It goes without saying that Canadian churches are interested in the movements towards church union south of our border.

We have, of course, our own fascinating share in such matters. Several years ago the Anglican and United Churches presented a draft basis of union, and discussions have been proceeding since then. Canon Ralph Lattimer and Dr. Robert B. Craig, representatives of the two churches, have set up a joint office with a common staff in the United Church head office in Toronto.

But there are problems. The climate has changed somewhat—this on the authority of the primate of the Anglican Church. The proposed uniting of the two publishing arms has been postponed. Originally this had been set for 1970. Now, it is to await the presentation of a definitive plan of union.

Moreover, at public meetings organized to discuss merger, there is an apparent preponderance of Anglicans who object to union. At one held recently in Hamilton, Ontario, 350 persons heard both sides of the matter presented by committed men. Anti-union sentiment was strong.

A further cause for disquiet to those who favor union as soon as possible has come from Winnipeg, where a fund has been established to assist Anglican priests who do not wish to enter any united church. The assistance planned is in the form of grants for further education or for the taking of new courses with a view to a more highly specialized form of ministry. It has been noted that in the recent trial run in England, Anglicans did not attain the necessary 75 per cent vote in favor of union with the Methodists, and there is much speculation about what percentage the essential favorable vote will be set at in Canada.

Sentiment against the merger also seems to be growing in the United Church. A highly-respected denominational voice, Dr. W. G. Berry of Ottawa, recently uttered particularly significant warnings against the proposal (see news story on page 34 in this issue). Dr. Berry favors ecumenicity, but doesn’t feel that this plan advances it.

There are now expressions of dismay in widely scattered areas of the country over the fact that in neither church is there to be any vote at the local or parish level. In the United Church, decision will be taken at presbytery level; in the Anglican Church, in the deaneries. This has been public knowledge for a long time, but only now have the implications of such an undemocratic procedure been forced on the consciousness of many. During his moderatorship, Dr. Lockhart went on record as saying that the United Church had learned its lesson in 1925 and did not intend to make the same mistake again. It is inevitable, nonetheless, that many should be asking this question and wondering by what authority any church court can rule on behalf of all its members in matters of such momentous import.

It is worth noting that at the Uppsala meeting of the World Council of Churches, the delegation from the Presbyterian Church in Canada strove manfully to have a full review made of the Canadian experience before and after 1925. Dr. Louis H. Fowler, clerk of the Presbyterian General Assembly, sought in vain to have a motion to this effect. Only now has his report been issued to the church in Canada, and it makes an enlightening commentary on the determination with which organic union is presented as the ultimate and principle end of the redeemed family of God. This all-too-brief report from the Presbyterian delegation must be studied along with whatever other plan or plans may emanate from the Anglican or United Church communions.

Meanwhile, the movement for greater unity amongst evangelicals goes from strength to strength. The representative of the Christian Reformed Church from British Columbia, who attended as an official observer at the recent convention, has urged that “we wholeheartedly support the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. We cannot afford to remain aloof.” The editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, Harold Jantz, writing of the same convention, says:

Eighteen denominations were present—all the way from Anglicans to Pentecostals, with a few Mennonite Brethren thrown in to balance the mixture. Most striking about this convention was the unabashed evangelical stance that it took, combining a deep and conscious commitment to historic Christianity with an eagerness to engage the rampant secularism of Canadian society. It is my strong conviction that Mennonite Brethren ought to get behind the EFC with all the resources they can bring to it.

Only a few days ago, a member of the editorial staff of the prestigious Globe and Mail, Toronto’s morning paper, told me that in large measure they were finding it was among the evangelical groups that the real action was taking place. This was certainly evident when Toronto’s well-known chief of Police used an evangelical platform to expose a power struggle going on between labor unions in the building industry that already had done nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of destruction. That remark blew up banner headlines in all the city papers and raised questions in the Ontario legislature. All this was an indicator of the power of the evangelical voice.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada is bent on creating an awareness of evangelical strength and deepening the springs that feed all true Christian fellowship. It is persuaded that the reviving of the people of God in Canada is dependent not on any form of organic church union but on the renewing of the first love of the people of God for their Lord and Saviour and in a new awareness of the power of the Holy Spirit. It is among the most fascinating of today’s experiences to see this fellowship growing and to see Christians of every denomination uniting in a great act of witness to the nation—uniting, too, for concerted endeavor in promoting renewal of the life of the Church. Clearer than ever is the fact that evangelical Christians are overdue participants in the modern dialogue. Clearer than ever we see that in Canada an evangelical confrontation of the spirit of this generation must take place, not only at scholarly levels, but also at journalistic frontiers, where the man in the street and the many in the uncomfortable pew need and are asking for theological help. All this the Evangelical Fellowship is determined to provide.

This is the unity we seek. It is a unity of faith and love, a unity made colorful by the great diversity of its membership. We believe it to be the unity for which Christ prayed. For such unity we too will pray—and work.

WILLIAM FITCH

On May 1 the Rev. Russell Chandler, a Presbyterian, joined our staff as news editor. His coming made me start counting denominational representation in our ranks, and I quickly discovered that we have an ecumenical movement in microcosm. Among us there are Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Brethren, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and others. First of all we are Christian; then we are Baptists, Lutherans, and so on. The regular morning fellowship of Bible study and prayer for all staff members starts the day off on the right note. The days go by more quickly and the work is done more easily. Time spent in the Word of God and prayer is not wasted time.

The current issue should provoke good interest and much response from our readers. In it is material about Israel; with the current and continuing military activity, the Christian, with special biblical concerns, cannot help being interested, nor can he avoid asking whether present events presage the second coming of Christ. Dr. Walters speaks authoritatively as a psychiatrist and a Christian about maturity. The essay on conscience hits the raw nerve of the debate over such matters as law and order and civil disobedience. Mr. Hillis’s essay strikes a missionary note and projects us into the middle of the Chinese world and the pressing obligation of the Church to a quarter of the world’s population that desperately needs the Gospel.

What’s happening to Christianity in America? Why is there so much controversy in the churches and so little effective proclamation of the Gospel? How can American evangelicals be mobilized to take better advantage of spiritual opportunities?

These are some of the important questions that will be up for discussion when 8,000 persons meet in Minneapolis September 8–13 for the first interdenominational U. S. Congress on Evangelism. It promises to be a historic assembly, and many are hoping and praying that God will use it to challenge the American Christian community to a great new offensive.

“Lay men and women are waiting for leadership,” says Billy Graham, honorary chairman. “They are ready to become involved.” Sensing the acute need for leadership development, congress planners have put the teaching function prominently in the purpose. Dr. Victor B. Nelson, executive secretary, states that prime emphasis will also be given to youth and ethnic-group representation.

“Lutheran Hour” speaker Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, chairman of a 53-member national committee, has said, “We desire at this time to bear a solid demonstrable witness to the central fact that personal faith in Jesus Christ is the way of salvation to all who will believe and receive him. We are seeking a more urgent declaration of the Gospel to our generation and reestablishment of the original strategy for universal evangelism—the witnessing church.”

Hoffmann also called for stimulation of Christians “to mount a vigorous attack upon the Satanic forces which produce misery, inequity, emptiness and all other evils in our society. Our goal is to lift both the spiritual and temporal burdens of man.”

More than 100 American denominations will be represented at the Minneapolis meeting, including virtually all the leading communions. These proportions have been set: one-third lay members of congregations, one-third parish pastors, and one-third evangelists, executives, educators, and seminary students.

Dr. Harold Lindsell, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and the Most Rev. Marcus L. Loane, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, will be “Bible Hour” speakers for the congress. Graham and Hoffmann also will be delivering major addresses. Position papers will be presented by the Rev. Leighton Ford, Dr. Paul S. Rees, the Rev. Richard C. Halverson, Senator Mark Hatfield, and Dr. Harold Ockenga.

Graham and Hoffmann have issued a special call for prayer for the congress, which is an outgrowth of the World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin in the fall of 1966. That congress was sponsored by CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Follow-up regional congresses in evangelism have already been held in Nigeria, Kenya, and Singapore. Three others¹In Kinshasa, Congo, August 11–18, 1969; in Bogotá, Colombia, November 21–30, 1969; and in Deolali, India, January 4–8, 1970. have been scheduled in addition to the American. There has also been talk of a second World Congress.

The Rev. Paul Fryhling, chairman of the U. S. Congress executive committee, said, “Delegates to the Berlin congress went back to their home countries with a desire to move forward to evangelize a spiritually barren world. This is the goal that takes priority above all others, and it is the heart and core of the future of Christianity and all mankind.

Around The Churches

The New York State Council of Churches, which previously urged broadening of grounds for abortion, now wants outright repeal of the strict abortion law, and a similar easing has been recommended by the American Lutheran Church’s Commission on Research and Social Action.

As Muskegon’s Walker Arena reverberated with the Gospel in folkrock, 4,200 persons turned out on the first night of a two-week western Michigan crusade led by Leighton Ford, Billy Graham’s associate evangelist.

A bill authorizing a five-year, $65.8 million attack on alcoholism problems has received bipartisan support in the U. S. Senate.

In what appears to be a new tactic to force a showdown on the question of celibacy, thirty-eight Catholic priests of the Detroit Archdiocese told John Cardinal Dearden they no longer feel bound to the 800-year-old law, a stand also taken by thirty-one Brooklyn, New York, priests.

A Roman Catholic priest’s application for a liquor and beer package store outside Louisville, Kentucky, has been approved by the local Alcoholic Beverage Control administrator. The Rev. Theodore R. Sans said the store was a family venture and had nothing to do with his clerical duties.

Campus Crusade for Christ International has picked Miami as the site of a pilot program to aid the needy in their own homes. Crusade is working locally through the Metropolitan Fellowship of Churches and is involving young people of Miami’s Youth for Decency movement.

Hamburgers and soft drinks may be used at holy communion if they have religious significance for the communicant, according to Methodist Bishop James Thomas of Des Moines, Iowa.

Narramore Christian Foundation in Rosemead, California, has announced establishment of a graduate school of psychology, offering the Ph.D. in counseling psychology. And in New York, Buffalo Bible Institute will merge with Houghton College to establish a Buffalo campus for Houghton this fall.

The noise from three trumpets, two cow horns, a sax, a trombone, two kazoos, one recorder, and three hundred protesting students failed to shatter the walls of the Minnesota Reserve Officers Training Corps building, though they circled it seven times. ROTC proponents carried placards that read: “If the walls don’t fall, then God is on our side.”

The ministry of reconciliation as defined in the “Confession of 1967” is to be considered as “the basic purpose of every congregation’s life” when new churches are built in the Washington City Presbytery of the United Presbyterians in the nation’s capital.

Wheaton College Graduate School will replace its bachelor of divinity degree with a master of divinity beginning next year. The college also plans to begin a master’s program in Christian communications.

Roman Catholics in the United States last year numbered 47,873,238, a gain of 404,903 over 1967, the smallest in a quarter of a century. The 1969 official directory also reported marked decreases last year in the numbers of priests, nuns, teachers, schools, and places of worship. But the upward trend in Catholic colleges continued for the sixteenth straight year.

Christ Memorial Southern Baptist Church in St. Louis is believed to be the first of its denomination to join the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Incorporated. The pastor of the white church said affiliation with the Negro group implements an SBC statement adopted last July asking an open-door membership policy and racial equality.

The three predominantly Negro Methodist denominations—African Methodist Episcopal, AME Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal—are moving toward merger in 1972, according to Religious News Service, which said the three have announced a joint publishing venture to produce church-school material, a combined hymnal, and an “official organ.”

A politically and religiously active coalition to be called “Concerned Christians” was formed by one hundred conservative Presbyterians and Catholic laymen in Louisville.

DEATHS

WALTER R. BOWIE, 86, former Episcopal rector and professor of theology, and author; in Alexandria, Virginia.

OTTO SOHN, 74, editor of Der Lutheraner; in St. Louis.

HAROLD J. SCHACHERN, 56, Detroit News religion writer and Religious News Service correspondent; in Detroit.

WATKIN R. ROBERTS, 83, missionary and founder of the Indo-Burma Pioneer Mission; in Boca Raton, Florida.

World Parish

The Far East Broadcasting Association says a powerful $480,000 missionary radio station is nearing completion in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean.

United Press International says 2.5 million Indonesian Muslims have converted to Christianity in the last three years, mostly in areas of former Communist strength where Muslim fanatics slaughtered suspected Communists in 1965.

The only Christian monastery in Muslim Morocco and North Africa, the Benedictine Community at Toumliline, has been closed. Financial and political troubles had dogged it since its founding in 1952.

With 5.7 million sterilizations and 2.7 million loop insertions, India has now equaled the total achievement of all other countries in these types of birth control, according to Indian officials.

Twenty-one conservative Protestant organizations hosted a study conference on literature, broadcasting, and correspondence-course ministries in the Arabic-speaking world at a recent Beirut gathering organized by the Muslim World Evangelical Literature Service, an outgrowth of the 1966 Berlin Congress on Evangelism.

In Johannesburg, South Africa, the Rev. Arthur Sexby declared sexy miniskirts work for the devil with a “flagrant and provocative display of the flesh,” and held up his sermon until five short-skirted women left his Anglican church. Most of the teen-age choir walked out.

Churches of the English-speaking world are being asked to consider a new version of the Lord’s Prayer that would include such changes as replacing the phrase “Hallowed be Thy name” with “Glorify Your name.” The version was prepared at a London meeting of the International Consultation on English in the Liturgy, representing Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, and Roman Catholics from twenty countries. The group also suggested replacing archaic pronouns in other prayers.

Personalia

Professor and Mrs. Joseph Baker were excommunicated from Iowa City’s First Presbyterian Church under an ecclesiastical law written in 1643. Presbytery action came after a sixteen-month study concluded the couple had disrupted the church by insisting the old building was safe.

Controversial Dr. Nathan Wright has been appointed professor of urban affairs at New York State University. The black-power theoretician recently resigned as head of urban work for the Episcopal Diocese of Newark.

Dr. Julius Mark, for nearly twenty years spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El, New York City, the world’s largest Jewish congregation, has been named Clergyman of the Year by Religious Heritage of America. Mormon George Romney, who is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was named Churchman of the Year.

Lillian Block, managing editor of Religious News Service, has been named a vice-president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in “recognition of vital contributions to intercreedal understanding.”

Fernando Chavez, 20, son of grape strike leader and union organizer Cesar Chavez, received the “symbolic bread of social justice” from a Catholic priest in front of the Fresno, California, Army Induction Center after the youth refused to be drafted. Saying he was “against violence in any form,” young Chavez charged he had been denied a hearing by his Delano draft board “because of my poverty.”

Dr. Milo C. Ross, president of George Fox College (Quaker), Newberg, Oregon, has been named chancellor of the Associated Christian Colleges of Oregon beginning July 1.

Succeeding Dr. Harold John Ockenga—now president of Gordon College and Divinity School in Massachusetts—C. Davis Weyerhaeuser was named chairman of Fuller Theological Seminary’s board of trustees at a biannual meeting on the Pasadena campus.

Miss Catherine McConnachie, 66, a deaconess of thirty-seven year’s service, has been ordained as the first woman minister in the Church of Scotland. She will pastor a church near Aberdeen. And in New Orleans, Mrs. Leontine Tucker, whose husband is a Vietnam serviceman, recently joined Temple Baptist Church. She is believed to be the first Negro to be baptized by a Southern Baptist church in the city.

Socially active E. Ezra Ellis resigned after eight years as pastor of large First Friends Church, Whittier, California (most famous member: Richard M. Nixon), over unspecified “difficult situations” and “divisive concerns.”

Whither the Southern Presbyterians?

“I am one of a majority who is caught in the middle of a conflict.… The gap is widening. I’m afraid I’m going to be split.”

A perplexed commissioner to the 109th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., held April 24–29 in Mobile, Alabama, made that statement in the midst of one of a dozen impassioned debates that sharpened conservative-liberal cleavage during the meeting of the Southern Presbyterians. Professor Walter Johnson of Austin Theological Seminary described the meeting as “pivotal,” one in which the one-million-member denomination ceased “tipping its head to the right.”

After floor fireworks had subsided on such subjects as evolution and conscientious objection, unresolved issues left for future assemblies to decide gave commissioners plenty to brood over in assessing the trend of their church. Touchy topics include reunion with the sister United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., inclusion in the 25-million-member united church proposed by the Consultation on Church Union, and first steps toward a new Confession of Faith. The latter may in the long run prove to be this assembly’s most far-reaching action.

Some conservatives voiced fear that the “New Confession” may in fact turn out to be the United Presbyterian Confession of 1967, thereby slickly paving the road to quicker reunion between the two bodies.

Long before the commissioners gathered in usually balmy Mobile—which greeted them with unseasonably cool weather—battle lines had been drawn between conservatives and liberals. Through letters, periodicals, and verbal jousts, debate had raged the entire year over alleged assaults on the “peace and purity” of the church, controversial worship services, and programs of PCUS boards and agencies.

As one of their first acts, the commissioners elected as moderator an elfin Midland, Texas, minister, the Rev. Matthew Lynn. The 65-year-old pastor of Midland’s First Presbyterian Church wasted no time stating as his chief objectives unity and healing of “illness” in the PCUS.

The unity Lynn said he was seeking was not only unity within the Presbyterian and Reformed family. “We should not only say ‘brother,’ but should mean it when we meet Methodists, Roman Catholics, or Orthodox,” he said.

Apparently the commissioners were listening. In its first instruction to sessions on the matter, the assembly sanctioned Roman Catholic baptism. (Previously, sessions individually determined whether rebaptism was necessary.) It also took what was described as the “first concrete action” in this decade toward reunion with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., a body from which the PCUS bolted during the Civil War.

The assembly proposed that the two denominations each send twelve representatives to compose a committee to talk over differences, to begin reporting to the General Assemblies of the churches in 1970, and ultimately to negotiate union. United Presbyterian director of information Frank Heinze, present at the assembly, noted that was what his church has been urging for the past ten years and predicted his denomination would welcome the PCUS action “with a doxology” when it convened in San Antonio, Texas, this month.

The PCUS also amended its constitution to permit union presbyteries. Under the arrangement, PCUS presbyteries bordering those of the UPUSA may link with them. Union presbyteries would then fall under the jurisdiction of both denominations.

The measure passed after lengthy debate centering on the constitutional legality of voting procedures under which three presbyteries had switched their votes on the amendment. (See News, May 9, page 43. The Northeast Texas Presbytery reversed its vote after press time for that issue.)

In another ecumenical swoop, the PCUS rejected an overture that it withdraw from the Consultation on Church Union, whose Plan of Union Committee happens to be chaired by PCUS minister William Benfield. Controversy was so sharp that conservative commissioners requested that Benfield not be allowed to report on COCU’s progress, saying they feared he might try to “persuade” as well as report.

There was little consensus on any union matter. Conservatives opposed most of the ecumenical measures, liberals favored them. In the end the victories went to the liberals, but some by queasily small margins.

After marathon debate, the assembly declared that the Bible and the theory of evolution are not contradictory. It also endorsed selective conscientious objection, and urged an easing in the nuclear-arms race and caution on development of the anti-ballistic missile system. While condemning violence in campus dissent, the assembly urged college officials to give ear to “responsible” protest.

Commissioners refused requests to chastise the Board of National Ministries for a controversial jazz worship and communion service last August at Montreat, North Carolina, though four presbyteries had asked for official criticism of the affair. But it did spank—ever so slightly—Concerned Presbyterians Incorporated, a staunchly conservative organization accused of not promoting the “peace, unity, edification and purity” of the church. A statement gently admonished Concerned Presbyterians to “speak the truth in love.…”

The Presbytery of Northeast Texas overtured that the moderator appoint a committee to investigate the Presbyterian Journal, an independent publication whose staff members, said the overture, “do continually strive to divide” the PCUS. The assembly, on recommendation of a General Council standing committee, rejected that bid, saying it did not have “original jurisdiction over the accused parties.”

The real significance of the 109th General Assembly rested in its undertone of division and unrest. Hardly any issue arose that was free of liberal-conservative division. A committee was formed to study “unrest” in the church. One of its first targets will be independent Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, a school of conservative leaning.

Although the RCA rejected union with the PCUS earlier this spring, merger was definitely on the minds of the commissioners when they authorized a committee of ten to begin study for a new Confession of Faith, “together with a Book of Confessions.” No time limit was set to complete the work, but conceivably it could be ready by next year’s assembly. More likely, it won’t be voted upon until constitutional amendments are made allowing a two-thirds rather than a three-fourths majority vote for such actions—probably live or six years away.

A move to compose the confession committee of members nominated by lower judicatories failed, 187–229. Instead, the moderator will name the ten.

Moderator Lynn, exhausted at the end of the week-long session, said the issues, which sometimes became prolonged agony, “indicated a new clarity of the various positions and their place in the church.” That new clarity may have been a clearer view of just how sharply divided the church is. As the commissioners caravaned out of Mobile, many frankly wondered where their wounded church would go next.

Wcc: More In The Fold

Dr. John Coventry Smith, outgoing moderator of the United Presbyterian Church and one of six presidents of the World Council of Churches, told delegates to the annual meeting of the council’s U. S. Conference that the Roman Catholic Church formally will come into the huge ecumenical body in one way or another by the next WCC assembly. (Not later than 1975.)

The upcoming visit next month by Pope Paul to WCC headquarters in Geneva was hailed as a dramatic step forward in the ecumenical dialogue.¹Meanwhile, however, the visit drew the ire of Father Gommar A. DePauw, president of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement. Catholic membership in the WCC would be “a big mistake,” said he, “because the Holy Father will then be only one of two or three bishops in authority.” And delegates at the Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, meeting last month waxed enthusiastic over the recent appointment of Jan Cardinal Willebrands to the Roman Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

There was elation over the apparent numerical growth of ecumenism, as evidenced by the presence of Catholics in many WCC agencies and the application for WCC membership by a Brazilian Pentecostal church with just under a million members.

But noted Episcopal laywoman Mrs. Cynthia Wedel—who wears leadership hats for both the WCC and the National Council of Churches—voiced the frustration some feel over denominational foot-dragging on full ecumenical involvement. Mrs. Wedel—who also announced she is stepping down from her two posts—noted that the NCC and the WCC are part of the same movement. Why, then, is a WCC member like the American Lutheran Church not in the NCC?

ALC suspicions about the NCC undoubtedly have not been overcome, but some observers find it hard to see why a denomination should not be either in both or in neither.

The conference generated little concrete action and raised no new issues. The closest thing to a confrontation was a letter from a Czech national asking why the WCC Executive Committee at its Tulsa meeting didn’t say a word about the occupation of his country, particularly since the presence of Metropolitan Nikodim of Russia would have made a condemnatory statement particularly appropriate.

The Rev. Blahoslav Hruby of the NCC, who read the letter, said there was no satisfactory answer to the question, but it was stated that the highest leadership levels of the Russian Orthodox Church supported Soviet intervention.

One session considered the increasing polarization over gospel preaching versus social action, described in a position paper entitled “Verticalism and Horizontalism in the Ecumenical Movement.” It was obvious nobody favored either extreme. Left unclear was how the two could be yoked without compromise.

Buck Hill Falls signaled no retreat in the WCC’s drive for more member churches, and optimism prevailed that leading American holdouts will soon be in the fold.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Canadian Union A Disaster Area?

The proposed union by 1974 of the Anglican and United Churches of Canada is coming under fire rarely made public in the usually placid United Church. An outspoken critic and former denominational bigwig has hit hard at the union scheme, seeing it not only falling apart but, in the process, causing catastrophic damage to the whole ecumenical movement.

Some substance to this prediction by fiery Ottawa pastor Dr. W. G. Berry materialized when a vote at a public debate in Toronto showed that more than half of 400 persons opposed the merger.

Berry contends there is a groundswell of opposition to union in both churches and that “a conspiracy of silence” surrounds the issue. If union architects would heed the opposition, damage to ecumenicity could be averted, he argues.

Further evidence of a “ho-hum” attitude toward merger was a recent attempt by a large United Church presbytery to recruit nine members to discuss the union with nine from an Anglican deanery. Seven eventually signed up, but they had to be pushed into it, according to a presbytery official.

The official and two principal speakers at the Toronto debate amplified mounting irritation now being heard in the pews that “headquarters” increasingly tries to thrust church union down people’s throats.

Berry says clergymen of both faiths must disregard their conscience to get around the ordination barrier for the new church: “Both must renounce their historic heritage.” Union boosters assert merger is scriptural and is God’s will.

Berry predicts that if union goes through, it will cut off the new three-million-member church from all others, such as Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and the Salvation Army (the non-episcopalians). Even more disturbing, in his view, would be a possible split into three churches: continuing United, continuing Anglican, and merged. Far better, he says, would be a strong federation of churches that might include Catholics.

AUBREY WICE

Accc On The Move

The American Council of Christian Churches will relocate its headquarters on a 46.7-acre tract at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the home of the American Baptist Convention. About 100 delegates attending the ACCC Convention in Atlanta last month unanimously voted for the $200,000 purchase. Officials cited lack of space in current New York City headquarters as the reason for the move. A farmhouse is expected to become temporary headquarters for the ultra-fundamentalist group.

The ACCC executive committee issued a statement saying the semiannual convention had not gathered to “repudiate” Dr. Carl Mclntire, alienated ACCC founder who has been at odds with current leadership. Instead, the meeting was to “speak on evangelism, communism and church union.” McIntire did not attend.

JOCKEYING FOR STATE AID

Pennsylvania Catholics are betting they have at least a partial answer to the nightmarish financial crisis in parochial schools. The horses will be off and running in Philly May 31 and a new state law provides that the schools will get a good chunk of the racing revenue.

The new legislation will give nonpublic schools $4.3 million of the state’s take from harness racing this year and at least $10 million from thoroughbred flat racing for future education programs.

State legislators were spurred to mount the public-revenue racing scheme—first of its kind in the nation—after being nagged by the prospect of Catholic schools closing and dumping hundreds of thousands of students into already strained public-school systems. Nationwide, Catholic educators predict two million of their grade-school pupils will be turned away unless there is massive public support over the next six years.

Cardinals Get New Hats—And Some New Jobs

Not only was it “red hat day” for thirty-three new cardinals elevated by Pope Paul VI during elaborate Vatican ceremonies this month; it also was a red-letter day for the Roman church as the Pontiff wrote several new chapters in its history.

He established a thirty-member central theological commission representing various currents of theological thought; created two new congregations, or offices—one to handle liturgy, the other, beatification and canonization of saints; and approved sweeping changes in the Catholic missal. These include permitting spontaneous prayers at mass under certain circumstances, and eliminating the requirement that women wear veils or hats in church.

At a semi-public consistory, the new cardinals—including four from the United States—wore their scarlet robes for the first time and received the traditional red biretta from the Pope. He used the occasion to announce the naming of Jean Cardinal Villot, 63-year-old former archbishop of Lyons, France, to succeed retiring Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, 86, as secretary of state.

Newly named Cardinal John Joseph Wright was assigned a top—and sensitive—Vatican post heading 280,000 diocesan priests the world over. The former archbishop of Pittsburgh, who is socially liberal and theologically conservative, will face the delicate task of dealing with such explosive issues as birth control and clerical celibacy.

In another Vatican innovation, the new cardinals added the oath of secrecy to traditional vows. The prelates swore not to reveal information learned at the Vatican to unauthorized persons.

Charleston: New Testing Ground

The Charleston, South Carolina, Negro hospital workers’ strike has become a new testing ground for the civil-rights struggle. The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy—in a typical switch of plans—said less than a week before a Mother’s Day march that it would be held there rather than in Washington, D.C., as previously announced. Abernathy, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was jailed for the twenty-first time while leading a Charleston demonstration supporting the strikers.

He said the Mother’s Day march was switched to Charleston because “the eyes of the nation are focused here” and added that the Washington phase—the second chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign—was supposed to start the next day. One hundred persons were to march, picket, and confront high government leaders with health, welfare, and employment demands.

What Is Christian Psychiatry?

Evangelical highbrows had a “love-in” last month.

Casting off clinical and theological masks, Christian psychiatrists, ministers, and social workers cried, hugged, laughed, shared, and, in the words of one, emotionally “let it all hang out.”

The result: group therapy for therapists. The scene: convention of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies in Chicago.

Highlight was a demonstration of psychodrama (group therapy in play form in which patients act out roles relevant to their problems) directed by Frank Kaemingk, chaplain of Denver’s Bethesda Hospital.

Emotional intensity peaked as the “patient,” a social-work student who volunteered, acted out problems with her mother. “I have felt the same way toward my father,” cried out a seminarian at the end. “I identify with your mother—she needs your love,” said a woman counselor. In a burst of motherly affection, a woman professor of the “patient” bounded on stage and held her. Both cried. “I have tears in my eyes,” exclaimed re-elected CAPS president G. Roderick Youngs, Calvin College education professor. “It may take me a week to recover from the exhaustion of exhilaration.”

Such personal expressions—spontaneous “acts of faith”—were the salt of the sessions.

Two earlier presentations had prepared the some 200 counselors present for this kind of honesty. Chicago-area psychiatrist David F. Busby put himself on the line by sketching cases of two former patients, one whose therapy was deemed successful, the other a failure. Both patients appeared to give their opinions of therapy by a Christian.

The group reacted strongly to the testimony of one of them, a young woman who had failed to make progress until she underwent demon exorcism by a Chicago tongues preacher. “Psychiatry is not the answer,” she said. “Jesus Christ is.” Several counselors later called her recovery incomplete and “second best” because of her extremely nervous and defensive behavior. Another scolded them for “knocking this girl around. So she has a second-best solution. I’m glad this girl is functioning as well as she is.”

Busby, gentle, quiet-spoken, said he believes “there was demon possession in Christ’s day and there may well be now. But I don’t know how to recognize it.” His other patient, an 18-year-old Baptist minister’s son who’d had delusions that he was the anti-Christ, gave an affirmative account of his treatment. During therapy sessions, prayer and extensive use of Scripture by Busby helped bring recovery.

In the only academic debate of the convention, bushy-bearded Basil Jackson asserted that “Christian psychotherapy does not exist as a distinct brand of psychiatry any more than there is a Christian surgery or Christian mechanics.” Jackson, who teaches at Marquette and at Northern Baptist Seminary, said, “There are evangelicals who practice good psychotherapy. If you want to call that Christian psychotherapy, fine.” He granted, however, that the Christian psychiatrist is unique in having the “healing person of Jesus Christ” in his work.

Busby contended that psychiatry differs from surgery or mechanics because it deals with evaluation of human behavior. “There is a Christian psychotherapy because a Christian psychiatrist’s goal is to make men whole. The crowning point is acceptance of Christ, although with some patients it may not be right for him to play this role.”

BARBARA H. KUEHN

A small group of anti-American black revolutionaries began a campaign of open persecution this month against white churches and synagogues. In a 2,500-word “Black Manifesto” they vowed church seizures, disruptions, and demonstrations and demanded half a billion dollars in “reparations” from the American Christian-Jewish community.

“To win our demands we will have to declare war on the white Christian churches and synagogues and this means we may have to fight the total government structure of this country,” the manifesto said.

The initial confrontation came May 4 when James Forman, reputed author of the manifesto, stopped a Sunday-morning worship service at New York’s fashionable Riverside Church. Forman stood in the altar area after the opening hymn and began to read a series of demands. The Rev. Ernest T. Campbell led the choir out, and the service never did resume.

The same day, the manifesto’s demands were read during a similar disruption by blacks at the First United Presbyterian Church of San Francisco.

Two days earlier, Forman had appeared before the General Board of the National Council of Churches to air the manifesto. The board had expressed its thanks to Forman and agreed to send the document to its constituent denominations for “study.” The NCC General Secretary was instructed to submit relevant recommendations to a June 23 meeting of the council’s executive committee, which was given special broad powers to act.

The “Black Manifesto” came out of a “National Black Economic Development Conference” held on the Detroit campus of Wayne State University April 25–27. The conference, which drew about 600, was co-sponsored by a number of agencies, including some from the NCC, the Episcopal Church, and the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. A United Presbyterian Office of Information employee was in charge of the press room, from which all white reporters were barred.

Forman’s manifesto was adopted by a vote of 187–63. In an introduction, he called the United States “the most barbaric country in the world,” adding flatly that “we have a chance to help bring this government down.”

Forman has been the director of international affairs for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Atlanta. His introduction also declared that “our fight is against racism, capitalism and imperialism and we are dedicated to building a socialist society inside the United States where the total means of production and distribution are in the hands of the state.… We work the chief industries in this country and we could cripple the economy while the brothers fought guerrilla warfare in the streets.”

The manifesto confined itself to overturning churches. The $500 million to be gleaned from the churches has already been budgeted: $200,000,000 for a Southern land bank to establish cooperative farms; $10,000,000 each to set up publishing industries in Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York; $10,000,000 each to “audio-visual networks” in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Washington, D. C.; $30,000,000 for a black research skills center; $10,000,000 for a communications training center; $10,000,000 for the already existing National Welfare Rights Organization, a lobby for welfare recipients; $20,000,000 for a black labor strike fund; $20,000,000 for an International Black Appeal to produce more capital; and $130,000,000 for a black university.

The money is demanded as “only a beginning of the reparations due us as people who have been exploited and degraded, brutalized, killed, and persecuted.” To extract the funds the manifesto calls for “total disruption of selected church sponsored agencies.… Black workers, black women, black students and the black unemployed are encouraged to seize the offices, telephones, and printing apparatus of all church-sponsored agencies and to hold these in trusteeship until our demands are met.

“On May 4, 1969, or a date thereafter, depending on local conditions, we call upon black people to commence the disruption of the racist churches and synagogues throughout the United States.”

The manifesto concluded: “Our objective in issuing this manifesto is to force the racist white Christian church to begin the payment of reparations which are due to all black people, not only by the church but also by private business and the U. S. government. We see this focus on the Christian church as an effort around which all black people can unite. Our demands are negotiable, but they cannot be minimized.”

Two Episcopal bishops met newsmen in New York after issuance of the demands. They said they agreed that their denomination and others were racist, and that the demands for money were just. “You’re not wrong in asking,” said the Right Rev. J. Brooke Mosley, “you’re asking the wrong people.”

At the headquarters of the Lutheran Church in America in New York, Forman posted the demands on the front door. He said he did so “in the spirit of Martin Luther.”

Black, Biblical, And Broke

A heart-warming blend of biblical dramatizations and gospel music lasted for five nights on Broadway. Despite generous reviews, Trumpets of the Lord failed to attract enough theater-goers to make the financial grade. It was an especially hard-to-take defeat for the producers who had brought back the 1963 off-Broadway show hoping to make a contribution to current emphasis on black culture. Advertisements in local papers (see illustration on page 29) echoed the producers’ bitterness. Across the street, “Hair” was attracting capacity crowds.

“Trumpets” is an adaptation of James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones. It is, quite literally and simply, the depiction of a typical Negro church service. There are three preachers, two men and a woman, whose messages are interspersed with lively choir numbers. The lines are commendably biblical and the music rousing and authentic. The climax had the audience spontaneously clapping with the all-black cast as they sang, “God Be with You Till We Meet Again.”

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Sour Note In ’Frisco

Campus ministers of San Francisco State’s controversial Ecumenical House (see January 17 issue, page 44) scorched jazz musician Duke Ellington for accepting a college concert invitation this month from his close friend Acting President S. I. Hayakawa. Suggesting he was “a political pawn of the entire minority community,” the ministers denounced Ellington’s appearance as “unethical and immoral.” Hayakawa shot back that the ministers were “again trying to stir up dissension,” and that Ecumenical House has been used to promote violence, revolution—and the closing down of the university.

The Gospel In Black

Jesus was the Black Messiah and the Apostle Paul was an “Uncle Tom.” The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, militant pastor of the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit, was dead serious as he expounded his views on what he called the “emerging new black theology.”

Cleage—whose skin is light for a Negro—is said to be the first Christian minister to become a leading black nationalist in this country. He spoke this month at a “Black Church/Black Theology” interdenominational conference at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Christ was really “black,” he claimed (“the ‘Black Messiah’ is my bag”), because the Israelites, during their 430-year bondage in Egypt, intermarried with their Egyptian captors. Cleage’s theological history blames Paul for distorting the views of Christ, whose teachings were intended to unite the divided “black nation” of Israel. He maintains Pauline tradition wrongly made salvation individual instead of corporate.

Asked about Christ’s inviting all men to come to him, the former social worker replied: “We [black people] want to be separate in a spiritual sense from the Western world and its decadence.… I really don’t worry about how a black Jesus now is going to affect white people.…”

Africa Hails A President, Prepares For Pope

One African country not trying to catch up with the rest of the world is Tanzania. Instead, it is determined to make its own contribution to the progress of mankind, and to suggest its own solutions to contemporary African problems.

Tanzania’s policy of socio-cultural, economic, and political development is based on traditional African practices and concepts, although some of these—notably work, economic justice, and self-reliance—have been clearly updated.

Three years ago Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the Christian socialist president of Tanzania, made his famous Arusha Declaration, which was immediately hailed around the world as the most original piece of political thought ever to come out of Africa. Nyerere created a ministry of culture to promote the African way of life and Swahili; he radically reorganized the educational system and reduced the country’s dependence on foreign aid to the barest minimum.

The president is now accorded a measure of esteem in world capitals, is envied by neighboring leaders, and enjoys genuine support among his people. After only three years of this bold experiment, people are beginning to suspect that “Nyerere might just be right.”

Christian leaders and scholars of Tanzania also now strongly support him. But the editor of the East African Christian monthly, Target, has given the Tanzanian Christians an appropriate warning: “One aspect of national life which will soon need to be brought into focus is the air of perfectionism which seems to have permeated the country. Christians have known for ages that man is a sinner and that there must always be room for error, either in the life of an individual or in the life of the society.”

This summer, Pope Paul is expected to visit Tanzania, where the Catholic Church, headed by the only African cardinal in the hierarchy, is celebrating its centenary. It is rumored the Pope also may visit Nigeria and Biafra during his trip.

July 31 he will consecrate several shrines in Kampala, Uganda, in honor of the twenty-two African martyrs he canonized in 1964. The martyrs were court officials, page boys, and soldiers of Kabaka (priest-king) Mwanga, who in 1884 succeeded his Christian father, Kabaka Mutesa I (who became a Christian through Sir Henry Morton Stanley), to the throne of Buganda. The youthful Kabaka, then 18, had strong Muslim inclinations and set out immediately to clear his palace and his kingdom of Christians.

After two years of brutal persecutions, twenty-two youthful members of his household—including the son of his prime minister and the son of his chief executioner—came forward to testify publicly that they were still Christians. They were burnt at the stake. Five years ago, the martyrs became Africa’s only saints.

The Pope also will open the first meeting of the Chairmen of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, called to discuss coordination of Catholic work throughout the continent. The group will be the largest episcopal organization within the church, and will be a major step towards moving power away from Rome into the hands of the bishops.

ODHIAMBO OKITE

THE ABM DEBATE: LIBERAL CHURCHMEN LAUNCH THEIR OWN MISSILE

Liberal churchmen had their defenses ready against the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) long before President Richard M. Nixon said he was contemplating construction of at least a “thin” system for enhancing national security. They had done their homework carefully, well in advance of the big test. As a reward, they are emerging as one of the more formidable, vocal forces in the hotly debated national issue.

For months, in fact, the missile question has been a religious preoccupation. Cost, implications for world peace, student sentiment, and a desire to limit a “military spiral” have been key concerns.

Some sources of their study are well documented, mustering, as the National Council of Churches said in a resolution against the missile, support from “knowledgeable persons including many of the nation’s leading scientists, experts on Soviet and Chinese affairs, many members of the Congress, and former high government officials.”

The NCC heard other voices coming from the churches, but did not listen. The resolution spoke of “wide diversity of opinion and controversy in our churches”—but then went on to give a number of reasons for opposition, ending on a request that churchmen let government officials know where they stand.

An April poll by the Friends Committee on National Legislation showed 204 congressmen still are publicly uncommitted on the ABM, 85 have spoken publicly against development of the system, and 28 others have expressed strong doubts about its military, economic, or diplomatic values.

Meanwhile, a Harris Poll April 30 found that 47 per cent of U. S. adults support the Nixon ABM endorsement.

The NCC wasn’t stealing all the show, however. Before the debate got started at the NCC’s New York meeting, twenty-seven Catholic, Methodist, and Episcopal bishops, theologians, and other churchmen, along with Jewish leaders, had upstaged the NCC. A few days earlier in the same city they had formed the National Religious Committee Opposing ABM. They, too, had some reasonably convincing arguments.

Some of the committeemen (including such notables as Reinhold Niebuhr of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, who is chairman of the committee’s board, and President John Bennett of Union) fired a salvo at the White House. They questioned Nixon’s brand of religion, with Bennett saying: “The kind of religion to which the President gives official sanction is somewhat on the escapist side.”

Suddenly a smoldering matter that had been bothering them since January 26 was fanned into open flame. They didn’t like it that only conservative Protestant clergymen were filling the pulpit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Catholic theologian-author Michael Novak said he is convinced clergymen of his persuasion will never conduct one of the White House services: “The President will invite only those who will bless what is going on.”

There had been rumblings about the services, with one Protestant clergyman saying (anonymously) that they “have in them more than a suggestion that the President is trying to have God on his own terms.” Now it was out in the open. The next Sunday, however, the Rev. R. H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of the NCC, was the White House-chosen pulpit guest for the East Room service.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel of Jewish Theological Seminary linked the ABM fuss and the “irrelevancy” of Nixon’s religion even more closely, asserting that if he would just reverse his position on the ABM, he would make clear to all the world his quoted belief that religion has relevance in national life. At least it would bring him in line with the rabbi’s idea of religious relevance.

WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY

Reducing Tax Privileges

Leading American churchmen issued a joint call this month for a reduction in the tax privileges enjoyed by clergymen, churches, and other religious organizations. Their words are expected to encourage immediate government action to curtail exemption.

“That’s fine that they did that,” said Chairman Wilbur Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee. “That’s my line of thinking and we intended to have that.”

The call came in the form of a policy statement adopted by the General Board of the National Council of Churches and a joint statement sent to Mills by the NCC and the United States Catholic Conference. The first and most likely effect probably will be to close the so-called Clay-Brown loophole, which enables tax-exempt organizations to use debt financing to acquire commercial income property and to realize handsome profits in ways not open to secular corporations.

The joint statement recommends that Congress eliminate the special exemption of churches from taxation of unrelated business income. It asks, however, that the government continue to exempt churches from paying taxes on income derived from rents, dividends and interest from commercial investment securities, and property sales.

The NCC policy statement (adopted by a 77–8 vote with 6 abstentions), goes considerably further than the joint statement with the Catholics. It says that “employees or other functionaries of religious organizations—lay or clergy—should not enjoy any special privilege in regard to any type of taxation.” It calls upon churches to pay a “just share” of such municipal services as fire, police, and sanitation services. It also says churches “should not begrudge paying taxes on auxiliary properties to help defray the costs of civil government. Certainly no exemption from property taxes should be sought for property owned by religious organizations which is not used primarily for religious (or other properly exempt) purposes.” “Auxiliary properties” might be construed as including parsonages and parking lots.

Turning to individual taxation, the policy statement declared that if a clergyman receives a cash allowance for housing, “that amount should be taxed as part of his income, as it is for laymen. Likewise, if he owns his own home, he should not enjoy any reduction of property taxes which is not equally available to his unordained neighbor. In case of a cash allowance, only the non-recoverable costs, which do not include payments on principal, should be included; if property taxes and interest are included in the allowance, they should not also be claimed as deductions.”

The statement added:

“Whether the value of housing provided a clergyman by his church should be taxed is a question that should be resolved as part of the broader category of all employees who occupy residences furnished for their employer’s convenience. Equity might be better served if the dollar equivalent of all such housing was taxed as income. In localities where parsonages are exempt from school taxes, provisions should be made by local churches for payment of tuition or the equivalent. Whatever the solution, churches should compensate their employees for any losses incurred through the elimination of special privileges from the tax laws. We favor legislation requiring payment by churches and church agencies of the employer’s contribution to social security tax for both lay and clerical personnel (except those bound by a vow of poverty).”

Concern over demands of black militants, and to a lesser extent over tax-exemption questions, overshadowed the NCC General Board’s adoption for the first time of a policy statement on the Mideast situation. The statement was approved by a vote of 72–18 shortly before a call for quorum ended the two-day meeting in New York. Only 69 of the board’s 250 members were counted; 85 were said to be needed for a quorum.

Today the church suffers more from the sheer indifference of young people than any other institution in our society. By and large, the young have dismissed the Church as archaic, ineffective, and irrelevant. So concludes John D. Rockefeller 3rd, writing in Saturday Review. The indictment stings. If it is true, we must find ourselves echoing the anguished retrospective query voiced by many parents, “What did we do wrong?” Or, a question more constructive and forward-looking, “What can we do now?”

Since adolescent revolt has been more prominent on campuses than anywhere else, our first inclination is to blame the universities, where naturalistic philosophies and scientism are rampant. Student denunciation of the multiversity has been vociferous for other reasons. They have reproached administrators for inaccessible professors, “rabbit-warren” residence halls, the “vocational” orientation of today’s higher learning, and the IBM impersonality of the institution. When due allowance has been made for these and other shortcomings of the university, the fact remains that home and church have had first chance at today’s student generation and must shoulder a proportionate share of the responsibility.

What is responsible for this generation’s revolt, with its distinguishing marks of sexual freedom, drug experimentation, activism, and desire for “instant everything”?

Behind today’s student unrest is a long period of “child-centered” education, characterized by broad permissiveness and subordination of adult direction. The spirit of that era was vividly lampooned twenty years ago by Robert Hutchins, who remarked, “The academic administrators of America remind one of the French Revolutionist who said, ‘The mob is in the street. I must find out where they are going, for I am their leader’ ” (Time, Nov. 21, 1949).

To understand today’s “mix” fully, one must remember that psychoanalytic psychology and nondirective counseling have also been ground in, followed by Kinsey statistics, offering an alleged “isness” in the place of “oughtness.” All these have profoundly influenced home and family, and are reflected in today’s education, literature, entertainment, psychiatry, and pastoral work. Because comprehension has replaced correction, delinquents have learned to play back in social-work jargon why they are in trouble through no fault of their own (see G. and F. Hechinger, Teenage Tyranny, Morrow, 1963).

Not all the blame can be fixed outside the Church. Some of the contemporary relaxation of sexual standards has been encouraged by ethicists who claim to be grounded in the Christian tradition. The idea that premarital and extramarital sex may be “redemptive” has traveled fast and far under the impetus given by voices from within the Church itself, voices that repudiate not only biblical foundations but also the centuries of human experience embodied in time-tested moral codes. With friends like these, as the quip goes, who needs enemies? Contemporary rejection of the Church by young people is undoubtedly in part an identification with their ecclesiastical elders who are rebelling against biblical authority and Christian tradition.

The dominant idea of situation ethics (which has been called the “non-Christian nonsystem of nonethics”), that love has a built-in moral compass and hence can allow itself to be directed completely by the situation, is a shallow and fallacious anachronism left over from a burned-out faith in the inherent goodness of human nature. Young people are encouraged to dispense with objective, extrinsic norms, leaving themselves free to enter any “emotional blitz” with only a free-floating subjectivism as a guide.

This process is not really the repudiation of all authority; rather, it is the replacement of biblical authority with the authority of mystical intuition. Reinhold Niebuhr long ago pointed out that “the natural passions which exist side by side with the capacity of rationality are always subject to the corruption of human sin.” This fact, coupled with the human penchant for self-deception where egoistic interests are concerned, leaves the man without a code at the mercy of his own rationalization. As Paul Ramsey points out, “there can be no Christian social ethics unless there are some rules of practice required by agape” (Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics, Scribner, 1967). Abandonment of the boundaries set by the revelation, by history and by society leads to a stance that, “if not antinomian, is certainly anomian.”

“Love alone” fails to take adequately into account the source and nature of divine love. Agape is not a natal endowment like hunger contractions or the ability to vocalize; it is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Faith antedates love, and justice completes it. Without commitment to Christ in faith, there is no agape. Moreover, justice is an essential complement to love, involving a sense of duty to all men. The complete principle underlying biblical codes of morality is a unity of these three. The principle begins in faith, takes the form of love, and extends to justice (see F. S. Carney in Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, Scribner, 1969).

Today’s student activism calls attention, not only to the universal need of youth for a cause upon which to expend their energies, but to a deficiency in evangelical Christianity that has only begun to be met—the imbalance in emphasis upon the regeneration of persons and the overt expression of that change in social action.

Evangelicals have sometimes dissipated too much of their energy upon legalistic prohibitions while neglecting an adequate defense of the principles underlying them. While they were intent, for example, upon boycotting the dance, many of their youth moved directly into overt forms of sexual stimulation, from which the dancing taboo was designed to protect them. Equal effort in the promulgation of Christian reverence for personality might well produce a far greater sensitivity and intolerance of sexual laxness.

The Church has nothing to gain by moving biblical goal posts. Young people will always test for limits, if only for reassurance that someone cares. The wails of protest that emanate from youth’s encounter with rules and limits are not so much the assertions of adequacy they purport to be as aspirations toward an independence that is eagerly desired but still deeply feared.—ORVILLE S. WALTERS, professor of health science and lecturer in psychiatry, University of Illinois.

Wayfarers All

When in 1964 Bishop Stephen Bayne resigned as the Anglican Communion’s first executive officer, graphic tribute was paid to the liaison he had established between that body’s autonomous provinces. “He has stitched them together with his person; a flying needle traveling over 120,000 miles a year.”

Now his successor, Bishop Ralph Dean, after completing his five-year stint, is returning to British Columbia next month. Publicity has been given to the fact that during his term in office he has gone seventeen times around the world.

Not to be outdone, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake has now described himself before an American University audience as a member of the “ecumenical Jet Set.” All this emphasis on mileage made is just shrieking for a comment from lolanthe:

Tripping hither, tripping thither,

Nobody knows the why or whither …

If you ask the special function

Of our never ceasing motion,

We reply without compunction

That we haven’t any notion.

The whole thing recalled a touching little piece once seen in a local newspaper. In accepting a retirement presentation, a locomotive engineer observed that his work had taken him over a million miles. It conjured up visions: about 180 round trips between New York and San Francisco, or two jaunts to the moon and back with enough left over to circle the earth twice.…

Not so. The engineer’s charge had been a shunting locomotive that had never taken him out of the railroad sheds. The newspaper headline was “A Million Miles to Nowhere.” The moral might suggest that even those who travel hopefully in an ecumenical Jet Set age might not get anywhere. Especially if their outlook is that ascribed by Dean Inge to a certain bishop: “He has taken a first-class single ticket on the line of least resistance.”

I would not want to give a onesided picture of what Dr. Blake said on that campus occasion mentioned above. After expressing “pleasure at the striking interest of Eastern Orthodox Churches in the Uppsala conference” (from which the Greeks pointedly absented themselves), Dr. Blake made another striking remark that was rightly publicized by Religious News Service. “If our critics knew what really happened at the WCC,” he declared, “then we’d be more eager to know what they think about us.” It’s not what he says, it’s the way that he says it.…

Substantive Thanks

Your issue of April 25 is not the first outstanding one, but rather one more in a series of such, which impels me to write you my thanks for so substantive a contribution to religious discussion and news.

Indiana University English Department

Bloomington, Ind.

Plus Appraisal

I congratulate you on the excellent article “The Recovery of the Positive,” by Louis Cassels (April 25). His appraisal of the reasons for lagging church attendance substantiate my own observations.

Southport Methodist Church

Southport, Ind.

Clocking Biology

Dr. B. L. Smith, in “Biology and the Christian Faith” (April 11 and 25), … seems to infer that all Christians believe in divine creation and all biologists believe in evolution. Actually, many church people have compromised with evolution, and many biologists believe that God created the kinds of animals and plants in the beginning. This [writer] has taught biology many years and belongs to the latter group.…

The study of hereditary factors or genes has demonstrated that they are composed of deoxyribose nucleic acid, DNA for short. A gene is very complex indeed, and this fact makes it reasonable to believe that living things were constructed by an intelligent Being, not by chance. An added fact is that DNA is used by the living cell to transmit traits rather than transmitting the traits by itself. The cells of every living thing are complex; if they were made of DNA alone they could not live. Furthermore, if they had been built up gradually through the ages, the simple, beginning forms could not have carried on the functions necessary for life.…

Julian Huxley does well in comparing the processes of heredity with the Second Law of Thermodynamics—the tendency to run down. But somehow he fails to see that this is a crippling blow to his favorite theory of evolution. When plants and animals reproduce, the offspring usually are much like the parents or more distant ancestors. When there is a heritable change, called a mutation, there is a loss of vigor and sometimes a crippling effect. Thus there is a slow but sure downward tendency in organic nature.…

Thus the kinds of plants and animals, even man, tend slowly to become like worn-out garments through the storing up of harmful mutations in the germplasm.… The world is like a clock which was wound up in the beginning and now is running down.

Creation Research Society Secretary

Eaton, Ind.

Graphing Missions

I greatly appreciate your many editorials but was particularly pleased with “Mission and Missionaries: 1969” (April 25). The graph is excellent and sets forth the facts so clearly.

May I suggest that a similar article and graph on the number of national workers—pastors, evangelists—would be most helpful. Many lament that more missionaries aren’t sent forth, forgetting completely that national churches in many countries of the world are established and have their own national leaders.…

Keep up the good work. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is meeting a great need.

General Director

Andes Evangelical Mission

Plainfield, N. J.

I have always appreciated the forthrightness and integrity in your editorials. However, I feel your editorial on … missionaries gives evidence that you really didn’t do your homework.

It seems you are trying to prove the point that NCC-related churches are suffering from missionary attrition.…

I must submit there are many … facts which you chose to ignore. One of these is the philosophy of missions. Many of our older mainline denominations have in recent years tried to train up native leaders to replace missionaries. And, while there may be fewer missionaries on the field and they may be spending more money, many of these groups really are doing a more significant work.

The First Baptist Church

Lockport, N.Y.

Baptists, Bible, And Tolerance

I wish to commend Dr. Clark Pinnock … for his recent comments about theological liberalism in our Southern Baptist seminaries (“Southern Baptists and the Bible,” April 25). The problem is not that some of us are concerned about a few liberals in each seminary; rather, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find any faculty members in our seminaries who hold to the evangelical view of the Scriptures. The Southern Baptist denomination is, as a whole, conservative in its doctrine. But the seminaries which are charged with the responsibility of educating the future pastors of this conservative constituency ridicule biblical inerrancy and deny propositional revelation. One result of this is a growing loss of confidence in the Scriptures. Many laymen would be satisfied … if the seminaries would at least present the evangelical view of the Scriptures as a plausible alternative. But those of us who saw the same thing happen to many seminaries in the American Baptist Convention know that tolerance and open-mindedness has never been a trait of theological liberals. Therefore, other laymen are beginning to talk of withholding funds from the seminaries, even if this means withholding money from that sacred cow Southern Baptists call the Co-operative program.

Chairman, Dept. of Philosophy

Western Kentucky University

Bowling Green, Ky.

Dr. Clark Pinnock says our Southern Convention “committed itself to biblical inerrancy” when it adopted the “Faith and Message” statement. In this opinion Dr. Pinnock shows the same lack of clarity about Baptist principles which our Sunday School Board showed—unintentionally and to a lesser degree—when that board advertised Dr. Criswell’s eloquent personal testimony (Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True) in such a way as to imply that the Criswell view was their official position.

When an agency as influential as our board lets a disputed doctrinal position become an official stand, even implicitly, then we have coming in the back door what Baptists have always refused to allow in the front—an authoritative confession or creed.

To head off any such “creeping creedalism,” I authored, and our oldest Baptist professors’ association adopted, a resolution protesting the tendency to let one method of interpreting the Bible (rather than the Bible’s own message) become our authority.

True, the “Faith and Message” statement contains a confession which speaks of biblical inerrancy in some sense. But Dr. Pinnock overlooks the opening of that statement, where it is made clear, in language stemming from E. Y. Mullins, that no confession is final or authoritative over Baptists.

Associate Professor of Religion

University of Richmond

Richmond, Va.

Rating ‘Hole’

Feel much better

when blood-letter

makes incision

in tradition:

Addison Leitch,

by his latest,¹(“Hole in Your Head,” Current Religious Thought, April 25).

rates my praisest.

Church of the Mennonite Brethren

Bakersfield, Calif.

Religion For Intellectuals

“A Theology of Trust,” by Harold O. J. Brown (April 11), is a very timely and most helpful message to so-called intellectuals who think that man, by wisdom, can find God.…

It is a paraphrase of the old song, “The old-time religion is good enough for me,” put into sixty-five-cent words so as to make it palatable to the “intelligentsia” who deify education and worship at the altar of mental gymnastics.

I particularly like his statements: “A ‘naive believer’ who does in fact trust and obey is likely to attain a valid unsophisticated theology, while the sophisticated theologian … will wind up with inadequacies in both his faith and his theology,” and “The challenge to the evangelical theologian, then, is to affirm the integration of knowledge and trust.” Amen and amen!

(The Rev.) IRVING KUGLER

Washington, D.C.

Balanced Pussyfooting?

I have just read … that there are apparently now enough votes in the Senate to defeat Mr. Nixon’s ABM system. And that reminded me that one of the sanest and most balanced views on the subject was the April 11 editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… Thank you for the stand you have taken.

Watertown, Mass.

May I respectfully state that your editorial on “The ABM Decision” constitutes bona fide pussyfooting. From a supposedly exemplary Christian periodical one would expect an affirmative position either one way or the other. As born-again Christians we must emulate our Saviour Jesus Christ, who minced no words in dealing with people.…

The position set forth by the President should be supported because the Soviet rulers cannot be trusted.… They are out-and-out atheists and as such are entirely immoral, unreliable … schemers.… Any agreement, oral or written, isn’t worth a tinker’s dam.

St. Petersburg, Fla.

In your remarks on the ABM decision, you obscure the issue. The issue is not whether or not to take the Sino-Soviet threat seriously. The issue is whether, in view of the vast American stockpile of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, it is necessary to spend another $9 billion on still another system, when there are other pressing demands upon our economy.

Bronx, N.Y.

Before Napalm

If Jesus Christ read that statement in your editorial (“Vandalism in the Name of Peace,” April 11), he would have been shocked and dismayed to see you repudiate so clearly what he taught.… If he were in Viet Nam today he would still be turning the other cheek and telling men of the good news and bleeding and dying for them, all before he would think of using napalm.

Monck Baptist Church

Conn, Ont.

The greatest protection from error is knowing the truth. “What you do not know will not hurt you”—this does not apply to the Christian and his Bible. Much more applicable is Alexander Pope’s dictum, “A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” Error stems from ignorance and superficial knowledge.

In the Scriptures we find Truth—a revelation of things man can never discover from any other source. How great, then, is the ignorance of those who do not know or willfully neglect the Scriptures, who capriciously question them or reject them outright.

The Sadducees, who denied the concept of the supernatural and miraculous, of course rejected out of hand the reality of the resurrection. On one occasion a group of them came to Jesus with an absurd hypothetical story about seven brothers who had died, one after the other, and who in accordance with the law of Moses had in succession married the older brother’s wife. Now the Sadducees asked triumphantly, “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife” (Mark 12:23).

Our Lord’s reply must have been devastating for them, and it also speaks volumes to us today: “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?”

The Sadducees were involved in a theological error about the resurrection because they were ignorant of the Scriptures. And being ignorant of the Scriptures, they were also ignorant of God’s power.

Within the Church today, even in many theological seminaries, the prevalent ignorance of the Bible is appalling. The modern-day Sadducees consider the supernatural and miraculous suspect. Many persons look upon the Scriptures as a more or less human document, and therefore discount their worth. In so doing they remain ignorant of the truth and the power of the living God.

Even a casual conversation with the average Christian will reveal ignorance of the Word. It may be that the pressures of daily living have crowded the Bible out of its rightful place, or that some casual seed of criticism has grown into a tree of unbelief. Whatever the cause, the result is disastrous, for out of ignorance comes error, not only such deviations as may be found in the cults that thrive on every hand, but devastating errors having to do with God and man, good and evil, sin and judgment, time and eternity, heaven and hell, and above all else, Christ and redemption.

Ignorance of the Word of God leads to futility and frustration and accounts for the world’s tumult as well as for disordered individual lives. It leads up every blind alley of the human mind and to the “wisdom of this world,” which is folly with God.

We are told that man has come of age, and that he is now capable of living without God. How far will such foolishness go? If man sows the seeds of rejection of God, he will surely reap the harvest of rejection by God.

What, then, should we do?

This is a plea that men replace their ignorance of the Bible by a knowledge that not only will stand the test against error but also will bring into true perspective the power of God in the redeeming work of his Son, in the indwelling presence of his Spirit, and in the written Word. When this is done, God leads the willing and obedient heart into all truth, and in that truth there is a freedom otherwise unknown.

To give the Bible its rightful place is to recognize that daily Bible study is as important for spiritual growth as is food for the physical body.

It also means that the Bible is allowed to speak for itself. While it is true that some people take “proof texts” out of context, thereby coming up with some invalid conclusions, nevertheless those saturated with the Word attain a perspective that enables them to rise to any situation and apply to it the clear teachings of this divine revelation.

In Josiah’s time reformation came when the Law of Moses was discovered and reapplied to personal and national life.

The false doctrines of Jesus’ day were the result of ignorance of the Scriptures together with the practice of “teaching for doctrines the precepts of men” (Matt. 15:9).

During the Dark Ages the Bible was kept from the people with tragic results, but with the Protestant Reformation there came a release of the Word through the translation and circulation of the Bible. This ushered in a new era of personal and corporate Christianity.

Today, the most flourishing churches are those that honor the Bible. And the nations with the greatest degree of moral light have been those where the Word was best known. Where the Bible is known and obeyed, we find also more true personal religion. The godliest families are found to give the Scriptures top priority, and those who live closest to God are the ones who make the Bible their own infallible rule of faith and practice.

To live thus is bound to arouse some opposition—many times fierce opposition. Satan’s sneering question, “Yea, hath God said?” (Gen. 3:1), is asked in every generation—the difference today being that the Bible is most vigorously attacked from within the Church.

Let not sneering criticism, outright opposition, or any other device of Satan deter you from reading, studying, believing, and obeying God’s Word! It is truly the “Sword of the Spirit,” and Satan has never been able to stand against it.

Far from being “obsolete” or “irrelevant” to today’s world, the Bible is the most up-to-date and relevant book in all the world. In Proverbs alone young people can find answers for all the problems that confront them. The Psalms put into words the holiest and highest aspirations of the human heart, as well as words of worship and praise that lift the soul to the heights of spiritual expression.

Make Bible study as much a part of your daily program as your meals, work, and exercise. Study it book by book, or choose a theme and follow it through. Do not fail to read the Scriptures through to catch the continuity of God’s revelation to man. Take a fine red pencil and underline passages that speak a special message to your heart. This will be a help at the time and a blessing in subsequent studies.

For the faithful student of the Word there are unending surprises as passages suddenly take on new meaning, often speaking to a specific need of that time. Believe what you read and obey God’s leading. Like the psalmist, pray to see God’s truth: “Let my cry come before thee, O LORD; give me understanding according to thy word” (Ps. 119:169).

L. NELSON BELL

Another Dogma Falls

Is Original Sin in Scripture? by Herbert Haag (Sheed & Ward, 1969, 127 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Philip E. Hughes, professor of historical theology, Conwell School of Theology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

If original sin is not in Scripture then the Church has been making a lot of fuss about nothing for a very long time. Dr. Herbert Haag, however, who is professor of Old Testament in the University of Tubingen and also president of the Catholic Bible Association of Germany, has come to the conclusion that this doctrine is not to be found in the Bible. And thereby he brings himself under the Tridentine anathema! But apparently the cursings of the Council of Trent are no longer operative, or if they are, they are no longer feared (this book is published without the customary nihil obstat and imprimatur), though the recent Second Vatican Council held in Rome was supposed to endorse and complete what was begun at Trent. Over this issue Haag parts company with his fellow Roman Catholics Karl Rahner, who maintains the theological certainty of monogenism (the descent of all mankind from a single original couple), and Leo Scheffczyk, who holds that the historicity of redemption stands or falls with the historicity of Adam and of original sin. Haag, in fact, frankly declares that for many in the Roman church today “previously held ‘dogmas’ have ceased to be dogmas, to the great dismay of those who believe in the immutability of dogmas,” and that what is taking place is “not merely interpretation but correction of previous teaching.”

Reformed theology has been in agreement with the official teaching of Roman Catholicism that the sin of Adam had evil consequences for all his posterity (see Rom. 5:12 and 1 Cor. 15:22), but has never concurred with the explanation that the precise result of the fall was the loss of an extra or preternatural (that is, over and above what belonged to human nature) gift of original righteousness together with bodily immortality, so that man, losing this endowment, was left in a purely natural state; for this view is imposed on Scripture and opens the door to a potentially Pelagian situation. Certainly, the old argument between the creationists and the traducianists can well be laid to rest, since it is a blind alley that leads nowhere.

In Haag’s view, the inheritance of Adam’s sin means “that sin, after its entrance into the world, so spread that consequently all men are born into a sinful world and in this sinful world become themselves sinners.” Nonetheless, when it comes to a choice between evolutionary concepts and biblical affirmations, the former are preferred. Thus Bruce Vawter speaks in his introduction of “the Darwinian revolution that lies in the background of this book by Professor Haag,” and the new Dutch Catechism, which Haag commends, asserts that “the world is involved in an upward movement.”

We would like to put to Dr. Haag the question: Is the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary in Scripture? Why does he not brand this dogma as “folklore” like the ideas he rejects? And, in the absence of biblical evidence, by what scientific considerations is he moved to hold that “the only human being who did not need rebirth was Mary the mother of Jesus,” and that, “by anticipation, she lived her entire life in the glory of Christ’s grace”? Such dogmatism contradicts the biblical teaching that the sole exception to the universality of human sinfulness is our Redeemer Jesus Christ.

Original sin, however mysterious its nature may be, tells us that the reality of sin is something far deeper than the mere outward commission of sinful deeds, and something more substantial than a “device,” as Haag calls it, whereby a man’s later actions are attributed to him from the time of his conception and birth. It tells us that there is an inner root of sinfulness which corrupts man’s true nature and from which his sinful deeds spring. Like a deadly poison, sin has penetrated to and infected the very center of man’s being: hence his need for the total experience of rebirth by which, through the grace of God in Christ Jesus, the restoration of his true manhood is effected.

Lay Off Charlie Brown!

The Parables of Peanuts, by Robert L. Short (Harper & Row, 1968, 328 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, editor, “The Christian and Christianity Today,” London, England.

Four years ago in this journal I reviewed Mr. Short’s previous work, The Gospel According to Peanuts. Now its successor, by a piece of editorial whimsey, has been sent for like treatment across the Atlantic—perhaps because, as before, no American scholar would lightly undertake a review certain to be mercilessly scrutinized in the higher academic echelons.

Someone wrote to say my earlier comments had “enigmatized” him, which might suggest I had handled it right. A crazy assignment calls for crazy handling. Just how many times removed from reality are you when called on to assess another man’s interpretation of a third man’s elusive and unique ministry? It’s like chasing the shadow of a shadow. The reviewer is a two-time loser: if he calls something asinine, the author can call himhumorless, or lacking in theological discernment, or can retort that the actors in this form of “art-parable” are only children, and that this is how children behave. The author is sitting pretty, and can’t lose.

Except when he over-reaches himself. And this is what Short has done (I think a second book generally was a mistake). He quotes Schulz’s comment about his strip: “There is lots of meaning, but I can’t explain it.” He doesn’t need to—Mr. Short can. The latter says: “We should never finally try to judge the meaning of a work of art on the basis of the artist’s intention,” because “who knows what these intentions are?” Short does, or so it would seem, for he displays little sense of the limitations of his project. Even more than with the earlier book, he gives the impression of taking out of a cartoon something which its creator had not put in, and which no ordinary reader would comprehend without the sort of help Philip gave the Ethiopian eunuch.

Take page 156. After a perfectly enjoyable cartoon, Short contrives an identification of Snoopy with God and the Red Baron with the devil, propped up by a quotation from “Eph. 6:12, NEB” (that “NEB” angle here is the sheerest oneupmanship).

Or page 297. For those having difficulty in plumbing the depths of Pigpen, all that is necessary is to equate him with “church.” Then they can often “expect the cartoon to make complete theological sense.”

Short’s determination to press home a point is often his undoing, as on page 242, where “Look and see if there is any sorrow like Charlie Brown’s” is not a happy parallel (it is Short’s again, of course, not Schulz’s).

On numerous cartoonless pages he does a power of moralizing on his own account, aided by his favorite sources, Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard (some fifty quotations each), and with less demanding references to works such as Moby Dick, Zorba the Greek, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and The Great Wall of China. On page 206 we meet a mind-boggling word: “For as soon as Peter ran out of faith and stopped, he sank like the Rock he was.” Had this not come amid some tedious sermonizing we should have hailed it gleefully as the sort of thing this book could have been doing with more of.

Short says “the word ‘art’ is never mentioned in the Bible,” but this is too loose a statement to exclude the techné of Acts 17:29. On page 229 Thoreau gets the credit for an idea of the sixteenth-century John Knox. On page 117 a profound passage of Pascal is rendered unnecessarily more difficult by the transposition of a line.

“The last thing we want to do in this book,” says the author, “is to decrease one jot of the sheer enjoyment and entertainment value that comes to anyone from Peanuts.” Some ordinary readers like myself will regard this disclaimer with skepticism, and will hope that Mr. Short will lay off Charlie Brown in future. We like him as he is.

There are in this book about 250 cartoon strips; he who prefers Schulz to Short will find that, at two cents a strip, it is a good bargain. An even better one will be Schulz’s long-awaited book on Robert L. Short.

Packed With Information

Judges, by Arthur E. Cundall, and Ruth, by Leon Morris (Inter-Varsity, 1968, 318 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by Clyde T. Francisco, John R. Sampey professor of Old Testament interpretation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

A striking similarity of approach is evident in these two additions (in one volume) to the “Tyndale Old Testament Commentary.” Both commentators show a wide acquaintance with their fields of study, and they treat the problems of the books with thoroughness. There is an openness to the evidence but a decided emphasis upon the basic integrity of Scripture. Just as Cundall will say, “Yet the witness of the Old Testament is accurate,” Morris will quote G. A. F. Knight approvingly, “Our author is careful to be accurate with his historical facts.” However, their characteristic respect for the Old Testament as the word of God does not demand a belief in the inerrancy of the received text. Both writers acknowledge that there might have been mistakes in the copying of manuscripts through the centuries, though they are very reluctant to admit the possibility of textual emendation.

It is quite remarkable that in such brief studies the commentators should take up the problems of individual verses. Far too many authors use the limitation of space as an excuse for avoiding difficult questions. Yet these writers attempt to meet every perplexity, usually with thoroughness, if not always with positive results.

Both writers sometimes confuse American readers. Their references to “corn” will be readily understood as grain by British readers, but in the United States the word can only mean maize. To the British reader, Cundall’s use of “prophylactic” clearly means “a preventive from disease”; but to the average American, for whom the word has a more restricted meaning, it may cause some eyebrow-raising when applied to divine activity.

Differences between the two studies appear primarily in the tendency of Cundall to differ with traditional views of authorship and date, and that of Morris to give more detailed analysis of individual words. This is due not to a difference of approach but to the nature of the evidence in Judges and to the size of the Book of Ruth—it is short enough to permit more intensive treatment.

Surely the desire of the editor that “these books will help many to understand, and to respond to, the Word of God today” will be granted. And another encouraging fact is apparent. A new “school of the prophets” is arising, composed of men who study the Bible critically, defend it effectively, and proclaim it convincingly. May their tribe increase!

Studies Doctrinal Development

Development of Christian Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomena, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Yale University, 1969, 149 pp., $6), is reviewed by Frederick Abbott Norwood, professor of history of Christianity, Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois.

This little book has two parts and four themes. The first part defines and discusses the problem of doctrinal development; the second consists of three case studies drawn from the patristic period.

The primary theme is identified in the title. Questions surrounding the process of doctrinal development have become increasingly numerous and insistent in the twentieth century as a result of various forces. Both dogmatic fixations by councils and popes in the last one hundred years and the openings and loosenings of Vatican Council II contribute to the concern over the meaning, even the possibility, of doctrinal development. Moreover, every ecumenical action underlines the importance of reassessing doctrinal developments that in the past all too often have led to schism. Pelikan here makes a beginning at the needed reassessment.

His second theme is a revisitation of John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), which attempted to define seven criteria for distinguishing between valid and invalid development. He analyzes these in the light of Protestant-Catholic polemic.

Pelikan’s other two themes, if not quite a hidden agenda, are more subtly presented, but nevertheless are quite present in his mind. The whole book might be viewed as a justification of the historical method and the subject of the history of Christianity as against the theological method and the subject of history of doctrine narrowly conceived. Christian doctrine, he avers, is too important to leave to the theologians. Historical method and study are essential for proper understanding of the development of doctrine, because that development takes place in the environment of the total Christian community, which itself is placed in the environment of general history. Many church historians have understood this for a long time, hence are puzzled at theologians who profess new discovery under various guises such as the secular gospel. Of course one can raise questions about some of Pelikan’s own presuppositions. He frequently allows Lutherans and Calvinists to speak for the entire Protestant tradition as if no one else had anything worth saying. He leaves no place for discussion of Harnack’s proposition that patristics is the “center of gravity of church history as a scholarly field.” Perhaps so, but is it axiomatic?

Oh, yes. His fourth theme is advertisement of his multi-volume history of doctrine, now in gestation.

Book Briefs

Love and Truth Meet, by Max Thurian (United Church Press, 1968, 166 pp., $6.50). The Taizé theologian seeks to point a way to Christian unity that will steer away from doctrinal laxity on the one hand and a divisive spirit on the other.

Man Yearning for Grace, by Jared Wicks (Corpus, 1969, 410 pp., $12.50). Studies Luther’s early works in the context of his pre-Reformation spiritual struggles rather than forcing them into the framework of his later thought.

Soka Gakkai, by Noah Brannen (John Knox, 1968, 181 pp., $5.50). An enlightening investigation of one of the fastest-growing and most significant religious and political movements of our day, pointing out its significance for Japan and the rest of the world.

Meditations for the Newly Married, by John M. Drescher (Herald, 1969, 139 pp., $4). The moderator of the Mennonite General Conference offers solidly biblical and practical advice for newlyweds.

Where Now Is Thy God?, by J. Wallace Hamilton (Revell, 1969, 128 pp., $3.50). Sixteen sermons, aimed at the uncertainty and confusion of this generation, show the effectiveness of the Christian faith for contemporary living.

The Foundations of Social Order, by Rousas Rushdoony (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1968, 232 pp., $5.95). A study of the creeds and councils of the early Church.

The Renewal of Preaching, by David James Randolph (Fortress, 1969, 137 pp., $3.95). Seeks a new understanding of preaching growing out of the new hermeneutic. The parts of this volume that are really worthwhile aren’t really new.

Take It to the People, by Howard E. Mumma (World, 1969, 124 pp., $3.95). Suggests unusual and exciting ways of taking the Gospel of Christ to people wherever they may be found.

Modern War and the Christian, by Ralph L. Moellering (Augsburg, 1969, 94 pp., paperback, $2.50). Studies militarism, pacifism, and “realism” (the “just war” tradition) and suggests positive action Christians can take. Sympathetic to the pacifist position but does not embrace it completely.

Heart Cry for Revival, by Stephen F. Olford (Zondervan, 1962, 119 pp., paperback, $1.95). Reprint of a collection of expository sermons on revival by the pastor of New York’s Calvary Baptist Church.

The Sovereignty of Grace, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969, 110 pp., paperback, $1.50). An appraisal of G. C. Berkouwer’s view of the Articles of Dort.

The Book of Obadiah, by Don W. Hillis (Baker, 1969, 75 pp., paperback, $1.95). This volume and The Books of Nahum and Zephaniah, by T. Miles Bennett, are a useful addition to the “Shield Bible Study Series.”

Phenomenology of Religion, edited by Joseph Dabney Bettis (Harper & Row, 1969, 245 pp., paperback, $3.50). This selection of essays written from diverse perspectives represents the attempts of various philosophers to describe the essence of religion. Could be useful for research.

Catholic Pentecostals, by Kevin and Dorothy Ranaghen (Paulist, 1969, 266 pp., paperback, $1.95). If the title jolts you, so will the book. An extremely interesting account of the Pentecostal movement within the Catholic Church.

Reconciling Community, by Orlando L. Tibbetts (Judson, 1969, 128 pp., paperback, $2.50). Challenges the Church to new forms of evangelism in a rapidly changing culture and offers helpful, specific suggestions toward a more effective ministry.