Early in 1963, the Church of England/Methodist report on church unity set out to heal a breach now about 230 years old. It suggested a period of “some years” during which there would be intercommunion while each body retained its distinct life and identity, to be followed by an organic union. To embark on stage one, however, would involve an obligation to achieve stage two. The Anglican signatories were unanimous, but a “Dissentient View” was entered by four (of twelve) Methodists: three distinguished university professors and a college principal.

This weighty minority objected: that the report’s section on Scripture and tradition did not recognize adequately the primacy of Scripture; that its understanding of “episcopacy” differed from the scriptural meaning; that the proposed Service of Reconciliation could be interpreted as reordination of Methodist ministers; that the report’s use of “priest” was expressly connected with sacrificial views of the Eucharist and with the power to pronounce absolution; and that full union would strengthen the grip of “the exclusiveness which would bar the Lord’s people from the Lord’s Table.” An open letter from thirty-nine leading Anglican clergy to the archbishops substantially echoed such misgivings.

But the establishment on both sides warmly espoused the scheme, seeing it as an irresistible summons to obey Christ’s will for his Church, and believing that difficulties could be ironed out. A year later came the founding of The Voice of Methodism, a movement implacably opposed to certain aspects of the scheme. Some people spoke loudly about reunion as the will of God, said Dr. Leslie Newman, one of the movement’s influential spokesmen, but “this age was not conspicuous for its concern for God’s will.” Dissent grew, and even the Methodist Recorder, a self-styled “completely independent newspaper,” showed its teeth by refusing to accept advertising from the dissentients.

Meanwhile the (Anglo-Catholic) Church Union, perhaps alarmed at the determination of the big boys to push the project through, pointed out that “some important theological questions are left unresolved.” In March, 1965, the Anglican House of Laity approved in principle the proposed merger, though the “studied ambiguity” of the proposed Service came in for a hammering.

Growing Methodist opposition could be seen that summer, despite Conference’s general approval by 488 to 137 of the report’s main proposals. Among “the inarticulate masses of Methodism” it was a different story: 26,440 in the quarterly meetings in favor, 22,236 against. A joint commission was set up to deal with points of difficulty, but by September, 1965, the report had been attacked by Anglican evangelicals, the Voice of Methodism, the Methodist Revival Fellowship, the Church Union, the (Anglo-Roman) Society of the Holy Cross—and by Lord Fisher of Lambeth, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. (A religious columnist later suggested that Lord Fisher “may be the front man of a considerable number of prominent Anglicans whose official positions require them to be favorably disposed toward union.”) By the summer of 1966 one heard more frequently the insistence on a “conscience clause” that would allow clergy of both churches to opt out.

The original report has now been in existence for five and a half years, during which time Methodists, now numbering around 666,000, have decreased by about 55,000 (they will tell you Anglicans have done proportionately no better). In February, 1968, there appeared the first part of the final report of the joint commission. Dealing with “The Ordinal,” it (inter alia) concedes that “presbyter” could be a reconciling word where “priest” would be divisive, but adds that “we neither expect nor desire that ‘priest’ should go out of use in other contexts, at any rate in the Church of England.” On absolution there is apparent withdrawal of the interpretation evangelicals find offensive, coupled with an apparent misinterpretation of Scripture; the former upset the Anglos, the latter the evangelicals.

Part two of the final report then appeared, incorporating discussions of doctrine, proposals for the united church, practical suggestions for stage one of the merger, and details about working toward full communion. This report had one dissentient: Dr. J. I. Packer of Oxford, probably the ablest of modern Anglican evangelical scholars (none of the original Methodist dissentients was on the commission).

Presenting his viewpoint in a symposium that he also edited (Fellowship in the Gospel, Marcham Manor Press, 15s. 6d), Packer says “the report is rooted in a bygone era of thought”; times have changed and “the historic episcopate cannot be defended … as being necessary, in the sense of divinely required and commanded, for either the ‘being’ or the ‘well-being’ or the ‘full being’ of the universal church.” While stage two of the merger will “abolish, once for all, episcopalian exclusiveness at Holy Communion,” it proposes to reach that laudable end by a procedure in stage one that would buttress that very exclusiveness.

Then also, says Packer, after discussing the validity of ambiguity in theological utterances, those statements “which by careful framing leave open the issues between ‘catholic’ and ‘protestant’ on church and ministry, will look very different if riveted into the context of procedures which find their ultimate rationale and defense in the ‘catholic’ principle … of exclusive episcopacy.” The latter Packer sees as “the one systematically distorting feature which threatens” the whole scheme.

The end of the matter is not yet. A decision was due this summer, but back-stage trouble has delayed the curtain-rising on this last act of the preliminaries. The inane reason given was that no printer could produce the final report in time for unhurried consideration to be given it before the summer meetings. As a result, the decision has been shelved for a whole year, tradition reigning so supreme that there must be no coming together before the appointed annual interval has elapsed.

It is clear that an epidemic of cold feet is raging in high places. A referendum is being held among Church of England clergy (which is significant), but has been refused to Methodists (which is even more significant). The certainty that the merger would split Methodism was a factor that body’s leaders were evidently prepared to accept. The rock on which the ship is likely to founder is that “historic episcopate” so beloved by Anglicans of the higher sort. I’m guessing, of course. Maybe that columnist was right; maybe the frontmanship of Lord Fisher has been more effective than we thought.

Ex-convict George (Watusi) Rose told a U. S. Senate subcommittee last month that the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago was a place where Blackstone Rangers, the South Side’s biggest gang, “laid around, goofed around, smoked pot, gambled, drank, and cleaned guns” and planned “armed revolution.” He also testified that the Rev. John R. Fry had once relayed to him an order to “take out” (kill) a dope peddler from Rangers chief Eugene Hairston, who is now awaiting sentencing for murder.

Fry called the charges “outrageous, false, and malicious,” and claimed the Chicago police are using Rose as a “mouthpiece” for their “evil” ideas about the Rangers in return for release after an arrest earlier this year. Fry said the Rangers kicked out Rose for “flirting” with the crime syndicate.

Both sides agree that fifty-eight weapons were stored in the church safe last year. William Griffin, a Negro who commands South Side police, said Fry reneged on a deal to turn in the arsenal within thirty days so police raided the church. Fry replies that police broke their agreement to protect the Rangers against another gang if they turned in their guns to the church.

Presbyterian ties to the Rangers were part of Senate Permanent Investigations Committee hearings on civil disturbances, and on a $927,000 anti-poverty grant to The Woodlawn Organization, under which Rangers were employed for job training.

Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago government has been trying to break up the gangs, and to get federal antipoverty grants channeled through his office. He is uneasy about strong organizations in the ghetto that rival his Democratic machine. During the past year police have made many arrests in Woodlawn, the slum adjoining the University of Chicago where the church is located. But most charges have been dropped or dismissed.

Fry is an outspoken opponent of police tactics. Griffin testified that church circulars have accused police of “robbing Negro youth of their manhood.” In one pamphlet this spring Fry allegedly said that “the police have been acting in such a way as to make insurrection obligatory for honorable men.”

First Church has spent $25,000 in youth funds for bail bonds and legal fees since it first tried to befriend the Rangers two years ago, Fry said. Supporters of the church project say violence has decreased in the area and credit the Rangers with keeping things cool on the South Side after the murder of Martin Luther King, while the West Side was in turmoil. They see the hearings as a chance for Chicago officialdom to discredit the Rangers and the antipoverty program without bringing in trial-worthy evidence, since cross-examination and other standard procedures are not followed in congressional investigations.

Besides Fry, the senators heard Charles LaPaglia, $11,000-a-year church social worker who Committee Chairman John McClellan of Arkansas said was fired from a city youth-welfare job. LaPaglia complained that a cooperative living project involving youths and Chicago Theological Seminary (United Church of Christ) students had been raided by police fifteen times, with twenty-six arrests and only one conviction. LaPaglia knows of none of the 4,000 to 5,000 Rangers who belong to First Presbyterian Church and in reply to a question said they “haven’t gotten a conversion yet.”

A Bishop Overruled

Disregarding pleas of the resident bishop, officials of the Episcopal Church’s urban-crisis program refused to hold up a $10,000 grant to the Black Unity League of Kentucky. Bishop C. Gresham Marmion had asked for a delay following the arrest last month of two VISTA workers who had been involved in planning the league. The pair were charged with conspiring to dynamite a Louisville oil refinery. Religious News Service quoted a spokesman as saying the grant “has been authorized … and will be going out.” He declared there seemed to be some misunderstanding about the relation of the accused to the league. The Episcopal Church reports it has issued nearly $1 million in urban and black-power grants this year.

Fry won quick support from United Presbyterian home-mission secretary Kenneth Neigh, General Assembly Moderator John Coventry Smith, National Council of Churches social-justice chairman David Ramage, the Presbytery of Chicago (which had given the project $38,000), and the session of the local church. Editor Robert Cadigan of Presbyterian Life wired the committee that Fry, who was his news editor before taking the pulpit, was telling the truth.

Fry, 44, was decorated for gallantry by the Marines in World War II and later graduated from Union Theological Seminary, New York. Speaking to an evangelism conference at this year’s United Presbyterian General Assembly, Fry charged that white America and the Church are guilty of “monstrous crimes” against blacks and that violent white “law and order” has created the urban crisis.

PERSONALIA

The Rev. James L. Rohrbaugh was found guilty of schism and contumacy by Seattle Presbytery last month because he joined his congregation in seceding from the United Presbyterian Church in protest of the Confession of 1967. A presbytery executive said the church would be allowed to practice under the traditional Westminster Confession alone if it stayed in.

Amid hoots at Hunter College, New York, U. S.-touring Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin, 74, of Moscow said the Soviet Union severely punishes anti-Semitism and that things are better than under the Czars.

Detroit’s black-nationalist pastor Albert Cleage, Jr., resigned as co-chairman of Operation Connection. He said he was dissatisfied with the slowness of financial support from whites for building political and economic power among the poor. The effort is directed by Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore, Jr.

Police and FBI agents entered a Unitarian church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to arrest AWOL Private Richard Scott, who had been given “sanctuary” by the pastor.

Catholic Theological Society of America said Texas Archbishop Robert Lucy’s charges of heresy against Father John McKenzie’s book Authority in the Church were “unjustified.” Roman theologians are astir over rumored criticism by the Curia’s doctrinal office of Father Hans Küng for his new book The Church, and a reported halt to publication of new translations.

United Methodist minister Randolph Nugent was promoted to director of MUST, the New York urban training program. Former director George Webber will remain on the staff.

The Rev. Samuel D. Proctor, a former National Council of Churches official, was named by the University of Wisconsin to handle statewide educational aids for disadvantaged citizens.

The Rev. Frederick R. Wilson, planning secretary for United Presbyterian missions, was elected first president of the World Association for Christian Communications, a union of the World Association for Christian Broadcasting and the Coordinating Committee for Christian Broadcasting, formed at a Norway meeting. He defeated the nominating committee choice, the Rev. Everett C. Parker of the United Church of Christ.

The Rev. Dr. Eugene Ransom, Wesley Foundation director at the University of Michigan, was appointed new head of the United Methodist Church campus department.

John Capon, a 29-year-old Baptist, was named editor of the Church of England Newspaper, a weekly that represents the Anglicans’ evangelical wing.

The Rev. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is retiring August 31 after thirty years as noted evangelical preacher at Westminster Chapel (Congregational) in London, so he can do more writing.

CHURCH PANORAMA

Several white ministers in Zoneton, Kentucky, offered use of their facilities to a small Negro congregation, First Corinthian Baptist, whose frame church was dynamited June 23, just ten weeks after the building had been the target of arsonists.

Negroes were turned away from First Baptist Church and Tuskegee Methodist Church in Tuskegee, Alabama, last month but were permitted to worship at previously segregated First Presbyterian Church, which decided to open its doors after the murder of Martin Luther King, the Southern Courier reports.

Missions boards of the United Church of Christ and Christian Churches (Disciples) are combining administration of their Latin America work. The United Presbyterian Church and Reformed Church in America are doing the same with their Africa offices.

A United Church of Christ confirmation course on Christian beliefs related to social issues is being published jointly for use by Roman Catholic churches.

New York’s Interchurch Center, home of major ecumenical offices, decided not to build an annex that had been opposed by a neighborhood group. A similar issue helped spark the Columbia University student strike.

The new United Methodist social-concerns magazine, engage, will be edited by the Rev. Allan Brockway, who edited Concern, published by the same agency until it was terminated last fall. Women’s magazines from the former Methodist and E.U.B. denominations will be merged into response magazine next January.

Facing financial pressures, Baylor University President Abner McCall and heads of six other private colleges issued a major report asking aid from the Texas legislature.

Contributions to the United Church of Canada increased 4.6 per cent last year, but membership was 1,060,335, a loss of 1,771.

The nineteenth centennial of the traditional martyrdom of Saint Mark was marked in Cairo with four days of rites and the opening of a new Coptic cathedral that will contain relics of the apostle. President Nasser of the U.A.R. and Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie joined churchmen in the festivities.

Evangelistic rallies by forty-four congregations in the French Baptist Federation resulted in 325 public decisions for Christ.

Long Weekends

President Johnson last month signed a law likely to cut church attendance. The measure—which won rare unanimous support from the National Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and the U. S. Commerce Department—moves four federal holidays to Monday. Beginning January 1, 1971, new three-day weekends will result annually from these holidays: Washington’s birthday (third Monday in February), Memorial Day (last Monday in May), Veterans Day (fourth Monday in October), and Columbus Day (second Monday in October). The changes will increase weekend travel and, as a result, church absenteeism.

Meanwhile, Senator Everett M. Dirksen said he intended to raise again his proposed prayer amendment to the Constitution before Congress adjourns for next month’s national party conventions. Dirksen introduced the resolution in January, 1967, and could circumvent the constitutional committee’s opposition by attaching it to an unrelated bill.

Reports say free churches in Czechoslovakia may have to shift from government-paid pastors to full church support. Nearly 4,000 persons attended a memorial Mass at the Prague Cathedral for victims of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia.

A long article in the official Communist paper in Moldavia, Soviet Union, accused dissident Baptists of slandering the state and maintaining contacts with anti-Soviet Russians in the West. Three youths in a leftist Christian group in Britain were arrested in Moscow, then released, after handing out leaflets criticizing imprisonment of writers and Baptists.

Churchmen planning a Pan-Orthodox Conference have refused to put on the agenda an appeal from the conference of eight ethnic American communions that they be permitted to form a single Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere.

Miscellany

Reformed, Baptist, and Episcopal bodies in Spain decided not to register by the May 31 deadline under terms of the new “religious liberty” law. But Plymouth Brethren won permission to hold meetings in a public auditorium in La Corona, and Billy Graham associate Fernando Vangioni drew overflow crowds to a church crusade in Barcelona. The Wheaton College Men’s Glee Club recently performed in Spain and at the Sports Palace in Lisbon, Portugal.

A group at non-denominational Church of the Savior, Washington, D. C., is helping establish Dag Hammarskjold College in Columbia, Maryland. Target date for opening the internationally-attuned, non-sectarian school is September, 1970.

The Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore, is holding its first workshop for musicians in non-liturgical churches July 15–19.

Wheaton College, Illinois, recently added 110 original letters and a set of Oxford University lecture notes to its C. S. Lewis Collection, said to be the most complete one in existence.

A poll of most of the unmarried undergraduate women at Oberlin College, Ohio, disclosed that 40 per cent had engaged in sexual relations, one out of thirteen had become pregnant, and more than four-fifths of these pregnancies had been terminated by abortion. Most of those polled wanted the college to supply birth-control information.

Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, and a man named Marshall instead of Fry. These figures predominated in key actions by the 3.3-million-member Lutheran Church in America during biennial sessions in Atlanta last month.

As expected (see June 21 issue, page 43), the nearly 700 delegates elected Illinois Synod President Robert J. Marshall, 49, to fill the unexpired term of the late Franklin Clark Fry, renowned LCA president who died June 6.

Obviously swayed by references to Luther’s rationale of “just” wars, they put the LCA on record as the first Lutheran denomination to recognize selective objection to a “particular” war deemed by “conscience” to be unjust.

Delegates also voted, after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.’s first major address since the death of his son, to launch a two-year, $6.5 million “appeal for emergency needs,” and to gear LCA priorities during this period to a “Justice and Social Change—The Urban Crisis” theme. They also handed King a $10,000 check from LCA “undesignated” funds for a “Poor People’s Development Fund” set up in memory of his son.

A vote for Marshall was, in effect, a vote for keeping the LCA Fry-oriented. A former professor at what is now the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Marshall mirrors Fry in voice and views (see box, next page). He was chosen on the third ballot from a field of sixty-three candidates. His nearest competitor was President Carl Segar-hammar of the Pacific Southwest Synod, who received only seventy-seven votes. Fry’s former assistant, Dr. George F. Harkins, was elected secretary—the number-two LCA post—to replace retiring Malvin H. Lundeen, who chaired the convention.

Fry had correctly predicted that selective conscientious objection would be the meeting’s most controversial issue.

The statement, drafted by the Board of Social Ministry, was guided past opposition and attempts at dilution by Dr. George W. Forell, religion teacher at the University of Iowa.

“This is really an anti-Viet Nam war proposal that allies us with Spock and the draft-card burners,” criticized Executive Council member Bernhard W. LeVander. Others warned that it endorsed anarchy. Not so, argued theologian Martin J. Heinecken of Philadelphia. It was, he said, merely a matter of “being true to our historic Lutheran position.” He and others held that the Luther-heralded validity of “just” wars presupposed the possibility of “unjust” wars, thereby imposing the necessity for individuals to make “ethical decisions” about participation. The document finally passed 426–146.

It affirms, in part, that the selective conscientious objector “is acting in harmony with Lutheran teaching,” and that he “ought to be granted exemption from military duty,” but that—pending a change in laws—he should “willingly” accept legal “penalties” for his decision. It further suggests that all C.O.’s “should be afforded equal treatment before the law, whether the basis of their stand is specifically religious or not.”

Social-ministry officials say the paper was designed to “have a functional purpose with draft boards” when selective C.O.’s register.

Controversy over finances arose when two Philadelphia clerics proposed a one-year campaign to raise $8 million for an LCA urban-crisis fund. Their appeal followed appearances of King and Atlanta Police Chief Herbert T. Jenkins, a member of the Kerner Commission. Delegates, including Marshall, voted 389–250 for a substitute measure that reduced the figure to $6.5 million and tied it more closely to the sagging LCA budget. (Treasurer Carl M. Anderson warned that apportionment receipts for the past few years were running more than 15 per cent behind quotas.) Spokesmen pointed to an additional $3.75 million already budgeted toward 1969 urban-crisis projects, including $200,000 for “community organizations.”

Delegates approved a $31.6 million budget for 1969 and $32.5 million for 1970.

In his speech, King said he would have no comments on his son’s assassination until the “plot” and “big money interests” that “are behind” the deaths of his son and the Kennedy brothers are exposed.

A statement on “The Church and Social Welfare” was adopted after deletion of a sentence that some interpreted as supporting a guaranteed annual income. Delegates also approved a paper on “Religious Liberty in the United States” that affirmed, among other things, the right of a person “to worship in accordance with the faith and ritual of his group, even in ways which appear curious or offensive to others, so long as the methods used are not legally defined as dangerous.…” Berkeley sociologist Charles Y. Glock, an LCA member, was among the architects.

The LCA also:

• Endorsed gun-control legislation minutes before the convention closed.

• Scrapped the faltering Luther League, official denomination youth program, in favor of a new Youth Commission;

• Heard pleas for tighter Lutheran unity from: Dr. C. Thomas Spitz, Jr., head of the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A.; Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, president of both the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran World Federation; and Dr. Oliver R. Harms, president of the Missouri Synod.

Church of the Nazarene. Delegates to last month’s assembly in Kansas City faced problems of a denomination that, though not old, shows increasing signs of middle age.

One concern for the sixty-year-old church is institutionalism. What was once a simple, evangelistic group now has burgeoning colleges at home and increasing educational and medical work in forty-eight foreign fields.

The Board of General Superintendents wants to keep evangelism in the primary place. In the state-of-the-church message, General Superintendent V. H. Lewis, who with two other incumbents was reelected by a wide margin, warned that colleges should “proceed carefully” and keep close ties with the denomination. Financial commitments, he said, should be held “within manageable limits.”

Two new junior colleges, voted by the 1964 assembly, will open this fall, in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and Olathe, Kansas. A Bible college opened last September in Colorado Springs. With these additions, the church now maintains eight liberal-arts colleges, the Bible school, and a seminary. Financing the colleges within boundaries outlined by the church is an increasingly severe test for college administrators.

While financial needs seem great, the nearly 500,000 Nazarenes contributed $23.7 million during the last four years. During 1967, per-capita giving went over $190, the highest among denominations of 100,000 members or more.

Among the goals not reached was establishment of 500 new churches. The denomination started scarcely half that number, and the mark for the 1968–72 term was reduced to 400. Some leaders think the church is too largely a denomination of small congregations. Of nearly 5,000 churches, about half have fewer than fifty members. New churches should not be organized, said retiring Superintendent H. C. Benner, at the risk of “weakening existing ones.”

The world-missions program is to undergo a serious study during the next year. Here again, institutions will be scrutinized. Dr. Howard Hamlin, a missionary surgeon in charge of a South African hospital, noted that only four applicants were available last year for forty-four requests for preachers on Nazarene mission fields.

Besides electing three new general superintendents (see July 5 issue, page 39), delegates chose a new seminary president. President William Greathouse of Trevecca Nazarene College was named to succeed the Rev. Eugene Stowe—one of the new general superintendents—as head of Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City.

In other action the assembly:

• Supported “the equal opportunity, according to one’s ability, to earn a living free from any job or economic discrimination”;

Successor To Fry

Similarities in speech and ideology link Dr. Robert J. Marshall, new president of the Lutheran Church in America (see page 50), to his late predecessor, Franklin Clark Fry, grand patriarch of the LCA. One notable difference: Marshall, a youngish 40, is more reserved.

In Fry-like nasal tones (like his predecessor he suffers from sinusitis) Marshall announced he would “attempt to tread the path Dr. Fry trod so well.”

Marshall told CHRISTIANITY TODAY his views theologically are “biblical, evangelical, and Lutheran.” Billy Graham’s positions, he affirmed, are “not far from what I accept wholeheartedly.”

As for evangelism: “I agree that our primary task is to reach mankind for Christ, but personal evangelism cannot be divorced from community needs, from social aspects of the Gospel.”

“On no major issue” does he differ from Fry, he says.

Like Fry, he is “happy” over observer-consultant status in the Consultation on Church Union via the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A., but he shares Fry’s frown on full participation in COCU as “confusing, not clarifying, to us.” He is “more interested” in the pursuit of unity with other Lutheran groups, especially the Missouri Synod, with whom Fry-initiated “informal” doctrinal discussions are under way.

Educated at Wittenberg College and Chicago Lutheran Seminary, Marshall was a pastor and an Old Testament professor before his election to the Illinois Synod presidency in 1962.

He sees as priorities for LCA involvement: the nation’s “emergency,” Lutheran unity, youth and education, and the international “crisis.”

“This,” he Fry-fashioned in response to his election, “is no time to trip lightly into the presidency.”

• Set up a fund to “aid existing churches and establish new churches in our cities that are faced with interracial ministries”;

• Voted to dissolve the separate Negro Gulf Central District;

• Voted down a move to make church membership legal for persons who were divorced and remarried persons on other than “scriptural grounds”;

• Rejected the idea of giving ministers a call to a pastorate with an indefinite time limit;

• Decided to join the 100-year-old National Holiness Association.

Christian Reformed Church. In its first official pronouncement on modern racism, the church synod went all the way, Almost. The historic pronouncement instructed the 275,000 members and denominational boards that “full Christian fellowship and privilege” must be granted to any Christian regardless of race or color, on pain of excommunication.

“Fear of persecution or of disadvantage to self or our institutions,” declared the 144 delegates, “does not warrant denial of full Christian fellowship and privilege in the church or in related organizations, such as Christian colleges and schools, institutions of mercy and recreational associations.” The synod warned that members who advocate such denial “must be reckoned as disobedient to Christ” and be dealt with by church discipline, which, if resisted, ends in excommunication.

Although many delegates observed that this was not a full statement on race, it was a hard-hitting one and was adopted with little dissent. The exclusion of Negro Christian children by a CRC school in Chicago was what brought the issue before the synod.

Meeting in Grand Rapids last month under the presidency of the Rev. John C. Verbrugge, delegates also heard vigorous opposition to the 1967 synod’s refusal to issue restrictive theological pronouncements on God’s love in Christ for all men. Many delegates insisted that the dissent was an attempt to reopen a case that indirectly affected Harold Dekker, professor of missions at Calvin Seminary. For three days the case moved back and forth like a weaver’s shuttle, from committee to floor to committee. After declaring that God’s love, and Christ’s death, for all men must not be presented in such a way as to deny other basic Reformed doctrinal tenets, delegates unanimously rejected the attempt to reopen the 1967 case.

In a tense atmosphere, heightened by confusion and contradictory reports, the synod became an official participant in the Theological College of Northern Nigeria. Christian Reformed minister Harry R. Boer has been the principal of the union seminary since its founding. Fear that the Africans would not be “soundly Reformed” had withheld official sanction from CRC’s many years of cooperation with the seminary.

In a historic action, the synod withdrew its endorsement of the Conclusions of Utrecht, formulated in the Netherlands and adopted by the CRC in 1908 to protect its unity by, among other doctrinal matters, granting official toleration to supralapsarians. The endorsement was withdrawn to further the union efforts of the denomination’s Canadian congregations with other churches in Canada.

For the first time within the memory of most delegates, the synod reduced its budget for Calvin College—by one dollar.

Evangelical Free Church of America. President Arnold T. Olson proposed a 1971 Chicago conference on theology, sponsored jointly with the Evangelical Covenant Church, in his report to the annual meeting at Trinity College and Divinity School in Illinois. Olson said the meeting would invite leaders from free churches in seventeen European nations. Olson also proposed a summer study session on race and inner-city problems, to be sponsored by several evangelical denominations.

At the organizational meeting for a Free Church Laymen’s Fellowship, high-school principal John C. Swanson of Rockford, Illinois, said, “Today’s youth feels that the organized church has failed to take a stand and commit its human and material resources in support of many humanitarian movements which are aimed at alleviating the social evils of our day. While we have issued vociferous denouncements of liquor and sex, we have been strangely silent concerning civil rights, poverty, prejudice, materialism, and bigotry.”

Luke Saba, 25, who heads Free Church youth work in the northwest Congo, told delegates of a meeting of 4,000 people at Gemena where 2,000 made professions of faith in Christ.

Olson said Free Church membership now stands at 54,589.

The Wesleyan Church. More than 4,000 Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Methodist members and friends turned out in Anderson, Indiana, June 26 to witness the first major conservative Wesleyan union in decades. And there were signs of further ecumenicity among holiness groups.

Besides creating a new church with a membership of 122,000 and a constituency (based on Sunday-school enrollment) of 300,000, delegates moved far beyond committee recommendations. They resoundingly adopted a floor proposal for preparation of a basis of merger with the Free Methodist Church—if possible, before next summer’s Free Methodist conference. Such a merged church would have a constituency approaching half a million.

If there was doubt about how widespread merger sentiment was, Free Methodist Bishop Myron Boyd dispelled it when he spoke to six thousand of the new Wesleyans on Sunday. “I’m thrilled,” he said. “Now I’ve got to get our people on the move so we’ll be ready for you.”

Officials were quick, however, to disavow any interest in entering America’s more liberal, mainstream ecumenical movement. “This is union among people who already agree on doctrine,” they said.

The conference also approved:

• A world plan with gradual establishment of completely indigenous regional general conferences.

• A quadrennial program of evangelism and—in a spontaneous move from the floor—selection of a full time evangelism director.

• Procedures through which ministers expelled for immorality can be restored, upon repentance, to the ministry. “Let’s not be harder than God is,” urged one international delegate after hours of hot debate. The conference agreed by a 6 to 1 vote.

The conference gave no time to social action. Retiring General Superintendent Harold Sheets did pray once that God would help the new church to “make an impact on the ghettos, on the inner cities, on the ethnic struggles.” But such matters were not mentioned on the conference floor.

American Baptist Association. Representatives of the 731,000-member group, meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas, passed a resolution against “riotous civil demonstrations, draft card burning, and flag desecrations.” In the same spirit, President Martin Canavan of Dominguez, California, condemned “unqualifiedly” any Baptist participation in picketing or street demonstrations. The proper Christian demonstration, he said, is in “manner of living.” He believes ministers “should either get back to preaching and upholding the doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible or resign.”

Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The stifling of dissent denies “the present activity of the Holy Spirit and seems to make the ideas of some, not the Scriptures, the yardstick of faith,” said the Rev. T. V. Warnick of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He told he General Assembly meeting in Oklahoma City that “real prophets have a poor record of being men-pleasers.” Later a resolution said none of the denomination’s 88,000 members could join “riotous street demonstrations” in the name of the Church. The Rev. Loyce Estes of Austin, Texas, was elected moderator.

Church of the Brethren. Although there was opposition, the church administrative board reaffirmed staff and financial support of the Poor People’s Campaign at the annual conference in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. A statement asked for welfare reform with a “floor of support” for all citizens.

Despite the debut of a Brethren lobby to get the church into the Consultation on Church Union, delegates voted 587–349 not to review a previous decision against COCU. The church voted full support for the National Council of Churches, though a minority report had shown interest in sending observers to the National Association of Evangelicals.

Moderator M. Guy West of York, Pennsylvania, said the denomination faces internal conflict over COCU, church-council membership, the Viet Nam war, and efforts for social justice.

The 190,000-member pacifist church also urged state and national firearms control and cited “the need for ultimate total disarmament of the citizenry and discontinuance of arms-bearing in normal police activity.”

A PATH STILL OVERGROWN

Outside the upper echelons of both churches, the one thing lacking in Church of England and Methodist circles at present is enthusiasm about the merger proposals (see Current Religious Thought, page 56).

No one who travels around England and attends local places of worship on Sundays would suspect that this should have been one of the most exciting years in English church life since the Reformation. The grass that has grown long on the village path between church and chapel has, indeed, been little disturbed in the five and one-half years since publication of the initial Anglican-Methodist report.

Meanwhile, top-level discussers have exercised their wits in controversial divinity and produced answers to questions that people have not been asking, and that in many cases they can as little understand as the scuffle over a diphthong at Nicea in 325.

Until recently, much of the opposition came from Methodist dissentients, whose advertising was refused by the Methodist Recorder, a self-styled “completely independent newspaper” that has all along been on the side of the unionists.

Two recent developments, however, have concerned Anglican groups between whom normally there is a great gulf fixed. In this case both evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, while far from thinking alike, find themselves united in opposition to the present scheme of union with the Methodists.

Leading what he calls the Catholic wing, Bishop Graham Leonard of Willesden alleged that the project was “splitting the Church of England from top to bottom.” He cited instances of disquiet among bishops and clergy, and severely criticized the Services of Reconciliation. “Many of us,” he said, “cannot see how, with a clean conscience, we can take part in prayers to God which are deliberately disingenuous. This is not a matter of a fine point of theology—it is a matter of common honesty.”

Meanwhile, fifty-two evangelicals sent an open letter to the archbishops and bishops, expressing deep misgivings about the present proposals. Approving the principle of “unity of the visible church,” and welcoming suggested new doctrinal amendments to the scheme, they too see the Services of Reconciliation as a major obstacle. As a means of establishing full communion (“the acceptance of each Church’s ministers as well as communicants by the other”), these are based, say the signatories, on episcopal exclusiveness, which is biblically indefensible.

They point out that the present scheme is bound to divide the ministry in both churches; they “cannot accept that such disunion is a fit price to pay for the union of majorities”; and they feel that episcopal exclusiveness as a basis for full communion cannot be applied to future unions.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Ten American vice-presidents have moved up to the White House, and November will probably see election of an eleventh. Political observers are all but convinced that the contest will be between Richard M. Nixon, who was vice-president from 1953 until 1961, and Hubert H. Humphrey, who has held the office since 1965.

Often overlooked in the cataclysmic events of the 1968 political campaign has been the phenomenal Nixon comeback. Six years ago he was politically dead. Now he seems to have the inside track for nomination by the Republican National Convention, which begins in Miami Beach August 5. And he probably has at least an even chance of being elected President.

Nixon has been considered a serious contender for only a few months. Even when he announced his candidacy at the end of January, few gave him much of a chance.

Nixon is not known to be particularly religious, but he has been a close friend of evangelist Billy Graham for two decades. It was Graham, apparently, who more than anyone else persuaded him to run this year, back when hopes were still very dim.

The crucial decision was made during the winter. Nixon was spending a few days alone in Florida and put in an urgent call to Graham to join him. The evangelist, though ill, obliged, and the two spent long hours reading the Bible together, praying, and discussing the future as they walked the sandy ocean beach. At that time Graham doubted that Nixon could win but urged him to run anyway.

When Nixon disclosed his decision, he wired Graham that the evangelist’s influence had been the deciding factor. Nixon has been publicly quoted as saying, “Billy Graham had a great deal to do with that decision.”

A sequel to the episode was the part Graham played in bringing together Nixon and U. S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon. Hatfield too is a friend of Graham, and he participated in the evangelist’s May crusade in Portland. But he has been a dove on Viet Nam, a position in which neither Graham nor Nixon finds much comfort. After talking with Nixon, however, Hatfield endorsed him, asserting that, given the political realities of the day, the options on Viet Nam would be wider with Nixon as President than with Humphrey. Graham claims Nixon and Hatfield are not nearly so far apart on Viet Nam as some think.

The most immediate effect of Hatfield’s endorsement of Nixon was to raise his own chances for the number-two spot on the Republican ticket. Hatfield, former governor of Oregon and an outspoken evangelical, is generally considered to have a bright political future. Other GOP vice-presidential possibilities are New York Mayor John Lindsay, an Episcopalian, and U. S. Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, a Christian Scientist.

Graham’s role as adviser to national leaders is not confined to Republican ranks. He is one of the world’s most admired men, and his counsel is sought by many. He has known Hubert Humphrey since 1945 and has spent a number of evenings in the White House with President Johnson. On Sunday morning, June 9, the day after the Kennedy funeral, Graham held a private service for the first family in the White House.

New Supreme Court Lineup

With U. S. Senate confirmation, 58-year-old Abe Fortas will become the first Jewish Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. To fill Fortas’s seat as an associate justice, President Johnson is nominating Homer Thornberry, 59, a Methodist and former Texas congressman who is a U. S. circuit judge.

Retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren, 77, listed his religious affiliation as “Protestant,” and had been a Baptist.

The continuing associate justices are:

Hugo L. Black, 82, oldest and longest-serving member, a Baptist.

William O. Douglas and John Marshall Harlan, both 69-year-old Presbyterians.

William J. Brennan, Jr., 62, the high court’s only Roman Catholic.

Potter Stewart, 53, Byron R. White, 51, and Thurgood Marshall, 60, the three most recent appointees next to Fortas, all Episcopalians. Marshall is the first Negro to sit on the Supreme Court.

There has been considerable speculation this year that Graham would take a more active role in politics and perhaps even run himself. The evangelist has flatly denied any intention of doing so and says he will not endorse any candidate as such. He has reserved judgment for the time being, however, on whether to divulge his own personal voting choice.

In an article for Graham’s Decision magazine in November, 1962—the month he lost the election for governor of California—Nixon told of attending a Los Angeles meeting of evangelist Paul Rader during Nixon’s first year in high school. “We joined hundreds of others that night in making our personal commitments to Christ and Christian service,” he recalled.

Nixon told about his activities as a youth in a small congregation of the Society of Friends (Quakers). He attended local Whittier College, operated by the Quakers, but unlike most members of this denomination, he is not a conscientious objector. During his years in Washington, D. C., Nixon at first attended Westmoreland Congregational Church, but when he bought another house he switched to Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church, the “national” church of Methodism.

Of the candidates, Nixon has been the most outspoken in support of changing the First Amendment to allow religious exercises and non-sectarian prayer in public schools. He favors construction aid and tax credits in support of church-related colleges.

New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, Nixon’s main challenger, had been much more active in getting government aid for parochial schools. In 1965 he won a national award for these efforts from Citizens for Educational Freedom, a predominantly Roman Catholic school-aid lobby. Last year he endorsed elimination of the ban on chuch-school aid in a new state constitution, which lost at the polls.

An issue for many religiously sensitive voters is Rockefeller’s 1962 divorce after thirty-two years of marriage, and his remarriage the next year. The chairman of the “Rockefeller for President” committee is industrialist J. Irwin Miller, a former president of the National Council of Churches. The governor is a member of the Rockefeller family church Riverside Church in New York City, which is affiliated with the American Baptist Convention and the United Church of Christ.

A Republican dark horse is California Governor Ronald Reagan, who belongs to the Hollywood—Beverly Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) but usually attends Bel Air Presbyterian Church and is close to its pastor, well-known evangelical Donn Moomaw. In a May interview for Christian Life, Reagan tells of seeking God’s will in his various political decisions. The article did not mention that, like Rockefeller, Reagan is a divorcee. His eight-year marriage to actress Jane Wyman ended in 1948; they had two children.

When the Democratic Party assembles in Chicago August 26, amid lingering threats of tie-ups by black militants, the choice will be between Minnesotans Hubert H. Humphrey and Eugene J. McCarthy.

Vice-President Humphrey, who has operated in the shadows of President Johnson’s Viet Nam policy, is opposed by the vocal group of anti-war clergymen, who look to Senator McCarthy. Humphrey’s own pastor, the Rev. Richard Griffis, 33, of First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in Minneapolis, has been disturbed about U. S. war policy for several years and has discussed his views with the Vice-President.

In a May visit to Kent State University, Ohio, Humphrey was subjected to a walkout in protest against the war. When a Negro student who remained said he had lost faith in America, the Vice-President replied, “The only real reason I want to run for president is to erase from your spirit the feeling you have.… I do not generally parade my religious convictions, but the whole basic reason for democracy—the whole moral justification for democracy—is man and his relationship to his God.”

Humphrey urged church social involvement in an address to the December, 1966, General Assembly of the National Council of Churches. Writing for an NCC publication three months ago, Humphrey said each church body should “take its stand” on the “battlefields of civic, state, nation, and international issues.” Although he said he respects those who think the churches are already overcommitted to material matters, he believes “living Christianity requires the Church to be in the vanguard for human progress.”

Humphrey’s concerns for church action generally parallel the liberal causes that have characterized his political career. Last year, he said at Southern Baptist Furman University that federal aid to Church colleges does not violate church-state separation. Americans United reports Humphrey has indicated he might appoint a Roman Catholic layman as ambassador to the Vatican—once a hot church-state issue but now rarely advocated.

With the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Senator McCarthy is the only Roman Catholic in the presidential field. At one time McCarthy considered a career as a clergyman and spent almost a full year in a Benedictine monastery. But he went into college teaching instead, first at the Benedictines’ St. John’s University in Minnesota, then at the College of St. Thomas, operated by the Archdiocese of St. Paul.

Pollster Elmo Roper uses McCarthy’s performance in the Wisconsin primary to belittle the importance of the religious bloc vote. McCarthy got 57 per cent of the Democratic primary votes in the predominantly Protestant state. But in Milwaukee, which has a Catholic majority, he drew only 43 per cent.

McCarthy, like Humphrey, favors aid to church schools on the child-benefit theory, but also advocates judicial review to test constitutionality of the practice. Last year, McCarthy and Cardinal Spellman were the headliners at a Citizens for Educational Freedom rally in support of the proposed New York constitution, with its parochial-school aid provisions. In the U. S. Senate, McCarthy voted against the Dirksen school-prayer amendment.

On birth control, McCarthy says “my religious beliefs would not affect my administration of such programs.” He favors government distribution of birth-control information and devices to needy mothers who request it.

CANADA’S TRUDEAUMANIA

Canadians have coined a word for it: Trudeaumania. New Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 48, has the same effect on followers as Frank Sinatra and the Beatles in their times of glory. The adoring crowds he attracts give the feeling they would tear him apart if they could.

The Liberals’ Trudeau is the exact opposite of the leader of the Progressive Conservatives, the losing party in last month’s national election. Robert Stanfield, 54, staid, plodding, slow speaking, represents the typical conservative image of Canadian politicians. He is a member of the Anglican Church, the nation’s long-established status denomination. His family fortune was made in underwear. He fought the campaign on issues in the old political style, while Trudeau promised nothing.

After winning a powerful majority. Trudeau expressed a desire to overhaul Parliament. But much more is expected of this dashing Roman Catholic bachelor who stands on his head, swims, dives, skis, Twists, drives fast sports cars for relaxation, and kisses pretty female strangers on the cheek.

While Minister of Justice, Trudeau proposed a bill to legalize homosexual relations, and abortion in some cases. Parliamentary opposition to these ideas will now be weaker.

A Quebec group, Pilgrims of Michael the Archangel, violently attacked Trudeau over this bill and identified him with Communism, anti-clericalism, perversion, and subversion.

The night before the election, Trudeau was on the reviewing stand for a St. John the Baptist Day parade in Montreal, a revelrous time for French Quebec. During the parade ugly demonstrations broke out and gasoline-filled bottles were tossed at Trudeau, who refused to leave the platform. Many police and rioters were injured and hundreds were arrested in one of the worst riots in Montreal history.

The instigators were Separatists, who want Quebec to be a separate nation and accuse Trudeau of selling out by becoming Anglicanized.

Another campaign issue was the revelation that progressive Cardinal Leger had once turned down Trudeau for a teaching post at the University of Montreal for “alleged pro-Communist opinions.” Former university Governor Donalien Marion, recalling the incident, said Trudeau “obviously was not a Communist. He was just a millionaire who felt that the interests of workers could be protected better.”

Another attack on Trudeau was a twenty-four-page glossy pamphlet put out by the McIntire-aligned Canadian Council of Evangelical Protestant Churches. It carried sections on Communism in Canada, including its alleged inroads into Catholicism, and charged that Trudeau had once been refused entry to the United States and had led a Communist delegation to a Peking meeting.

Council President Harold Slade of Toronto’s Jarvis Street Baptist Church said the pamphlet was written by W. J. Ewin, who he thought was a Baptist minister, and was “a mere expression of our liberty for freedom of speech.”

But acting Justice Minister Donald S. Macdonald attacked the pamphlet and urged “all decent Canadians” to expose producers of hate literature: “The people behind this hate literature are diseased—mentally diseased—and the disease is as virulent as any physical sickness.…”

The Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec and the Canadian Council of Churches disclaimed any connection with the affair. The Rev. Leslie K. Tarr, administrator of Central Baptist Seminary, who has written for Slade’s church paper, wrote to Trudeau: “That such literature should claim the sanction of the Christian Gospel is abominable.”

After the election, preacher Tommy Douglas, New Democratic Party leader who lost his own seat, said Trudeau’s campaign was an appeal to mindlessness.

Little has been said of Trudeau’s religious views. He was once immensely impressed by a visit with the leader of the Parsi Zoroastrian sect in Bombay. He has said: “I don’t like religions which make people do things because the commandments say to do them.” He said that Christ’s basic precept was to love one another and that religion should be an inner thing commanding people to act.

AUBREY WICE

COFFIN GUILTY

Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., 43, may be forced to trade his campus office for a federal prison cell.

Judge Francis J. W. Ford was scheduled to impose the sentence, which could be as much as five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Coffin and three others, including baby doctor Benjamin Spock, were convicted in Boston last month of “conspiracy” to “counsel, aid, and abet” men to violate draft laws.

The four said they would appeal their case in their avowed efforts to test “the constitutionality of the draft law and the legality of the Viet Nam war.” Ford, insisting that the “conspiracy” indictment alone was “the crucial issue,” refused to admit these topics into the month-long trial.

Yale President Kingman Brewster was not available for comment on what effect the outcome will have on Coffin’s job. The school recently reappointed the cleric on a wait-and-see basis, pending the court’s decision. Brewster, while “disagreeing” with his chaplain on the draft and even “deploring” his urging of Yale undergraduates to turn in their draft cards, has nevertheless been sitting in Coffin’s corner, but board members may have second thoughts.

In an open bid for arrest (in order to precipitate a “moral, legal confrontation” with the government), Coffin participated in numerous anti-draft protests, including one at Boston’s Arlington Street (Unitarian-Universalist) Church October 16. Following his impassioned plea there for a “reformation of the conscience,” sixty-seven college students burned their draft cards in the flame of an altar candle, and another 214 handed their cards to him for delivery to the Justice Department in Washington.

REVIEWING THE EUROPEAN RIOTS

In their first statement after the May–June riots—and before President De Gaulle’s smashing election victory—the Roman Catholic hierarchy of France criticized “blind and brutal violence” and commended the ideals of the student and labor strikers. “From now on,” they said, “the exercise of authority requires more dialogue and access to more responsibility for all.” They asked “renunciation of excessive profits” and raising of low salaries.

In West Berlin, a special synod of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg upheld 41 to 32 their executives’ intervention in sympathy with recent student protests. Bishop Kurt Scharf said the Church should be “right in the center of distress and misery.” But Dean Heinrich Grüber said it is “impossible” to talk with the “intolerant and biased” student movement in Germany.

‘TWO A PENNY’

A unique Christian film. That’s Two A Penny, the latest and definitely the best release yet from the studios of Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures. The film began a two-month exclusive engagement at London’s Prince Charles Cinema with a June 20 premiere. Britain-wide release is due this summer.

Unique. Because it portrays believable people searching for convincing answers to contemporary problems. And because at last we have a Christian film that is no anemic version of an evangelical fairy tale.

Unique too because the hero, Jamie Hopkins (played by Cliff Richard), is actually seen and heard relishing easy money, strong drink, stronger language, and miniskirted girls. And at the close of the ninety-eight-minute feature there is no overnight dramatic transformation of character; merely a sincere willingness on his part to admit that God might exist and might deserve his love and discipleship. “God, if you’re real,” he prays, “if you’re there at all, show me”—convincing (though some will say inadequate) spiritual progress from his defiant sentiments expressed a few days earlier: “If you want me, God, you’ve got to stand in line like everyone else.”

Richard, one of Britain’s top pop singing stars, excels in the role of an art student and amateur drug-runner. Screen newcomer Ann Holloway, though very much second fiddle to Richard, manages to portray realistically the concern of Carol, a fresh convert, for her unsaved boyfriend. (Most Christian films would have had her break ties with Jamie on the night of conversion.)

Two A Penny is magnificent in photography, direction, camera effects, and music (Richard sings four songs—he wrote either words or music for three of them), all of which can stand judgment by top commercial standards.

At times the story line is thin, the dialogue a trifle stilted, but the hypnotic power of the visual presentation makes these failings hardly noticeable.

There are more noticeable faults: one very bad cut between scenes, an unlikely conversation between an enthusiastic vicar and the bewildered and recently converted Carol, and a grossly overacted scene on top of a bus. But these are small blemishes when set beside the overall beauty of the production.

A unique film. A welcome sign that at last evangelicals are becoming conscious of the world as it is and not merely of the world as they would like it to be. No clear-cut answers, no dogmatic preaching (even Billy Graham’s Earls Court sequence is exceptionally brief), and no converted-so-they-lived-happily-ever-after ending.

Undoubtedly, a triumph.

DAVID COOMES

Fletcher’S Euphoria

The Situation Ethics Debate, edited by Harvey Cox (Westminster, 1968, 285 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by Merville O. Vincent, assistant medical superintendent, Homewood Sanitarium, Guelph, Ontario.

A new law I give unto you: A best seller must have a follow-up. So now The Situation Ethics Debate follows on the heels of The Secular City Debate and The Honest to God Debate. Since there are fifty-six participants, it is impossible to do justice to all the contributions; but the shortest, from “Anonymous in Maine,” can be given in toto: “You Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”

The book consists of a short introductory preview by Harvey Cox, a series of brief, pungent, sometimes cogent responses to Joseph Fletcher, thirteen reviews from a broad spectrum of Christendom, fourteen scholarly essays on situation ethics, and finally a “sharp reply from Joseph Fletcher,” who concurs with some of the analysis of problems within his system but categorically rejects and rarely interacts with the views of those who reject his central thesis of “accentuate the positive (love) and eliminate the negative (every universal law except love).”

Fletcher sees all ethical decisions in shades of gray. However, he dogmatically states that “a codeless love is the only alternative to a loveless code.” This is not my own experience in family life, and I find such an absolute difficult to accept. Fletcher makes no distinction between “legalism” and the grounding of some laws in love. As Wilford Cross states, “no effort is made, really, to distinguish between the use of law as guidelines and the imposition of legalistic requirements in morality.”

Fletcher has other absolutes besides love. “All isms are out. In the end there is nothing but process.” He claims that valid negative universal prohibitions do not exist: “We cannot absolutize both love and law, and the New Testament makes it perfectly clear which one to choose.” (What then does Christ mean by, “If you love me, keep my commandments”?) Only the end justifies the means.

Despite these absolutes, Fletcher approvingly quotes the warning of Eric Hoffer that “the fanatic absolutizes his beliefs and his principles.” He obviously does not have insight into his own pre-suppositions and conclusions. The presence of this irrational, subjective element even in a scholar of Fletcher’s stature makes it clear that a few absolutes are consistent with a loving God’s relationship to a fallen race.

All contributors concur on the centrality of the ethical dimension of the Christian life. All accept love as the basic principle of Christian ethics.

A number of their criticisms of situation ethics were not adequately answered:

1. Love and law are not essential opposites. Paul Ramsey states, “The fact that nothing other than agape makes a thing right or wrong does not mean that nothing is right or wrong.”

2. Neither “love” nor “situation” is adequately defined. As James Gustafson colorfully puts it, “ ‘love,’ like ‘situation,’ is a word that runs through Fletcher’s book like a greased-pig. It refers to everything he wants it to refer to.”

3. The irrational element in man is not recognized. John Crane notes that “any man who knows himself to any important degree, any man who freely admits and accepts his limitations, knows all too well that he has a marvelous capacity to deceive himself and an ingenious ability to find sure, certain reasons for doing whatever he impulsively wishes to do.”

4. The significance and power of sin in fallen mankind is minimized.

5. In an imperfect world, we are sometimes presented with various choices, none of which represents what perfect love would demand. But we then make a choice and, as Norman Langford says, “bring our decisions to Christ that he might cover them afresh with his forgiveness.” The situationist sees the lesser evil as a positive good; this is related to his minimal emphasis on repentance, forgiveness, and the grace of God. Gustafson claims that “Fletcher seems to want an ethic that omits any possibility of a bad conscience.” Harmon Smith notes, “Forgiveness permits us to live without the choices we would have preferred but didn’t have. But it is precisely this quality of the moral life that one misses in the situationist’s baptism of existential necessity with the waters of normative relativism.”

6. The Bible authoritatively states principles of Christian ethics. The difference between the old morality and the new morality is basically theological.

I found the book interesting and informative. The essays come from a wide spectrum within both the old and the new morality. Some articles pleased me, some annoyed me. These experiences probably are worthwhile for a man struggling to “come of age”! I was fascinated by the varying backgrounds of those with whom I found myself in quite firm agreement, such as Richard McCormick (Roman Catholic, Jesuit), John C. Bennett (Baptist), John Crane (Unitarian), Robert Fitch (United Church of Christ), Wilford Cross (Anglican), and Charles Curran (Roman Catholic). I am led to think that there must indeed be some sheep in wolves’ clothing!

Interestingly enough, the two portions of the book that seemed weakest to me were the opening section by Cox and the closing section by Fletcher.

The Reality Of Satan

Jesus and the Power of Satan, by James Kallas (Westminster, 1968, 215 pp., $6), is reviewed by Merrill F. Unger, emeritus professor of Semitics and Old Testament, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

James Kallas, chairman of the Division of Theology and Philosophy at California Lutheran College, has rendered a valuable service to critical study of the Gospels in demonstrating the futility of scholars’ attempts to remove the concept of Satan and demons from the narratives of the life of Jesus. Dr. Kallas shows not only that Jesus shared the conviction of the power and reality of the demonic with his contemporaries but also that this motif dominates the Synoptic narratives, and that apart from this they cannot be understood.

This study represents a healthy reaction against the naïve view that in a scientific and technological age one can no longer believe in evil supernaturalism, and that Synoptic references to Satan and demons are examples of antiquated thought patterns that must be rendered in modern scientifically acceptable terminology. Kallas shows the fallacy of this widespread desire to “demythologize” the Gospels of the demonic, or element that is inextricably interwoven with the basic meaning of the Synoptic accounts. Our choice is only to accept the New Testament on its own terms or forfeit any correct understanding of it.

I heartily agree with Kallas’s view that the critical school of Bultmann and C. H. Dodd, in giving lip service to demonology but failing to recognize it as a real factor in the life of Jesus, has forfeited any vital interpretation of his Person and work. The result has been an emasculated theology that fails to see sinful man’s full plight and the full splendor of Christ’s redemptive work on man’s behalf.

Call Of Cod And Cry Of Men

The Seven Worlds of the Minister, by Gerald Kennedy (Harper & Row, 1968, 173 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Oral Roberts, evangelist and president, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This hard-hitting book earns a permanent place in my library of preaching tools. I identify with the frank attempt to prick and goad the reader into action. Bishop Kennedy invades the minister’s world intent on providing solutions to some of his problems.

I respond enthusiastically to Kennedy’s claim that the minister, to fulfill his role as a God-sent man, must submerge himself in an atmosphere in which God speaks to him, the Holy Spirit anoints him, and the needs of the people encompass him. I concur heartily when he writes that the minister’s preaching must bring the individual face to face with Jesus in one great moment of experience. When such preaching leads the person to say, “I understand you,” or “God gave me a healing word today,” then the minister is meeting his obligation to God and humanity.

First as a young preacher—admittedly starry-eyed with liberalism—then as pastor, evangelist, and administrator, Bishop Kennedy came to learn that he had to meet people where they were. He realized that for speaking effectively to contemporary man, liberal theological jargon was not the answer. Rather, he found that a minister needed a deep personal relationship with Christ if he was to bring the Gospel to people at the point of their actual need.

And so he expresses the two great demands made upon the minister. The first is God’s very special call to him to preach the good news of the historical event of our Lord’s coming to earth, his death and resurrection, and his ministry as Living Lord every moment. The second is the demand of the people in their lost and painful state, a demand from which the minister must not flee, however tempted. He is not to hobnob primarily with the rich or the more influential members of his congregation. He must accept the tediousness of administrative detail just as he does the glorious spontaneity of the prophetic word of revelation. In short, he must enter his world as God sets it before him and deal with it as God enables him.

Bishop Kennedy has a discerning grasp of the many-sidedness of the minister in this age of complicated people-problems. First and always the minister must be a preacher of the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this role he must learn to teach, to stimulate others with the thrust of an evangelist, to show loving pastoral concern and patience, to know God and the theology of the Word of God sufficiently so that he can present Jesus Christ as a real Person, and to enter into the sometimes boring tasks of daily administration. Above all, he must be a man, a human being, responding to God and to people, admitting mistakes but always going forward in the loving ministry of the Living Christ.

If Bishop Kennedy’s own ministry reflects the Christian confrontation he has written about in this volume, I look forward to hearing him at the earliest opportunity.

Naturalistic Theology

The Pusher and Puller, by J. Edward Carothers (Abingdon, 1968, 224 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by S. J. Schultz, professor of Bible and theology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The title is intriguing, and the author’s perspective is pertinent to twentieth-century thought—an intellectual or philosophical approach to the concept of God. Reacting to the “God is dead” theologians, who have left Christians with a religion of Jesus without God, this author asserts that “Christianity without God is unthinkable.” He goes on to offer the thoughtful clergyman and layman “some reasons for believing that the Power pushing and pulling the evolutionary process can be understood in part.”

Have you ever thought about God as the “Pusher” and “Puller” in life? If not, you will find these pages stimulating. According to Carothers, the attributes of God are apparent in natural phenomena, specifically in:

Reading For Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• Christianaity and the World of Thought, edited by Hudon T. Armerding (Moody, $5.95). An evangelical “brain beat on contemporary issues in sizteen areas of study.

• What’s New in Relgion?, by Kenneth Hamilton (Eerdmans, $3.95). An incisive explication and critique of the new theology that reveals its antisupernaturalism, humanism, and inordinate concern with newness for its own sake.

• A Leopard Tamed, by Eleanor Vandevort, with an introduction by Elisabeth Elliot (Harper & Row, $5.95). A Presbyterian missionary presents an honest account of thirteen years of service in the Sudan, highlighted by her friendship with Kuac, a small boy who became a minister.

1. the existence of life, represented in its human form as an end-seeking, value-creating man;

2. existence in the feature of life known as the rational process, by which man gains ideal ends;

3. the increasing tendency of life to develop complex forms;

4. the emergence of novelty;

5. the feature of creative synthesis.

The author must be commended for his effort to guide the thoughtful man in recognizing from the naturalistic perspective that man is not alone and that God, whom Carothers identifies as the “Pusher” and “Puller,” is the Power on whom man’s life depends. It may be difficult, however, for many to share his optimism over man’s ability “to know enough about God to govern his life accordingly,” merely from the naturalistic perspective.

Since Carothers wishes to affirm a “Christian natural theology,” he redefines such biblical terms as “heaven,” “hell,” and “love.” The Bible—which historically has been regarded as the basic source for man’s knowledge of what God requires of him—does not seem to be a live option, according to Carothers, since “the average person in our time cannot understand the Bible with its magnificent mythologies, its lofty symbolism, its roots in heritage from ages apart.”

The author regards Jesus as more than an example: “Jesus the man is Christ the Lord because in his person there was manifested all that was essential for the birth and the continuance of the church ecclesia.” However, his appraisal of Jesus is pointedly expressed in his introduction, where he says, “I wish to state as boldly as I can that Christianity is not acceptable to me if Jesus is to be worshipped.”

In a natural theology that could rightfully be called “Christian,” would not the Bible, which offers to man Jesus Christ as the One through whom God can be known, provide a more adequate source for man’s knowledge of God’s requirements than the natural resources of man’s own experience?

Fresh Breeze At Gordon

The Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Missions, Volume I, edited by Burton L. Goddard (Nelson, 1967, 743 pp., $18), is reviewed by Arthur F. Glasser, special lecturer in missions, Westminster Theological Seminary, and home director, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Significant changes are taking place in American evangelical seminaries. The appearance of this excellent encyclopedia is evidence. A decade ago, nothing would have been less likely than for a sizable segment of a seminary faculty to team up and produce something on this subject; few professors were creatively concerned with the problems encountered by missions, missionaries, and national churches overseas.

But the seminaries are now beginning to discover that they are on the front lines in the struggle of our times. The “doctors of the Church” are emerging from an ivory-towered preoccupation with theological battles and are sensing their responsibility to help the worldwide church in its mission of discipling the nations. They are finding themselves in demand; the Church needs their insights into such far-reaching issues as Church and mission, gospel proclamation and social involvement, the new encounter with resurgent ethnic religions, and the challenge of secularism and Communism. One has only to review seminary curricula of the fifties to become aware of the fresh winds blowing at such schools as Gordon, Westminster, Trinity, Dallas, and Fuller.

Particularly at Gordon Divinity School, which received a wonderful heritage of missionary concern from its illustrious founder, Adoniram Judson Gordon. Several years ago, when the Gordon faculty first began to make plans for celebrating their seventy-fifth anniversary, they could easily have chosen to publish a joint work on some major theological subject. But they didn’t. Past heritage and present concern focused attention on the worldwide mission of the Church, and faculty members got to work, even though there was no professor of missions to spark the project. What they produced is described as “a publication of the faculty of Gordon Divinity School.”

Volume I (The Agencies), the first of three projected volumes, is the first complete directory of missionary organizations throughout the world ever to appear in the English language. It describes in detail the history, ethos, and activities of more than 1,400 missionary agencies and related organizations, 1890 to 1960. Although the specific listings are limited to Protestant agencies, survey articles describe Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox missionary activities as well. Libraries, churches, missions, clergymen, students, and various secular agencies will welcome this comprehensive work.

We eagerly await the next two volumes. Volume II will be a biographical dictionary describing the men and women who have played a significant part in world evangelism since 1890. Volume III will survey the actual work accomplished throughout the world in this time and will also offer extended articles on missionary philosophies and methods, institutions, and the spread of problems.

This volume is not dull reading. Many an agency managed to tell its story in an interesting way, and as I sampled here and there I enjoyed myself greatly. But I was more impressed with the difficulties the editor and his staff surmounted—how to judge, for instance, whether Scripture Union, with its unusual pattern of administration and promotion of evangelism and Bible reading, should be included in a missions encyclopedia. (It was.)

We gratefully salute Burton L. Goddard, the editor of this three-and-a-half-pound work. More, we rejoice over what is taking place at Gordon Divinity School.

The Preacher Who Stirred London

Spurgeon: Heir of the Puritans, by Ernest W. Bacon (Eerdmans, 1968, 183 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by J. Edwin Hartill, dean, Northwestern College, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In these days when the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon are being republished and restudied, this work on his life and extraordinary influence is welcome, especially since no Spurgeon biography has been published for more than thirty years. No minister of the Word will be able to read it without having his conscience stirred and his mind sharpened. Men from all over Britain who sat under the ministry of Spurgeon found their hearts rekindled as Spurgeon challenged them to a new vision of Christ.

The author, Ernest Bacon, reveals the extent to which Spurgeon was steeped in Puritan aims, principles, preaching, and writing. His preaching strongly emphasized biblical doctrine. Among the doctrines discussed in the book are inspiration of the Word, the sovereignty of God, predestination and election, the deity of Christ, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, justification by faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, holiness, and the return of the Lord.

Bacon reappraises the well-known “Down Grade” controversy, a problem involving Baptist ministers and churches, 1887–89. He objectively relates the considerable differences over the interpretation of the facts of the controversy. Admiration for Spurgeon is renewed as one reads the great preacher’s firm statement: “I shall not cease to expose doctrinal declension whenever I see it.”

The closing paragraphs of the book continually remind the reader that Spurgeon preached Christ—Christ only, and all the time. Little wonder that hearts were warmed and melted.

This Is Where I Came In

The Coming Christ and the Coming Church and After the Council, both by Edmund Schlink (Fortress, 1968, 333 and 261 pp., $8.75 and $4.95), are reviewed by John H. Gerstner, professor of church history, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In these volumes an outstanding German Lutheran scholar, Edmund Schlink, applies himself to ecumenism in general (The Coming Christ and the Coming Church) and to Vatican Council II in particular (After the Council). The first book consists of essays written over many years on many subjects, while the second concentrates on the council in its relation to Protestantism and ecumenical dialogue. The Heidelberg professor handles his obviously vast learning easily, without letting it become cumbersome. The reader of the two works, especially the first, will find himself introduced not only to the contemporary ecumenical situation but also to the history of doctrine from New Testament to the present, by a man as active in practical affairs as he is erudite.

Schlink believes that viewing present ecclesiastical positions from their biblico-historical background enables us to appreciate or depreciate their significance. He himself tends to favor appreciation rather than depreciation: the “first step must be to understand the importance of other traditions” (by “importance” he means more than “importance”). This conviction is obvious throughout both books, but he never tells us why we should seek to appreciate rather than deplore. This may be his subtle, perhaps unconscious reintroduction of the “ecumenical actualism” (the ignoring of dogmatic differences) he censures. Is there much difference between callously disregarding differences and concentrating on them until we appreciate them? Paul’s teaching is not just “hold fast to what is good” but “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (Rom. 12:9)—though, alas, this counsel may not be as ecumenically sophisticated as Schlink’s.

This leads to the most basic ecumenical idea of all. Schlink claims no originality—in fact he traces it to Oxford, 1937—for his idea of church unity: “Our unity in Christ is not a theme for aspiration; it is an experienced fact.” I myself have no objection to this except that I do not know what it means. Does it distinguish the unity of the invisible Church in Christ from that of the visible church, whose unity is a “theme for aspiration”? If so, then I can understand it. But ecumenists object to this interpretation; first, because they suppose that a realized unity in the invisible Church alone causes zeal for visible unity to lag, and second, because it denies the reality of visible unity, which the ecumenical formula states. That is where I came in: the realized visible unity of the visible churches seems invisible to me. Again, if the unity of the Church is Christ himself (rather than the participation of his members in him), as Schlink maintains, then the distinction between Redeemer and redeemed is obliterated.

Dealing with Roman Catholicism, Schlink tends to be more “realistic.” The Second Vatican Council, at which he was a representative for all sessions, was much more ecumenically encouraging than Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos and Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis. Schlink notes with pleasure the absence of anathemas, the more biblically oriented discussions, prohibition of Roman missionary activity among younger churches of other Christian groups, a restriction of biblical inerrancy to matters of salvation(!), and the great influence of “progressives” such as Küng, de Lubac, Congar, Daniélou, and Ratzinger. Nevertheless, in the matter of church unity, the net result of these analyses is that the “ecumenism of the [council] decree is a specifically Roman ecumenism.” Still true to his basic conviction, our author concludes, probably wishfully, that even this ecumenical stance of Rome must be interpreted from a controlling center. No doubt he hopes that center will be, as he thinks it was in the early Church, Christ and not creed.

Love Those Youths

Youth and the Church, edited by Roy G. Irving and Roy B. Zuck (Moody, 1967, 442 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Charles Miller, minister of Christian education, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, Maryland.

Twenty-nine leaders of Christian education here speak from their experience in working with young people. Their articles are grouped in five parts: (1) perspective on youth education—its challenges, biblical basis, goals and standards, history; (2) the contemporary world of adolescence; (3) youth in relation to the local church; (4) youth beyond the local church—in denominational and interchurch activities, at college or in military service, at camps and conferences, in extra-church youth movements; and (5) methods and materials for working with, and counseling, young people. The chapters are accompanied by excellent bibliographies.

I found the second part to be the strongest. Its four authors present valuable insights into the culture and needs of the everchanging adolescent and advice on how to cope with these needs.

The weakest part is the third, “Youth and the Local Church.” One author offers these suggestions for setting up a new youth group: “Let the youth work out the rules for membership”; “Carefully inform the youth what is expected of them.” When will we simply love teen-agers where they are for Christ’s sake? Why must we make membership an issue? Why must we require them to live up to a standard? Did Christ develop his ministry with membership cards? This is why so many youth have left the evangelical church. They cry, “You only love me if I fit into your mold.” Love produces organization; organization does not always produce love. The authors in Part III fail to stress that building a youth work takes time; it means beginning where the people are. People go where they are loved. When we love people to Christ and for Christ, a program will be the natural result. For years the churches have been grinding out programs and demanding that youth come. We’ve produced leaders of programs instead of lovers of people.

Despite this weakness, Youth and the Church will serve as a good refresher for the director of Christian education and a good source of information and stimulation for the layman.

Communicating The Christian Faith

Religion Across Cultures: A Study in the Communication of Christian Faith, by Eugene A. Nida (Harper & Row, 1968, 111 pp., $4.95) is reviewed by Ella Erway, associate professor of speech, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York.

“Communication” is the modern scapegoat for the ills of society. The term has become trite in business and management. The linguists are doing research in the province of the rhetoricians, and the physical scientists are concerned not only with the transmission of messages but also with their language. Anthropologists and sociologists are making communication the center of an interdisciplinary approach.

Eugene Nida attempts to synthesize the findings of the psychologists with the patterns of prayer—or communication with the gods—in the major religions of the world. His first chapter is an interesting but inconclusive discussion of man’s aesthetic activity expressed in worship and prayer. His case for religious expression as an intrinsic drive lacks strong support.

The next section of the book is most valuable. Here Nida draws upon his anthropological background to study patterns of prayer in Hinduism, Buddhism. Islam, and Christianity. He presents simplified but helpful models to illustrate his points. However, the models are static and do not depict the process of response from the gods to man or the mediating factors of environment and culture. There is some discussion of “feedback,” or the behavior of the gods in response to man’s prayers. The models are particularly effective in showing communication with nature as well as with the supernatural. Nida also discusses the inclusion of elements from non-Christian religions and cultures in the communication patterns of Christianity.

In the final section, the tone of the book changes. Secular scholars would agree with the concepts of the early chapters but would not accept the concluding analysis of communication in contemporary Christianity. Nida claims that the task of communicating Christian faith is not hopeless; as evidence he cites several examples of “biblical renewal.” Although he makes no reference to research in mass communication, he illustrates one of the early findings: that value changes result from individual contact and persuasion rather than from mass presentation. He presents examples from South American countries, the Young Life movement, and others, but offers little interpretation. The conclusion of the book is an attack on the conventional patterns of communication of the Christian Church rather than an exploration of the principles involved.

The final illustration of a value grid that reveals man as an expression of God’s love is useful for understanding Christian theology but should be examined with the criteria applied to non-Christian religions. The approach of the last two chapters will offer a fresh perspective to the theologian, but there is little analysis in scholarly terms.

The text is documented with notes from psychological and theological sources. Some reference is made to anthropology and sociology but none to the communication theorists. Since the central thesis is concerned with communication, this omission is a major weakness. However, the style is clear and interesting, and the innovative approach deserves expansion beyond 111 pages.

What Is Existentialism Really Like?

Restless Adventure: Essays on Contemporary Expressions of Existentialism, edited by Roger L. Shinn (Scribners, 1968, 217 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by H. Dermot McDonald, professor of historical theology, London Bible College, London, England.

The spate of books and articles on existentialism that have already appeared on the market might cause one to overlook another. That would be a pity, for this symposium should not be ignored. The editor has gathered together a number of interesting studies showing the influence of existentialism—both as a bane and as a blessing—on philosophy, theology, literature, art, and psychology. Professor Shinn in his editorial introduction makes it clear that existentialism is something of a radical rebel whose hand is more often against every other man’s, and yet who sometimes joins up with the strangest of allies. But he is an illusive sort of fellow for all that, says Shinn, and it is hard to track him down to discover what he really is.

Philip Hallie deals with the expression of existentialism within philosophy. He points to “rebellion” and “freedom” as specially characteristic here. This does not mean that existentialism offers any sort of political philosophy. The only interest existentialists have in institutions is to attack them, for existentialists seek to repudiate all externals and to shrug off the claim to objective knowledge as enough to make a decent man laugh. Hallie, however, confesses unhappiness about the “dogmatic” emphasis that existentialism gives to a masterless subjectivity and a reasonless freedom.

Shinn sees existentialism as the prodigal son of biblical faith. Yet he regards biblical faith as radically existential in its perception of God. He then spends time restating some of Kierkegaard’s strong influence on theology: his repudiation of natural theology, of history, and of external authority. Shinn has no difficulty showing the weaknesses here. He concludes that “existentialism is not a biblical faith. It is a substitute for biblical faith. But the only answer to existentialism is an existential faith.”

Stanley Hooper reviews the existential influence on contemporary literature. Inevitably he speaks of Kierkegaard’s “subjectivity” and of the “negativity of the infinite in existence.” Such themes are shown to be given dogmatic form and force in Kafka, Sartre, Camus, and Heidegger and in all the strange and strained terms hatched out of this literature, such as “paradox,” “absurdity,” “nausea,” “estrangement,” and “inauthentic existence.”

Roger Ortmayer deals with art; the chapter is not intended to enlighten those who have little understanding of what modern art is all about. Rebellion and freedom are what the modern artist has learned from existentialism, says Ortmayer. The “know-alls” will, of course, classify and specify, eulogize and intellectualize, as if there were purpose in the program. But “only you (or I) can experience a work of art. No one can do it for us.” To say a work of existentialist art looks like this or that is virtually to offer an insult and to talk nonsense. It looks like something only by coincidence. In truth, it looks like nothing at all, for there are no absolutes, no standards, no definitions. In such an activity the artist seeks but to paint with infinite passion out of his own subjectivity and to find authentic living in the exercise.

Rollo May says existentialism has shown that contemporary man is characterized by repression of the sense of freedom and responsibility. By a happy misprint, William James’s Will to Believe comes out as the Will to Relieve. Here indeed we have the key to the activist outlook of existentialism, doing rather than being; to do merely what we wish gives supremacy to the irrational, whereas to believe makes demands on the mind. Misology, the distrust or hatred of reason, must surely be the ultimate madness.

Contemporary expressions of existentialism do certainly show themselves in restless adventure, as the title of this book points out, though the word “adventure” might seem almost too purposeful, too meaningful. However, the book does show some of the range of influence of existential ideas. Inevitably, there is a good deal of repetition as each writer seeks to get into his theme; but perhaps some readers will count this an advantage.

A Holy Detergent

The Secular Congregation, by Robert A. Raines (Harper & Row, 1968, $3.95), is reviewed by William Edmund Bouslough, professor of biblical studies, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

In an ecclesiastical world where evangelical article after evangelical article stresses evangelism first and social concern second, where this emphasis is invariably interpreted as meaning, “Get their souls saved and don’t worry too much about their bodies,” The Secular Congregation comes as a worthy antidote to invalid ideas.

It is a holy detergent that dissolves away our accrued misinterpretations of Scripture and helps us find a viewpoint founded on the whole of the Bible. One often is tempted to select biblical passages that support his own stance and disregard those that don’t. Robert Raines attempts to look at the whole of Scripture and come up with a biblical position that ties evangelism and social concern into an integrated function sponsored by the local church and expressed in the needy community.

The evangelical has a theology that emphasizes the whole man. To him, the God who made the spirit is the same God who made the body. He has a Saviour who uses a human body as a vehicle of divine love and who through that body ministers to the bodies and souls of the distressed. He believes in a resurrection that culminates in a soul-body wholeness. But often he has an evangelism limited to the verbalization of “good news.” Raines would re-define the evangelical perspective in this way: the use of the whole man—his God-given talents, gifts, and capacities—to reach the whole man, body and soul, through all the channels of communication provided by body-soul possibilities. He writes:

I think “evangelism” is a term worth renovating because it makes clear that proclaiming the good news involves both the Word and the deed of the Gospel. The deed without the Word is merely a matter of social service, important as it is, and the Word without the deed (and this is where the church has chiefly been guilty) is simply irrelevant piety, for which there is no longer any metropolitan audience.

The pastor who is striving to minister the love of Christ beyond mere verbalization of its ideas, who hungers to meet human need in the rich-young-ruler suburbs as well as in the distressed inner city, who longs to open the doors to understanding through a congregation without walls, will find here much that will challenge his spirit and bless his soul, and give him specific guidelines for the enrichment of his own ministry.

Ripples Or Riptides?

Protestant Crosscurrents in Mission, edited by Norman A. Horner (Abingdon, 1968, 224 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by C. Dorr Demaray, president, Seattle Pacific College, Seattle, Washington.

In preparation for this volume, Norman Horner, the editor, formulated certain questions that lie at the center of the issues dividing the ecumenical from the conservative religious world: What is the design, the basic criterion, for missionary effectiveness? What is the strategy of world mission? What is the process? He then asked informed persons from both ecumenical and conservative circles to answer the questions in a direct encounter of basic philosophy.

Replying to the first question, James A. Scherer concludes: “Integration between church and mission has taught the ecumenical movement to think of world mission as a single task of the churches everywhere.” Conservative scholar Harold Lindsell answers the question by stressing the deity of Christ and the vitality of his Church. He says that modern mission cannot be divorced from “revelation”; no truth can be validated unless it agrees with the Scriptures. “The mission of the Church,” he insists, “cannot be understood apart from God’s saving acts in the person and work of Jesus Christ.” He emphasizes the “missionary call” and the task of “soul-saving.” To him, world mission is evangelization.

In the answers to the second question, on the objectives of world mission, lies the heart of the dialogue. The ecumenical point of view is concerned with shifting series of objectives and with the changes that must necessarily take place to meet a modern civilization. The conservative answer is that there is one Christ, one Church, one message, and that change occurs in method only—not in message. The articles by M. Richard Shaull and Jack P. Shepherd on mission objectives help to clarify the nature of the struggle within Christianity.

The third question concerns the Church’s response to what God is doing. David M. Stowe stresses God’s work in programs that encourage: (1) openness to persons and groups of all perspectives; (2) diversity; (3) unity; (4) experimentation. He suggests as strategies the joint survey, joint planning, joint action. On the other hand, Arthur F. Glasser emphasizes the evangelistic mandate. He defines it as “God’s call to his people to participate with him in the redemptive activity” and speaks of the necessity of “spirit-transformed, spirit-indwelt people.”

Protestant Crosscurrents in Mission will help readers gain a clear perspective of the ecumenical-conservative controversy of today. The writers offer a high level of understanding of the basic philosophy underlying the two schools of thought.

A Reservoir Of Insights

Psalms II, The Anchor Bible, Volume 17, by Mitchell Dahood (Doubleday, 1968, 399 pp., $6), is reviewed by David Allan Hubbard, president, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Mitchell Dahood’s work on the Psalms, a landmark in the history of Old Testament scholarship, is not really a commentary but a vast reservoir of scholarly insights upon which all future commentaries will draw. References to it will dot the pages of tomorrow’s studies of the Psalms as citations from Brigg’s volumes in the “International Critical Commentary” have yesterday’s studies.

Most important of his several significant contributions is the philological material gleaned from Ugaritic and other Northwest Semitic literature. A covey of elusive words are flushed out by Dahood’s persistent bird-dogging. Teachers of Hebrew could well build an up-to-date course on biblical grammar on his notes: the manifold meanings of prepositions like b and l; double-duty suffixes and prepositions; the rich range of nuances in Hebrew moods and tenses; the recognition of traces of a Northern Hebrew dialect in Psalms like 81; and many more.

The various patterns of parallelism and other aspects of poetic structure are aptly analyzed and reflected in the language and form of the translation. Again Ugaritic texts lend a hand in helping to elucidate fixed pairs, inclusions, ballast variants, chiasm, merism, and other facets of rhythm and style.

Occasionally the translation misfires: “Let your achievement be manifest to your servants” (90:16) is hardly graceful; “from whose heart are your extolments” (84:6) is hardly idiomatic; “un-sin me” (51:9) is hardly English. But usually it conveys with clarity the color and power as it is found in the original Hebrew.

Students of the Psalms will ponder Dahood’s interpretation of the difficult Psalm 68. Though indebted to Albright for some details of interpretation, he finds greater unity in the psalm than does Albright, who interpreted it as a list of the first lines of thirty poems. For Dahood, Psalm 68 is a triumphal hymn, like Exodus 15.

Awaiting further evaluation are Dahood’s emphasis on afterlife in Psalms like 73; 91, and 97; his interpretation of the so-called enthronement psalms as eschatological (e.g., 97; 98); and his identification of Psalms 54; 56; 57; 59; 61; 86; 91; 92 as laments or praises from the lips of Israel’s king. All in all, in cultic and theological questions Dahood manifests discretion and discernment, while his mature conservatism in the handling of the consonantal text is a welcome relief from the brashness frequently found in earlier psalm-criticism.

Dahood’s precise evaluations of the merits of the form-critical and cultic theories of H. Gunkel, S. Mowinckel, A. Weiser, C. Westermann, and H.-J. Kraus will hopefully come to light in the final volume. That he could project three jam-packed books on the Psalms without dealing substantially with form-critical or theological issues is a tribute to the immense gains biblical scholarship has made in recent decades. No reasonably sized commentary can contain all we now know about the Psalms. Dahood does not say everything, but he says enough to guarantee that all future commentators on the Psalms will be, to some degree, his pupils.

What Makes Churches Grow?

God’s Impatience in Liberia, by Joseph Conrad Wold (Eerdmans, 1968, 227 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by John T. Seamands, professor of Christian Missions, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

This book grew out of the burden of a missionary heart. Pastor Wold is concerned because the expansion of the Liberian church has so far been limited almost entirely to the Americo-Liberians or the educated elite living near the coast. Only a small number of the tribal people in the hinterland—who make up 90 per cent of the population—have been won to Christ.

Certain historical factors have undoubtedly contributed to this, such as the long hostility between settlers and pagan tribes and the identification of Christianity with a foreign culture. However, Wold thinks the missions have enhanced the problem by using methods unsuited to rapid church growth. He is especially critical of “the mission-station approach,” in which work centers around a school system and produces “the gathered colony,” dominated by the mission and supported by foreign funds. The system brings about “social dislocation” by isolating the Christians from the pagans and severing the natural contacts essential for the spread of the Gospel.

Wold claims that much of the former hostility between the educated elite and the tribal people has broken down in recent years, and that new social upheaval has prepared tribal people for the Gospel. Among the 900,000 villagers, whole sections are ready to turn to Christ in movements that promise to be amazing both in proportions and in vitality. God is thus impatient for his servants to reap the harvest, Wold believes.

He is convinced that if the church is to meet this new challenge in Liberia, it will have to discard outmoded patterns of mission work and adopt sound principles of church growth, leading to family accessions, people movements, self-support, and indigenous Christianity. Anthropology and theology must combine to produce a new strategy for advance.

Although the principles Wold advocates have a familiar ring to them—echoes of Donald McGavran!—they are expressed with a winsome freshness and great persuasion and are illustrated by accounts of actual situations. The author is speaking to God’s servants not only in Liberia but also in many other lands, for he deals with the universal question: What makes churches grow? Missionaries and ministers everywhere should read God’s Impatience in Liberia, for he is impatient in other places also.

Book Briefs

Strange Facts About the Bible, by Webb Garrison (Abingdon, 1968, 304 pp., $4.95). An interesting potpourri of human-interest material on four hundred biblical topics.

Big Day at Da Me, by Bob Pierce with Nguyen Van Due and Larry Ward (Word, 1968, 72 pp., $2.95). The founder of World Vision graphically relates the glories and hardships of Christian service to the Vietnamese in the midst of the horror of war. Includes many excellent photographs.

Left Luggage, by C. Northcote Parkinson (Houghton Mifflin, 1967, 236 pp., $4.95). The man who enunciated the law on the inevitable increase of bureaucratic workers in government offers a caustic critique of British socialism.

Gnosis and the New Testament, by R. McL. Wilson (Fortress, 1968, 149 pp., $4.50). Posits an interpenetration and interaction between Gnosticism and the New Testament writings in which Gnostics drew upon the Christian tradition more than Christians upon the Gnostic.

Thy People Shall Be My People, by Ruth June Perl (Bethany Fellowship, 1968, 249 pp., $4.50). The joyful story of a Biola College graduate who, like Ruth the Moabitess, left her own people to embrace the Jewish people. Married to a Hebrew Christian, she is now involved in a vital Christian mission to Jews.

The Wisdom of the Psalms, by Romano Guardini (Regnery, 1968, 168 pp., $4.50). Expositions of uplifting Psalms by a German Catholic scholar that provide a good basis for dialogue between Protestants and Catholics.

Hymns and the Faith, by Erik Routley (Eerdmans, 1968, 311 pp., $4.95). Learned expositions of forty-nine great Christian hymns.

Paperbacks

With Bands of Love, by David Allan Hubbard (Eerdmans, 1968, 114 pp., $1.95). Highly readable, theologically perceptive lessons on the Book of Hosea, in which the prophet “lashes out at the entangling alliances which in Israel became substitutes for trust in God.”

Church Architecture and Liturgical Reform, by Theodor Filthaut (Helicon, 1968, 110 pp., $1.75). This Catholic-oriented book on church architecture provides ideas helpful to Protestant planners also.

Foundations of Theory, by William Young (Craig, 1967, 122 pp., $3.75). A philosophical investigation of the basis of theoretical thought by a scholar influenced by Herman Dooyeweerd and Gordon Clark. From the “University Series of Philosophical Studies.”

Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, edited by Peter Vorkink, II (Fortress, 1968, 142 pp., $2.50). Essays on the elusive thought of the German martyr by Paul Van Buren, John Bennett, Eberhard Bethge, Paul Lehmann, and others.

The Christian message makes a man conscious of his guilt before God and, in Christ, provides forgiveness of sin and eradication of guilt. Yet many Christian believers whose sins have been confessed and forgiven cannot feel forgiven because they cannot forgive themselves. When the pastor forcefully seeks to stir the conscience of the indifferent, those already overwhelmed with self-condemnation think he is speaking to them and so sink deeper in their feelings of guilt.

This self-condemnation typically stems from a neurotic self-rejection. Those who suffer from it cannot feel that Christ’s forgiveness applies to them. Their overwrought conscience chronically seeks to atone and accepts flagellation with morbid pleasure. These persons, often some of the hardest-working members in the church, are perfectionistic, driving, and intense. Their self-criticism may be symbolized by their hypercriticism of others. They may be excessively generous, apologetic, and self-effacing. Or they may even be apathetic and lazy, as a result of the numbing of despair brought on by unassuaged guilt.

The pastor, who so often must deal with the problems of guilt and sin, needs to be keenly perceptive of the difference between real guilt as a consciousness of sin and neurotic guilt, the response of self-rejection. The role of the pastor is certainly not for the sadist or for one who, because his own feelings of guilt are not resolved, compensates by flagellating himself and others.

Some of the neurotically guilt-ridden cannot forgive themselves for sins of the past. Others keep blaming themselves for things they never did. They may blame themselves for parental quarrels, for the death of a family member, for their inability to get better grades or lack of talents. Some feel guilty for being physically handicapped or sick and think their trouble was given as punishment. Recently I learned of a child of three who believed that an operation he underwent was a punishment. The child is often led to believe that it is “bad” to spill things, to show interest in sex, to forget, to be loud or silly. One little boy asked his mother, “Is it naughty to have fun?”

A person feels guilty whenever he violates whatever he is led to think is acceptable by those whose love he seeks. A child may be taught it is good to steal from the rich but wrong to get caught. Hitler probably lost no sleep over his slaughter of millions of Jews. Whether one feels guilty or not is a poor criterion for judging real guilt.

The laws of God and the laws of man get mixed up in our thinking. We can feel guilty for not having been able to please an impossible father, a nagging mother, a frustrated teacher, or even our childhood peers. The Church itself has a history of erecting taboos that the Bible never mentions. The Pharisees were past masters at inventing yokes ingeniously designed to create a false righteousness for those who could keep up and a false guilt for those who could not.

Fortunately, the Bible does not condition God’s forgiveness on man’s feeling of being forgiven. Nowhere in the Scriptures is the question treated, What if the repentant does not feel saved? Although many may think they are saved who are not, no one is ever lost simply because he does not know he is saved. It takes no great skill to create feelings of guilt among earnest seekers. All one need do is to make indeterminate rules. A person can always hope to be more fervent, more generous, more burdened.

Some evangelists interpret the passage “as many as received him” to mean that salvation is contingent upon a mystical act of receiving, taking, appropriating, which to the neurotically guilt-ridden person means that the reason he feels the way he does is that he has not “taken” properly. He is led to believe he is supposed to stop feeling guilty in order to be forgiven, but this he cannot do. He can respond quite easily to “come unto me,” “ask,” “confess,” “repent”; but he cannot “receive,” if this means feeling immediately that he has been accepted by God and is no longer guilty.

The Gospel does not attack the problem of guilt from the direction of improving one’s behavior. Man defines sin by what he does, but God pronounces man guilty for what he is; he looks upon the intentions of the heart. Man’s sin (singular) is that he has tried to usurp God’s throne. Whatever his sins (plural) are, they are effects rather than the cause. A man sins because he is a sinner; he does not become a sinner because he sins. But God also pronounces the man in Christ righteous apart from his behavior, because God sees the new heart he has implanted in him and gives his children full credit for all they would like to be. Thus the Apostle Paul could say of his sinning, “It is no longer I that do it,” and of his heart, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.… So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God” (Rom. 7:17, 22, 25).

The good news of the Gospel is that man can be perfect in God’s sight without being good. If he had to be good to get to heaven, he would never get there. God has taken all the “have to” out and replaced it with a “want to.” As God writes his laws in our hearts, we no longer try to please God because we are afraid not to; we want to please him because we love him. The neurotically guilt-ridden Christian is strongly conscious of his desire to please the Lord. This fact may be used to help him realize that his heart is right with God. The penitent needs to know that because he himself is covered by the blood of Christ, all his trespasses are forgiven—past, present, and future. Because he is clothed with Christ’s own righteousness, all his sins have been charged to Christ and all Christ’s righteousness has been credited to his account. He is now holy (1 Cor. 3:17), righteous (Isa. 61:10; Rom. 4:6, 8), perfect (Heb. 10:14; 12:23)—in a word, a saint (Phil. 1:1). God’s forgiveness is contingent not upon our feelings but upon his own promise. On the basis of God’s Word, we can inform anyone who wants forgiveness in Christ that he has it (John 6:37)! If he still feels guilty after he is committed to Christ, then he is suffering from either a neurotic or an ignorant guilt.

The treatment of neurotic guilt often requires the aid of a psychologist. It is very tempting for the concerned pastor to feel that Bible verses or sage advice will provide insights to remove guilt feelings. But when these are rooted in traumatic experiences long forgotten, they are usually inaccessible to logic. It is essential, however, that whoever provides psychotherapy respect the patient’s Christian position, so that no conflict will be aroused between his confused guilt and his desire to please God.—WILLARD HARLEY, SR., professor of psychology and director of counseling, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Many people are unaware that we live in enemy-occupied territory. As a result, they are often booby-trapped and fooled into making all kinds of disastrous mistakes.

Dr. Emile Cailliet has expressed the danger in these words: “One of the neatest tricks Satan has ever performed is to convince so many people that he does not exist.” How true! And how many there are who go down to defeat because they do not know the enemy and how he works!

In his Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis pointed out: “Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.… I know someone will ask me, ‘Do you really mean, at this time of day, to reintroduce our old friend the devil—hoofs and horns and all?’ Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is, ‘Yes, I do.’ I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, ‘Don’t worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you’ll like it when you do is another question’ ” (Mere Christianity, Macmillan, 1960, pp. 35, 36).

The fact is that from the very beginning of Genesis to the end of the Revelation, the Bible makes repeated references to Satan, clearly stating that he is a person—evil, malignant, and persistent—but that though he is extremely active now, his doom is sealed.

The names by which he is characterized in the Scriptures speak volumes, not only about who he is but also about what he does. He is called the accuser, the adversary, the angel of the bottomless pit, the devil, the enemy, an evil spirit, a liar and the father of lies, a lying spirit, a murderer, the power of darkness, the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the serpent, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience, the tempter, the god of this world, an unclean spirit, the wicked one, and a roaring lion.

In the light of this revelation of the nature of Satan, what folly to deny his existence or belittle his power! Were it not for the fact that his ultimate defeat was accomplished at the Cross, that he cannot stand against the Word of God, the Sword of the Spirit, and that God has provided an invincible armor for me as a Christian, I would not dare to write this article.

We sing, “This is my Father’s world,” and it is, by creation; but for the moment there is a usurper on the throne, the “god of this world”—the devil. We are living in “enemy territory.”

Satan is doubly dangerous because he is the master of camouflage, even appearing as an “angel of light” to deceive the unwary. There are people and institutions today that are Satan’s servants, even as there were in the days of the Apostle Paul, who said of them: “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil. 3:18, 19). Think of the danger for those who do not recognize the enemy and his work!

How can we tell? How can we know whether something is of God or of the deceiver? A Christian is given something like a spiritual mine detector. He is instructed to ask when in doubt: Does it honor God? Does it glorify his Son? Is it true to his written Word? Does it give evidence of the presence and blessing of the Holy Spirit?

As the committed Christian finds himself confronted with Satan’s counterfeits, the Holy Spirit warns: Be careful! Wait! This does not conform to God’s revealed truth!

Jesus repeatedly warned against the works of Satan. He said that it is the evil one who snatches the seed of the Gospel from the hearts of the ignorant and indifferent. Speaking of the weeds growing where good seed had been sown, he said, “An enemy has done this.” And at this point he gave a warning many ignore today, a specific warning against “weed-pulling,” because the wheat is pulled up with the weeds. Jesus’ word is, “Let them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matt. 13:30)—small comfort to Satan and his dupes, and a warning to over-zealous Christians.

Today, as always, Satan works to disrupt and destroy. The Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, says about the devil, “we are not ignorant of his devices.” We know his devices are legion.

Wherever the blight of Communism falls, the Church and Christians are sure to come under attack. Twenty-five years ago there were 8,000 Protestant missionaries in China. Today there is not one. Twenty-five years ago there were 275 Christian hospitals in China. Today not one is left. Eighteen years ago the most thriving church to be found on any mission field was in North Korea. Today every vestige of Christianity has been wiped out.

But Satan is also working his devious methods in the West. Secularism dominates most of the colleges and universities once founded by the churches. Materialism determines the goals of many men and nations. Entertainment and art worship the god of sex and lust. The reason is easy to find: “The whole world is in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19b).

For all of this, thank God, there is an answer. There can be victory and safety. Because of the works of Satan, there is the Cross. Because of him, there is the Gospel of Christ’s redemption. Because of him, we have power through the Spirit. Because of him, God prepared his own protective armor for the Christian (Eph. 6:10–18).

Man inevitably fails when he trusts himself. It is through Christ alone, “who loved us,” that we are more than conquerors. And we are given one weapon with which to carry on an offensive warfare against the devil: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Our Lord gave a perfect example of its use when he was tempted in the wilderness. Satan has never yet been able to stand against it.

Let no man deceive you—Satan is real. On every hand we see the evidences of his presence and work. Just as hunters follow a trail, certain that there is a cause for its existence, so we can trace the trail of Satan throughout the world, both Communist and free. It is folly to ignore him and even greater folly to ignore the One who has conquered him. Satan’s end is sure: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever” (1 John 2:16, 17).

Dear Spectators of the Satirical Scene:

The satirist is involved in a tricky business. As an angry but optimistic reformer, he must gingerly avoid the traps of vulgarity and tedious cuteness as he uses incongruity, exaggeration, wit, and gentle ridicule to put down his foe. A fine example of effective theological satire is Anthony Towne’s “obituary of God” that appeared in the wake of the “God-is-dead” craze. It began: “God, creator of the universe, principal deity of the world’s Jews, ultimate reality of Christians, and most eminent of all divinities, died late yesterday during surgery undertaken to correct a massive, diminishing influence.”

The heady wine of acclaim for his “obituary” bit made Towne realize that the theme of a deceased deity should not remain buried. So he has exhumed and recently released Excerpts from the Diaries of the Late God (Harper & Row, $2.25). These diary entries are the work of a cool deity who wants every church building to have a blinking neon sign: “GOD IS HUMAN, TOO!” Towne’s human God has apparently been molded from that undulating mass without form and void: the new theologian-bon vivant-professional liberal. Possibly he has been made in the image of Towne himself.

“The late God” is a likable chap but oh so predictable. He has kind words for Bishop Pike, Adam Clayton Powell, William Stringfellow, the Christian Century, and Edward Albee. And whom does he take pot shots at? You guessed it: Norman Vincent Peale, Lady Bird, Thomas Aquinas, and, inevitably, Billy Graham. The latter, he twice inscribes, “has halitosis of the soul.” (Apparently Towne here has adapted Harold Ickes’ vituperative gem, “halitosis of the intellect.”)

An omnipotent God who is “omnibored,” he develops “hypostatic schizophrenia” after being told he is three persons. Another problem: His secretary always removes the centerfold from his Playboy. He yearns to stump the panel on “What’s My Line?” At stag sessions he converses with eight “steadies”: the H.G., J.C./or King David, Paul, Socrates, Freud, Marx (Karl, not Groucho), Adlai Stevenson, and Pope John XXIII. His one regular woman discussant: Eleanor Roosevelt—who else?

Despite his decision to create his own death, “the late God” is no grave person. But as the omniboring liberal that Towne has made him, he belongs six feet under.

Rest in peace,

EUTYCHUS III

DIGGING THE DIGGERS

Congratulations on the archaeology issue (June 21). It is excellent.

MARTIN L. SINGEWALD, M.D.

Baltimore, Md.

Dr. Albright’s article on “Archaeological Discovery and the Scriptures” contains an excellent summation of the positive contributions of twentieth-century excavation to biblical scholarship.…

One of the most stimulating features is his attitude of openness to the impact of new evidence upon the hallowed structures of orthodox Wellhausianism. He shows a willingness to modify or even to abandon cherished elements in the documentary hypothesis (in which he was originally reared, and to which he remains basically committed), even though such concessions to the demonstrated accuracy of the Hebrew Scriptures erode the foundations of the entire JEDP theory. His frequent emphasis on “the astonishing accuracy of ancient Hebrew oral tradition” (as finally embodied in the late written form finally achieved in Ezra’s time) furnishes a firm basis for his frank avowal of the “substantially Mosaic origin” of the Pentateuch as a whole.

What Dr. Albright does not take into account, apparently, is the fatal damage such insights and concessions administer to the very foundations of the documentary hypothesis, which after all was erected upon the supposed demonstration of the astonishing inaccuracy of the Hebrew record—inaccuracies which could only be accounted for by a lapse of many centuries between the events themselves and the written records which narrated them. But if it turns out that the alleged anachronisms which Graf, Kuenen, and Wellhausen used to demonstrate late composition of the Pentateuchal books were actually not anachronisms at all but were accurate to the second-millennium period to which they related (as subsequent archaeological discovery has consistently shown), then the whole case for late authorship falls to the ground. All that is left to prop it on is a set of undemonstrable philosophical premises, such as the evolutionary origin and development of Israel’s religion (a theory quite indefensible in the light of the concrete data of comparative religions), and the assumed impossibility of genuine prophecy of future events (which on a completely doctrinaire basis leads to the postdating of every successful prediction to a time after its fulfillment). Dr. Albright’s training and background inhibit him from seeing how circular and subjective this type of reasoning is upon which the JEDP theory was originally erected. But at least he continues to serve up the ammunition with which the shaky structure of the Wellhausen hypothesis may be still further undermined and exposed for the self-contradictory monstrosity which conservative scholars have always recognized it to be.

GLEASON L. ARCHER, JR.

Chairman, Div. of Old Testament

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Ill.

ATTENTION ON ETERNITY

Fred C. Kuehner’s comments on “Heaven or Hell?” (Fundamentals of the Faith, June 21) came as a welcome reminder of the neglected segment of the whole counsel of God.

CARL J. BIHL

Assistant to the President

John Brown University

Siloam Springs, Ark.

What a dismal failure he makes out God’s effort to save a lost world to be! Just a small minority, the “born-again,” out of all the myriads of souls who have died out of Christ in the centuries past and present and future, are to be saved. All others are to be separated from God forever and ever in a lake of fire.… Of course there is a hell, an awful hell, but it is remedial, not merely punitive.

RICHARD H. WICK

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Those of us who have been privileged to sit under Dr. Kuehner’s teaching in seminary expected the penetrating, scholarly presentation of his ideas along with the impassioned appeal of a great evangelical preacher.…

I feel in good company with Edwards and Spurgeon in believing that the fires of hell are literal.

LEWIS W. KISENWETHER, JR.

Philadelphia, Pa.

ABOUT THE ‘FIASCO’

Your editorial, “Fiasco at Resurrection City” (June 21), is an excellent expression of our philosophy.

E. A. BEYERSDORFF

Editor

The Milwaukee Lutheran

Milwaukee, Wis.

Your editorial displayed the typical lack of Christian love and empathy which pervades most of our country’s churches today. It is true that there have been incidents of questionable tactics utilized by small groups, but we must learn to educate ourselves to the questionable tactics that have been used by our country to keep the black man and the poor man down and breed the frustration which cannot help but flare into violence occasionally.

MR. & MRS. KENNETH L. RATZLAFF

Urbana, Ill.

FEW UTOPIAN DREAMS

The “religious establishment” continues to alienate students in thoughtless and unconscious ways. A recent example is a sentence from your editorial, “Where is America Going?” (June 21): “Students must be shown that only Christ, not utopian dreams for hedonistic pleasures, makes life joyful and purposeful.” Such a statement reveals its author to possess less than a knowledgeable acquaintance with any large numbers of students. If such was the case he would know that few students harbor “utopian dreams for hedonistic pleasures,” and that even fewer believe such pleasures make life joyful and purposeful.

Those of us who minister to students find enough built-in obstacles and, needless to say, do not need such irresponsible statements to add to the confusion.

JEFF C. PECKHAM

Baptist Chaplain

University of Missouri

Kansas City, Mo.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY regrets the slip (read “or” for “for”) that contributed to Chaplain Peckham’s distress.—ED.

‘CHRISTIAN CENTURY’ REPLY

The generosity of your attention to my becoming editor of the Christian Century (News, June 21) is unhappily compromised by a number of distortions and misrepresentations. I regret very much that you did not fulfill my oral and written requests to review the accuracy of views attributed to me following our telephone interview.

It is true that I am not a traditional pacifist, but the Century’s commitment to the struggle for world peace over six decades is most important to me. Arguments among pacifists and nonpacifists in the 1940s are not very relevant to the present quest for peace.

I did not single out World Council of Churches pronouncements for the criticism you attribute to me in connection with my friend Paul Ramsey’s attack on the council in Who Speaks for the Church? I do agree with some of Ramsey’s criticisms as applied to many church pronouncements—but the WCC has done better than most church bodies in bringing informed international judgments to bear upon political and social issues.

My 1963 book Piety and Politics did not, contrary to your report, urge the “establishment of a cadre of church experts in Washington to advise the government on foreign policy.” What I did propose was that seminaries in Washington and other cities make the most of their opportunities to “foster a genuine dialogue between theologians and political scientists, between pastors and policy-makers.”

Regarding Viet Nam, I have been opposed to the bombing of the North from the very beginning as a counterproductive and politically disastrous policy. It is not a matter of proposing “more cuts or an end to bombing if the Paris talks break down.” The bombing should stop now. It never should have started.

Finally, while I disavowed any original contribution to the “new morality” in terms of sex ethics, I have not forsaken my interests in Christian ethics “in recent years.” I am a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Christian Ethics and chairman of its one active task force. I look forward to the strengthening of the Christian Century as an organ of ethical reconstruction in a post-Niebuhrian age.

ALAN GEYER

Editor-Elect

The Christian Century

Chicago, Ill.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY news policy disallows submitting for approval to those involved an advance copy of an article.

Dr. Geyer’s specific proposal of a Washington cadre, with emphasis on “military and arms-control doctrine,” appears in the January 31, 1968, Christian Century, not the book. We regret this error.—ED.

CHURCH HISTORY

Your report on the Reformed Presbyterian and Orthodox Presbyterian Churches (“Alliterative Issues,” News, June 21) said, “During the thirties both churches left what is now the United Presbyterian Church because of theological liberalism in that denomination.” This is not strictly true. There was one church which left the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. in 1936. That church is now the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The McIntire movement broke away from it, in 1937. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church broke with McIntire in 1958, and more recently united with the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

The reason for the break with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. in 1936 was not “theological liberalism.” There had been plenty of that before 1936. But it was when liberalism compelled the Presbyterian members to support liberal agencies or face the consequences, that we faced the consequences.

EDWARDS E. ELLIOTT

Garden Grove Orthodox Presbyterian Church

Garden Grove, Calif.

VIOLENCE AND GUERRILLA WARFARE

The words of the Rev. Ralph Chandler, secretary of international affairs for the United Presbyterian Church (“The Church for Guerrillas?,” News, June 21) certainly deserve further comment.

In an age of violence he would encourage missionaries to support guerrilla movements in which killings of a peculiarly vicious kind would take place. Guerrilla warfare has no place among the established ways in which human life may be taken, namely, necessary defense of human life, lawful war, and public justice.…

Are your readers aware that the Rev. Richard Shaull, a member of the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, has openly expressed great sympathy for guerrilla warfare? In the midst of the breast-beating and finger-pointing as to the blame for the assassinations of important persons and the rising crime rate, we ought to take a good look at ministers of the Gospel who would encourage men to act in unlawful violence against their fellow men.

STEPHEN M. REYNOLDS

Chester, Pa.

OF PROPHECY AND HISTORY

I appreciated the tone and restraint with which Dr. Culbertson wrote regarding Arab-Israeli tensions (June 7). It is a good deal different from the elation expressed by many American Christians about Israel’s victory of a year ago. Christ’s death was a fulfillment of prophecy, but there are not many who would praise the Israel of that day for fulfilling prophecy. Culbertson is surely correct in separating the possible relation to prophecy of the events in Palestine and the moral quality of Israel’s deeds. We who live and work in Arab countries would make the separation even more emphatic.

Kelso’s article helps to bring into focus some important historical facts that Americans generally do not know. It also helps to demonstrate the terrible complexity of the Middle East problem. Some viable approach must be found; the present impasse can only breed continuing bitterness and conflict.

RALPH A. GWINN

Dept. of Religion and Philosophy

Beirut College for Women

Beirut, Lebanon

The article by Dr. Kelso is the most lucid statement I have seen anywhere on the subject.

RICHARD P. AULIE

New Haven, Conn.

I would like to point out what I consider to be an erroneous military conclusion in Dr. Kelso’s article.… He says, “She [Israel] could never have caught the Arab planes on their airfields if the Arabs had been intending to strike first.” This statement is not consistent with military experience or reasoning.

Whether or not the Arabs, particularly Egypt, intended to attack Israel is a fact probably known only to the Arab high command. The previous oft-repeated loud public threats of the Arab intent to destroy Israel utterly are well known. The great numerical superiority of the Arabs, armed with Soviet weapons and equipment; the closing of the Strait of Tiran to Israel shipping, itself an act of war; and the massing of Arab forces on the Israeli frontier could only mean to Israel that the moment of decision had come. The Israeli government had to consider two principal Arab capabilities. The first was that they might launch their vastly greater forces simultaneously against Israel on all its frontiers. Second, they might try to strangle Israel economically, by blocking the Strait of Tiran. The latter action would almost certainly lead ultimately to military invasion by the Arabs, after Israel had been weakened.

For Israel it had become a matter of life or death. To wait until the Arabs, particularly Egypt, were ready to start the conflict might have been fatal. Following proved military principles, the Israeli sought to save their lives and their national existence by seizing the initiative and launching their own attack while the Arabs were still not ready. The first necessity was to destroy the Egyptian air force, and the best way to do this was to strike it while it was helpless on the ground. This they did.

Any reasonably competent Egyptian military commander and staff should have been aware that Israel might act so, and this in spite of whatever might have been the Arabs’ own intentions. Therefore every precaution should have been taken to avoid allowing the planes to be caught on the ground. Instead the Egyptian command was caught militarily sound asleep.

LT. GEN. WILLIAM K. HARRISON

U.S. Army (RET.)

Largo, Fla.

The article by James L. Kelso is excellent. I’m distressed that other Christians have done so little for Arab Christian refugees. To whom do we look for leadership (person or organization) to remedy this error?

PAUL W. ORCUTT

McPherson, Kan.

As a Hebrew Christian, and a survivor of the Jewish community in Poland, I rejoice in the measure of deliverance which God has provided for Jewish people in Israel. I was thrilled at the deliverance from what surely would have been a genocide last June, and over the newly won free access to the Wailing Wall. But I stand in mourning and penitence because this reprieve has come through the sword of Israel and her Western allies lifted against people whose frustrations and angers are not entirely out of proportion to their wounds.…

Culbertson gave us a lesson on prophecy and Kelso gave us a lesson on history. But the question remains, What are the demands of agape love in the light of either Culbertson’s prophecy or Kelso’s history?

EMMANUEL GITLIN

Professor of Bible

Lenoir Rhyne College

Hickory, N.C.

ONCE BANNED AND UGLY

I am shocked and grieved! “ ‘Why’ and ‘Way’ for EPA” (News, June 7) contains the ugly words “hell” and “damn.” I know that it has become common for professors of religion to use such words in conversation and even in supposedly religious writings, but I had expected something better from CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I can see no justification for the use of such words even in quotations. They were once banned even in secular papers.

P. P. BELEW

Church of the Nazarene

Danville, Ill.

SEEING NO GIMMICK

If good reporting is supposed to be objective, why is it necessary to use words such as “gimmick” and “free-lance revivalist” about Ronald Coyne (Personalia, June 7) and to place the word “reads” in quotation marks as if he were not reading?

I am acquainted with him and part of his family.… He lost an eye and was prayed for and received the unusual ability of seeing with or without his plastic eye and with his good eye covered. It is a fact, not a gimmick!

WAYNE C. EASTHAM

Tulsa, Okla.

WHY HE LEFT

“Canadian Growing Pains” (News, April 26) has been a source of very grievous embarrassment to the Rev. Hector MacRury and to his many friends, including, of course, both his session and congregation. For it to be said that he left the meeting after my own name had been placed in nomination is a grotesque caricature of what actually happened. My friend left the meeting only in order to ensure that there would be complete freedom of discussion by all present, and in this I feel he acted with very great magnanimity.

WILLIAM FITCH

Knox Presbyterian Church

Toronto, Ont.

PRESBYTERIAN PROPERTY

Edward B. Fiske may be right (“Supreme Court Weighs Churches’ Stand,” July 5) in pointing to the Walnut Street case as the most important legal precedent. The fact remains, however, that Walnut Street was not a congregation of the Presbyterian Church U. S., and the case was based on the constitution of the Presbyterian Church U. S. A. (of which it was a member).

The constitutions of the two denominations are different at the point of congregational property.… Despite the repetitious claims of some that slavery was the issue back in 1861 when the PCUS was formed, slavery, per se, was not. One of the issues was property, and the constitution of our church reflects this.

Let me refer you to Para. 6–3 in our Book of Church Order: “If a church is dissolved by the Presbytery, or otherwise ceases to exist, and no disposition has been made of its property, those who hold title to the property shall deliver, convey and transfer to the Presbytery of which the church was a member, or to the authorized agents of the Presbytery, all property of the church.…” This clearly leaves the property in the hands of the congregation. The constitution only provides for its disposition if the congregation does not otherwise dispose of it.

On the other hand, the UPUSA constitution has no such provisions. It clearly states (in the 65–66 edition, for instance, at 32–8, 32–11, and 32–12) that a congregation cannot move in any direction on the property issue without presbytery’s permission and that the presbytery has the last word on the use of property. The 1968 UPUSA Assembly reinforced this in the decision on the Blackstone (Palm Springs) case when it said that churches “must use the property for the benefit of the denomination.” The decision also said, “It is neither legally nor factually accurate to assume … that the property in question was given by people who intended to limit the use of their property forever to any particular theological emphasis.”

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Asst. Editor

The Presbyterian Journal

Asheville, N. C.

AROUND THE WORLD

I think that CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been especially appreciated among evangelical missionaries who are far from homelands and need guidance and understanding in what is going on among our Christian circles. Not only has it proven to be helpful in keeping us abreast with these things, but the greatest contribution it has made has been in the field of spiritual guidance. Certainly no other magazine is looked forward to as much.

DAN DALE

The Evangelical Alliance Mission

Kobe, Japan

Please do not renew my subscription … It is one of the closest things to “hate literature” that I have ever seen. It is filled with nothing but condemnation of the ecumenical movement, and hardly ever is there a positive note or theme.

HENRY SCHALM

Salmon Arm, British Columbia

I have found many wonderful articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. As an editor of our quarterly periodical Kristitty (which means “The Christian”), I wonder if we could translate some articles into Finnish and publish them in our magazine.

KAI ANTTURI

Helsinki, Finland

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is one of the most valuable pieces of literature that comes into my home. I enjoy its clarity, its forthrightness, and its honesty, and it is a continual stimulus.

B. G. MARSH

Rector

St. Paul’s Church of England

Harris Park, N.S.W., Australia