The speaker might have been Negro militant James Forman. Except that his face was not black; the state he was attacking was South Dakota; and instead of a beard, his distinctive marks were a red jacket and a beaded headband.

He is Dennis Banks, a Minnesotan, and he does not like his American Indian Movement to be compared to the militant blacks. But the comparison is inevitable.

Like Forman, he was disrupting a church conclave—this time a meeting in Sioux Falls of some 150 Lutheran workers among the Indians. Like Forman, he is seeking civil rights for his people. And his words, like Forman’s, carry a sting.

“You tell me Christianity is a good religion—the best,” he declared. “But if so, why aren’t Indians in your churches?… This is America’s most racist state.… Justice: the whites spell it ‘Just Us.’ ”

The delegates reacted sympathetically, assuring the Indians they would have more influence within the three major Lutheran bodies. More significant, however, was what the confrontation symbolized: Indian culture and religion in the midst of change.

For decades the American Indian population has been growing rapidly, and it now numbers about 700,000.¹Government Indian raids in the late 1880s dedmated the nation’s Indian population, leaving only 250,000. It once had been one million. Two-thirds live on reservations in the poor-land areas of the West, where they were driven a century ago.

As a class, they are poor, with a median per-capita income of about $800 a year (several times smaller than that in the Los Angeles Watts area). They are still mainly rural, though there is a growing shift toward the cities. They are young; more than half are under twenty. Their birth rate is twice that of the rest of the population.

During the years of increasing Indian population, most Indian missions have developed along traditional lines. Preaching has been central. Many churches, particularly the more liberal ones, have carried on rudimentary social programs. But in nearly every case, the white man has “run things” for the 50 per cent of America’s Indians who are at least nominally Christian.

Now shifts within Indian culture are pounding against this framework. A new self-awareness has developed, chiefly through the movement of Indians to the cities. Minnesota Indians describe Minneapolis as their “biggest reservation.” Observers in the Southwest, where the largest share of the Indians live, talk of “substantial numbers going urban.” All major cities report growing Indian ghettoes (there are 26,000 Indians in New York, for example).

As they have moved, Indians have become more keenly aware of the cultural and economic differences between white and red people. The stark poverty of so many reservations, the coffee-and-bread diets, the junk-car homes, the high infant-mortality rate—all stand out grimly against metropolitan affluence.

Increased self-awareness also has brought new understanding—and hatred—of missionary paternalism. “They remember,” said one churchman, “the white pastor making announcements as he poured the contents of the offering plate into his coat pocket.” They recall that whites always earned salaries, while many Indian ministers worked for free. They view clothing boxes as an insult because of “this thing called dignity.”

And awareness has brought to some an anger toward the white man’s indifference to Indian culture and sensitivities.

On the national level, an example of this was the reputed “perfunctory manner” in which New Yorker Louis Bruce was chosen United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs last month with almost no consultation with Indian leaders. Of churches, Charles E. Fiero of the Christian and Missionary Alliance declared bitterly: “I have seldom visited a church for Indians where the format was not predictably white.”

Perhaps, they tell themselves, it is simply that the white man never has cared about them, and still doesn’t. Gordon H. Fraser, chancellor of Southwestern School of Missions in Arizona, noted: “In the decade that we were erecting the Statue of Liberty to welcome the masses of Europe, we … exterminated 40,000 Indians because we had no room for them.”

Indians who know this often grow cynical. “I’m getting bitter,” said one youth. “And if you don’t wake up, there are going to be lots more like me.”

All of this has set off rumblings on the reservations—mild at the center, devastating on the edges.

In the heartland of some Southwest reservations, traditional evangelism is still successful. A missionary from Rockpoint, Arizona, reported that while 80 per cent in her area hold to native religions, the Christian Church is expanding rapidly. “These people are far enough from modern society [most speak no English] to avoid disillusionment,” she said.

Others in that region report strong camp meetings and growing indigenous churches. Fraser’s school maintains healthy enrollment. Many are excited about Christian Literature Foundation’s new Indian translation of the New Testament, using an 850-word vocabulary.

But nearer the fringes of the reservations, and outside the Southwest, most Indian churches are faced with the choice of changing or folding. A priestresearcher in South Dakota, the Rev. Stanislaus Maudlin, estimated that as much as 10 per cent of the Indian Christian community in the Upper Plains is leaving the church each year. Conversations with Indians back him up. Even the most optimistic church officials will say only: “Maybe we’re holding our own.”

Much of the loss is through migration to the larger cities, where Christian Indian ministries are rare. But a substantial number also leave because of disillusionment over church paternalism and hypocrisy. Father Maudlin tells of an archdeacon in the Episcopal church of South Dakota who left “because I had to choose between being in the church and being Indian.”

Another factor is the impact of native Indian cults, such as the peyote religion in the Southwest. And Mormonism is said to be making impressive inroads.

In response to these shifts, most of the groups in the National Council of Churches are making drastic, rapid changes from church-oriented, competitive ministries to ecumenical, social programs. The United Presbyterians, regarded as typical, once had thirty churches on Pine Ridge Reservation in the Dakotas; today they have four or five. Other groups, such as the Upper Midwest Lutherans, are placing more emphasis on social programs while still trying to maintain strong preaching. Most of the mainline denominations are turning leadership over to Indians (all the 113 Methodist Indian churches of Oklahoma now have Indian pastors).

Among evangelical groups, the pattern is mixed. Perhaps the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Fiero best stated their over-all aims: “Our focus is the conversion of people to Jesus Christ, establishment of individuals in holy living, and establishment of churches. Some of our workers envision such churches as being predominantly Indian in membership, with full Indian leadership. And some of our group do not see a need of distinctly Indian church life for Indian believers. We have good, effective workers of both persuasions.”

In any case, it appears certain that all Christian agencies committed to Indian work have a lot to do—and quickly—to meet the social and spiritual needs of America’s first citizens. In another generation, it may be too late.

America’s Christian colleges are in trouble. About thirty-five have died this year, unable to cope with soaring costs and exploding fields of knowledge. And observers predict nearly 1,000 deaths in the next two decades. But the crisis has spurred a lot of fresh thinking among educators. Consider these pioneering efforts:

• In Detroit, nondenominational John Wesley Foundation hopes to sponsor some twenty-five satellite schools in the next five years. The plan: students would take most of their course work at secular colleges, while living and studying religion at a near-by Christian campus called, at each location, John Wesley College. The degree would come from the secular school.
• Near San Diego, Skyline Christian Institute will begin pilot classes this month for a similar, but graduate-oriented, satellite school. The institute describes itself as a “powerhouse, generating a love of Christ which the students carry daily on to the secular campus,” rather than “a greenhouse in which we cultivate students in isolation from the secular world.”
• Close to the nation’s capital, a Baptist minister is planning an experiment in “world-community” to be called Dag Hammarskjold College. Though the school is described as a “Christian mission,” its goals sound more like those of the secular university.
• Ground has been broken in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for American College, a superpatriotic school that will affirm “Americanist ideas.”

Spearhead of the Wesley colleges is Dr. Kenneth Armstrong, 42, pastor of Detroit’s First Nazarene Church. The first Wesley college is scheduled to open in two years with a $6 million-dollar plant in Detroit (the only major city in America without an accredited Protestant college). It will emphasize “both Christian and democratic” principles, which Armstrong says include “the value of the free market economy” and “individual responsibility.”

Each Wesley college will feature a professional counseling staff—available to both students and the public—a 110-foot tower with an eternal flame, and a faculty expected to be made up exclusively of Ph.Ds.

Two thousand miles away, Skyline plans to launch a professionally oriented satellite program (see News, August 30, 1968, page 45). Unlike the Wesley colleges, SCI will not seek accreditation; academic standing is expected to rest on the secular schools its students attend.

Initially tied to Skyline Wesleyan Church in Lemon Grove, California, SCI recently cut ties and became nondenominational. Its staff expects to begin three pilot classes this fall, complete the first building by Christmas, and assume full operation (with a faculty of six) by September of 1970.

Dag Hammarskjöld College, also scheduled to open its doors in 1970, is said to be a “Christian mission.” Based in Maryland’s experimental city, Columbia, the school will enroll 1,440 high-capability students, 60 per cent of them non-American.

Its format, seeking relevance to the “growing world village and the basic causes of student unrest,” betrays more humanism than Christianity. Scientific humanists and Communists will be especially welcome in an atmosphere of “confrontation” helped along by Students for a Democratic Society, whose spokesmen reportedly said the school will be a “challenge to disrupt.”

School president Dr. Robert McCan, who describes himself as theologically orthodox, explains his “Christian mission” this way: Through “confrontation,” not “manipulation,” the college will attempt to “cultivate concern for spiritual things.… Realization of ultimate reality—I call it God—is basic to education.” He nevertheless admits some Christian students may lose their faith. “Who is converted is left to the Holy Spirit.”

Much less likely to attract Communists is Billy James Hargis’s American College, scheduled to open in the fall of 1970. Groundbreaking came last month during the annual convention of ultra-conservative Hargis’s Christian Crusade. The school, designed to counter-balance “degenerate” influences at secular universities, will teach “God, government, and Christian action.”

Starting as a junior college, Hargis’s latest enterprise will grant associate-of-arts degrees in six liberal-arts categories. It will seek accreditation and professors with earned doctorates.

Hargis is unhappy that “young people can go to so few schools that champion conservative principles and Americanist ideas” and wants to teach students to be “militant, patriotic Americans.” Moral standards at his school, he pledges, will be strict. Tulsa is already the home of Oral Roberts University (see March 28, 1969, issue page 40).

In other recent developments:

• New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller vetoed a bill that would have included church-related colleges in a $15 million program of state aid to private institutions of higher learning.
• Kentucky Southern College finally merged this month with the University of Louisville to clear a $4.25 million debt. Two years ago, Kentucky Southern withdrew from a debt-inspired union with Louisville when students raised $1.2 million in a “Save Our School” campaign. In a move for federal funds, KSC earlier in 1967 broke ties with the Southern Baptist Convention; but even with federal aid it was unable to cover operating costs. Merger means complete loss of identity for Kentucky Southern.
• Richmond College, Canada’s only evangelical liberal-arts institution, has a new president. Geophysicist Dr. Hugh White replaces his brother-in-law, the Rev. Elmer McVety. Still feeling the effects of its precarious beginning several years ago (see September 1, 1967 issue, page 42), Richmond is making a bid for support from Toronto’s evangelicals.
• Grand Canyon College, a lightly endowed Southern Baptist school in Arizona, has operated in the red fifteen of its twenty years. Now it must raise $125,000 by November to avert closure.

An expedition party of six men brought back four samples of plank-like wood from a foot to eighteen inches long found at the edge of a glacier some 13,000 feet above sea level on the slopes of Mount Ararat, near Istanbul, Turkey.

The party was led by Harry Crawford, a Seventh-day Adventist veteran of six previous expeditions to the mountain region. He said the wood was found July 31 and August 2 near the spot similar pieces of hewn timber believed to be about 4,000 years old (according to carbon tests) were found by French industrialist Fernand Navarra in 1955.

The search team, financed privately and sponsored by the Scientific Exploration and Archaeological Research Foundation (SEARCH), was composed of men of various skills.¹Expedition members were Crawford, of Denver; Fred Lee, a photographer and illustrator for SEARCH in Washington, D. C.; Ralph Lenton, an explorer for the Arctic Institute of North America, Washington, D. C.; Hugo Neuburg, a physicist and glaciologist; Navarra; and his son, Fernand Navarra, Jr. Not all are orthodox Christians, nor does the team make any claim that the wood is indeed the remains of Noah’s ark. But the discovery has excited reputable scientists and archaeologists. Tests to determine the nature and age of the wood are being conducted in France, Turkey, and the United States.

Team member Fred Lee said the wood was found buried in ice and rock in a spillway where water was flowing out from under a small glacier. “We believe the wood is the same consistency and grain structure as the samples found by Navarra,” Lee said.

The party rented a minibus and driver at Ancra, then took ponies up the lower slopes of the 17,000-foot twin-peaked mountain from a base camp. They back-packed to an upper camp well above the timber line and just below the snow level at 12,000 feet, according to explorer Ralph Lenton. He said the mountain—which is on the border of the Soviet Union and faces Iran and Syria on the south and east—appears to be volcanic in origin.

If future exploration reveals that the wood is from a ship, a host of biblical, historical, and geological problems will have to be reassessed and answered.

Dr. William F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University, a world-renowned archaeologist and authority on ancient languages, scoffs at the idea the ark may be lying under the glacier. He told CHRISTIANITY TODAY there is no basis “either in biblical geography or in later tradition” for the claim that Mount Ararat (the mountain bearing this name in modern times) is the location of the settling of the ark. (Genesis 8:4 says the ark “rested … upon the mountains of Ararat.”)

Further, Albright argues there isn’t a trace of physical evidence that there was a flood of worldwide proportions around 2000 B.C. He completely dismissed the theory that the pieces of wood could be from the ark, noting that the remains of the ark, in his opinion, could not be at such a high elevation.

Robert Faylor, director of the Arctic Institute of North America, admits there could be glaciological problems in dating the wood as recent as 4,000 years. The Ice Age is commonly believed to have been much longer ago. But the Arctic Institute thought enough of the venture to release Lenton for the expedition and to lend exploration equipment to the party without charge.

“We need objective appraisal to strengthen the findings,” Faylor said. “I can’t explain how wood that size and age could get to that height.… Whatever is there is going to be of great archaeological interest.”

SEARCH plans further explorations next summer. Lee believes about one million cubic yards of ice and rock will have to be removed to reveal what—if anything—lies beneath.

The admission of its first indigenous African church, lively skirmishes over the Middle East and Nigeria, some significant words on racism, and significant silences on other issues—these were features of the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee meeting last month in Canterbury, England. The twelve-day sessions began with a service in England’s oldest cathedral and continued in one of England’s newest universities.

Some Eastern European churches criticized the WCC’s 1968 statement on Czechoslovakia, but General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake in his report defended that statement, not only because of the principles involved, but because “it had been widely said that the World Council was unable or unwilling to be publicly critical of the U. S. S. R.” as it had been of others. Asked later if, since the present meetings coincided with the first anniversary of the Russian invasion, the WCC proposed to make a further statement, Blake said this was the task of the Churches Commission in International Affairs (CCIA), whose report had not yet been given (and which was in fact making no statement).

One Central Committee member had more to say. United States Congressman John Brademas (D.-Ind.) told journalists the invasion was “so obviously an outrage against human rights that the CCIA’s omission is a rather obvious and glaring one.” On a Russian committeeman’s statement to a previous session that there was no racism in their socialist regime, Brademas commented: “Nobody takes that kind of rhetoric seriously.”

The CCIA report’s reference to Greece was comparatively strong: “In the field of human rights,” it said, “CCIA felt a particular responsibility toward the interior situation in Greece which unfortunately shows no signs of alteration or improvement.” The report nonetheless proposed that no action be taken until the publication this fall of the findings of the European Commission on Human Rights. A Romanian speaker gravely said the CCIA should take up the matter with the Church of Greece. Dr. John Coventry Smith, a WCC president, suggested that if the suppression of civil rights was confirmed, the CCIA should make its own recommendations.

Professor Constantine Bonis of the Greek Orthodox Church denied there was no improvement in the Greek situation and said the Greek prime minister had affirmed recently that there was “complete freedom of the press.” Bonis may have raised the matter again to good effect in the policy-reference committee, for when that body submitted its recommendations, the reference to the Greek situation had disappeared.

Not so successful was a Rhodesian speaker who, while glad the report called on Rhodesians to reject the new constitution, expressed himself “very dismayed” that the CCIA advocated the intensifying of sanctions. They had not worked, said Anglican Dean Wood, and were felt most by the African majority.

After some knockabout stuff from indignant African members, the Committee affirmed by 39 to 37 that it “appreciates the intention of the United Nations’ policy of economic sanctions against Rhodesia, and requests the member churches to press upon their governments the necessity to find more effective measures for the ends sought.”

A Filipino participant wryly pointed out in contrast that they had earlier asked for sanctions to be lifted against Cuba, and had called for the reestablishment of trade and diplomatic relations (two American Lutherans had dissented here).

On Viet Nam the committee was merely asked to “note with approval” a recommendation passed previously by the CCIA executive; but an Australian, noting the “hope that the United States will continue to withdraw its troops from South Viet Nam,” wanted a note appended about his own government’s harder line.

When this was accepted, Dr. R. L. Taylor of the United States swiftly asked that a reference be made also to the withdrawal of “all foreign troops, including those of North Viet Nam.” Officialdom was evidently caught by surprise, asked that the subject be deferred till a later session, and later withdrew the Viet Nam document.

Controversy arose over a proposed statement on the Middle East. The committee finally adopted a statement that “in supporting the establishment of the State of Israel without protecting the rights of Palestinians, injustice has been done to Palestinian Arabs by the great powers which should be redressed.”

Concentration on that section diverted attention from another wherein the committee suggested that “the subject of biblical interpretation be studied in order to avoid the misuse of the Bible in support of partisan political views and to clarify the bearing of faith upon critical political questions.”

The question of Nigeria produced some fireworks, too. The committee reaffirmed that “the immediate urgent need is to open up safe corridors, approved on both sides, through which adequate quantities of humanitarian relief supplies may reach the victims of this conflict.”

Admitted to WCC membership were the Karo Batak Protestant Church of Kabandjahe, North Sumatra (65,000 members); the Moravian Church in Jamaica (23,000); the Church of Christ on Earth by the Prophet, Simon Kimbangu, Congo-Kinshasa (estimated at 1.1 million by the son of the prophet who was present); the Old Catholic Mariavite Church, Poland (24,000); and the Evangelical Pentecostal Church “Brazil for Christ” (1.1 million). Accepted as WCC “associated churches” (having fewer than 10,000 members) were the United Evangelical Lutheran Church, Argentina, and the Presbytery of Liberia.

A number of the committee’s Orthodox members had some soul-searching about the admission of the Congolese church (which has no baptism by water), but after this first indigenous African church to apply had found an unlikely champion in the Russian Nikodim, it was accepted with only two abstentions.

At an earlier session, loud applause greeted some informal remarks by the Rev. Manoel de Mello of the Brazilian applicant-church. If accepted by WCC, he said, his church would maintain its strongly evangelical viewpoint and its emphasis on spiritual revival. While welcoming the five new member churches, WCC officials made it clear that there also was rejoicing in Geneva because the Pope had lifted a Vatican taboo in agreeing to consider the question of Roman Catholic membership.

The vexing topic of racism was tackled by the committee with great verve and determination, despite some zany chairmanship by M. M. Thomas that threatened to disrupt the debate by procedural chaos. The committee affirmed the need for “an ecumenical act of solidarity which would help to stem the deterioration in race relations.”

It agreed that the concept of reparations raised in the United States and at the May consultation in London this year was inadequate, since “it seeks simply to apportion guilt for the past and highlights a method of action which leaves out of account the need for acts of compassion, brotherhood and community which go beyond any financial payment.”

A new unit was set up, initially as the responsibility of the General Secretary, with an annual budget of $150, 000 for five years, a special fund created by the transfer of $200,000 from reserves, and an appeal for $300,000 from member churches.

Are you partly responsible for the weakened influence of Christianity in your community? The unbelieving world can no longer see Christ in the flesh, but it does see the people who bear his name—the Christians. And what does the world see as it looks at us?

I am convinced that many of us fail in our witness for Jesus Christ because of compromise in our personal lives. When we were called to follow him we were asked not for a partial allegiance but for full surrender. His demand was not that we serve him with our lips alone but that we serve with our minds, spirits, and bodies. We were not called to follow the standards of the world with half our heart and our Lord with the other.

In other words, Christ has called us to be his own without reservation, and when we compromise with Satan we find ourselves walking on very dangerous ground.

There are so many ways by which we compromise with this enemy of our souls. When the Children of Israel were longing for freedom from slavery, Pharoah’s offers of compromises were typical of the way Satan works today.

To Israel Pharaoh said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land” (Exod. 8:25). How similar to the advice we get today. Don’t be a fanatic. Be in the world and of the world, for that is where the action is. Don’t try to be different; after all, aren’t you ‘salt’? You must stay close to the world.

Furthermore, it is implied that by staying “within the land,” by making a compromise with the world, we will find it much easier to be a Christian. But is this true?

The Apostle Paul knew the danger of compromise with the world and warned, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).

It is interesting how Egypt typified for Israel that which we see in today’s world order. There the people were slaves, even as the unregenerate are slaves of Satan today. Staying in Egypt meant continued slavery and alienation from God’s plan for them. Obedience to God required departure. Redemption meant transferring of citizenship. They were confronted with a choice, with a decision: obey God and leave Egypt, or Pharaoh and continue in slavery.

How subtle the urge to compromise with Satan! And how disastrous! All around us are men and women who are lost because they made the wrong choice. “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God” (2 Cor. 4:3, 4).

Pharaoh’s second offer of compromise has its counterpart today also. “I will let you go, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in the wilderness; only you shall not go very far away” (Exod. 8:28). While God was demanding a clean break from Egypt, Pharaoh wanted the people to stay close. He knew that the vicissitudes of the wilderness would drive them back into bondage if they remained close.

Our Lord speaks of those in whose hearts the gospel seed is sown along with worldiness: “they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:14b). If necessary Satan will tolerate the seed of the Gospel, provided we do not wander far from his blandishments.

Because of compromise with Satan the Church is filled with people who are but little different from the cultured pagans all around them. They have never made a complete break with the world and are therefore not prepared to cope with the pitfalls that surround them.

Pharaoh offered another compromise: “Go, the men among you, and serve the LORD” (Exod. 10:7). He knew that if the men went leaving their families behind, there was no problem of their not returning. They would surely come back. Satan will make the same offer if necessary. He fears the truth and power of God’s covenant: “The promise is to you and your children” (Acts 2:39). He will divide families if he can, for he is familiar with the Apostle Paul’s words, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, and your household” (Acts 16:31).

When none of these ploys worked, Pharaoh tried yet one more, “Go, serve the LORD; your children also may go with you; only let your flocks and your herds remain behind” (Exod. 10:24). The cattle were their wealth, their earthly possessions. Leaving them in Egypt, the people would surely return.

Pharaoh was no fool; neither is Satan. When we surrender to Jesus Christ it must include a surrender of our money to his Lordship. True in Paul’s day, and true in ours, “the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Tim. 6:10).

These are not the only compromises Satan suggests today. Have you compromised in your faith in God, in His Son, and in his written word? Through such compromise many find themselves powerless in preaching and teaching the Word. There is a subconscious realization that as one rejects the Christ presented in the Scriptures one has compromised so that he can no longer exhibit the power of the Holy Spirit in his witness.

Have you compromised in your habits? There are things so closely identified with the world that any compromise with them has a deadening effect. Self-discipline has never been more difficult than it is today. The Apostle Paul writes, “I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27).

The correction of the compromises in our lives is a personal matter. It is a question of honest confrontation with self, and it requires work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

I am not talking of some kind of asceticism, nor am I asking Christians to renounce many of the pleasures and joys to be found in the world. All I ask is that we make a clean break with any compromise with Satan, thereby experiencing a joy so far beyond and above anything the world has to offer that we find our hearts overflowing with the “peace” about which our Lord speaks, a peace and joy that the world cannot give, and cannot take away.

This is the way of freedom, freedom from the power of Satan and deliverance into the life Christ would have us live in this world—in the world but not of it. We will continue to be surrounded by a dying world order, but our lives will become the “salt” and the “light” about which Jesus spoke. We will live in a new dimension: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

While this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is being distributed around the world, the U. S. Congress on Evangelism will be meeting in Minneapolis. Many of us are praying that God will break through and send showers of blessing upon the delegates and through them on their churches throughout the world. We call to the attention of our readers the lead editorial, “Times of Refreshing,” and ask them to join us in prayer to God for the outpouring of his Spirit.

September brings us to the end of summer, the shortening of daytime, the return to school, the start of fall programs in the churches. As we watch season yield to season, as we anticipate the colorful glories of autumn, the tingle of colder mornings, and the coming of winter, we are reminded once again that the promises of God do not fail. As long as time shall last there will be seedtime and harvest, winter and summer, snow and sun. The seasons now approaching bring with them anniversaries we look forward to: Reformation Sunday, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, with its remembrance of the greatest of all gifts. Man on the moon pales to insignificance when we think of God on earth—in Jesus Christ.

Profundity With A Flair

Faith at the Frontiers, by Carl F. H. Henry (Moody, 1969, 204 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial representative, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, London, England.

The founding editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY has here brought together sixteen of his addresses, most of which have not previously appeared in print. Although prepared for specific occasions, chiefly campus, conference, or church, there is much that is relevant to a wider audience. Whether it is “Reality in a World of Illusions,” a look at the new morality or the divine demise, or a discussion of American religious journalism, Carl Henry writes not just with knowledge that can be obtained in the market place, but with wisdom and with flair. To theological profundity is added journalistic skill that can make a point refreshing merely by changing the word order in a sentence.

There is candor here. “Many of us have learned the long way around,” he admits, “that social justice is not dispensable.” In other areas Henry has misgivings: he does not think the institutional church ought to be “directly promoting specific political and economic programs and positions,” and he challenges Professor Lewis B. Smedes to say precisely “what institutional structures he wishes us to identify as Christian and to advance as the will of God for society in our generation.” Nevertheless, he makes clear his conviction that every believer has “a public duty to register his influence in public affairs, in school and community matters, and in state and national politics.” He dislikes intensely the tendency to transfer to scientific method and government funding “the role once held by divine grace in shaping a new humanity.”

It is Henry’s thesis that much of man’s predicament stems from wrong priorities (“man raises very urgent problems—such as communism, scientism, meaninglessness, immorality, social injustice”) that obscure his real need. It is not, for example, a division between the Communist and the free world that is “ultimately critical … but that between the regenerate church and the lost world.” The nature of that Church he pinpoints as a difficulty, for both conciliarists and non-conciliarists are divided on the subject. (We do badly need a volume on this theme.)

One thing about which Henry has no doubt at all has him hitting the sort of strong eschatological note we need to hear so badly today. “The living God,” he says, “is history’s highest bidder and, awaiting the last trump, He has already bid the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, and a small band of redeemed fishermen.” Apart from one delightful slip which refers to “the controversial Angelican Bishop John Robinson” (an intriguing image), the book is impeccably produced.

Attack On Modern Theologies

The Protest of a Troubled Protestant, by Harold O. J. Brown (Arlington House, 1969, 282 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Bernard Ramm, professor of systematic theology, American Baptist Seminary of the West, Covina, California.

This book is basically an evaluation of the theological situation in the world today. The author is a staunch and articulate defender of what may be called evangelical, or conservative, or historic, or orthodox, Christianity. The book is not so much an explication of this position as an attack on the various kinds of theologies that prevail in the churches. Brown is troubled because there is such a Babel of theological opinion in the Church, and he is protesting because all these modern options conflict with true Christianity. It is a spirited book, and Brown frequently adds some emotional zap to the theological point he is making.

The men that have helped him the most, he says, are Ockenga, Rodenberg, Schaeffer, and Dooyeweerd.

The book is arranged topically; in each of fourteen chapters a particular topic is discussed. Brown carries on a spirited punch and counter-punch, more with modern theological ideas than with men, though he does mention men. He sets forth what these wrong opinions are and what is the correct evangelical stance on these particular points. If a reader wants a handy point-by-point account of where modern theology differs with evangelical Christianity, Brown’s book will serve him well.

However, there is a very serious fault in the book for the student who really wants to know what is happening. Brown does not really tell us why a Bultmann or a Barth or a Tillich or a Robinson emerged in our generation. Nor does he tell us the inner system or the synthesizing motifs of these men so that we know why they arrived at the place where they have come. While he gives us a listing of the errors and heresies and departures from historical Christianity in modern theology, we gain no real understanding how they got this way. And unless we know what generates these theological movements or theologians, and how their systems are put together so at least to appear to them as rationally viable theologies, we are just on the surface.

Because Brown does not do this, the existentialist or Barthian or Bultmannian is not going to be markedly impressed or challenged. A book that does this sort of thing the right way is Kenneth Hamilton’s The Revolt Against Heaven.

For example, Brown is really at a loss to assess the theology of Barth. Although he does not make a direct accusation, he suggests that in the final analysis Barth is really a cryptoliberal. Somebody who is ranked with Origen, Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher must be taken with far more seriousness and understanding than he receives here.

Finally, if Brown is protesting and troubled, he should have given the reader some guidance as to books or theologians he ought to be reading, such as Berkouwer’s great series on Studies in Dogmatics.

Reflections Of A Great Mind

Experiences, by Arnold Toynbee (Oxford University, 1969, 417 pp., $8.75) is reviewed by Lee M. Nash, associate professor of history, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona.

At eighty, Arnold Toynbee gathers random reflections on great issues past, present, and future into a partial autobiography of his mind. He has earned our respectful notice through A Study of History (twelve volumes, 1935–1961), the brilliant patterned analysis of twenty-one civilizations, as well as through his sustained study of current world happenings as primary author of more than twenty volumes of the Survey of International Affairs from 1924 to 1954. He explores here the philosophic bent and background he brought to his writing, which were products of the finest classical education Victorian England could offer. In a fascinating review of a humanist’s stewardship he tells how and why he worked. Casually organized, the book is marked by an old man’s obsessive repetitions, especially concerning World War I. That war, thoroughgoing trauma for Toynbee, saw the death of half his male contemporaries, jarred him from ancient Greece into modern times, and launched him on his lifelong crusade to abolish war.

Time was when partly informed evangelicals took comfort from the prominence of religion in Toynbee’s famed civilization cycle, and from his statements about the doleful prospects of our own Western civilization apart from spiritual revival. But his concept of religion is rationalistic and broadly eclectic. He shares an intimate statement of his personal credo, confirming his lack not only of commitment to Christianity but also of any inner understanding of it. He sees religion as the “most fundamental element in human nature,” but rejects any divine initiative in revelation, incarnation, or redemption. He departs from his own dictum that nothing undemonstrable should be taken “by trust” when he accepts without investigation certain naturalistic conclusions of scientists, and when he identifies love with the impersonal ultimate reality he calls God. He disposes cavalierly of profound moral and philosophical problems in discarding the doctrine of divine omnipotence, and suggests that only the passive, unthoughtful mind could accept Christianity. Thus does theological illiteracy coexist with erudition. The early “orthodox” Anglican faith Toynbee came to reject appears to have been a dormant thing, one of several inheritances of a 1,300-year family lineage. Yet his candor in acknowledging the Christian source of his moral priorities is rare among agnostics.

Toynbee takes occasion in a “posthumous agenda” to promote some of the unfinished business of his life. He assumes the early establishment of the effective world state he has long advocated. The most important challenge is to preserve human personality in an automated age. This can be done by careful municipal planning and mainly through a “change of heart” which will bring an “inward spiritual grace of serenity.” The tragedy of Toynbee lies in the impotence of the theological means by which he hopes to reach goals so sublime.

How To Do Public Relations

Effective Public Relations for Community Groups, by Howard and Carol Levine (Association, 1965, 192 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Edward E. Plowman, pastor, Park Presidio Baptist Church, San Francisco, California.

Effective public relations deals with more than program promotion. It includes membership recruitment and conservation, fund-raising, and the solving of organizational crises. Therefore, every pastor and church leader should have basic “P.R.” familiarity.

This book, simply written but fairly comprehensive and professionally adequate, is a valuable how-to-do-it and check-list manual. While directed toward a wide range of groups, it is easily adaptable for church use.

The authors deal first with techniques: planning, production pieces, pointers on writing. Pastors and church editors will find the chapter on “Newsletters and Brochures” especially helpful. Next, the book investigates problem areas. The section on membership deserves required-reading status. If used as a discussion topic by groups, it might impart new vitality to many sluggish churches that have never really explored their reason for being. The writers also deal helpfully with the “use me or lose me” implications that are present in the post-recruitment period.

On other fronts, there are guidelines for the one who must carry on a stewardship campaign and for the one who must tread the thin ice of public controversy and crisis. And that’s reason enough for many evangelicals to make room for the volume on their special-resources shelf.

Book Briefs

Christ’s Imperatives, by Emerson S. Colaw (Beacon Hill, 1969, 107 pp., paperback, $1.75). Studies the implication for believers of several of Jesus’ commands.

The New Testament Image of the Ministry, by W. T. Purkiser (Beacon Hill, 1969, 148 pp., $2.50). A study of the New Testament teaching concerning the responsibilities of the minister.

The Church: An Organic Picture of Its Life and Mission by Robert Brow (Eerdmans, 1968, 122 pp., paperback, $1.95). Sees the Church as a living organism and studies its “original” and “perennial” forms, with special attention to the implications for contemporary churches.

Studies in the Epistle of James, by A. T. Robertson (Broadman, 1969, 200 pp., $3.75). Reprint of a work first published in 1915 under another title. Admirers of A. T. Robertson will welcome this helpful study of James.

The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola, by John C. Olin (Harper & Row, 1969, 220 pp., $8.50). Focuses on the struggle for renewal within the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation.

Violence, by Jacques Ellul (Seabury, 1969, 179 pp., $4.95). This study includes a historical survey of various attitudes of Christians toward violence, examines current statements, and contrasts the dynamics of violence and the demands of the Gospel.

Prayer in the Public Schools, by William K. Muir, Jr. (University of Chicago, 1969, 170 pp., $5.95). An assessment of changes in attitude toward religion in public schools, based on interviews with a number of school officials.

The Judaic Heritage, by R. Brasch, O. B. E (David McKay, 1969, 437 pp., $7.50). A rabbi describes Jewish faith and the Jewish way of life.

Jesus and the Kingdom, by George Eldon Ladd (Word, 1969, 367 pp., $5.95). Reprint of a significant evangelical work on the Kingdom of God.

Not long ago in an English hamlet I happened upon a show window of antiques and for a few pounds bought an old silverplated urn. Atop the urn a parading drummer with a drumstick in each hand energetically whacks his instrument. Since the cover is removable, the urn may originally have been produced to serve on a variety of occasions, much as a travel agent today changes his cap to meet a diversity of tour parties.

There is something ominous, however, about the dispensability of my drummer; some morning I may awake to find a tyrant in his place.

At 193 years of age America is hardly an antique among the nations of the world, but it is nonetheless a nation in trouble. And if patriotism is not dead in the land, it is certainly ailing; what’s more, the affliction may be more serious than many backbenchers think. Much idealistic phrasing about the American dream now expresses fond hope more than vision of the present. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and television all suggest that the United States is sagging in orbit and is already off course. Has some mortal disease smitten this youthful nation? Will its decline as a great power be as rapid as its rise?

During my year abroad I have read in the British press some rather cynical reporting o f American history and events. Only General Eisenhower’s death seemed to provide an occasion for saying anything good about our presidents. The Apollo space program was deplored as a diversion of funds from the poor. Only Britain’s own growing race problems at home and in Rhodesia moderated the comments on America’s. Some news articles have said vicious things about Richard Nixon.

Such attitudes are understandable, however, when one considers Britain’s swift decline in world prestige, its serious political and economic troubles, and the fact that the welfare state has turned out to be anything but a millennium for everybody.

Much harder to understand is the American who enjoys the privileges and benefits of life in the United States but takes and even creates public opportunity to demean his own country. Said Sammy Davis Jr. when customs men at London’s Heathrow Airport relieved him of his gun and ammunition: “I hate the idea of having to carry a gun to protect myself in America.” A few years ago when Russian ecumenical leaders first arrived in the United States, security agents detained them briefly aboard the plane. A leading American churchman openly deplored this as an ugly act, and vaingloriously announced that when he traveled to Moscow he was welcomed with open arms.

A nation without the enthusiasm of its people cannot long prosper. And the change of national spirit in the 1960’s is something to turn one’s dreams into nightmares. For the American temperament seems less and less informed by the great convictions that inspired, nurtured, and shaped this land of unparalleled opportunity for all.

The Viet Nam war has doubtless been a turning point, one whose high cost to national morale is as yet only dimly evident. Given the present mood, it is unlikely that America would go to war again in Asia under the circumstances that prompted our military engagement in Viet Nam. But then, what if—thirty days after our troops are withdrawn—Red China should move against Formosa? Or North Korea against South Korea? Criticism of American involvement in Viet Nam has mounted in England and in other lands to whose aid American soldiers came in World Wars I and II; yet the United States had even less to gain from Asian than from European involvement. Would the United States go as readily to defend England today as it did a generation ago?

I am not suggesting that the United States had no business in Viet Nam. I am assuming that, treaty-bound, we kept our word in defending a just cause. That was surely the view of most Americans at the time, and in it we were encouraged by our most trusted leaders both political and military.

Even if now and then the whiteness of the cause turned gray, I stayed with that verdict until late in President Johnson’s administration. Then I felt increasingly that the political determination of military decisions might be bleeding justice to death by a tolerance of evil. More and more I became convinced that the administration was needlessly sacrificing American youth in a cause it had decided not to win. When the commander-in-chief makes all the important decisions, often unpredictably, he must sooner or later take to the field or take to the woods.

As a presidential candidate Mr. Humphrey inherited two Johnsonian liabilities: a just Asian war that must not be won, and the unchallenged Negro rioting unleashed in Washington. The administration seemed to be fiddling while Washington burned and to sing lullabies while America’s young men fell in Viet Nam. On those scores I rejected an invitation to join a clergy-for-Humphrey movement. Mr. Nixon, I felt, would reunite justice with power or link a no-win strategy with presence rather than punch.

By the time of Nixon’s election the American conscience had undergone significant change. More and more Americans felt we were going at the Viet Nam war in the wrong way, and those who believed that the cause itself was wrong exploited this conviction. It became increasingly difficult for young men conscientiously to give themselves to an indecisive cause, and without the support of conscience no public issue can win its way. The Johnson strategy not only fed the fires of dissent but also unwittingly encouraged those who insisted against the accepted patterns of response that everyone should “do his own thing.”

The nation has not recovered from this development, and the implications for the future are awesome. Mr. Nixon came too late to overcome it, even if he had had the personal magnetism and persuasiveness to confront it. The only course left was to disengage American troops as swiftly as possible, while maintaining hope that other sanctions and pressures might depress North Viet Nam’s voracious appetite.

This is but the beginning of woes for the American spirit, however. If there is no rebirth of conscience in a matrix of sensitivity to justice, the tide of protest and subjectivity now loose in the land may be ultimately contained only by a lofty general astride a horse.

In these circumstances I am convinced that America’s finest young manhood—I speak of spiritual and moral astuteness—must march again in the open arena. If evangelicals who place their bodies on the line in Viet Nam, and Christians on campus who dare to stand for both the Gospel and the cause of justice, could join forces and energies in a call to conscience and devotion to the right, my drummer would not need to fear displacement by a tyrant, and America could experience a rebirth of patriotism and moral power.

“Blessed be he who considers the poor!” (Ps. 41:1). Many people have chosen to forfeit this blessing and to persist in ignorance of the true condition of the poor in our land. President Nixon, however, has shown his consideration for the poor by his recent address to the nation and in the subsequent outlines of his proposals to Congress. A generally favorable response has greeted his suggestions for revamping much of the present welfare system. Critics have found fault more with the limitations on the funds to be spent than with the general direction of the proposals. It is difficult to imagine any legislation in this area that could not be faulted for failing to provide enough to those in poverty and enough to the states and cities with their desperate need for funds. As we all know, however, programs to which the government commits itself have a way of escalating their expenditures. The fundamental question is not, How much?, but rather, Is this the right direction? In general, we think it is.

Two things about the present programs of Aid to Families with Dependent Children have been especially reprehensible. Many men found that their families could obtain more money on welfare, small as the amount was, than they were able to bring home from their poorly paying, often irregular jobs. To make the family eligible for aid, however, the man had to leave home. He had to break up his family in order to provide for it. The President’s proposals for family assistance eliminate this predicament. Also, present programs generally reduce welfare aid by the exact amount of any earned income. At first glance, this might seem to be only fair to the taxpayers (leaving aside the problem of the substandard amounts given in aid). But such a policy has in practice discouraged attempts to secure part-time or low-paying jobs. The President has wisely recognized the need for encouraging adults to become part of the work force by allowing families to continue receiving government aid, in gradually reduced amounts, while increasing their total income through outside earnings. His proposals for job training and placement are also essential to the long-term goal of reducing the number of those needing aid.

Even more important for the country and for the individual is the development of the children presently on welfare so that when they are grown they can contribute positively to our economy. When those who grow up in impoverished environments try to enter the work force, they suffer competitive disadvantages that are rarely overcome. Poor food and shelter and health care take their toll on the ability to acquire the physical and mental skills so necessary for the kind of jobs that will be increasingly unfilled in our technological society. They will be unfilled, that is, unless we are alert to the need to cultivate our future manpower while it is still young.

In part this cultivation can take place in the homes of the poor when they can stay together as families. But much of the cultivation must be done in the schools. Yet the persons who most need what good schools can do to offset poor home environments are the very ones who have to attend poor schools. This is why other parts of the President’s proposals are so vital to its success. Federal revenue-sharing with state and local governments is needed because, though education is by far the biggest expense on the local level, not enough is being spent on it, especially in the areas where poor people live. Until we make the schools that serve poor children superior institutions that can do much to compensate for the disadvantages of poverty, we cannot expect that when these children grow up they will make a great contribution to our economy. (It was the presence of comparatively good schools in many of our large cities that enabled earlier generations of poor children to gain good educations.) If we are willing to invest in adequate assistance to families and substantial improvements in the schools that serve the poor, then in years to come the contribution in taxes from the gainfully employed children of the poor will more than repay the admittedly high costs of welfare reform.

What is the role of the Christian in relation to the poor? The Scriptures tell us that we will always have the poor among us, but we are not told what percentage of the population they will be. The implication of apostolic teaching is that we should do what we can to keep the percentage low. The exhortation to love our neighbor calls us to do what we can, consistent with our other responsibilities, to reduce the level of involuntary poverty.

Christians, of all people, should encourage planning that looks beyond the present to consider the future. The President is to be commended for taking this long view of eventual returns to society. We must urge in addition that men not be concerned with relieving material poverty only. “What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, yet lose his own soul?” There is a spiritual poverty in our land, as there has always been, that is even more destructive in its long-term effects than is material poverty. All members of society, Christians included, are to do what they can to relieve material poverty and to enable the poor to become productive. But only Christians are entrusted with the message of God’s grace, which is the remedy for spiritual poverty.

Yet many Christians, out of understandable concern for fulfilling this spiritual responsibility that is uniquely theirs, have overlooked biblical implications that we are to be concerned for those who are materially poor as well.

This ought not to be. Christians have a valuable contribution to make in helping the poor even when judged by the standards of secular society. We are entrusted with a message that, when believed, can give genuine joy and hope even to those whose earthly possessions are few, and can give motivation for good work habits and reliability, which employers seek. Another way in which Christians can help is to enter occupations that bring them into contact with the poor, such as social work, police work, and teaching. Since God has enabled us to be free from the lust for material possessions, we should be more willing than others to assume these low-paying positions. Moreover, following the example of our Lord, we should be better able than others to take gracefully the unwarranted abuse that may come from those whom we seek to serve.

Christians rightly value the divine call to enter full-time ministry. But God does not always lead in that direction. We need to recognize that He may also call His people to enter occupations that particularly enable them to share in the blessings promised to those who consider the poor.