, earthy office waiting to see his senator or congressman. Or, for that matter, does it really make any difference to the operation of government whether the legislator is a man of Christian faith?

Many politicians respond with a quick, “Yes, it does matter.” In a CHRISTIANITY TODAY interview four legislators, all active churchmen, discussed what that “Yes” means.

They were: Senator Mark Hatfield, a Baptist from Oregon and a well-known evangelical speaker; Representative Wilmer (Vinegar Bend) Mizell of North Carolina, who belongs to the Christian and Missionary Alliance; Illinois Representative John Anderson, a member of the Evangelical Free Church; and Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, who grew up in a Wesleyan Methodist parsonage, went to Garrett Theological Seminary, and is now a United Methodist layman.

Each man was ready with some well-thought-out responses to the question, How does a legislator’s Christian faith influence his life in politics? Three of the four talked first about the personal matter of inner peace. “Each day I try to spend time in personal devotions,” said the graying Anderson. “It is a constant struggle to remain fresh, but I keep trying.” Mizell concurred: “It’s a policy; I don’t start the day without at least a few quiet moments with Him.”

“An important thing about this,” added Hatfield, sharply dressed in a dark suit with maroon shirt and tie, “is that it helps ease the hurly-burly of politics. A lot of people think politicians don’t have feelings, so they throw daggers and make snide remarks. But we do have feelings, and knowing all things work together for good to those who love God helps when the daggers come.”

Answers to how this tranquility translates into action within congressional halls became more complex.

“First let me point out,” said the Oregon senator, “that there is no such thing as ‘a Christian position’ on most voting matters. After praying and asking God for wisdom, I come to a decision; it’s right for me, but I can’t put a label ‘Christian’ on it.” Added McGovern, sitting under a large photograph of South Dakota’s Black Hills: “There will always be differences; religious faith is subject to personal interpretation. I can only say that in my own case I wouldn’t have taken many political initiatives without my religious background.”

Members of the National Council of Churches’ General Board climaxed a turbulent triennium when they agreed to the council’s response to the Black Manifesto. Their two-day September session in Indianapolis was the last meeting of the policymakers before they gather at Detroit in late November on the eve of the NCC’s triennial General Assembly.

The board members pledged to raise $500,000 immediately and to propose a plan to the assembly for seeking “tens of millions of dollars” for black economic development. The Marott Hotel’s ballroom was crowded during an afternoon of debate over the proposal.

The Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC)—made famous by James Forman’s disruption of church offices and events—was not named as a recipient of the initial contribution, but the funds will go to two organizations known to be friendly conduits. The solution, skirting direct funding of the BEDC but financing black churchmen who support it, was similar to that adopted earlier last month by the Episcopal Church (see September 26 issue, pages 37 and 42).

An executive-committee report hammered out since Forman’s May address to the board was approved, including its rejection of the manifesto’s ideology. However, the council policy makers acknowledged the BEDC as a “programmatic expression of the aspirations of black churchmen.” The document also said: “The Black Economic Development Conference is a new agency among those agencies in the black community directed toward the achievement of economic justice for the deprived peoples of this land.”

President Arthur S. Flemming, who presented the executive-committee report, stressed that board members were approving a “no strings” grant to the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), which sponsored the conference that originally produced the manifesto, and to the National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC). “Self determination,” he insisted, “was the clearcut issue.”

New York pastor M. L. Wilson, board chairman of the NCBC, made the same point. He told the NCC policymakers he was under instructions to accept no restricted money. He is a member of the BEDC’s steering committee. Before the vote was taken, board members heard from one of their veteran colleagues, Disciples executive George Beazley, that a July meeting of the executive committee was told there was a “high probability” that a portion of the money would go to the BEDC. He reminded them that the manifesto that launched the BEDC pledged to overthrow the American system.

Even though the debate was sometimes heated, the executive-committee report had more than enough support to meet each challenge. Three attempts to amend it were easily defeated.

The first proposal offered from the floor would have made the board’s rejection of the manifesto doctrines more explicit. Proponents of the executive-committee document argued that the NCC response should avoid excessive rejection in its tone. Then the board voted down a proposed amendment that would have denied the $500,000 to any organization advocating violence or violent overthrow of the nation’s political or economic systems. Finally, a proposal to eliminate IFCO as a money conduit was defeated. The $500,000 is to fund five regional conferences of black churchmen and to aid other programs aimed at eliminating “injustice.”

Other items in the board’s response to the manifesto are: A call for “massive government involvement” at all levels to end the crisis; realignment of NCC program priorities “to meet more substantially the Crisis in the Nation Program”; and continued consultation with the BEDC and other minority groups.

The action was taken against the backdrop of severe financial problems for the NCC. The Crisis in the Nation Program was launched in February, 1968, with a nine-month budget of $300,000. Denominations responded with $247,000. For 1969, a twelve-month budget of $350,000 was originally approved, but later it was trimmed to $250,000. By September, though, only $152,000 had been promised in support.

NCC general secretary R. H. Edwin Espy reviewed the over-all financial situation this way: “In spite of increasing demands for services by and through the council, the proposed 1970 budget totals almost $2.5 million less than the budget presented to you a year ago. Deep cuts have been made in amounts asked for almost all of the division and office budgets in view of reduced income prospects.”

The council’s chief executive noted that over the past eight years reserves had been depleted by $392,000, and that $150,000 of further dipping into this source had been authorized. In one attempt to ease the financial strain, especially for the central administration of the NCC, the board decided to phase out its 18-year-old “Committed Fund.” Some fifty staff positions (from the assistant general secretary for financial development to clerks) are being vacated in the budget squeeze.

A budget of $21.5 million was approved for 1970, including reimbursable ocean-freight costs of $3.5 million. If the budget is followed, total expenditures will be the lowest in five years. But the council was instructed by its governing body to put more youths on the payroll in staff positions, as the result of a special committee report on the young generation. The report also asked for a “fair proportion of members of the young generation” on the board itself. As adopted, the document establishes a task force to keep all council units alert to youth.

Children and young people were the subject of another presentation to the board. Dr. Mary S. Calderone, executive director of the Sex Information and Education Council of the U. S. (SIECUS), defended her organization and was accorded a standing ovation by the NCC policy-makers. She asked for an NCC investigation of charges against SIECUS by opponents of sex education in the schools. The board made no immediate response to her request.

Three resolutions were passed under extraordinary procedure (bypassing the requirement for first reading at an earlier meeting). The board went on record in favor of broader family-assistance grants; in opposition to certain restrictions of foundation contributions in the tax-reform bill; and in favor of more federal action to fight hunger. Also passed was a statement of concern on the continued occupation of Czechoslovakia. And the board authorized NCC promotion of a movie on the late Martin Luther King, Jr.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Bill Glass, an all-pro tackle turned evangelist, shared the “secret” of the Green Bay Packers’ three successive championships as revealed by a member of the team: “We love each other.”

Glass, in an appearance before the U. S. Congress on Evangelism, did not insist that love is the only ingredient of victory—either on the gridiron or in the pulpit. But he did maintain that the demonstration of love is a singularly effective means of witness in our day. And most of the 5,000 delegates from ninety-five denominations gathered in the Minneapolis Auditorium last month seemed to agree.

Without a doubt, the need for more compassion among evangelicals was the dominant theme of the historic six-day meeting. “Evangelism must be love with flesh on,” said the Rev. Leighton Ford. “Our message has got to combine the prophets, who called for repentance and justice, with the apostles, who called for repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.”

Such statements startled certain nonevangelicals. Billy Graham, honorary chairman of the congress, noted that “it has come as a surprise to many that evangelicals have social concern.”

In many respects, of course, the evangelical movement has always had a social conscience and a compassionate spirit. But in recent times, as liberals have involved themselves deeply in corporate pronouncements on current problems, many evangelicals have reacted by withdrawing to the point that serious blind spots have developed. The spirit of Minneapolis may have been a major corrective (see editorial “A Turning Point?,” page 32).

The Rev. Tom Skinner, a black evangelist from New York, urged his predominantly white audience to make significant sacrifices to combat racism. “The role of the Church is to live oblivious to public opinion,” he noted, adding that it must be willing to “lose its shirt,” in standing against racism.

Skinner, a 27-year-old former Harlem gang leader, eloquently traced the history of the oppression of blacks in America, and noted that Negroes nonetheless continued to uphold American ideals in war as well as in peace.

“You must remember,” he said, “that it is not the black soldier who is burning his draft card and running off to Canada.” Skinner was repeatedly interrupted by applause and at the close was given a standing ovation.

About 1,000 white delegates engaged in a dialogue with the blacks who were present.¹A number of black denominations were represented, though a date change by officials of the two biggest black Baptist conventions produced a conflict with the congress. The largest black delegation (sixty-one) came from the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In response to an appeal from whites as to “what we can do,” blacks drew up a list of eleven recommendations for white churchmen eager to improve race relations (see story following).

The congress opened with a stirring procession of fifty state flags followed by the singing of the national anthem and a prayer by Rear Admiral James W. Kelly, U. S. Navy chief of chaplains. Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann’s keynote address was a vibrant plea to “get with Christ, and go with him.” At least one observer noted that Hoffmann, a Missouri Synod Lutheran clergyman who is the preacher on radio’s “Lutheran Hour,” sounded strangely like Reformer Martin Luther speaking his salty prose to the twentieth century.

Hoffmann presided over most of the plenary sessions and was chairman of the congress national committee. Graham, the honorary chairman, also presided several times.

Each day began with a prayer service followed by a Bible study. The first two studies (on Ephesians) were conducted by Anglican Archbishop Marcus Loane of Sydney, Australia. The others were led by Editor Harold Lindsell of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, who underscored the need for the power of the Holy Spirit. Lindsell also used the occasion to make a public appeal to President Nixon to call for a national day of prayer for an end to the Viet Nam war.

“We’ve tried everything else,” he said. “We’ve tried force, we’ve tried diplomacy, and we’ve tried psychology. But we haven’t tried prayer.”

Author Keith Miller, an Episcopal layman, urged delegates to be “vulnerable” for the cause of Christ. And the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, challenged “you evangelists to join hand in hand and heart in heart in solving the three great evils of our time: war, racism, and poverty.” Senator Mark Hatfield said he takes issue with “those who reject any responsibility for overcoming the obstacles to peace simple because sin is a reality.”

The congress, however, was much more than a series of speeches. Forty-six workshops were held simultaneously each day. They covered everything from “doing your thing” and leisure evangelism, to dialogical retreats and ministering through the use of the secular theater.

Other highlights included student responses to each of six study papers; a “turn-on” for young people led by Pat Boone; a women’s luncheon with Mrs. Billy Graham; and an evangelistic rally with Graham and Hoffmann. A varied musical program featured traditional gospel music as well as a generous sampling of folk and rock. One group premiered a new missionary cantata by John W. Peterson, So Send I You.

The congress was not structured for legislation, and no attempt was made to draft resolutions except for an informal expression of concern for a group of Chippewa Indians who took the stage following an evening service. The only other disruptive incident took place when a University of Minnesota student and his wife, both clad in hippie garb, were evicted from the auditorium for squatting in front of the stage and refusing to be seated. Congress officials apologized to the pair and readmitted them a few minutes later.

The congress program included provisions for caucuses by delegations from denominations and special-interest groups. More than one hundred persons attended a luncheon sponsored by the leaders of the “Key Bridge” consultations, which are aimed at furthering evangelical cooperation and are now focusing on an interdenominational evangelistic thrust for 1973.

A service of commitment climaxed the congress. On the closing day, delegates stood together in response to Graham’s appeal for a new spirit of consecration.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

The eastern european countries’ “Pastors’ Conference”—a congress on evangelism held recently in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia—could signal new courage for Christian vitalities in lands under Soviet influence. Participants came not only from Yugoslavia, the only Eastern nation permitting Christian workers to attend the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, but also from Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, which had refused visas to pastors invited to Berlin. Once again, however, no representation was permitted from Russia, East Germany, and Bulgaria, where hostility to such Christion engagement runs deep, nor from Albania, where the present condition of the churches is unsure.

East European participants numbered more than 130, exceeding by scores the sponsoring committee’s minimal expectation. Not only did Yugoslav authorities not interfere with program planning and execution, but they were gracious to program participants. Many of the conferees are pastors of local churches; others are engaged in itinerant work and a wide diversity of evangelical efforts, some are professional men, and not a few are university or seminary students. Observers also came from Austria, West Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland.

Major messages fell to Dr. Stephen Olford, pastor of New York’s Calvary Baptist Church, and to me. In Sunday church services before the congress opened, more than a score of first-time decisions for Christ were made in services we conducted in Belgrade and in Backi Petrovac; others also responded to opportunities for spiritual renewal and vocational commitment. During the congress, Dr. Olford covered pastoral and experiential concerns, while theological issues came my way. Translations were into eight languages.

European Baptists, who had wanted their own denominational congress on evangelism for Eastern workers, cooperated instead in the Novi Sad interdenominational effort and placed the ample facilities of the recently completed Novi Sad Baptist Bible Seminary at the disposal of the participants for meetings, meals, and lodgings. They have now projected an all-Baptist congress in 1970 in Prague for East European Baptist workers. Dr. Billy Graham, who addressed the European Baptist Congress in Vienna, did not go to Novi Sad because sponsors felt world publicity might jeopardize the event, but he called hearers of “The Hour of Decision” to prayer for God’s special presence and blessing.

Participants could not fail to be impressed by the larger freedom and initiative of Christians in Yugoslavia in contrast with other Eastern European lands. The Petrovac church, for example, had recently sponsored an evangelistic series that drew an average of seventy outsiders nightly, and within six months ten of these had been baptized on confession of faith in Christ. (In some churches, interestingly, active youth groups hold a lively expectation of the Lord’s imminent return.) Elsewhere a Christian reading room is being opened. These may seem small tokens alongside free-world liberties, especially in view of the absence of radio and television opportunities for the Gospel, and of city-wide meetings outside the churches. (Graham’s 1967 campaign in Zagreb was an exception; he may return in 1971.) But in the East European context they provide rays of hope, and Yugoslav Protestants feel they have more open opportunities than Protestants in Greece, Italy, and some other Western countries.

For not a few delegates, the meetings were the first of an extradenominational nature in which they had participated. Some found fellow Christian workers from their own areas of whom they had not known. They shared reports of remarkable conversions and of healings. A Baptist church in Hungary had recently baptized twenty-six persons. In Czechoslovakia, after the recent Russian invasion, scores of Christians presented Russian Bibles to the incoming soldiers; in Russia, Bibles have sold recently for as much as $200 because of the short supply. Czechoslovakian Christians are now preparing a modern translation of the Bible in their own language.

The congress was arranged by The Evangelical Alliance Mission through its European missionary-at-large, Thomas Cosmades. Numbers of American tourists who, in their travels, heard prayers in evangelical churches for the congress, came to share the blessings of the speaking sessions. Several Roman Catholic priests attended incognito.

Some delegates had been in prison, others had been persecuted and even prohibited from preaching, some are laboring amid physical and financial need and in discouraging circumstances. In some lands, particularly Hungary and Romania, some pastors are still under pressure to expound a biblical basis for socialism and to take the government line, if preaching permits are to be renewed.

It was clear that these workers had much to teach other believers about the Christian walk and witness. Some were products of earlier revivals such as that in Hungary twenty years ago; some were the fruit of the ministry of visiting evangelists; others came to Christ through a local church ministry of lay witness. They heard eagerly of developments issuing from the World Congress on Evangelism and of subsequent regional congresses. Most realized that for the near future at least their evangelistic efforts must mainly take forms other than mass evangelism. Some seemed strangely unprepared for aggressive evangelism. Even some Baptist pastors, asked to give a spiritual testimony, would recite the statistics of local church and Sunday-school attendance.

Delegates responded openly and readily to an invitation to rededicate themselves in quest of theological vitality and evangelistic virility; leaders publicly took their stand in a packed meeting to declare their determination to serve Christ obediently and earnestly. They came in Novi Sad to a new sense of the power of the Gospel and of the permanence of revealed truth in a situation of social change. They found a renewal of Christian life and ministry, a deeper joy in Christ, encouragement to labor in their restricted outposts to proclaim the liberty that is in Christ; and they left with a deep desire to nourish Christian virtues in their unhappy lands.

Nowhere in the Eastern lands has it become as apparent as in Yugoslavia that the socialist leveling of material possessions leaves wide ranges of human aspiration unsatisfied. That is why I stressed that the Eastern European peoples are homeless in the Marxist materialism of Soviet Russia and in the secular materialism of the Anglo-Saxon West, and are homesick for realities of spirit, mind, and conscience that are integral to their past religious and philosophical heritage. Secret believers are taking an open stand for Christ, and Christians who have not met across international boundaries for twenty years are assessing the Great Commission in new perspective. Their faithful witness alone could bring the truth of God to multitudes who have not heard about him for a generation.

CARL F. H. HENRY

The “wave of the future,” so joyfully acclaimed by some churchmen, may prove to be a wave not of progress but of disaster.

I am convinced that there are many good men caught up in the excitement of new-wave activity who have little idea of what it is they are supporting and where it is leading the Church.

I am equally convinced that there is a hard core of brilliant designers and coordinators who know exactly what they are doing and where they plan to take the Church. The Apostle Paul seems to describe such men when he speaks of “enemies of the cross of Christ”: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil. 3:18, 19).

Paul was equally explicit about those who preach another gospel, not the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ: “As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:9).

We are confronted with perhaps the most serious situation the world-wide Church has ever faced. God grant that we may face it with love and truth.

Had I not heard with my own ears the perversion of the Gospel being proclaimed by some today, I would not have believed it.

I witnessed a series of conferences for young people based on the theme “reconciliation,” not of men with God but of the Church with the world. Indeed, it was not so much reconciliation that was being taught as revolution—revolution against God, the “establishment,” and the present order of things. A representative of the black militants was brought in to tell the whites how evil they were. And a representative of the Students for a Democratic Society—an organization that is thought by many to be Communist-oriented—was brought in to preach revolution by violent action.

All this was not a “happening” in an isolated denomination but a well-prepared program from a central source with the aim of capturing the youth of the churches for revolution—not a revolution of the spirit through Christ but a revolution of society along Marxist lines.

But I have not yet told all. During these conferences a picture on Red China was shown again and again, a picture so obviously made for propaganda purposes that even the dullest should have perceived its intent. The material advances made under the Communist regime were extolled, while there was a striking silence about Communism’s relentless attacks on the Church and Christians, as well as the total loss of personal freedoms under such “liberation.”

Along with this there was a pacifist theme with a banner proclaiming “All War Is Sin.” It was all cleverly designed to lead young people to espouse a world revolution, the end of which will certainly fit in with the long-range plans of the Kremlin.

This is no time for silence, or for closing our eyes to what is happening. The fact that some dear Christians have become enmeshed in this movement is no reason to refrain from showing where these things are taking us and the Church.

It will come as a shock to some to know that the conferences about which I am writing came under the surveillance both of the FBI and of another agency that is watching subversion in this country and was particularly concerned about some of the “invited [and paid] speakers to these young people.” Some person (or persons) was responsible for using a church conference for very dubious purposes, at best, and as a vehicle for definite Communist-oriented propaganda, at worst.

That this particular conference was not an isolated case is indicated by a letter from a friend who attended another conference 1,500 miles away. He says: “An alarmingly large majority did not understand at all (in my humble opinion) the way the Communists are ‘using’ our youth groups and black-power advocates as a means of destroying the Church. This is presently being done all over the country and in every denomination. A Christian doesn’t give the Communist sign of the clenched fist; a Christian doesn’t wear the ‘Broken Cross’—the sign of the anti-Christ; a Christian doesn’t make demands or attempt blackmail of other Christians. Unless a true understanding is reached on what is being foisted on our youth and on what is being done through the black-power movement, the Church could be destroyed from within—and lose the golden opportunity to be that shining beacon in a very dark sea.”

It is my opinion that some church executives, desperate because of the lost influence of the Church, have been sold a bill of goods by some radicals who have no right to represent the Church. These executives, victims of their own innocence or stupidity, are proving to be the unwitting servants of forces that are willing to destroy the Church and the nation to accomplish their revolutionary aims.

In this context Jesus is being held up to youth as the “great revolutionary,” and his cleansing of the temple cited as an example of his revolutionary zeal. What is not recognized is that Jesus was cleansing the “Church” of his day. He was neither a political nor an economic revolutionary. His was a spiritual mission to change the hearts of men, and through them, to act on the social order as “salt” and “light.”

It is my opinion that should our Lord enter one of the “worship” services now being contrived for youth, with their off-beat and frenetic music, night-club atmosphere, the flashing of lights and slogans, the emphasis on psychedelic art, he might well wade in and say, “Take these things away. My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of psychedelic emotionalism.”

Why is the “wave of the future” a part of present-day youth work in the churches? Because it is our young people who will make up the Church of the future. Should they be confused as to the nature, message, and mission of the Church, the “wave” of which they are a part may prove to have a deadly undertow.

Young people must be taught that there is a vast difference between good and evil, between this world system and the Kingdom of God, and that there are two roads, one broad and the other narrow. But those church leaders who have captured the youth movement give little evidence of spiritual power or understanding. Some may strongly disagree with this opinion, but others know I speak the truth. No longer accepting the complete integrity and authority of the Scriptures, having cut themselves loose from the anchor of a firm faith in the Bible-revealed person and work of Jesus Christ, they are causing young people to venture out on the wild seas of life with no compass or rudder.

If the “wave of the future” is to be on God’s side, there is much work to be done right now.

L. NELSON BELL

The thousands of people who attended and underwrote the congress in Minneapolis have gone home. The booths have been dismantled, the displays pulled down, the typewriters sent back. The tired staff members whose labors made possible a beautifully organized and executed program despite immense logistical problems now find they can spend some nights at home. One question remains to be answered: What was the impact and the effect of the U. S. Congress on Evangelism?

The congress brought together Christians from almost a hundred denominations, some of whom (e.g., the Southern Baptists and the Missouri Synod Lutherans) have generally avoided involvement in ecumenical activities and have been inclined to go it alone. Barriers were broken down at Minneapolis. Christians from divergent traditions got to know one another personally, and a spirit of unity prevailed. No one was asked to sacrifice his convictions or change his opinions. The presence and power of the Holy Spirit were manifest.

Most religious gatherings must elect officers, pass resolutions, and adopt legislation. There was none of this at Minneapolis. Consequently there was no politicking, no behind-the-scenes maneuvering, no acrid debates. No votes were called for and no resolutions were adopted. The thrust of the congress centered on the evangelistic task of the Church of Jesus Christ in its many different forms.

Program participants were free to speak as they pleased, and some things were said about which there rightly was vigorous disagreement. Evangelicals often are stereotyped as thoughtless supporters of the status quo, whatever that may mean. At Minneapolis it was eye-opening for some to discover the spirit of openness and honesty among the delegates. There was a liberty that avoided “party-line” unanimity, and there was no hint of coercion.

Black Christians, but not enough of them, attended the congress and had prominent places in the assembly. The blacks spoke frankly from their hearts and made concrete suggestions about how white Christians can help them in their struggle for equality. But the spirit of brotherhood was evident, and no threats were tossed about. The congress set a pattern for this kind of constructive dialogue.

The congress was willing to look deeply into the implications of the Gospel for the social milieu. Perhaps no evangelical conclave in this century has responded more positively to the call for Christians to help right wrongs in the social order. Those who listened carefully realized that the call to social involvement was put on a personal basis. Thus there was avoided what so many evangelicals believe to be a major error of the ecumenical movement, that of making the institutional church the agent of social revolution as though that were the mission of the Church. Believers, as members of Caesar’s kingdom as well as of God’s, were called upon to exercise their dual citizenship in such a way that their Christian faith would be brought to bear upon society for constructive change.

Minneapolis was in many ways a learning experience. Two hippies were physically removed from the auditorium when they refused to be seated in chairs (city regulations forbid sitting on the floor). This action of zealous ushers brought a considerable negative response from delegates, who applauded when the hippies were brought back to the meeting. Afterwards Billy Graham talked with them, and the next day he apologized to the delegates for the ill-advised action that precipitated a minor crisis. But the incident brought home forcefully the fact that the hippies need the Gospel brought to them where they are, not where evangelicals would like them to be. Much was learned, too, in the discussion of issues about which delegates disagreed. Many learned to love and respect the personhood of those with whom they could not agree.

A sizable group of young people under thirty attended the conclave, and they contributed to the congress by offering critiques of position papers and through personal testimony. Friday evening more than fifteen thousand young people listened to the music of the Now generation and were exposed to the straight gospel message in their own idiom.

What was perhaps the most solid contribution of the Congress received the least public notice. The 1966 World Congress in Berlin laid a strong theological foundation for evangelism. Minneapolis went on from there to teach men how to evangelize. Each afternoon in “How to” sessions delegates were shown different methods used to reach people with the Gospel. For example, representatives of Campus Crusade and Inter-Varsity demonstrated how to reach the college crowd, and James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, told how a local congregation does the work of evangelism. Some delegates began right away to practice what they had learned. One man was seen sitting on a curbstone witnessing to a stranger about the saving power of Jesus Christ.

Although the congress ended officially at noon Saturday, Billy Graham spoke at a mass meeting that evening at the Sports Arena. Thousands of people were turned away for lack of space. On the platform were members of the U. S. Congress national committee, and Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann of the “Lutheran Hour” reported on the congress itself. After Dr. Graham preached, many hundreds of people responded to the invitation to receive Christ. This service seemed to symbolize what the congress was all about—preaching the Gospel of salvation to sinful men where they are.

The long-range effects of Minneapolis must await the verdict of history, and that verdict depends on what happens around America in the months ahead. If the participants who were fired with enthusiasm carry the flames of their passion to set new fires for evangelism in their home churches, then the congress will have succeeded. The first test may come out of Billy Graham’s Anaheim, California, crusade, which could, by the grace of God, open an era of church renewal and revival power that could loose the dynamic of the Holy Spirit in a way we have not seen for generations.