“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God …” (Rom. 8:28). This familiar promise is one of the most frequently quoted parts of Scripture. But its full significance is often overlooked. It is not a verse to be glibly quoted to one suffering hardship to assure him that things really aren’t as bad as they seem.

To be rightly understood, this promise must be considered in the light of its context, which speaks of a purpose that God is working out in the lives of Christians. God calls those whom he chooses, not just so they can escape hell and go to heaven, but so that they can be made like Jesus, here and now. He is carrying out this purpose in the lives of believers, and in his sovereign power he is able to use all things that come into their lives as instruments to mold them in the image of Christ.

The promise that “all things work together for good” does not mean that all things that happen to us as believers are in themselves good; it means, rather, that God uses all things—both bad and good—to carry out his purpose. Sometimes tragic things happen, things for which there is no ready explanation. But God works even through these to being about the best for us—that is conformity to Christ.

An artist beginning to paint a landscape may streak the canvas with colors and patterns that seem to have no relation to the scene he is portraying, and a casual observer may think he has really made a mess of things. But as the artist continues to apply the various colors from his palette, the landscape begins to appear; had he not made those seemingly faulty first strokes he could not have created an accurate likeness. At times it may seem that God has lost control and is allowing our lives to turn into an awful mess. But the master painter is using the whole pattern of circumstances and events to bring about the good result he has in mind.

James proclaims this truth when he says: “When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance” (Jas. 1:2, 3, Phillips).

God does not promise that everything will be good and easy. But he does promise the one who genuinely loves him that as he patterns his life after Jesus Christ he will experience the highest good life has to offer.

“The agony of Northern Ireland is one chapter of western civilization’s history without a happy ending,” observed United Press International writer Donal P. O’Higgins from Belfast, as religious woes on the troubled island continued to mount.

While Northern Ireland Protestant church leaders assailed the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Catholics accused Protestant extremists of starting the violence by systematic attacks on Catholic neighborhoods. Meanwhile, mini-skirted Bernadette Devlin stumped for Catholic rights and pressed her plea for money and help with United Nations secretary general U Thant.

Ulster’s polarization has roots going back to the Reformation (see “John Bull’s Other Island,” page 9). In New York, Dr. William P. Thompson, United Presbyterian stated clerk, assured U.S. Catholic leaders that “American Catholics and Protestants are not divided” in their sorrow over the “tragic events.” (See editorial, page 33.)

Canadian Anglicans took a crucial vote last month on the touchy question of participating in communion services with other Christians. Many interpret the results as a major breakthrough toward reciprocal communion.

The vote came at the 24th biennial session of the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod, which includes lay delegates in addition to priests and bishops. The intercommunion decision had been referred to the synod by the church’s House of Bishops, which in turn had been requested to speak its mind on the subject by a commission working on a merger plan for the Anglicans and the United Church of Canada, the country’s largest non-Catholic denominations.

The synod met in Sudbury, northern Ontario’s largest city. Sessions were held on the picturesque new campus of Laurentian University, perched on a rocky hillside overlooking the world’s nickel capital.

During several hours of conscientious but orderly debate, one delegate compared intercommunion before union to “sleeping with a woman before you’re married to her.” The analogy was picked up by another delegate who expressed fear that the act might well produce an illegitimate birth—meaning a church split. Proponents of intercommunion appealed to the need to keep in step with the times.

The approved resolution reads: “Having received through the House of Bishops the request of the General Commission on Church Union for a revision of the present ecclesiastical discipline to permit occasions for reciprocal communion: this General Synod respectfully requests the Diocesan Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada to permit Anglicans and members of other Christian churches to share an eucharistic practice with the full knowledge and consent of the proper authorities.”

The measure carried in all three orders decisively, the bishops by a vote of 26–9, the clergy by 84–19, and the laity by 79–11.

Inasmuch as the resolution is in the form of a request, it is still uncertain what will happen in dioceses headed by the bishops who voted negatively. The vote is nonetheless an important step toward merger with the United Church, which already has accepted the principle of the episcopacy.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Former Roman Catholic Bishop James P. Shannon, saying he couldn’t cope with the ecclesiastical system, is now learning to cope with a wife. The first American bishop whose marriage has become public married thrice-wed Ruth C. Wilkinson August 2 in a brief Protestant ceremony in the study of the Rev. H. Hugh Kelly, pastor of the First Christian Church of Endicott, New York. The bride is a member of the Disciples of Christ.

Dr. Shannon (as he now prefers to be called) has a doctorate in history from Yale. He resigned as auxiliary bishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis over the birth-control issue (see June 20 issue, page 34) before his marriage. General Catholic reaction was sadness and shock coupled with a call for charity and prayers.

The National Catholic Reporter devoted almost four full pages to the case, including a 7,000-word interview with Shannon, an articulate and progressive cleric who has championed numerous liberal causes. The NCR said Shannon struggled through a year of vacillation and pressure that began with his private dissent on the use of artificial contraceptives and culminated in his realization that “I was a source of embarrassment to my superiors.”

The church automatically excommunicated Shannon. He said he doesn’t intend to become an “underground cleric” and will hang on, hoping for a change of Vatican heart in his lifetime allowing priests to marry. The newlyweds live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the groom is now vice-president of small, nondenominational St. John’s College.

It has been a long, hot summer for American Baptist Convention headquarters staffers at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Long-simmering liberal-conservative tensions are boiling over, some as an aftermath of a semi-secret communication study. As expected (see June 6 issue, p. 41), the study recommended in part that the denomination’s popular tabloid Crusader and the ailing Mission journal be replaced by a new all-purpose periodical.

Crusader editor Paul Allen says ABC communication executive Dean Goodwin told him that despite editorial seniortiy, Allen would not be named to the top post of the new magazine. Goodwin denies saying this. Allen, increasingly the target of liberals’ fire for his conservative editorials, circulated a counter-proposal that would retain a slicked-up Crusader. At this, Goodwin fired him for “insubordination.” But General Secretary Edwin Tuller next day rescinded Goodwin’s action and instead placed Allen on paid leave. Home-missions chief James Christison and others, angered by Tuller’s intervention, urged the nonplused Goodwin to press his case. Some leaders threatened to quit if Allen were reinstated.

Crusader’s editorial committee virtually upheld Tuller and Allen; members will meet with Goodwin’s other departmental committees this month in Indianapolis to thrash out the issue. Meanwhile, Allen’s assistant put out the September issue. Some officials predicted privately that Allen, still on leave, will resign and return to secular journalism.

Crusader is probably unique among church papers. Its news reporting is fairly objective, and controversial issues get both-sides treatment. With a circulation of 360,000—up 30,000 during Allen’s eleven-year editorship—it reaches the majority of ABC homes and is second only to fatly subsidized Presbyterian Life in constituency saturation.

Curiously, despite signs of health, the recent study by secular organizations reported primarily negative symptoms, such as shabby makeup, substandard content, and poor readership reception. The samplings reportedly involved fewer than 1,200 of the ABC’s 1.5 million members.

One ABC church member, a veteran secular journalist, blamed the ABC’s communication woes on troubles at the source, not transmission, level: the newsmaking events themselves. Indeed, Tuller and other staff heads have been forced to divert costly major attention to the deluge of protests—including threats of financial recriminations—over an ABC agency’s $200,000 grant to the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), which spawned the Forman reparations movement. ABC administrators also face lingering widespread unrest generated by liberal strides taken at the May Seattle convention and by grass-roots unhappiness with head-quarters-styled evangelism.

It was the summer of discontent in Van Nuys, California, too, where the 8,000-member First Baptist Church—the ABC’s largest—unanimously called it quits after more than a decade of estrangement. Pastor Harold Fickett, Jr., explained: “We want to be a traditional Baptist church, but the present ABC course is antithetical to this desire.” Disclaiming vindictiveness, he cited the IFCO matter, a new ABC rule granting voting rights to non-immersed delegates, and “universalism in the evangelism department” as reasons for withdrawal.

Over-all, however, there have been thirty-six affiliations and eighteen disaffiliations of churches from the ABC so far this year.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Doctrinal issues once occupied much attention at conventions of the thoroughly conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. But this year, the big issue at the synod’s August meeting in New Ulm, Minnesota, was whether to close one of its colleges.

After more than five hours of debate that stretched over four days, delegates voted 150 to 65 to merge Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee with Dr. Martin Luther College in New Ulm at the end of the next school year. The convention was told that the synod’s elementary parochial schools will not need as many teachers as was expected when the Milwaukee college (a teachertraining facility) was opened.

The synod also deplored the failure of recent attempts to conduct joint meetings with the tiny Church of the Lutheran Confession but said it is open to seeking agreement on principles of church fellowship. The Church of the Lutheran Confession withdrew from the Wisconsin Synod because it felt the latter was too slow in breaking fellowship with the larger Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. (Suspension of fellowship between the Wisconsin and Missouri bodies subsequently took place in 1961.)

The 370,000-member Wisconsin Synod, which makes up about 5 per cent of the nation’s Lutherans, approved a $5.4 million budget for the next fiscal year, an increase of 23 per cent from the previous budget. The Rev. Oscar J. Naumann, 60, of Milwaukee, was re-elected to his ninth term as synod president.

WILLMAR THORKELSON

A 20-year old Boston man almost made good an elaborate attempt to steal the $1 million Gutenberg Bible from Harvard University’s Widener Library. But the two-volume, thirty-pound work was recovered by guards after they found the man, with the Bible in a knapsack, sprawled unconscious at the foot of a forty-foot rope attached to a window.

The Apostle Paul has a way of moving from the sublime to the mundane with considerable ease. He exhorts the Philippians to work out or show forth their salvation with the assurance that God is at work in them to make them willing and able to do what is in accord with his will. Then to illustrate, he mentions something contrary to God’s will, and the sin he names is not adultery or murder or something else that misses most of the readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY but a sin that is very prevalent among otherwise respectable Christians: the sin of murmuring.

The English word murmur comes (via Latin) from the sound made by people who are grumbling. So, apparently, did the Greek word. We all know the kinds of circumstances that produce grumbling. We don’t think we’ve been given our fair share (Matt. 20:11; Acts 6:1). Others aren’t behaving the way we think they should (Luke 5:30) or they are saying things we don’t like (John 6:35–66). Sometimes we do something good for others, yet spoil it by murmuring (1 Pet. 4:9).

Murmuring is wrong because it refuses to face the situation openly and plainly. Instead of speaking directly to the person involved, we complain behind his back. Instead of speaking specifically about matters that can be changed, we grumble about things in general. Often things that are wrong can be made right—but not by murmuring. The way to do it is to bring the matter up openly and specifically, as Paul does in some of his exhortations to the Philippians.

We need to realize that grumbling about the way our congregation does things, or about taxes, or the weather, or our neighbors, is not some innocent diversion, common though it may be. God views it as a serious sin, and Paul is bold enough to say that the absence of murmuring is a mighty testimony to the power of God in transforming us so that we may shine as lights in a dark world.

Many find it impossible to understand those who, reared in a developed and technological society, deliberately reject the ways of civilized living that the human race has struggled so patiently to develop. The current revolt against civilization is most incomprehensible to those who have struggled successfully against poverty and other hardships to attain a reasonable standard of living for themselves and their families. But it is undeniable that many from upper-middle-class and upper-class homes are determining to “get away from it all” and to return to a tribal form of life.

Obviously, the socio-cultural rebel would call into question many words in the above paragraph, especially the expressions “developed society” and “civilized living.” He would point out that “civilized” persons resort to liquor, clandestine sex, tranquilizers, and a frantic social whirl to camouflage their personal failures and their frustrations with today’s living. Perhaps it is time for the Christian Church to engage in some heart searching to see whether through some misemphases it has contributed to the current yearning for the tribal state among these rebels.

The most obvious forms of retribalization are the rejection of monogamy, with its one-family home, and the abandonment of the “work ethic” in favor of a minimum-effort form of communal living. About a decade ago, there arose in California a tribal arrangement known as the “Perry Lane commune” which became something of a prototype for subsequent tribal establishments. The hippies of the Haight-Ashbury establishment sought to develop a parallel form of tribalization. The failure of this attempt lay, in good part, in the instability of many of the types who flocked to San Francisco, and in the large-scale use of drugs there, with the consequent abandonment of the basic forms of sanitation. In consequence, hepatitis and venereal disease became common, and the devotees of retribalization either abandoned the attempt or else turned to other forms and settings.

The Perry Lane group and its offshoot, the Merry Pranksters, which Ken Kesey established in the Santa Cruz Mountains, faded out. But from the so-called Midpeninsula Free University in Menlo Park there have come further attempts at commune-style living; notable is the Medway Forest Commune, which has lasted for six years now.

Still problematical, from the survival point of view, is Hog Farm in the San Gabriel Mountains, near Sunland, California. Here another of the “tribes,” as they are called in the underground press, has assembled, its members being mainly dropouts from the Sunset Strip and from Haight-Ashbury. Many of them are disenchanted with narcotics and skeptical about the total abandonment of the work ethic. The commune concept seems to be growing in popularity in North America and in scattered other parts of the world. In Washington, D. C., there are reported to be at least forty communes. In West Berlin there is the so-called Kommune-I at Sehenstrasse 60 in the Moabit district, and Kommune-II (K-II) founded by Eike Hemmer. These two communal forms resemble the California communes in their casualness concerning sexual matters and in their insistence that children must be surrounded by many adult figures, and not merely one father and one mother, since the latter form is held to be authoritarian.

In general, the German communes are more politically conscious than their American counterparts. Their inmates, being too young to have personal knowledge of the atrocities committed by the personnel of the Red army in the spring of 1945, have a sentimental leaning toward Marxist Communism; interestingly, their heroes are Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm-X, and Mao Tse-tung, rather than Lenin or Stalin. Thus they oppose the “spirit of privatism” and favor the elimination of private property and of the “capitalistic” practice of “formal” work. The overall aim is to outrage society, attack patriotism, and humiliate their elders.

The persistence of the efforts at retribalization leads one to feel that there must be some deep ideology or rationale behind the movement. It is much too simple to assert, as some do, that the communes are merely arrangements by which those in rebelllion against so-called middle-class morality act out what they have read in pornographic literature—although this does seem to occur. But there is a deeper theoretical basis for this return to the tribal form of living.

There is, it seems, something of the romantic in most men and women, something that is attracted by the words of the song,

A beautiful child

Growing up free and wild …

This the advocates of retribalization share. Deeper still, there lies in them the ideal of a return to a supposed primeval form of life, advocated by Aldous Huxley on something like a metaphysical basis, and articulated in terms of modern communication media and their effects by Marshall McLuhan.

In the volume War and Peace in the Global Village, by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, there is a three-page chart tracing in imaginative fashion the history of man’s civilization, from paleolithic man, through the stages that led to modern man (utilizing linear type), and back to “tribal man again.” It is significant that in the same volume McLuhan speaks of “the highly tribal and group-oriented character of the drug users.”

What McLuhan seems to be suggesting, according to Raymond Rosenthal in McLuhan: Pro and Con, is a kind of dismantling of today’s society, supposedly made inevitable by the discoveries in communication that rest upon electronic circuitry, and the erection of a type of new anti-environment in which men return to the kind of social configuration that allegedly marked pre-verbal man.

It seems to the newer advocates of retribalization that man can now defy all the hard facts of his previous geography, sociology, economics, and politics, and build a new life style that ignores the accumulated wisdom of the ages and the power of ideas and values of the past. The idea has charm and has attracted its devotees.

What has the current movement toward retribalization to say to the Church? Possibly it performs its best and most searching function if it inspires some pointed questions. For example, the Christian Church might ask whether the existence of racism among Christians has not been a form of concealed tribalization. Or to express it in other words, has not Christianity been remiss in failing to extend the concept of “The Tribe” so as to include all men?

Finally, has not the Christian movement sometimes assumed uncritically that all forms of so-called civilization are right and good? Possibly the existence of even such gauche social types as the commune comes to prod the Church into being prophetic rather than culture-affirming.

Disciples Heed Minority-Group Needs

After nearly a year in ecclesiastical waters, the restructured Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is still very much afloat, steaming toward ecumenical and social-action harbors. But James Forman’s Black Manifesto will not be among the ports of call, delegates decided in their first biennial General Assembly last month in Seattle.

The Manifesto sparked much action—and reaction. The Disciples’ 250-member General Board asked for approval of its response to the Manifesto, which confessed racial sins but rejected Forman’s “racism, violence, separatism, extortion, revenge, and blanket denunciation of the church.” Board members proposed five-year goals which, if accepted, would “shake every one of our churches and institutions,” according to the Disciples’ chief executive, A. Dale Fiers.

Recommendations included: increasing the Disciples’ own “Reconciliation” urban-crisis fund from $2 million to $4 million; redeploying $30 million of congregational and headquarters budgets to minority-group needs; hiring one-fifth of staff from minorities; investing in minority businesses; creating a Christian Church Urban Affairs Commission.

Leaders of the non-official Disciples for Mission and Renewal bloc moved—but lost 1,603 to 696—to recommit the measure for the addition of denominational recognition of Forman’s Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC). Chicago pastor Charles H. Bayer revealed that some Disciples wanted to give $4,000 to the BEDC in the name of the church. To blunt the opposition he repeated a rumor, later denied by BEDC chief Calvin Marshall III, pastor of an A.M.E. Zion church in New York, that Forman was no longer a BEDC spokesman.

The defeated and rather weak issue of the $4,000 nevertheless became a rallying point for dissident youths and blacks. James Blair, a black minister from Kansas City, Missouri, who is a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, announced the formation of a Black Caucus to press for demands (bearing an initial pricetag of $3 million). “You will hear from us later,” he warned.

Twenty youths, at the suggestion of an eight-year-old, marched with raised fists to the platform to protest the defeat of BEDC recognition. This touched off harsh public exchanges between delegates. Disciples congresswoman Edith Green (D.-Ore.) revised a speech to express both “chagrin” over the demonstration and support of the board’s position.

In a surprise bid for the last word on the matter, several Mission and Renewal representatives commandeered the podium at one of the concluding services. They presented a $4,000 check to black ministers for delivery to the BEDC. New Moderator James M. Moudy, chancellor of Texas Christian University, named the Mission and Renewal bloc in a complaint about splinter-group practices: “When the majority goes against them, they try to find new ways around the majority.” Earlier, he had rated the Manifesto “an excellent document,” a source of “inspiration.” (Moudy replaces Beverly Hills, California, pastor Myron C. Cole.)

The anti-establishment forces, though vocal, suffered internal divisiveness. Blair readily admitted a power struggle among black clergymen. Weeks before, the National Christian Missionary Convention—a black Disciples body—voted to disband in favor of full denominational participation, and to maintain an advisory “convocation.” The latter, chaired by new Disciples first vicemoderator Raymond E. Brown, a North Carolina minister, rejected power moves by Blair and other militants.

The young people, too, were split in publishing and pressure projects; some even apologized for rash radical acts by their peers.

Action also centered on ecumenical concerns. Lawrence W. Bash, minister of the 3,000-member Country Club Christian Church of Kansas City, fought to recommit a measure on support of church councils. He drew applause in questioning alleged cordial consideration of Forman’s “definitely Marxist” program by the National Council of Churches’ General Board. On strong counter-prodding by Fiers, who is helping to draft the NCC Manifesto response, the delegates voted 1,464 to 963 against Bash.

They also voted down an attempt to postpone “further commitment” toward merger with other churches, including the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). But they did delay further wedding plans with the United Church of Christ in light of COCU progress.

This pleased guest speaker William A. Benfield, Jr., chairman of COCU’s Plan of Union Commission, who was annoyed with mergers that “relegate COCU to a minor position of concern.” He admitted that committee members still differ on organization and government, and he confessed fears that denominations may balk later. But COCU advances and church costs were too great, he boomed, for churches to “allow their operational differences to keep them apart.” (Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy, who spoke to a pre-convention evangelism conference, had caustically remarked that COCU was “of the devil.”)

On issues relating to war, the draft, and the anti-ballistic-missile system, the Disciples adopted dovish positions. The Disciples Peace Fellowship placed forty-three white crosses on empty seats to dramatize the 43,000 American deaths in Viet Nam. The Peace Fellowship also picketed while Disciples layman Maxwell Taylor, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ambassador to South Viet Nam, addressed Disciples chaplains on the “morality” of U. S. involvement in Viet Nam.

As for statistics, when restructure last year changed the 120-year-old brotherhood of Disciples into a denomination, some 3,500 churches with about 450,000 members formally elected to jump ship. Apparently many of them were never really aboard, though, since the financial losses for the year were less than seventy-five cents per disgruntled Disciple, mostly in designated giving. Next year’s operating budget for the 1.5-million-member denomination is $11.5 million.

Defending Shelton

Arch-fundamentalist Carl McIntire’s latest war is against a move by the New Jersey higher-education department to close his small Shelton College in Cape May. Since 1964, its accreditation (without it the school could not operate) has been cautiously renewed.

The controversy revolves around a public hearing on charges by New Jersey chancellor of higher education Ralph A. Dungan. He claims the school fails to meet state requirements in nineteen areas. These include failure to “effect the orderly execution of educational policy,” insufficient faculty preparation, listing of courses not actually taught, insufficient income to attract quality teaching, and inadequate library and laboratory facilities.

McIntire, Shelton’s president, denies all charges. The radio preacher (who recently has lost considerable conservative support over internal problems in his movement) has taken to the air to raise 1,000 gifts of $1,000 to defend Shelton. By the end of last month, McIntire sources said about $250,000 had been netted.¹Another current McIntire project is a “Christian Manifesto” demanding $3 billion reparations from ecumenical churches and the keys to Princeton Theological Seminary be turned over to his International Council of Christian Churches.

July 30 McIntire staged a “Great March on Trenton” attended by a crowd of Shelton supporters variously estimated from 1,500 to 5,000. He promises greater things for October 25:25,000 marchers in New Jersey’s capital and George C. Wallace by his side.

Vows the feisty Cape May warrior: “Under no circumstances will we relocate.… We will never die.”

Tragedy At Pass Christian

It all started as a cozy “hurricane party.” About a dozen revelers were gathered in the posh Richelieu apartments in the town of Pass Christian, Mississippi, 200 yards from the beach.

Along came police chief Jerry Peralta at nightfall, when the winds were whipping at sixty miles an hour and the ocean was creeping over the sea wall. He urged them to flee; they refused. He dutifully took the names of the next of kin; they laughed.

At about 10:15 P.M., in a single stroke, all the lights and power in Pass Christian went out, and then a three-story-high wave smashed over the sea wall. The Richelieu apartments were slashed to bits by the rushing waters and ferocious winds of Hurricane Camille. Twenty-three bodies were found in the rubble, including those of persons who had holed up a few hours before to party away the storm. Only a five-year-old boy survived, floating to safety on a mattress.

Later, as church leaders attempted to assess the damage, sketchy reports began to filter in. Damage to the church and church-owned installations was estimated at $15 million in an interim survey, with Catholic losses accounting for $12 million of the figure.

Meanwhile, Church World Service, the Salvation Army, the National Catholic Disaster Relief Committee, and other agencies swung into action to do the best they could to help the numbed survivors.

Putting The Screws On Church Tax Privileges

California set a precedent for church-state relationships last month that could soon be followed by more sweeping legislation on a national scale virtually abolishing special tax privileges to churches.

Beginning next January, California churches must pay state corporation taxes on income from unrelated businesses. The bill—which Governor Ronald Reagan is expected to sign into law—also requires, for the first time, that all churches and religious organizations file an annual form with the state regarding their income.

The principle that churches should pay income taxes on hotels, manufacturing companies, and other unrelated businesses has been broadly endorsed by major church bodies, including the National Council of Churches and the U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy (see May 23 issue, pages 23 and 31).

On the same day the California bill was approved, the U. S. House of Representatives passed a similar measure taxing church business income. The bill, passed 394 to 30, is the most inclusive tax-reform bill in House history and will be considered by the Senate and the President this fall. Here is how the House treated churches and taxation:

• Deductions for contributions to religious groups are retained as presently provided.
• Foundations operated by religious groups are exempted from the 7½ per cent tax levied on other non-profit foundations.
• Businesses bought by churches and leased back to the managers (resulting in a competitive advantage over other businesses) are taken off tax-free status.
• Donors of appreciated securities and property to churches and their agencies may continue to claim the full value of their contribution without paying capital-gains taxes on the appreciated value.

Under the California action, churches will be subject to the 7 per cent tax levied on net business incomes. Income from church-related activities will go untaxed. California churches and synagogues already pay property taxes on all property except buildings used strictly for religious purposes, the land they occupy, and nearby parking lots.

Los Angeles Times religion writer John Dart reported that the biggest disappointment in the income-reporting provision of the proposed law is among laymen who had hoped that church income, holdings, and spending would be made public. The bill asks only that churches without taxable business income identify the kinds of income they have—not the amounts. And it does not touch the “lease-back” set-up.

Senator Anthony C. Beilenson, the Beverly Hills Democrat who wrote the California tax bill (he also was the author of the state’s bill liberalizing abortion practices in 1967), guessed the tax measure would bring several million dollars into the state treasury. But Glen Holman, a Sacramento-based advocate for the California Councils of Churches, lowered the estimate to less than $1 million. “The number of churches that actually operate businesses is probably small,” he said.

The extent of the congressional action—if it becomes law—is not known exactly, either, because there never has been a thorough tabulation of church-owned, profit-making enterprises.

The most sweeping reform, however, could result from an unusual case now pending in the U. S. Supreme Court. It involves Frederick Walz’s 22-by-29-foot plot of land on Staten Island (see July 18 issue, page 38), and hinges on Walz’s argument that tax exemption for churches increases his property taxes, puts money into the hands of churches, and thereby establishes religion. If the high court agrees with him, tax exemptions to churches and income-tax deductions on gifts to churches could be eliminated.

Such action would profoundly affect church financial structure. Educated estimates place the worth of real estate alone owned by congregations in the United States at $102 billion.

Meanwhile, in New York, a State Supreme Court justice ruled last month that a religious institution loses part of its tax-exempt status if it leases part of its property for commercial use.

The Mineola, Long Island, case centered around a summer day camp that has used the grounds and rooms, except the sanctuary, of Temple Beth Sholom. The judge ruled that the camp was run for financial gain rather than religious purposes. The case was considered historic; it reportedly was the first lawsuit in the state brought by a taxpayer to force a religious organization to pay taxes on a commercial sideline.

A record total of forty-one religious-freedom and church-state cases await decision in federal and state courts, according to a survey made by the American Jewish Congress. Many are expected to reach the U. S. Supreme Court—already facing a heavy fall agenda of lawsuits concerning the “establishment of religion” and “free exercise” clauses of the First Amendment.

As churches and governments examine St. Matthew’s taxation text, there seems to be some slow movement toward consensus on what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. It’s unlikely Caesar will get short-changed.

Graham’s Vienna Visit

“You are a triumphant Church, and the whole world is watching you,” Billy Graham told some 600 Czechoslovak Christians last month in a small Austrian church on Vienna’s Lindenstrasse. The evangelist was in Europe to address two climactic meetings of the once-in-five-years conference of the European Baptist Confederation. East European delegates (more than a thousand) made up almost half the registration.

Vienna was chosen because most East European Baptists could attend, and because of the obvious boost it would give the tiny Baptist minority in the host country. Austrian Baptists number less than those in either of the neighboring Communist countries of Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia.

One miscalculation in an otherwise well-organized and smooth-running conference was the drawing power of the main speaker. Although the name of Billy Graham is known and guaranteed to rouse interest in almost any other part of Europe, Austria’s evangelical isolation was emphasized by large areas of empty seats expected to be filled by “outsiders” for the final public meeting. But this did not deter scores of people of all ages from responding to the invitation for commitment to Christ.

For Graham, the smaller meeting on Lindenstrasse was “one of my most memorable experiences.” And many Czechs who attended described it as “a highlight of the entire conference.” Although the evangelist planned to pay only a brief visit to the prearranged meeting of Czechoslovaks and other East Europeans, his “three-minute greeting” extended much longer. “We’re used to three-hour services,” one pastor assured him.

Graham was to have visited Czechoslovak church leaders in Prague the day after his Vienna engagement, but even though the government had agreed, the evangelist canceled the trip at the last moment. According to the European Baptist Press Service, he feared it could be considered a provocation by Communist rulers there, who showed anxiety over the then-forthcoming anniversary of the Russian-led invasion one year before.

That press service said Graham was concerned that his visit, intended to help and strengthen the churches, might harm them instead. The Associated Press in Vienna said Prague church leaders were “shocked” by Graham’s cancellation.

After receiving a huge, hand-cut Czech crystal vase at the Lindenstrasse meeting (it was to have been presented in Prague the next day), Graham sparked a standing ovation when he said: “This will remind us to continue to pray for you, and of our promise to come to you.” The evangelist indicated he might make the trip to Czechoslovakia later this year, but set no date.

DAVE FOSTER

MOVE OVER, PORTNOY, THERE’S A NEW MOON RISING

A ray of decency may be breaking through the smut glut in the fiction world.

Eugenia Price’s new novel, New Moon Rising, had made the best-seller list for six weeks running by the end of last month. It was ninth on the New York Times Book Review list (the top ten are picked from reports from more than 125 bookstores in sixty-four communities across the nation), after holding down the number-ten spot for several weeks.

New Moon, published by Lippincott (281 pp., $5.95), hasn’t received rave notices from reviewers (see August 22 issue, page 28). Despite the stereotyped plot about a romance—without bedroom scenes—the public is taking the novel seriously enough to put the book up there with such lurid fare as Jacqueline Susann’s The Love Machine, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor.

Meanwhile, a slim little volume on as unlikely a best-selling topic as prayer was leading all Doubleday hardcover book sales throughout the country—and it had become the rage in Belgium. I’ve Got to Talk to Somebody, God ($3.95), by Washington Evening Star columnist Marjorie Holmes, is a housewife’s On Practicing the Presence of God written in the down-to-earth, chatty style of contemporary prayer-conversation.

Religion In Transit

Lutheran church bodies in North America had a combined membership of 9,239,274 at the close of 1968, according to an annual summary.

Racial segregation, armed defense of the “principles of democracy, freedom and Christianity,” and law and order were supported in resolutions adopted last month by the Florida State Baptist Association, affiliated with the American Baptist Association.

John Cardinal Dearden of Detroit has approved guidelines for Roman Catholic funerals that permit a service by a parish priest for every Catholic family requesting one. In the past, non-Catholic members of the family sometimes were refused such funerals.

Christians on the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, and Minnesota Twins baseball teams conduct Sunday-morning services in their hotels during road trips in order to beat difficult time schedules.

The National Council of Churches has terminated its bi-weekly Information Service on current issues because of a budget squeeze.

A court ruling last month held that property of the Evangelical Congregational Church of Sawyer in Bradford, Pennsylvania, should become part of the United Methodist Church. The action came after the Sawyer church (formerly Evangelical United Brethren) protested the EUB-Methodist merger.

A recent decision by the State Unemployment Compensation Board of Review in Pennsylvania says that a person who quits a job because an employer makes derogatory remarks about his religion can collect unemployment compensation.

More than $1.2 million is spent each week on air time and production of religious TV programming in the nation, according to a recent survey by the Television Information Office. Typical stations carry about two hours of religious programs a week.… The general director of the Lutheran World Federation’s Broadcasting Service told a Lutheran Laymen’s League meeting that “the mass media play a major role, perhaps a decisive one, in shaping thought patterns, especially of the younger generation.”

A nationwide poll of Roman Catholics indicates most lay members oppose any changes in present rules for attending mass on five annual holy days.

The Minnesota Baptist Convention, most conservative of half a dozen Baptist bodies in the state, has opposed the U. S. Congress on Evangelism being held in Minneapolis this month, contending it is “an ungodly mixture of saved and lost persons.”

Dubuque Seminary (United Presbyterian) and Aquinas Institute (Roman Catholic) now share courses, conferences, and facilities in Dubuque, Iowa, and plan a joint 200,000-volume library.

The General Conference of the Mennonite Church, meeting in Turner, Oregon, last month, voted to raise some $565,000 for projects in racially tense urban areas and approved a resolution providing for “non-cooperation” with the military for draft-opposed Mennonite youths. Two-hundred delegates of the 110,000-member historic peace church attended.

The United Methodist Board of Education has announced a $2 million fund-raising drive to meet emergency needs of its eleven black colleges and a seminary.

Personalia

Dr. Robert S. Denny, senior associate secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, has been named to a five-year term succeeding Dr. Josef Nordenhaug as the alliance’s general secretary next July. The organization includes 30 million Baptists in 120 countries.

Dr. Robert Boyd Munger, pastor of University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, since 1962 and for seventeen years pastor of Berkeley (California) First Presbyterian Church, has been appointed professor of evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

Texas real-estate developer and banker Frank Wesley Sharpe, a Methodist, was designated honorary founder of the Jesuit Province of New Orleans, the first Protestant to be so honored by the 400-year-old Catholic Society of Jesus.

The former director of the China office of the Lutheran World Federation, the Rev. Arthur S. Olson, his wife, and a married daughter were among seven persons killed when tornadoes destroyed a Christian camp near Minneapolis last month.

Ex-chief “Boo Hoo” Judith Kuch of the Neo-American Church, which advocates the use of drugs, pleaded guilty to four counts of marijuana possession.… Father Richard Ginder, an unassigned Catholic priest and former editor and syndicated columnist for conservative Catholicism, waived a hearing in Pittsburgh City Court on morals, drug, and liquor charges.

Predictably, Mrs. Madalyn Murray O’Hair has asked federal courts to stop United States astronauts from reading the Bible in space.

Dr. C. E. Autrey, 65, the top evangelism executive for the Southern Baptist Convention, retired this month to become professor of evangelism at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. Joseph M. Stowell, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Hackensack, New Jersey, will become national representative for the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches at its Des Plaines, Illinois, headquarters.

The new president for the 1968–70 term of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference is the Rev. Edgar Wheeler, pastor of the Ashaway, Rhode Island, church.

DEATHS

MILFORD F. HENKEL, 44, former professor of history and philosophy at Malone College and Baptist clergyman; in a traffic accident at Elkhart, Indiana.

BOYD LEEDOM, 62, former National Labor Relations Board chairman, president of International Christian Leadership; in Arlington, Virginia.

GEORGE A. LONG, 84, president emeritus of Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, former trustee of Westminster College, and moderator of the United Presbyterian Church of North America in 1955; in Akron, Ohio.

C. HOYT WATSON, 81, former president of Seattle Pacific College, onetime general Educational secretary for the Free Methodist Church; in Seattle.

World Scene

Religious leaders in West Germany are concerned over changes approved in the 100-year-old German penal code, including removal of legal punishment for homosexuality between consenting adults, adultery, and spouse-swapping (with consent).

The worldwide membership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses has jumped 370 per cent over the past twenty years, according to figures released at a Witness international assembly in Paris. Total membership was given as 1,221,504.

A person can get six lessons for $3.60 at a school for witchcraft to be opened in Ulting, England, sponsored by the county-council education adviser.

A national congress on evangelism drew leaders from twenty-five denominations and representatives from seven African states and foreign lands last month at Kinshasa, Congo. National Negro Evangelical Association leaders from the United States said it was the first time Afro-American evangelicals had attended such a gathering.

The Rev. William Rodda has opened the Church of England’s first licensed bar alongside his Wiltshire church near Bemerton, England.