I feel a special kinship with Kimo, the Auca Indian and ex-murderer who told the World Congress on Evangelism that he could not understand why not everyone was a Christian. To Kimo and me, being Christ-ones is amazingly simple, definable, and certain, and good beyond our fondest dreams. Despite the vast difference in our backgrounds, we share the same concept of the Christian mission: telling others, as Komo did at the World Congress, of the great things God has done.

Recently I met with several young men interested in missionary work. All were critical of the evangelical approach. Each was convinced that projects in engineering, public health, education, and the like rated top priority, and none of the clergymen present disagreed. I suppose I must have seemed an irrational fanatic when, too discouraged to try to explain, I simply expressed my opinion that what lost men need is to hear the Word of God. This is not a popular approach to missions. When delegates to the Miami Beach assembly of the National Council of Churches ranked missionary priorities, “preaching” trailed as least important. Higher priority was given to “meeting acute human need,” “working under indigenous churches,” and “leadership training” (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, July 21, 1967).

But God’s power to bring life to the spiritually dead does not depend upon improvement of the physical condition of the corpse. Indeed, one honest look at our own fantastically affluent society ought to convince anyone that improved social conditions have no marked effect upon man’s willingness to receive Christ. Neither Kimo nor I was reached by any kind of existential evangelism or social action. We were brought to Christ by the Holy Spirit through hearing the Word of God. There is no other way.

Jesus calls his followers to preach the Good News to every creature. The only question is: “To whom shall I go?” Some have gone to the Auca Indians. For others, the “uttermost part of the earth” may be the office across the hall. But there is no question about priorities. The mission is to go and tell what great things God has done. John R. W. Stott simply echoes the commandment of God when he says, “Evangelism is not soul-winning but rather proclaiming of the Gospel—whether anybody responds or not.” Although the new-breed clergyman finds this kind of preaching irrelevant today, true evangelists trust nonetheless in the foolishness of preaching Christ. They presume miracles, for they know that God is in the life-changing business.

Failure in evangelism comes when the would-be evangelist fails to believe God. He may never have experienced rebirth himself, or he may have reservations about the Word of God. Like Cain, he may believe in God without believing God. Because there is no power in his preaching, he attaches greater value to other activities and soon buries himself in pitiful programs of do-it-yourself salvation.

Anyone who wishes to speak powerfully for Christ needs to recognize that power comes, not from ordination by men or from superior education or training, but from believing God. Every Christian is called to a ministry in this power. One of the best demonstrators of this I have encountered is Corrie Ten Boom, a former watchmaker who was a Nazi prisoner. This woman speaks with great power and authority, and everywhere she goes she brings people to Christ. Corrie believes God with a faith that seems almost foolishly childlike. Her faith, tempered and matured in the living hell of the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, is completely independent of increased cultural opportunities and clean sheets.

The second chapter of Genesis describes two trees in the Garden of Eden—the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man was specifically invited to enjoy the fruit of the Tree of Life, but he was commanded not to eat the fruit of the other tree. It is not enough to say that this means simply that man was to remain innocent of sin. The mystery of good and evil is not man’s business; Scripture says Christ has reserved this knowledge to himself. Man was created to glorify God—to make his greatness known among men. He is confused if he thinks he was created to try to eliminate what he calls evil.

To a world sick and tired of tilting at the windmills of presumed evil, to men who have become discouraged from striving to solve human problems by manipulating what they call good, Christ comes with an astonishing and unexpected message. Man looks for answers to the mystery of good and evil, but Christ offers a message of death and life. To all who receive him, he gives without regard to social condition, the power to become sons of God.

When Jesus’ disciples returned to the well at Sychar after buying food, they were astounded to find Jesus talking publicly with a despised Samaritan woman. “Lift up your eyes,” he said to them, “and see how the fields are already white for harvest.” He was talking about evangelism. I can hardly imagine that his companions thought he was suggesting agricultural reform.

To his disciples Jesus says, “As God sent me into the world, so send I you.” Jesus, the perfect evangel of God, sends us in love, just as he was sent to this Samaritan woman. He did not suggest building a shanty town on the temple mall in Jerusalem to demonstrate against the hatred of the Jews. He did not teach her to disobey the laws under which she was downtrodden and oppressed.

To this miserable, outcast Samaritan woman, Jesus did not offer social justice, or the elimination of poverty, or improved plumbing. He gave her the gift of Eternal Life.

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise” (Prov. 11:30, KJV).

After Death The Judgment

Satan lounged on a torrid crag, smoke curling about his face as if he were doing a TV commercial. He was perusing a copy of Time. Close at hand perched his underling, Spitfire.

“You look pleased,” said the underling.

Satan smirked. “Nietzsche said it some time ago. Scarcely anybody believed it; Nietzsche was an unbeliever. Now the Christians are saying it!”

“What can Christians be saying that Nietzsche said?” asked Spitfire.

“That God is dead, little brother. See, here are the names of the new theologians who speak thus. Messrs. Altizer, Van Buren, Hamilton and Vahanian. Altizer has written a book called The Gospel of Christian Atheism, in which he explains that God’s death is an act of redemption.

“Incredible are the ways of theologians!” remarked Spitfire.

“Give ear to these words from Mr. Altizer: ‘We must recognize that the death of God is a historical event; God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence.’ Shattering from a religious teacher, isn’t it?”

“Shattering!” agreed Spitfire.

Satan grinned. “These death-of-God theologians insist it’s no longer possible to believe in, or even think about, a transcendent God who acts in human history. Christianity, if it is to survive at all, must get along without any such God. And, says Altizer, men would waste their time trying to put God back into human life; instead, they should welcome the secularization of the modern world.”

“This,” said Spitfire, “is strange theology, even in an age of strange theology!”

“Attend me further, little brother. Altizer contends that only in the midst of the radically profane can man again recapture an understanding of the sacred. How this can be done he does not explain. However, he is sure that Christendom is finished, and that mankind must somehow discover the sacred in godless secularism.”

The devil paused and Spitfire said, “Could it be, Mighty One, could it be that we have an ally in these theologians?”

“Perhaps. Then there’s Mr. Hamilton. In a way he amazes me more than Altizer does. He contends that the theologians have left to them nowadays neither faith nor hope. Only love is left. And, since God is dead, believers should all the more follow Jesus as the great exemplar of conduct. (Just how they should follow him in his personal commitment to a personal Father, Hamilton doesn’t say!) Christ isn’t a ‘person’ or an ‘object,’ says Hamilton; he is a ‘place to be.’ That place is not before an altar, but in the world, in the city, with needy neighbors, and needy enemies if need be.”

“God is dead! Long live Love!” chortled Spitfire.

Satan grimaced gleefully. “Now, about this other one, Mr. Vahanian. He also says that God is dead, and that he will remain dead until the Church becomes secular enough in thought and structure to proclaim a new way that will fulfill the cultural needs of the times.” A smile formed on the Satanic face. “I love the way these fellows talk of ‘the times’ and of ‘the modern world’—as if no other times had ever meant anything to mankind! Vahanian says that the spirit of the times is ‘irretrievably secular,’ and that all ideas of transcendence and otherworldliness are to be positively rejected.”

“Hmmm,” muttered Spitfire.

Satan said, “I also get a kick out of what Time calls these theologians—‘the godless Christian thinkers’! Such irony! Godless Christian thinkers—ha!”

Spitfire’s eyes began to glow. “With God dead, maybe we can raise the devil for real!”

Satan looked right at him. “I suppose it was only a matter of time until someone came up with the idea of God’s demise, since, to all practical purposes, God has long been dead for countless church members. They act as if he were dead. They live as if there had never been a cross or a Holy Spirit in the world. They appear, by their actions, to have witnessed God’s funeral.”

Spitfire nodded. “True. And isn’t this wonderful? Think what it means to our cause.”

But suddenly Satan was sad. He dropped his head, and smoke curled about his face as if he were doing another TV commercial.

“Why is your countenance fallen, Mighty One?” asked Spitfire. “Haven’t we got good news?”

Satan lifted a dark face. “Nietzsche knew God was dead. Messrs. Van Buren, Hamilton, Vahanian, and Altizer know it. But you and I, little brother, do not know it, do we? We have blasphemed God; we have tried desperately to overthrow his kingdom. But we have never been naive enough to think he is dead! Our theology causes us to tremble, because, at long last, we know who will be dead! Don’t we now?”

Spitfire too was saddened. His head dropped. Smoke curled up as from a funeral pyre. Stillness lay in that place like the silence of death.—LON WOODRUM, Hastings, Michigan.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Second of Three Parts

As a method, form criticism is not in itself wrong, and conservative scholars engage in this kind of research also. In modern critical scholarship, however, form criticism is not an innocent affair, largely because of the various presuppositions upon which it is based. They can be briefly summarized in the following points:

1. The modern form critics believe that in the so-called twilight period of oral tradition (from c. A.D. 30–60), the gospel stories and sayings circulated as separate units in the various Christian communities. It is the task of the scholar to find out which of these units were original and authentic, and which are later additions.

2. For Bultmann and his followers believe (and this is the second major presupposition) that nearly all these units were gradually altered and embellished under the influence of the beliefs held in the various Christian communities. In the Gospels, for example, these critics generally distinguish four layers. The first and lowest layer consists of Jesus’ own words, or authentic memories of his deeds. The second consists of contributions of the earliest post-Easter Palestinian community. The third is formed by the contributions of Hellenistic churches. The fourth and last is the contribution of the evangelists themselves. The three top layers are so thick that it is very difficult to penetrate to the layer at the botton. This also explains Bultmann’s statement quoted above: “We know, strictly speaking, nothing of Jesus’ personality.” The rest of the New Testament (and the Old Testament as well) is subjected to similar methods. Second Corinthians is said to consist of four or five smaller letters or fragments of letters; First Corinthians consists of two, Philippians of three, First Thessalonians also of three, and so on.

Critique

The whole procedure is unacceptable to us for several reasons.

1. It ignores the fact of the inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit. Often this is not even discussed. The Bible is seen and treated as any other human book; the only acknowledged difference seems to be that it is the book of the Christian community to which we ourselves belong. As the basic document of this community it is unique, but this is only a historical judgment. Seen merely as a document, it is not in any way different from any other human document.

2. The whole procedure is one of pure arbitrariness and subjectivism. When form criticism started, Martin Dibelius found in the Synoptic Gospels eighteen stories that in his opinion were almost certainly authentic, i.e., spoken by Jesus himself. Later, Bultmann studied the same material and concluded that only three of them were authentic. Today Bultmann accepts only some forty sayings in all the Gospels as genuine. And yet it is quite common in the circles of form criticism to speak of the “assured results” of scientific theological study. What is “assured,” when the one scholar rejects what the other accepts?

3. This naturally leads to the next objection: there are no scientific criteria. R. H. Fuller mentions the following three: First, anything that clearly presupposes the post-Easter situations must be eliminated from Jesus’ sayings. Secondly, everything that is paralleled in Jewish apocalyptic and rabbinic tradition must also be eliminated. Thirdly, authentic sayings must exhibit Aramaic features (The New Testament in Current Study, p. 33). But are these criteria really scientific? Are they not typical examples of scientific question-begging? Fuller himself admits that none of these criteria is really foolproof. As for the first two he says: “They yield no complete certainty, for on some points Jesus could have agreed with the post-Eastern church.… Jesus might also have quoted or used with approval Rabbinic teaching.” About the third point he admits: “Of course the earliest Aramaic-speaking church could also have used poetic forms, and certainly its creation would undoubtedly exhibit Aramaic linguistic features, just as the authentic logia (words) of Jesus.” But what then, one may ask, is left of the validity and usefulness of these criteria? The German theologian Ernst Käsemann seems to be too right when he openly admits: “We simply do not have formal criteria to find out which aspects can be genuinely attributed to Jesus Himself” (in G. Bergmann, Alarm um die Bibel, 1963, p. 103). And this is no wonder, for the Gospels are the only sources of our knowledge of Jesus. The form critics do not have secret sources of information on the basis of which they can evaluate the Gospels. They have to work with these Gospels, and with nothing else. Obviously, then, almost everything one says about what lies behind the Gospels is mere guesswork. And yet the results are often presented as the “assured results” of scientific study.

4. Closely related to the foregoing is the form critics’ disregard of the existence of eyewitnesses in the early Christian communities. Bultmann and others believe that all the additions and embellishments that took place in the “twilight period” happened within these Christian communities. But must we then believe that these communities first shaped the additions, for kerygmatic or theological reasons, and afterwards started to believe them as historical facts? And must we further assume that all the eyewitnesses who had been present during Jesus’ ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection accepted this whole process? As A. M. Hunter says: “Reading the form critics, we easily get the impression that when the Gospel tradition was taking shape, all the eyewitnesses of Jesus had either ‘fallen asleep’ or were in safe hiding” (Interpreting the New Testament [1900–1950], 1951, p. 39). Really, the small time-lag separating the historical facts and the written documents is too small to explain this whole process. The development of German folklore, for example, required centuries!

5. Again and again we see that in the application of the form-critical method the presuppositions are decisive. Take, for example, the fact of the empty tomb in the resurrection story. It is beyond a doubt that all the Gospels mention this fact. Yet nearly all form critics reject the reality of the empty tomb, because they do not find it in Paul’s kerygma, as recorded in First Corinthians 15, which is the earliest resurrection tradition known to us. At first glance this seems to be a rather strong case. Here at least there seems to be textual evidence for the critical view. In reality, however, the case is extremely weak. In his summary of the tradition that he himself had received from others (most likely he means the other apostles) and had delivered to the congregation in Corinth, the Apostle does speak only of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Yet a careful study of the whole chapter makes it quite clear that the reality of the empty tomb is definitely implied in Paul’s kerygma. First of all, there is the whole argument about the resurrection body of the believers (vv. 35–50). This argument would be meaningless if the Apostle had not believed that Jesus’ own resurrection was a bodily one. Secondly, there would have been no need for the Apostle to “defend” the resurrection Gospel against the opponents in Corinth, if he too had believed in a purely spiritual resurrection. We may be sure that his opponents, who were deeply influenced by the Greek idea of an immortal soul, did not have any objection to a “spiritual” resurrection. Simply by agreeing with them Paul could have settled all differences. Thirdly, in 15:3 the Apostle emphatically speaks of “buried” and “raised on the third day.” The addition of the word “buried” is again meaningless if it does not speak of the reality of the resurrection as the fact of being raised from the grave. As Julius Schniewind says: “The Empty Tomb has already asserted its place in the kerygma in First Corinthians 15; otherwise the presence of ‘was buried’ and ‘on the third day’ is inexplicable” (Kerygma and Myth, I, 73). Therefore I believe that Kirsop Lake, who belonged to the nineteenth-century school of liberalism, was far more honest when he wrote that “the story of the empty tomb must be fought out on doctrinal, not on historical or critical grounds” (Historical Evidence for the Resurrection, 1907, p. 253). Here at least we have an honest acknowledgment of the true situation. Applying it to the many modern denials of the empty tomb we can only conclude: There cannot be an empty tomb, for this would shatter the whole modern conception of the impossibility of a real resurrection.

6. Finally, if this method is correct, there is no absolute certainty left. Everything becomes ambiguous and subject to doubt. No one, I believe, has expressed this with more honesty than Professor Gerhard Ebeling did in a discussion of the modern historical-critical method. He openly states that we may not stop half-way. We have “to expose ourselves relentlessly to the vulnerability, the insecurity and the dangers.” We have “to go ahead with the critical examination of our foundations, to let everything burn that will burn and without reservations await what proves itself unburnable, genuine, true—and to adopt this attitude at the risk that much that seemed established may begin to rock, that indeed some things may even be temporarily considered shaky which upon ever new examination then prove to be stable after all, that thus many mistakes and errors are made, much asserted and much taken back again, that our path takes us through serious crises, bitter struggles, bewildering debates and the results are apparently weakness and collapse,” until we find that version of Christianity which withstands even the most vicious critical attack (Word and Faith, 1963, p. 51). But this means, of course, that for the time being, nothing, literally nothing, is finally certain. And even that which is certain today may become uncertain tomorrow. We are and remain dependent upon the results of the critics.

Conclusion

For all these reasons, the whole modern method is absolutely unacceptable for us. The attitude that comes to the fore in this method is not belief but unbelief. Here man lords it over Scripture; everything depends on his judgments. No one can any longer be sure about the message of the Gospel. Indeed, we must say that there is no Gospel left. Jesus Christ becomes a foggy figure of the past, and no one knows for sure who he was, what he did, or what he meant to do. Skepticism is the order of the day, and the Gospel disappears in the mists of human subjectivism and relativism.

And what does all this mean for the layman? Nothing else than that he is again relegated to the state of tutelage. Again, as in the Middle Ages, he is dependent upon the priest—the high priest of modern scientific theology. R. H. Fuller tries to deny this. He rightly assumes that the ordinary believer does not want his faith “to be tied down to what the professors tell him at any given moment.” But this is not necessary, either. The believer does not depend on the professor. “What he believes in is Christ as he is proclaimed by the living church today.… This Christ is not a myth, but the Jesus of Nazareth, in whom, according to the kerygma and to faith, God has acted decisively for man’s redemption” (R. H. Fuller, op. cit., p. 142). All this does not sound bad, but is it really the solution? How can the ordinary believer trust the “Gospel,” the kerygma that is proclaimed in his church, if the very theologians of his church tell him and all the other believers that nothing is yet fully certain about this kerygma? Professor Geering seems more honest and more to the point, when he openly admits in an article in The Outlook (Sept. 25, 1965): “If the Bible is to continue to be the rule of the church’s faith and practice, and the basis of continuing reformation, the study of it must necessarily be the task of the specialist. The Bible is a book from the ancient world and must be studied in the light of modern scholarship and all that it can tell us about the world that bequeathed us the Bible. The Holy Spirit is no more likely to reveal all its truth to the lay-reader, however sincere, than He is to reveal the cure to the lay medical practitioner.”

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

From copywriters on Madison Avenue to teen-agers in the junior-high locker room, everybody is talking about sex. The copywriters sell it big, offering it as a bonus with everything from cigars to mouthwash. The kids play it cool, swapping half-truths with a titter or a smirk. But truthfully or twistedly, blandly or blatantly, directly or indirectly, everybody is talking about sex.

Television commercials, billboards, and magazines assure us endlessly that some sort of sexual reward comes with every wise purchase. Mass man soaks up the message, unabashedly approves, but all the while suffers a growing sense of disillusionment. In spite of their prattle, neither Madison Avenue nor the locker room can give man what he needs to make sense out of sex. It is a theological perspective that is needed, one that considers sex in its ultimate relationship, and this can come to us only out of the Christian Scriptures.

Not surprisingly, that theological word confronts us at the very portals of the Bible. Of God’s creation of man, Genesis one says, “Male and female created he them.” In the first chapter of the Bible we have the first reference to sexuality, and the second chapter elaborates it with the story of Adam and Eve. Those who are tempted to think this account naïve should remember that both Jesus and Paul referred back to it as in some way normative for the human race (Matt. 19:3–9; 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31). Five guidelines in chapter two are helpful today.

First of all, human sexuality is the result of God’s fatherly concern. “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him a helper fit for him’ ” (2:18). Eve was God’s benevolent provision for Adam, and Adam, in turn, for Eve. Sexuality is therefore a feature of God’s creation, bearing his approval. Pride and self-will may trick us into yielding it to evil ends, leading to results that are often unbelievably twisted and gross. Nevertheless, far from being evil, sex is God’s provision for the good of mankind, and every Christian discussion of the subject must begin here.

Do not underestimate the force of this theological point of view. Recently I listened to an anguished young man confess that he was aroused by the presence of men but completely indifferent to girls. Even so, he was not ready to face his problem seriously until a few days later he heard a sermon on the biblical theme of creation. He then returned to say, “If that’s the way it is, I’ll pay any price to be God’s man.” He had caught a glimpse of God’s purpose behind every feature of life, including his sexuality, and this had motivated him to seek help in earnest.

Secondly, sex belongs to the Christian mysteries, and its ultimate meaning is known only by revelation. The Lord God caused Adam to be in a “deep sleep,” and therefore Eve’s origin could be known only as God chose to make it known. The new relationship was beyond Adam’s rational powers to comprehend. He knew only that Eve was God’s gift to him and that her coming had made all of life different. Sexuality is still beyond rational explanation but can be accepted in faith for what it is, a feature of God’s creative concern.

Adolescents who are given extensive biological information about sex as though this were the whole of it are deprived, however sophisticated they may appear. If they are not given a sense of the ultimate meaning of sex, if they are led to view it only as a biological function, they are likely to become what Grace and Fred M. Hechinger have called “little old technicians.” This is a sure path to disillusionment. On the other hand, adolescents who are taught to accept their sexuality as an endowment from God have a framework within which to place the biological facts, and they are more likely to manage those powerful impulses wholesomely.

In the third place, the account of Adam and Eve confronts us with what Helmut Thielicke has called the “wonder of recognition.” When God presented Eve to Adam, Adam said, “This at last is bone of my bone …; she shall be called Woman.” He recognized in Eve both likeness and dissimilarity: she was bone of his bone but needed a name something like “she man” to mark the difference between them. Here is the polarity of the sexes, the ground of Adam’s sudden awareness that in Eve he had found his other half.

It is wise to remember that the story of Adam and Eve answers questions people ask today. It speaks cogently to youth who marvel at the idea that somewhere in the world lives their “other half.” Why not tell them, then, on the strength of this account, that their moment of recognition can come under the watchful eye of God, that finding a life’s partner can be a theological experience for those who will make it so? Is not the Lord God as concerned for the welfare of his creatures today as he was for Adam?

In the fourth place, the term “one flesh” reflects the unique nature of marriage. The current notion of marriage is strong on romance but weak on commitment, as shown by America’s nearly 500,000 divorces a year. By contrast, the Scriptures consistently hold that marriage is a relationship so profound and enduring that only the term “one flesh” can adequately characterize it.

“Flesh” in Hebrew thought stands for the whole of a man’s mortal life, including his feelings, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses. Much more than the merging of two bodies, “one flesh” implies the merging of two persons, and no human relationship is more intimate. Within this intimate relationship, sexual intercourse becomes a sacramental act symbolizing the union’s completeness. Apart from the totality of a “one flesh” relationship, it leads only toward disillusionment, and no amount of glib talk can refute this. Only yesterday I listened to the confession of a modern sophisticate who had scrapped the “one flesh” conviction and had tried intercourse for kicks. Her grim countenance bore the strain of several months of self-loathing, and she is still far from regaining her emotional balance.

Finally, we are told that Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed. If this account is to stand as a paradigm of marriage at its best, then marriage is to be a relationship of complete openness between husband and wife. Later, after Adam and Eve had rebelled against their Maker, they tried to hide from each other. Not uncommonly, spouses today reflect this same state of affairs. “We just can’t talk to each other,” they say. “We’re like two strangers in the same house.” Openness nevertheless remains the ideal to be sought after. When Jesus answered questions about the collapse of marriages in Moses’ time, he reminded his questioners that “from the beginning it was not so,” thus affirming for all time an ideal never to be forgotten. The closer spouses come to this ideal of openness, the nearer they are to marital fulfillment.

In a word, the account of Adam and Eve teaches that sex is sacred and that marriage is the normative relationship for one man and one woman. That is, God has created man as a sexual being and has ordained marriage as the institution within which that sexuality can be fully expressed.

But what about those who agree with this theology but whose marriages are nevertheless racked with destructive tensions? Often a person brings to marriage the causes for such tensions: strong negative feelings from his childhood, fears that have never been aired, confusion about his marital role, inadequate commitment to the relationship, serious immaturity, and sometimes personal guilt. These, not unrealistic theology, place stresses upon marriage. Often pastoral counsel and sometimes the best psychiatric services are needed to resolve the tensions and strengthen the bond.

Nevertheless, those who hold a theological view of marriage are in the best position to face their problems. Their conviction that marriage is for keeps gives them a steady foundation on which to work. Their conviction that it is ordained by God orients them toward the source of aid and forgiveness. In a word, Genesis 2 is a backdrop against which they can work out the implications of their own marriage under the watchful eye of God.

The idea that marriage is the normative relationship in human life may seem to be disproved by a new group of free, affluent, “swinging” single people, sometimes called the “swingles.” After describing them, Time, in an essay on “The Pleasures and Pain of the Single Life” (Sept. 15, 1967), put its finger on their loneliness: “Ultimately, the singles devoutly wish that they weren’t.” But they are, and many will remain so. Our ministry to them, besides understanding their loneliness, is to help them find personal fulfillment through surrender to a worthwhile cause. It is also to help them acknowledge to themselves the reason for their not marrying, a reason more often related to fear than to the unavailabilty of a mate.

In a culture that is rapidly losing the conviction that marriage is ordained by God and in harmony with man’s nature, how can Christians be helped to implement a wholesome theology of sex and marriage? The Church can perform a powerful ministry, first of all, by making the theological view of marriage a part of the fabric of congregational life. There is no better place to start than with the Christian wedding. Every congregation should be led periodically to take a hard look at all the features of weddings performed within its facilities. Are the songs sentimental or Christian? Is the focus of the event on the bride or on Christ? Does the ceremony express Christian convictions about marriage in a lofty way, or has it become corrupted by merely romantic sentiments? The congregation that takes its responsibilities seriously at this point is likely to find the same high views of marriage coming to permeate all other areas of its corporate life.

Christians must also be helped to cultivate wholesome feelings about sex. The frightened, confused, and guilty in every congregation should hear the subject discussed in a wholesome way, much as Paul discussed the matter with the troubled Corinthian church (1 Cor. 7). There is all the more reason to do this when secular voices like Playboy seem to be issuing the same call for open discussion. The difference is enormous, however, for Playboy regards sex as an impulse of nature related to nothing ultimate, while the Church sees it as a gift from God to be expressed according to his laws. Wholesome feelings about sex can exist only where the Church makes its theology clear and Christians align their lives in accordance with it.

Above all else, the Lordship of Jesus Christ must be declared over the realm of sex as over every other realm. After I began writing this paragraph, a young couple appeared at my door seeking help. They confessed that their relationship had become “much too physical,” and their story was one of lust breeding confusion and hate. Both were from Christian homes and were sincere in their appeal for help. They were in immediate need of forgiveness, to be sure; but if they are to cope successfully with their problem, they will have to reckon with the Lordship of Jesus and work their problem through in terms of this allegiance. The Lordship of Jesus is the alpha and omega in solving the problem of lust.

This tormented couple are only two of a faceless throng both inside and outside the Church who are caught in a sexual crisis. The embarrassed silence of the Church only deepens their guilt and confusion. They will get no help from the propaganda of Madison Avenue, and the word from the locker room serves only as seeds of confusion for the next generation. What they need is a clear, patient biblical word—a word that bites into the contemporary situation with authority, realism, and compassion. The Church that speaks that word will be speaking a relevant word for Christ.

Break The Time Barrier!

Time is the scarcest resource for ministers. A minister continually feels that there is simply not enough time for him to do everything his people demand of him. Business executives face a similar problem, and one student of executive behavior, Peter D. Drucker, has developed a set of simple guidelines to help solve it. These guidelines, presented in The Effective Executive (Harper & Row), apply as well to the time-squeezed minister as to the business man.

In applying them to a minister’s use of time, however, there are a few important principles to keep in mind. First, a minister’s time is not really his own; he is just the one appointed to manage it. It does not even belong to the people he serves. In the final sense it belongs to God.

Second, God gives a man enough time to do everything He wants him to do. This includes fulfilling his responsibility to his family and to his own health. For Him to do anything else would be illogical and inconsistent.

The third principle is stated by the Apostle Paul: “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” Paul meant simply that God would give him the strength to do everything He wanted him to do.

Here then is the framework: God gives us time; he gives us enough time to do all that he assigns; and he has promised us the strength we need. What we are left with is the problem of how to become a good steward of that time.

Drucker’s guidelines are simple to apply:

1. Record your time.

2. Prune the time-wasters.

3. Consolidate your discretionary time.

4. Build a flexible schedule.

To manage your time better you must first know where it is going, and the only way to know is to keep a written record. This may seem like a needless suggestion; most people think they already know where their time goes. However, tests have shown that usually they do not. Not even the highly paid executives know. Tests of dozens of these men at this very point reveal that almost without exception, though they think they know how they are spending their time, they really do not.

Once you know where your time is going, then you must prune away activities that simply waste time. For the minister, these are the things that do not contribute to the real work God has called him to do—that is, his work of preaching and teaching, visitation and counseling, and so on. You must be ruthless with these non-essential activities that clutter up the day and simply stop doing them. This demands boldness. On the surface most of them seem important; if they did not, you would not be doing them. The best way to decide is to ask this question about every item on your time record: “What would happen to the work God has called me to do if I stopped doing this altogether?” If the answer is “nothing,” then stop doing it.

Pruning the time-wasters will not really create free time; no minister has that. However, it will give you more time over which you can exert some control. This “discretionary” time comes in small blocks, and the more of these you can consolidate, the better chance you will have of really getting something done. Most ministerial activities demand fairly large blocks of time; a minister needs to be alone for long periods to prepare a sermon or lesson, to plan his future program, to keep himself spiritually refreshed. The way to get these large chunks of time is to put your scattered bits of discretionary time together.

These steps lead directly to the last one: Build a flexible schedule. A good schedule is a pathway, not a prison. There are good reasons for breaking a schedule; but without having one in mind, you will be unable to remain on a sound course. You will fall back into time-wasting without knowing it.

All this does not imply that you must turn your service for God into a mechanical process. Our Lord himself gives us the best example of balance in this matter. He always had time for the important things, and to him the important things involved people. Their souls and their well-being were his great concern. He had time for people because he made time for them.

Ministers share Christ’s objectives. To accomplish them they must, like him, be careful stewards of their time—LAWRENCE H. MERK, assistant professor of economics and management, University of Idaho.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

A misconception of Christianity arises from a supposed antithesis between the religious and the secular that has much more in common with medieval Christendom than with the New Testament. The Church is indeed described in the New Testament as a “holy nation” and its members as those “called to be saints,” and Christians are constantly exhorted to “follow after holiness” and to shun the ways of a wicked world. But the Church and its members are nonetheless required to get out into the world and involve themselves in its affairs, and this in no way contradicts New Testament Christianity.

In the great days of medieval Christendom, the whole of life, secular as well as religious, was in one way or another under the control of the Church. To be more precise, it was under the control of organized religion, which meant that it was essentially under clerical control. Hence, although the secular sphere was regarded as in itself unhallowed, it was given at least a veneer of sanctity through its association with religion; and what was more important, its resources could be used in the service of religion. Already in the Middle Ages there were the beginnings of revolt against this state of affairs; yet something very like it continued even after the Reformation, not only in Roman Catholic countries but also—mutatis mutandis—in large parts of Protestantism. But the revolt continued, too, and gained momentum, and an increasing number of areas of life became emancipated from ecclesiastical control. Now, in large parts of what used to be Christendom there is little or nothing left for the churches to control but their own private enterprises of education and charity.

In this connection, it is often said today that Christendom is dead, and it is fashionable in some quarters to add: Thank God! But a more appropriate comment would be: God forgive us! For in Christendom God gave his Church, and especially its leaders, the clergy, privileges it had not had since the days of David and Solomon. Failure to rise to the accompanying responsibility resulted in the division of the kingdom and the increasing erosion of its privileges, until now the Church is again going into exile—not in an alien land but in an alienated world. The alienation of the world, however, is not wholly the Church’s fault, nor is it simply or primarily a matter of the secularization of life, in the sense of its emancipation from ecclesiastical control. It has to do, rather, with the secularization of thought and feeling about life that has been going on in the West with increasing tempo for the past four or five centuries. This process began with the Renaissance and was powerfully reinforced by the Enlightenment, and it is now spreading rapidly round the world.

The Renaissance was marked by a dramatic turning of interest away from the supernatural world to the natural, from heaven to earth, and from God to man. Both it and the Enlightenment were what may be called world-affirming movements—so much so, that in affirming this world they succeeded in denying any other. Both no longer reckoned seriously either with a “higher world” or with an “age to come”; they recognized no order of reality, no powers or resources other than those of what is commonly called “nature.” They were strongly prejudiced against the “supernatural”—a prejudice that in large measure was, no doubt, a quite understandable and not unjustifiable reaction to the excessive emphasis put on the supernatural and the claims made for it in ecclesiastical circles. But in consequence they lived in a one-story universe, which was the theater of a one-act play. It was a theater of incredible vastness, but without windows or doors; and the play was of enormous length, but the curtain was rung down on it by death. This is the outlook of secularism. It is utterly alien, not only to Christianity, but to all genuine religion.

We must distinguish, however, between secularism and secularity. Secularism implies a negative and even hostile attitude toward religion, but secularity does not. Secularity stands for what is simply non-religious, not anti-religious, and it implies neutrality in religious matters. The most obvious structures of secularity are the modern secular state and the system of secular education that goes with it. Here no special privileges are accorded to any religious group, and non-religious and even anti-religious groups share equality under the law with the religious. The same is true of other structures of secularity: science and the arts, industry and commerce, medicine, and a whole host of charitable and welfare enterprises both public and private that bear no religious label. In all these structures, Christians are or may be involved, and we now have to consider the possibility of holiness with them.

On this it might not be amiss to remark that we have every reason to be thankful that our environment is secular and not anti-religious or pagan. If it grants us as Christians no special privileges, neither does it put us under disabilities like those our forefathers endured in the ancient world, or those that multitudes of our brethren have endured and still endure in various parts of the world today. Nor is there anything defiling about secularity; it is not “unclean.” Although politics, for example, is often “dirty business,” it does not have to be; and when it is, the fault is with the politicians whose motives and methods are dirty—a point that suggests the urgent need for truly sanctified Christians in politics. The unholiness of men engaged in politics or any other secular business is no good reason for Christians to hold themselves aloof; for unholiness is not contagious, as Christ has shown by his association with all sorts of sinners.

Christians should not make the mistake of thinking that because secularity is neutral in matters of religion, secular affairs are of no concern to God. Here we might learn something from the early Church, which held that even the rulers of the Roman Empire, pagan and far from neutral though they were, had their authority from God and were (unknowingly) servants of God and subject to the authority of Christ. That was why Christians were to pray for them and to obey them, as long as they commanded nothing incompatible with loyalty to Christ and obedience to God; if the rulers transgressed this, Christians were to disobey and take the consequences. Similarly, the structures of modern secularity are subject to the lordship of Christ, for this is no less a reality in a world emancipated from the control of his Church than it was in a world not yet under such control. With or without Christendom, Jesus Christ is Lord. His lordship, moreover, extends to the whole of life, not just to some religious fraction of it; it belongs to weekdays as well as Sundays. Christians therefore are called to bear witness to it, both with their lips and with their lives, amid the structures of secularity as well as in the Church.

Then what is there to prevent Christians from living holy lives today within the structures of secularity? Apparently nothing at all, provided they keep constantly in touch with the Divine Source of holiness through the means of grace he furnishes, and are open to receive from him the Spirit of holiness, which is the Spirit of Christ. This they are free to do, since the religious neutrality of the secular world demands no such neutrality on their part. They are also free to give expression to the Spirit, whether in doing or in suffering, as they meet the demands of daily life and fulfill their various vocations in faith toward God and love for their neighbors. There may be nothing outwardly very distinctive about them, for they will cultivate no peculiarities of speech or dress or behavior to mark them off from other decent citizens; yet there will be something in their whole way of living that bears witness to the mystery of a life that is hid with Christ in God. They will not be infallible, though they will be honest and reliable and will try to do everything in the light of their commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord. Nor will they be exempt from trials and temptations; but they will have the resources to meet them. They will know how to rejoice in tribulation, and like John Wesley’s Methodists they will “die well.”

They will also rejoice in all the wonder and beauty and riches of the world, and the marvel of man’s mind; for the Spirit of Holiness is no disparager of God’s creation. William Temple used to say that Christianity is the most materialistic of the world’s great religions, and he was right. For with its three great dogmas of creation, incarnation, and resurrection, it affirms the essential goodness of the world, in spite of the corruption of sin and the ravages of Satan and the universal, ineluctable fact of death. With a vision, moreover, that is far wider than that of the world-affirming secularist, it dares to believe in a future for the world, from which not only sin but death itself, the last enemy of God and man, shall have been abolished. It can do so because it has had a vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and has learned from him to see the divine fire that flames in every common bush. It cannot therefore simply sit around plucking blackberries, not even the very luscious blackberries that grow on the structures of secularity in our modern affluent society. Yet these two are gifts of God, to be received with thankfulness and used with reverence.

“Be ye angry, and sin not” (Ephesians 4:26).

Clarence E. Macartney, for many years the distinguished minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, writes that “anger is one of the most common sins, yet one of the most dangerous and injurious to the peace and well-being of man. More than any other sins, it blasts the flower of friendship, turns men out of Eden, destroys peace and concord in the home, incites to crime and violence, and turns love and affection into hatred” (Facing Life and Getting the Best of It, p. 47). He goes on to cite illustrations from the Bible of the havoc brought on by anger, making mention of Cain, Balaam, Moses, Naaman, and the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

No one—certainly no Christian—will deny that Dr. Macartney is entirely right in what he says about the devastating effects of human anger, which the Church has rightly regarded as one of the seven deadly sins. But there is another side to it. There is such a thing as righteous and even Christian anger. All profound moralists have agreed with the dictum of Thomas Fuller, that “anger is one of the sinews of the soul; he who wants it hath a maimed mind.”

The clinching illustration and proof of this are to be found in Jesus Christ himself. The gospel records make it perfectly plain that he could on occasion feel blazing anger and, feeling it, could and did give emphatic expression to it. For example, in Mark, chapter 3, the story is told of his healing on the Sabbath a man with a withered hand. When some protested that it was altogether improper to heal a man on the Sabbath, Jesus was indignant at their stubbornly perverted sense of values. The Scripture says that he “looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” In Matthew 23, the account is given of Jesus’ blasting the scribes and Pharisees, whom he describes as “hypocrites” for the revolting contrast between their high religious profession and their low irreligious practices. And in John 2 it is recorded that Jesus cleansed the Temple of its money-changers, insisting that his Father’s house must not be made a house of merchandise.

The Apostle Paul too was capable of righteous indignation. He says quite frankly that when Peter came to Antioch, he (Paul) withstood him to the face, “because he was to be blamed” (Gal. 2:11). Peter had wobbled, wavered, and trimmed over what to Paul—and to all subsequent vital Christianity—was a crucial issue, namely, the view that the Jewish law was in no sense to be considered binding upon Gentile converts to Christianity, since Jesus Christ alone was fully sufficient for man’s salvation. Paul was deeply angry with Peter for betraying this fundamental principle, and he had the courage to tell him so.

Yet Paul also exhorts his Ephesian fellow Christians to “be angry and sin not.” Just what does this mean? What constitutes righteous Christian anger? In other words, how is it possible to be both good and mad?

The first characteristic of righteous anger is that it is properly motivated; that is, it is inspired and animated by unselfish considerations. Far too often our anger is rooted in selfishness, however we may try to hide this under noble motives. It is, at bottom, little more than personal resentment born of some private injury or slight. It is personal pique, caused by something that damages us in pocket, or prestige, or self-esteem.

Remember how Shylock, the Jewish money-lender, says of Antonio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice:

I hate him for he is a Christian;

But more for that in low simplicity

He lends out money gratis, and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,

I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

He hates our sacred nation, and he rails,

Even there where merchants most do congregate,

On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,

Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe

If I forgive him!

That is the usual character of our anger: It is motivated by basically selfish considerations.

But righteous anger, the kind that is not sinful, is not animated by personal motives at all. Jesus Christ never spoke one angry word when he was personally mistreated—not even at Calvary, when he was unjustly put to an excruciating death as a common criminal. His indignation was aroused only over wrong done to others, particularly the weak and helpless. For example, in Luke 17 he says that “it were better for [a man] that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”

A fundamental mark of righteous and Christian anger is that it boils over, not at wrong done to self, but at wrong done to others. The incident that inspired the career of the great English philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury took place when he was about fourteen. One day he was startled to hear a great shouting and yelling in a side street and the singing of a bacchanalian song. Presently the noisy party neared the comer, and to his horror he saw four or five drunken men carrying a roughly made coffin containing the body of one of their fellows. Staggering as they turned the corner, they let their burden fall and then broke out into foul language. The horrified young boy stood spellbound as the bizarre funeral procession passed. Then he exclaimed, “Good heavens! Can this be permitted, simply because the man was poor and friendless?” Before the sound of the drunken songs had died away in the distance, he had determined that, with the help of God, he would from that time on devote his life to pleading the cause of the poor and friendless (Life of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder, I, 47).

The biographer of Frederick W. Robertson, one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century, says this about him:

The indignation with which he heard of a base act was so intense that it rendered him sleepless. His wrath was terrible, and it did not evaporate in words. But it was Christ-like indignation. With those who were weak, crushed with remorse, fallen, his compassion, long-suffering and tenderness were as beautiful as they were unfailing. But falsehood, hypocrisy, the sin of the strong against the weak, stirred him to the very depths of his being [Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson, by Stopford A. Brooke, p. 106].

An almost contemporary American illustration is to be found in the well-known story of Abraham Lincoln who, on seeing the slave market at New Orleans for the first time, reportedly said: “Let’s get out of this, boys. If I ever get any chance to hit this thing, I’ll hit it hard.”

The second characteristic of righteous Christian anger is that it is properly focused and directed. That is to say, if it is really righteous and not sinful, it is directed not against persons, wrong though they be, but against wrong deeds, things, institutions, and situations. The commandment of Jesus Christ is clear and plain, that we who call ourselves Christians should love all persons, even the most sinful and unlovely. What we have to be angry against is not the wrong-doer but his wrong, not the sinner but his sin.

If we are morally in earnest, we sincerely lament and even hate our own wrong-doing, for which we make confession to God and crave his divine forgiveness. But this does not prevent us from loving ourselves, sinners though we are. C. S. Lewis puts the matter this way:

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did these things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them.… But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves; being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again [Mere Christianity, pp. 92, 93].

The third characteristic of righteous Christian anger is that it is properly implemented—that is, followed up by every possible kind of positive and constructive action to end the wrong that occasioned the anger.

A bit of verse quoted by Hubert Simpson in Put Forth by the Moon says it well:

We do not see the vital point,

That ’tis the eighth most deadly sin,

To wail, “The world is out of joint,”

And not attempt to put it in.

It is not enough to register indignation against admitted evils. The Christian must do everything he can to channel that indignation into appropriate remedial action.

For after all, real Christian anger is always the reverse side of Christian love. We as Christians should hate wrong deeply because we love the right so deeply. Our Christian love impels us to believe, as Jesus did, that every human life is infinitely precious in the sight of God; and therefore we are in duty bound, not merely to protest against whatever evils prevent human beings from reaching their full God-intended stature, but to do all in our power to end such evils.

For instance, it was characteristic of Jesus’ righteous indignation that he not only was angry at flagrant wrongs but also went about doing good, healing the sick of all sorts of diseases and offering that fullness of life which comes from entering the Kingdom of God and living as his redeemed children. Paul did not merely protest against Peter’s wavering and hedging on that crucial issue of the non-applicability of the Jewish law to Gentile converts; he also preached and practiced a Christianity in which Jesus Christ was all in all, and in which his sacrifice on Calvary was the all-sufficient remedy for human sin and acceptance of his finished work the one essential condition of eternal life.

Shaftesbury, angry at the exploitation of the poor, the young, and the underprivileged, advocated concrete measures in Parliament for ending that exploitation and worked incessantly and sacrificially until appropriate legislation was passed to humanize conditions in mines, factories, and workshops throughout Britain. Not only did Abraham Lincoln register his vow to hit slavery hard; when he had the opportunity, in 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It is always characteristic of righteous anger that it not only protests but also proposes, that it not only raises its voice to object but also raises its hand to remedy.

The immediate relevance of this is illustrated by a passage from The Temptation to Be Good, by A. Powell Davies:

That is one of the truly serious things that has happened to the multitude of so-called ordinary people. They have forgotten how to be indignant. This is not because they are overflowing with human kindness, but because they are morally soft and compliant. When they see evil and injustice, they are pained but not revolted. They mutter and mumble, they never cry out. They commit the sin of not being angry.

Yet their anger is the one thing above all others that would make them count. If they cannot lead crusades, or initiate reforms, they can at least create the conditions in which crusades can be effectual and reforms successful. The wrath of the multitude could bring back decency and integrity into public life; it could frighten the corrupt demagogue into silence and blast the rumor-monger into oblivion. It could give honest leaders a chance to win [p. 119].

George Matheson, the Scottish hymn-writer and preacher, once said this: “There are times when I do well to be angry, but I have mistaken the times.” It is our Christian duty to be angry at the right times, in the right way, and against the right things, that right may triumph and wrong be put to flight.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Beginning this month CHRISTIANITY TODAY is being printed at the new $15 million McCall Printing Company facility in Glenn Dale, Maryland, a Washington, D. C., suburb. The plant is located in a clearing on a heavily wooded 125-acre site with a spur off the main north-south railroad route between Eastern cities. One new printing press alone cost over $2 million.

■ Readers must wait a month for the next issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (dateline August 16) because of the annual summer-vacation “dropout” issue.

■ Editor-elect Harold Lindsell is attending the World Council of Churches assembly in Uppsala, Sweden. The next issue will feature his editorial evaluation.

“Is Life Just a Chemical Reaction?” Joseph Wood Krutch asks this question in an excellent article in the Saturday Review (May 4, 1968). He faces the developments scientists think they see growing out of DNA and the possibility of the creation of living organisms in a test tube. And he also faces an old, old philosophical puzzle.

As all philosophers know, Plato was a realist. What most people do not know is that Plato was not “realistic” in the way we use the word today. A man today prides himself on being realistic when he deals with the here and now, the material at hand, things evident to the five senses. But Plato was realistic in an entirely different way. For him, the real was beyond the realm of the senses. He was more interested in the eternal than in the temporal and found those things immediately before the senses as only passing illustrations of The Real. He believed that The Real had to do with such things as the Beautiful, the True, the Good. One may speak glowingly of a beautiful woman, a beautiful sunset, a beautiful horse, or even a beautiful double play, but these are merely passing instances of the abiding reality that is Beauty itself.

Aristotle threw an emphasis on the individual cases and pointed out that what Plato would call The Real is simply a name to cover a group of similar things. Thus the word “dog” is a useful name for all the dogs we ever see. Because of this approach, Aristotle was rightly called the first scientist. Generally speaking, the scientist likes induction, though he is not limited to this method, and the Platonist likes deduction.

The debate between the reality of the seen and the unseen has never downed in either religion or philosophy. It appeared again in the dualism of Descartes and was answered in one way by the mechanism of Hobbs and in another way by the idealism of Berkeley. It was the genius of Kant to attempt to pull these two worlds together, at least in our ways of knowing. Closely related to this perennial debate have been arguments about the natural and the supernatural, or the body and the mind, flesh and spirit, matter and thought.

Back in the twenties, many people thought behaviorism had had its day. (Behaviorism was an effort, primarily by Watson and his school, to reduce man to nothing but matter; “the brain produces thought as the liver produces bile.”) But it has returned, allying itself with the philosophy of logical positivism, and it is hard to find any great university center where behaviorism in psychology and logical positivism in philosophy are not in control. In a popular way, this has sifted down into what is called scientism.

The climate and atmosphere of opinion in our day is the scientific one. The emphasis is on material, on induction as a method. “Everybody knows” that no knowledge is valid unless it can be proven in the laboratory or drawn out of laboratory testing by necessary inference. This sort of thinking plays havoc with much that we call religious. Talking about God is talking nonsense. Anything like metaphysics is dismissed as absurd. This set of mind adjusts easily to the notion that science can now take over man because he is nothing more nor less than matter that can be handled mechanically, if only we know enough. The “hidden persuaders” in advertising and the use of propaganda in national and international affairs illustrate how neatly all this sort of thing works. By 1984, any Big Brother who is smart enough will probably be able to control mankind by computer. In this situation, such ideas as freedom and moral choice would seem to be illusions.

It is of such things that Krutch writes. Like others, he has been led to believe that all our answers can be found scientifically. But the old debate is on. If we accept matter as the clue to reality (and science likes matter because it is always scientifically controlled), we have still, as Krutch says, those nice questions of “pleasure or pain, interest or boredom, love or hate, and all those other phenomena which depend upon that consciousness which will remain for us the most important consequence of being alive, even if it is ultimately dismissed as nothing but a chemical reaction.” Krutch finds it too easy “to define the living in terms that will enable” the scientist to ignore many of the obvious characteristics of life that make it worth living—and, of course, what will we do with the word “worth”? Is a completely materialistic answer enough to down the traits and values of which man is capable? A man might argue this in a class in philosophy and then go home and kick the cat viciously or play with his children gladly just like someone who does not know any better.

Krutch quotes with approval a McGill biologist, N. I. Berril: “If mind and spirit grow out of matter, they are nonetheless what they have been thought to be. It is our conception of matter which needs revision.” This indeed may be the solution to the whole matter and may lead us right back to the dualism that Descartes supported. If behaviorists and others are going to insist on “nothing but” matter as the proper view of man, then matter becomes something far more complex and, indeed, interesting than merely stuff. I have always wondered about that first molecule that came alive out of the primordial slime, supposedly through millennia of accidental combinations. Allowing for the appearance of this molecule at some point in time, we must allow that potentially there was bound up in this molecule and its environment everything that has come out of it—such as Michelangelo’s art and Bach’s music. If you prefer the idea of accidental molecules to the idea of God, then you have to posit some molecule. Most mechanists fail to realize that even if we start with “nothing but” a live molecule, we still have to decide where all the laws of its relations to its environment arose. I think they did not arise out of the molecule.

By the same token, if we are going to insist on “nothing but” conglomerations of atoms constantly bumped by other conglomerations of atoms, then we shall have to allow in those atoms and their relationships what awkwardly keeps pushing itself to the fore, namely, all those things that are finally put under the heading of “consciousness.” So nothing material has changed.

With the increasing reduction of the atom to something more akin to energy than stuff, perhaps what has finally happened in our day is an awareness that stuff is much more than stuff. Maybe the whole universe is dust, but might it not be dust “inbreathed with the breath of life”? Will Durant quoted Bruno with approval:

Every particle of reality is composed inseparably of the physical and the psychic. The object of philosophy, therefore, is to preserve unity in diversity, mind in matter, and matter in mind; to find the synthesis in which opposites and contradictions meet and merge; to rise to that highest knowledge of the universal unity which is the intellectual equivalent of the love of God.

It seems to me that the second chapter of Genesis is dead right. Man is matter, sure enough, but matter “inbreathed with the breath of God.” This can well mean that every single cell in him is alive with something more than matter. In the last analysis, all life may well be sacramental, “visible signs of invisible spiritual realities.”

1968 may go down as the year in which the world tried to cope with a rising tide of violence while ecumenical assemblies sought to encourage it.

In Uppsala, Sweden, this week, the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches will weigh the pros and cons of violent protest. The National Council of Churches has already adopted a policy statement giving dignity to the use of physical force to achieve social change (see page 43).

Meanwhile, countless Christian clergy and lay leaders pledged themselves anew to principles of law and order, to a more urgent ministry of reconciliation, and to the task of sensitizing consciences toward recognizing social problems and finding solutions within democratic processes.

It seemed to be left to politicians to devise ways of subduing civil unrest and the violent climate that has seen the assassination of a number of American political leaders.

Among the components and causes of today’s climate of violence are the breakdown of American home life, the popularity of murder mysteries and spy stories, the prevalence of TV and movie violence, the traffic in toy guns, and the use of alcohol and drugs. But after the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, attention centered upon the ease with which irresponsible persons can still get guns and ammunition. There was an immediate public outcry for more stringent laws on firearms control. As usual, churchmen differed on the issue.

President Johnson has told Congress that guns are used in more than 6,500 murders in the United States each year. The most frequent victims are policemen, bus and taxi drivers, and small shopkeepers. But it can happen to anyone. In January, two Roman Catholic nuns were wounded and another narrowly missed by a woman with a gun in Columbus, Ohio.

Proponents of stricter gun control point out that the United States has less regulation of firearms and more misuse of them than any other country. Moreover, riots in U.S. cities have spurred gun sales. The gun used to shoot Senator Kennedy was originally purchased during the Watts riot in 1965, presumably for defense.

The feeling seems to grow that the American society is a sick society. Both liberals and conservatives hold this view, though for somewhat different reasons.

Methodist Bishop Eugene M. Frank contends that “our nation rages with anger” and notes the teaching of Jesus that anyone who is angry with his brother is already guilty of murder in his heart.

The Rev. Raymond Ortlund of Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, California, asserts that even Christians are often guilty of intense bitterness. “Some Christians talk of our leaders in such vulgar ways that it makes me sick,” he says. Ortlund urges evangelicals to start anew to contribute to solutions instead of to the problems.

For one Los Angeles area minister, the Kennedy killing brought memories of another assassination, that of American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell. The Rev. Andre Bustanoby, now of Fullerton, California, was then pastor of a church in Arlington, Virginia. Rockwell was shot across the street from the Arlington church while Bustanoby was readying a message for the funeral of his mother.

Bustanoby thinks Americans have lost their capacity to be outraged by violence. “We are so jaded that it takes the murder of a national figure to shock us,” he declares. “Perhaps in time we can get used to the murder of national figures, too.”

After the immediate shock of Kennedy’s murder wears off, will it be back to violence as usual?

THE SIRHANS’ RELIGIOUS ROOTS

The head of the Armenian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem says that the “psychological background” of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy is found in the years of Arab-Israeli hatred. Bishop Shahe Ajam Ajamian, in the United States on a fund-raising drive, said he had known the family of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the 24-year-old assassination suspect, before the family left Jordan in 1957.

Bishop Ajamian suggested that the Sirhan family left Jerusalem when Arab hatred for the State of Israel, created in 1948 in the face of strong Arab opposition, was at a high point. Religious News Service said the prelate noted that the Sirhans were not members of his Armenian congregation. They were Christians of Greek Orthodox background, though the suspect attended a school maintained by the Lutheran Church of the Savior in the former Jordanian sector of Jerusalem.

The Sirhans have had connections with a wide range of religious viewpoints. The suspect, his mother and father, and three of their other children came to Pasadena eleven years ago under the sponsorship of Dr. and Mrs. Haldor Lillenas, members of the First Nazarene Church there. The late Dr. Lillenas was a noted composer of gospel music. The Sirhans attended the church briefly and later went to First Baptist Church in Pasadena, which brought the two oldest sons to this country. Mrs. Sirhan has been employed by Westminster Presbyterian Church and also has expressed interest in a Seventh-day Adventist church. Her husband, who went back to Palestine some years ago, has reportedly had dealings there with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Young Sirhan, the accused slayer, is listed as a member of the Rosicrucian Order and is said to have asked that some of his confiscated money be sent to the group’s headquarters.

PERSONALIA

Famed interdenominational Riverside Church in New York City called as pastor the Rev. Ernest T. Campbell of First Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Campbell, 44, a graduate of Bob Jones University and Princeton Theological Seminary, is successor to Robert J. McCracken and Harry Emerson Fosdick, both Baptists. Campbell believes “it is not enough to say that if you know God personally you will automatically do the right thing in personal and public life. But there will be no substantial change in society unless individuals are changed.”

Dr. Paul A. Crow, Jr., 36, church historian at Lexington Theological Seminary (Christian Churches), was named the first full-time general secretary of the Consultation on Church Union. Crow has been a part-time executive of COCU, which seeks merger of nine Protestant bodies.

Dean John B. Coburn, 53, of Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is resigning to join a New York Urban League program to help high-school dropouts qualify for college admission.

William Pannell, Negro evangelist with Youth for Christ, has resigned to join Tom Skinner Crusades.

Deaths

ARCHBISHOP CHRYSOSTOMOS, 92, once the youngest Greek Orthodox bishop; nearly executed for alleged involvement with rebels while a prelate in Turkey; primate of Greece 1962–67 but ousted by the new military government as too old under a series of church reforms; foe of ecumenism; in Athens, of gastritis.

JOSEPH D. BLINCO, 56, British Methodist pastor who became an associate evangelist with Billy Graham in 1955; for the past two years director of Forest Home Christian Conference; in Loma Linda, California, ten months after brain-tumor surgery.

Burton W. Marvin, for two years a communication staffer for the National Council of Churches and a former journalism dean of the University of Kansas, was named a journalism professor at Syracuse University.

The Henry W. Luce ecumenics chair at Princeton Theological Seminary has been given to Professor M. Richard Shaull, noted for his espousal of revolutionary social change.

The Rev. David Randolph, preaching teacher at Drew University, was appointed director of the United Methodist department of evangelists.

The Rev. Paul C. Empie, general secretary of the U. S. committee of the Lutheran World Federation, was named president of Lutheran World Relief in place of the late Franklin Clark Fry.

CHURCH PANORAMA

After an Athens meeting with Archbishop Hieronymos, General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake of the World Council of Churches announced June 13 that the Greek Orthodox Church would be represented at this month’s WCC assembly by a group of lay theologians. The Greeks had boycotted the assembly three months ago after the WCC complained about treatment of Greek political prisoners.

Contributions to Methodist World Service in the fiscal year ending May 31 totaled $17,469,840, a 1 per cent drop.

When the 181-member Second Congregational Church of Warren, Maine, withdrew from the United Church of Christ because of political resolutions at the state conference, the pastor received more than 100 calls and letters in support from all over the state.

The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. voted to abolish listing of honorary degrees after names in official publications, but decided not to require ministers to delete them from local church publications after one D.D. asked, “Does this mean I must remove the stripes from my robe, too?”

MISCELLANY

New York City’s Lindsay administration is thinking of charging churches and other tax-exempt institutions for water, garbage removal, sewerage, and other direct city services.

The U. S. Patent Office granted Latin America Mission exclusive right to use of its term “Evangelism-in-Depth” for organization and promotion of evangelistic campaigns.

As a result of territorial gains in last year’s Arab-Israeli war, the Christian population of Israel has risen from 56,000 to 105,000, the government said.

Soviet Baptists, who cannot hold Sunday schools, have won permission to teach Bible correspondence courses to 100 persons—the first time it has been possible since 1929.

This September a graduate-level theology school tentatively called the Discipleship Training Center will open in Singapore, headed by David Adeney, Far East director of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. The three-year course is sponsored by Overseas Missionary Fellowship and Singapore Bible College.

A week-long crusade in Duluth, Minnesota, by Canadian evangelist Barry Moore drew attendance of 27,900 and resulted in 643 spiritual inquirers.

A national legal showdown now looms over the theological drift of the big American denominations and their increasing involvement in social issues. The U.S. Supreme Court announced June 10 that it would hear the case involving two Savannah congregations that pulled out of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), charging “revolutionary, fundamental, unlawful, and radical diversion from the Presbyterian faith.”

The immediate question is whether the two churches are entitled to retain their properties. Under Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal government, properties in congregational defections normally are forfeited to the ruling denomination.

But much more significant issues are at stake. These revolve around how far a denomination can deviate from its originally stated purposes and still expect allegiance from its constituency. Indirectly, corollary questions arise over the mission of the Church and its role in the world. The two Savannah churches, Hull Memorial and Eastern Heights, have objected very strongly to Southern Presbyterian involvement in civil rights, civil disobedience, and the war in Viet Nam.

When the case first went to court, few outside observers thought very much of the churches’ chances. As Edward B. Fiske of the New York Times has pointed out, the most important legal precedent is an 1871 Supreme Court decision involving Walnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, which tried to sever ties with its denomination in a dispute over slavery. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parent body. The precedent was set that civil courts accept as binding the judgments of top ecclesiastical judicatories. Those who unite with a national denomination are recognized as giving “implied consent” to its government.

In 1907, however, a Georgia decision declared that the “implied consent” can be invalidated if the denomination is found guilty of “absolute” departure from its founding tenets. This decision has now been invoked in behalf of the two Savannah churches. A local court and the Georgia Supreme Court have ruled in favor of the congregations, and the denomination now seeks to have the U. S. Supreme Court overturn the ruling.

The case has sent some shudders through the American Protestant hierarchy. Should the decision be upheld, it would probably produce a rush of church withdrawals. Numerous congregations throughout the country are at odds with their denominations over theological issues, social concerns, and ecumenism. Even a reversal could produce new precedents and possible legal loopholes for dissenting churches.

The U. S. Supreme Court will hear testimony after it reconvenes this fall. Other similar cases are pending.

Before the justices recessed for the summer, they also handed down a pair of important rulings affecting church schools. In a six-to-three decision, they upheld a New York law requiring local school districts to offer parochial-school students the loan of textbooks. In a separate case, the justices with only one dissent ruled that taxpayers under certain circumstances have a right to challenge acts of Congress on grounds of violation of the religion clause of the First Amendment; the case now goes back to a trial court.

Previously, on the basis of a 1923 court ruling in Frothingham v. Mellon, taxpayers had little or no standing in a federal court to challenge the constitutionality of federal expenditures. As Baptist Press put it, the new ruling did not nullify the Frothingham doctrine against taxpayers’ suits challenging federal spending, “but it did say that this ruling does not prohibit some cases in which the establishment and freedom of religion are involved.… So while loosening the rules on First Amendment court cases, the Supreme Court made it clear that it felt that government could provide public services to students in all schools without thereby furnishing aid to church schools or agencies.”

Spokesmen for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State hailed the standing-to-sue ruling but minimized the significance of the textbook-loan decision and made no public comment on it.

In yet another pre-vacation ruling, the Supreme Court upheld by a 7–2 vote a Reconstruction Era law that extends equal rights to Negroes and other racial minorities in purchase, sale, and rental of housing. The case involved an interracial couple who say they were victims of discrimination when they sought unsuccessfully to buy a home in suburban St. Louis. Supporting the couple in friend-of-the-court briefs were the National Council of Churches and a group of high-ranking Roman Catholic prelates.

LEFTWARD HO FOR N.C.C.

As 150,000 people filed sadly past the casket of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the National Council of Churches’ General Board held sessions nearby in New York City that signaled their desire for closer contact with the Roman Catholic Church and their commitment to liberal policies on the racial crisis and civil disobedience. Had Kennedy been present, he undoubtedly would have appreciated the hearty response the 119 board members gave their guest speakers, Archbishop Terence J. Cooke of New York and Poor People’s Campaign leader Andrew Young, whose rousing speeches highlighted the June 6 and 7 meetings.

The NCC appearance of Cooke, celebrant the next day at the Requiem Mass for Kennedy, marked the first time a member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy had addressed the General Board. After a warm tribute to the late Senator (“We know that the soul of Robert Kennedy is with God but his spirit lives on …”), Cooke expressed his concern for Christian unity. “We are to our own sorrow divided,” he said. “Surely, then, we need to ask ourselves, Why? How? For how much longer? If Christ unites us in faith, hope, and love—as he surely does—then something other than Christ must occasion our division.” He commended the NCC for its “Crisis in the Nation” and “Priority Program for Peace” activities. Both before and after his address, he received a standing ovation.

Earlier, General Secretary R. H. Edwin Espy had reported that exploratory and long-range discussions on possible membership of the Roman Catholic Church in national councils of churches were under way in the United States and in eight other countries. He also referred to “the projection with the Roman Catholic Church of a major joint program on world development which if it materializes will mark another forward step in National Council-Roman Catholic cooperation.”

Interfaith cooperation was further seen in the board’s passage of a statement on sex education, jointly formulated by Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant-Orthodox representatives.

Coming straight from Resurrection City, Andrew Young of the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference commended the churches for being “our one ally in society” in support of the Poor People’s Campaign. He asserted, “Most of our government programs destroy the poor. Most government programs are genocidal. It is a genocide of the spirit, a crushing of the mentality of a people, denying them of their humanity. That is genocidal.” Young’s speech, which climaxed a day of reports on implementation of the NCC crash program on the “Crisis in the Nation,” was greeted with thunderous applause.

Dr. Charles S. Spivey, Jr., general executive of the Crisis program initiated by the board in February, told of NCC efforts to reduce tensions and deal with “white racism,” identified by the Kerner Commission Report on Civil Disorders as “a root cause” of recent riots. (NCC President Arthur S. Flemming called the Kerner Report “the most significant public document of my lifetime.”) Programs now in operation to combat white racism, said Spivey, include distribution of NCC curriculum materials in thirty-three denominations, other racial-crisis educational and publication efforts carried on by various denominations, financial aid programs for autonomous local civil-rights organizations, investment programs to help change “racial patterns in the church and community,” and selective buying projects by churches to influence hiring practices.

United Methodist John P. Adams told of extensive NCC involvement in the Poor People’s Campaign. In addition to building a shanty in Resurrection City, NCC representatives have accompanied every caravan march and have been present at every demonstration in the campaign, to aid in communications. They have provided direct telephone and radio communication among SCLC strategists and organizers and also have published materials interpreting the campaign to the public.

Immediate objectives of the Crisis program, outlined by United Methodist Dr. Richard Nesmith, are congressional appropriation of funds to finance enacted legislation, passage of guaranteed-annual-income legislation, informing the citizenry on key election-year issues, improvement of police-community relations and reduction of the misuse of police power (“the white form of violence in our communities,” asserted Nesmith), support of local action organizations, particularly among blacks and other minorities, support for black churchmen, and development of emergency measures for urban crisis.

The General Board’s only sharp debate came after Dr. Truman Douglass of the United Church of Christ presented for ratification a policy statement on civil disobedience. The statement set forth the various courses “men seeking to obey God’s will have followed,” including “action in revolution against an entire system of government.” It said: “We recognize that when justice cannot be secured either through action within existing structures or through civil disobedience, an increasing number of Christians may feel called to seek justice through resistance or revolution.”

Episcopalian Peter Day offered an amendment to strike the “revolutionary” sections, claiming that they would “contribute to the atmosphere of violence in the United States.” He was opposed by black churchmen, including the Reverend James L. Cummings of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, who argued, “This is a means by which men can alleviate causes that make them suffer.” Dr. L. Doward McBain, immediate past president of the American Baptist Convention, pointed out the inconsistency between the civil-disobedience policy statement and prior NCC resolutions condemning the use of violence in Viet Nam. Nevertheless, Day’s amendment was defeated by a two-thirds vote. The policy statement was adopted, 81–6, with 15 abstentions, mainly from among Episcopal and Orthodox churchmen.

The board also ratified a raft of other resolutions and measures:

Viet Nam—plea for a ceasefire by all belligerents;

Firearms Control—support of federal legislation to ban mail-order sales of all guns to individuals, set age limits for purchase of rifles (18 years) and pistols (21 years), require gun permits, and outlaw bombs, firebombs, bazookas, and other such destructive devices;

Telegram to President Johnson—commendation for his appointment of a commission to study the causes of violence, and support for a program to implement recommendations of the Kerner Commission Report.

The board also heard first readings of controversial policy statements on abolition of the death penalty, defense and disarmament, and selective purchasing by the church.

In the conference’s waning moments, a discussion of new directions in Faith and Order found three theologians differing in their selection of the principal theological issues that the Church should now confront. Boston University’s placid Professor J. Robert Nelson claimed studies should probe the meaning of human nature and consider an overall view of God’s relation to man, history, and nature. Fiery Paul Lehmann of New York’s Union Seminary disagreed, stressing that the Church shouldn’t “take the long look—God, man, history, nature—but look at where the bite is.” He felt the nip now comes in the issues of (1) the identity of a Christian in society, (2) power, and (3) the relation between piety and justice (“Justice and reverence—not law and order—is what is important”). United Church of Christ minister Lawrence Durgin doggedly called for development of a theology of corporate responsibility.

When NCC President Arthur S. Flemming initially convened the General Board meeting, members were bunched on one side of the room. He said, “I would like to convince some of those on the right to move to the left.” He may have succeeded more than he realized. The movement throughout the two-day session was leftward ho, all the way.

ROBERT L. CLEATH

SOLIDARITY DAY: RELIGIOUS MOTIF

Occasional breezes and passing clouds brought relief from the hot sun beating on Poor People’s Campaigners gathered for their Solidarity Day March June 19. Sitting, standing, and lying on the grass at the Washington Monument, they laughed, sang, and clapped through more than two hours of entertainment, mostly by Negroes. While helicopters buzzed overhead and planes approached National Airport, additional busloads of marchers arrived and police reinforcements stood by.

Despite the sun, singer Don Leace thought the crowd was too slow warming up. He told them to “start acting like” the Baptists many of them said they were. By the time a Detroit minister and Southern Christian Leadership Conference worker appeared, the crowd was hanging loose. The Rev. Esquire Hamilton called them to “love one another” and “let God rule in our hearts.” Then he crooned, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” as the audience clapped in rhythm.

Hemisfair Crusade To Be Televised

The compact HemisFair Crusade with evangelist Billy Graham drew a total of 94,900 persons to four services in the Alamo Stadium of San Antonio. Three of the services will be televised in color throughout North America in the late summer.

Some 4,326 persons recorded decisions for Christ during the weekend series in June. As in other crusades, young people made up a high percentage of the audiences. Many servicemen and their families attended also; there are several military bases in the San Antonio area.

Texas Governor John Connally, mentioned by some observers as a possible vice-presidential candidate this year, attended the first service with his wife and two sons. Coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys professional football team also participated.

Graham’s television specials from his May crusade in Portland, Oregon, were shown on more than 300 U. S. stations last month, the most he has ever scheduled. The evangelist conducts two television series a year, one at the beginning of the summer and one toward the end. Each costs his organization more than $1,000,000 but brings a flood of mail and financial support and, infinitely more important, reports of thousands of decisions for Christ.

The Portland series was also scheduled to be shown over about twenty-five stations in Australia. One of Graham’s associate evangelists, Leighton Ford, is planning to do a similar television series in Canada.

The ten-day Portland crusade drew a total turnout of 227,797. More than 7,000 stepped forward to indicate a new Christian commitment.

Almost on schedule, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, SCLC official, herded the estimated 50,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial. Led by the SCLC president the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Resurrection City residents, those who accompanied a mule train, representatives of ethnic groups, and Father James Groppi, campaigners walked the mile singing “We Shall Overcome” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It was a varied crowd that included young and old, hippies and businessmen, clergymen and nuns, Boy Scouts, teachers, and Negroes with African hair styles and dress. Many families came with small children in strollers or strapped to parents’ backs.

Marchers carried signs prepared by SCLC; “I Have a Dream” was one of the most popular. Washington’s Church of the Saviour delegation proclaimed, “Let not our wealth divide us; rather let us divide our wealth.” A nun from Minnesota, wearing a colorful Indian shawl over her habit, carried a sign declaring, “I care. But I do something about it.” Jewish groups carried signs in Hebrew and English; one quoted Leviticus 19:18: “Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor.” Another sign said, “Let’s March into Hell for the Heavenly Cause.”

At the Lincoln Memorial, the program employed several clergymen. It began with an invocation by Rabbi Jacob Philip Rudin of the Synagogue Council of America. Later, Washington’s Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle prayed for “the courage of religious convictions in race relations.” He petitioned, “Teach us how to live together.”

Other ministers on the program were SCLC staff members. High point of the program was the appearance of Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was greeted with a standing ovation. The widow of the slain civil-rights leader called for “woman power” and love to combat the three evils of racism, poverty, and war.

Abernathy concluded the speeches with what he called a “mandate from God” in which he called for furtherance of human rights and asked for donations to the Poor People’s Campaign. He acknowledged the $50,000 gift of the United Presbyterian Church, presented by Dr. Edler Hawkins, former United Presbyterian moderator and first Negro to hold that post.

Solidarity Day was frequently compared to the 1963 march when King made his “I have a dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial steps. Twice during the day’s events, silence memorialized civil-rights workers killed since 1963, once just before Mrs. King spoke in honor of her husband. Other tributes to King included a song during the entertainment period: “Didn’t the angels sing … as they welcomed the soul of Martin Luther King!”

One difference was noted about this year’s march. “Five years ago we stood here and pleaded,” Abernathy said. “Today we stand here and demand.”

Throughout the day, care was taken to include the needs of Puerto Ricans, Indians, and Mexican-Americans, as well as Negroes. Mrs. Martha Grass, an Oklahoma Indian, accompanied her speech with war whoops. Two New York Indians said the Creator, the Great Spirit, “is here with us today.” In fact, said Mad Bear, a “sign may appear today in the sky to show the Creator is here with us.”

The march almost got off to a bad start when violence flared the night before. Several arrests were made at the White House as a group from Resurrection City marched to Congressman Wilbur Mills’s apartment. And at Resurrection City several people were injured in unrelated incidents. Although Solidarity Day was for the most part orderly, two incidents marred the calm. A Negro stabbed a white youth and another young man was arrested for carrying a gun at the monument.

On the morning of Solidarity Day several Washington churches held services, with attendance at many reported in the hundreds.

The National Council of Churches reported no estimate of the number of people who responded to their call for support for the march. But church banners proclaimed the attendance of many religious groups, including the United Methodist Church, American Lutheran Church, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, American Baptist Church, Society of Friends, Baptist Peace Fellowship, Catholic Interracial Council of Boston, and Seminarians Organized for Racial Justice.

JANET ROHLER