Our increasingly sophisticated media of communication have stimulated much discussion in theological circles today. Some of the avant-garde believe we are shortly to witness the emergence of the “multi-medium man.” The idea derives in part from the analysis of communication theorist Marshall McLuhan, whose formula, “The medium is the message,” is enlisting the most serious attention.

This interest reflects also an aspect of Frank Kermode’s now-familiar analysis of the three stages in the role of art. Some think man’s artistic activities are entering the third of Kermode’s stages, in which art does not merely imitate an order or reinforce a current mode but rather meets man instrumentally. In so doing, it induces him to create a wholly new form of environment or scene. If Kermode and McLuhan are correct at this point, the implications of this newer understanding of communication need to be faced squarely.

The electronic revolution is being estimated variously in our time. McLuhan feels that electric circuitry (which he regards as an extension of man’s central nervous system) will transform the presentation of data so radically that a “new man” will inevitably emerge. This multimedium man will, so the forecasts read, have a mode of thinking structured upon strictly technological lines. This suggests that a new type of corporate mentality is being built in which sequential or linear thought will be largely lost. In its place will come a new form of perception, based upon disjunctive and juxtaposed presentations of different patterns of data.

The power and the demonic possibilities of multi-medium methodologies need to be considered in more depth than has been done to date. If the medium determines the content of the presentation, then certainly the newer modes will be able to produce a climate of mind that resists or rejects any single integrating pattern for structuring data input. Again, the mind may conceivably be faced in the near future with a pattern of pluralistic options so multiform that the power of choosing any integrative center may be lost.

The possibilities for manipulation of the public mind through the deliberate selection of cultural input are many and frightening. One ought to keep in mind the problems that might ensue if presentational media and modes were to come under the control of decision-making agencies. This will be of vastly more significance if the power of media over the production of the public and private mind proves to be as McLuhan predicts. He and other communications theorists seem singularly unconcerned over the problematical issues involved in the development of a technological man. Nor does he feel any qualms about the trauma that may well seize a culture in which yesterday’s categories are totally incomprehensible today and fantastic tomorrow.

It is significant that the alienated in our society are turning to a specialized form of multi-medium art, pop music. Here a serious or quasi-serious theme is typically parelleled by a form of overmusic whose mood is incongruous with it. What seems to be desired by some current mod-music groups is a form of “art” that reduces the anxieties of the alienated by affording a wild vision of the world akin to that afforded by drugs. This form of presentation, particularly in its more frankly “mind blowing” form, erases one view of reality by crossing it with another.

This raises the question whether “psychedelic” music is really a specialized form of pop music, significantly different in intent and in its effect upon character from other styles. For an answer this writer consulted with two men well informed about music, whose view was as follows: Although one has difficulty in assessing contemporary movements in art, it seems clear that for some years popular music has appealed to the primitive and the primeval in man. However, there is good reason for thinking that the writers of “psychedelic” music are self-conscious at the point of manipulating the public mind. Certainly it is significant that Timothy Leary, commenting upon the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, declared that the Beatles had taken his place, and that this album was a musical republication of LSD moods.

If the secular problems posed by the era of technological communication are great, the theological significance seems greater still. If McLuhan be correct in asserting that “the medium is the message” and that the human mind is the end-product of the modes by which data are presented to it, then perhaps we must accept his technological determinism. Perhaps the Reformation was nothing more than a derivative of the diffusion of printing and the interiorization of linear type.

We venture to say, however, that his view is extreme. Now, perhaps the medium may, to a significant extent, determine the choice of material; but to assert this is something completely other than establishing that medium and message are identical.

The newer view takes it for granted that men of a technological era will no longer be the suitable subjects for a propositional hearing of the Evangel. It assumes that the Bible is meaningful only within a narrowly restricted segment of man’s intellectual history, and that all theological formulations are direct derivatives of the communication media of a given era.

The avant-garde take it for granted that the emerging multi-medium man cannot hope to erect a world outlook or Weltanschauung but must content himself with assembling a collage. The contemporary world, it is assumed, confronts him with such a vast range of data, presented in such a juxtaposed but disparate fashion, that no coherent pattern is possible. His outlook must be a mere unstructured collection of bits and pieces.

Such a view seems to assume that man is an obedient pawn in the hands of presentational media. It fails to take into account the structures of the human person, and is probably quite incorrect in its supposition that modern man will be radically different from his predecessors solely because of electric circuitry.

Events may show that McLuhan is a prisoner of his own enthusiasm for an idea. They may cast doubt upon the anthropological implications of his thesis. Quite probably the application of his theory to religious matters will be called into question. The Christian Evangel is expressed in structured and verbalized form, and may prove to be continuingly viable and powerful in that form.

Does it show maturity when some of the architects of our age, to say nothing of the professed servants of Jesus Christ, rush forward to accept the current mode in communication theory and to conform to it? Our Lord is presented to the world as the eternal Word. As such, he is also the content of the “Word which we preach.” In a sense he embodies in himself medium and message. What is fitting to him, however, may be idolatrous when applied to any finite medium or mode.

The National Association of Evangelicals, in the City of Brotherly Love for its annual convention last month, experienced an awakening of conscience. A “feeble awakening,” perhaps—as one well-known evangelical observed near the end of the four-day meeting—but an awakening nonetheless. With quiet candor and, at times, courage, a number of evangelicals addressed themselves to social problems of the day, particularly tensions between the races.

In some ways, the issues lay behind just about every speech or paper. NAE General Director Clyde W. Taylor said “evangelicals must take a renewed interest in the public life of our country,” and urged those present to meet “physical needs, help with the social problems, care for the sick.”

Donald Davis called divisions within the churches along racial lines “immoral” and “an abomination” in the sight of the Lord. Radio preacher Joel Nederhood asked how evangelicals can be “so untouched” by inner-city problems. His answer: Maybe they “do not see the people”; they see “only their souls.”

Speaking to 1,500 persons in a University of Pennsylvania auditorium the first night, Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon echoed some of these concerns. He called on the Church to set straight the values of the nation, correct the evils, and indicate to all Americans that “our affluence and our money are not enough.”

The most perceptive moments came during commission meetings scattered throughout the day. The evangelical-action and social-concerns commissions heard David L. McKenna, young new president of Seattle Pacific College, claim that in public morality, the evangelical church “wavers in the uncertainty of pluralism and relativism,” thus producing a “whisper” on moral issues that is “too weak” to call the churches to moral action. The carefully prepared paper drew a long, uninformed rebuttal that left some visibly annoyed.

At a quieter session the same hour, a panel of ministers discussed their inner-city work in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. One panelist said he had no answers on civil disobedience but believed it is often necessary. Significantly, this produced no reaction, only a request for help in explaining the idea to isolated suburban churches. Some estimated that half of those present might be ready for action along these lines.

The convention itself never got beyond talk about social action, and the resolutions did not always get that far. The most timely resolution, on “The Crisis in the Nation,” said little more than the truism that all men need the Gospel. It bemoaned evangelical failure to give an “active testimony” and spoke only of witnessing to those who are “oppressed and afflicted.”

Delegates defeated a motion to add to the few minimal suggestions for action this sentence: “We can urge our respective denominations to begin to spend similar amounts of money on the evangelism of black men in America as they do on the evangelism of black men in Africa.”

Defeat of the amendment was all the more significant because it followed by minutes an identical but unconnected recommendation by Negro evangelist Tom Skinner. In a brief address, Skinner urged intensive efforts to evangelize the Negro community and reported on a project to engage 3,000 white and Negro volunteers for such a witness in Newark, New Jersey, this summer. The project was endorsed by the most recent Key Bridge meeting.

Skinner also expressed dismay that so few Negroes were at the NAE convention. Apparently, most were at a gathering of the National Negro Evangelical Association in Chicago.

A number of delegates spoke favorably of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although nearly all expressed dissatisfaction with his liberal theology, none mentioned that he had been turned down by a number of orthodox seminaries because he was a Negro.

Resolutions were adopted on law and order (for), and on drugs and alcohol (against). A third paper tried to analyze the role of “A Witnessing Church in the Secular World.”

Speakers were more forceful on the subject of evangelical unity. NAE Executive Director Billy A. Melvin said the time has come when needless competition among evangelicals must be eliminated. In one of the few papers strongly undergirded by theology and biblical exegesis, Westminster Theological Seminary President Edmund P. Clowney argued for visible unity based on biblical perspectives. “It is vain to say that we are united upon the Bible if we cannot, as a matter of fact, use the Bible as the path to union.” He said that “the more evangelicals perceive the reality of the spiritual existence of the Church,” the more they must acknowledge “the open manifestation of that unity.”

NAE elected as president Dr. Arnold T. Olson, head of the Evangelical Free Church. With evangelicals awakening, perhaps Olson and other new officers can find the answer to the question Taylor raised in his opening address: “What will it take to get the evangelicals to move?”

PERSONALIA

Yale University reappointed the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., as chaplain but said it would review his status if pending federal charges of conspiring to help youths avoid the draft later appear to raise questions about his fitness.

The FBI arrested the Rev. James Webb, Baltimore director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, on charges he had been a Marine Corps deserter from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, since September.

The Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the century’s leading Protestant preachers, is to mark his ninetieth birthday May 24.

Olaf Christiansen retires next month as choir director at St. Olaf College (American Lutheran), one of the top college choirs in the United States. The group was founded in 1912 by Christiansen’s father, and he has led it since 1940.

Winton M. Blount, 47, contractor, active Presbyterian layman, and leader of a biracial committee set up by Montgomery, Alabama, was elected president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

Father Charles Curran, whose firing and rehiring caused an uproar at Catholic University last year, says if the condition is “irreversible,” homosexuality “may be the only way such a person can find a warm, meaningful human relationship.”

Dr. James Luther Adams, noted Unitarian theologian at Harvard, has been named social-ethics professor at Andover Newton Theological School (United Church of Christ-American Baptist).

President William H. Kadel of Florida Presbyterian College was elected executive secretary of the Southern Presbyterians’ Christian education board.

Anglican Bishop Robert H. Mize, a native of the United States, said South Africa is expelling him July 1 without explanation. Mize said he had avoided making an issue of apartheid, unlike Bishop C. Edward Crowther, who was ousted last year.

Dr. Eugene W. Linse, Jr., of Concordia College, Minnesota, has been named director of open-housing efforts in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Executive Director J. Philip Hogan of the Assemblies of God foreign missions was elected president of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, which encompasses sixty-four agencies and about 8,000 missionaries.

Anglican Archbishop Frank Woods of Melbourne, Australia, issued a pastoral calling on two “agnostic” clergymen in the diocese to resign. One, the Rev. Peter Lane, admitted recently, “I do not know whether God exists.”

King Olav named Bishop Fridtjov Birkeli, 61, as primate of Norway, after he won a church vote.

Pope Paul told representatives of Catholic and Protestant Bible societies that all Christians should have “easy access” to Scripture, and endorsed joint translations. Vatican observers believe the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., may spur the Pope to issue a strong encyclical against racism.

CHURCH PANORAMA

Led by Southern Baptist pastor Harold O’Chester, a religious-civic “Committee of Conscience” was formed in Meridian, Mississippi, to rebuild Negro churches hit by arsonists, two days after the burning of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church. It is the city’s first biracial effort.

The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization plans a $35,000 campaign to recruit Eastern Negro leaders to train Los Angeles Negroes in community-organization methods.

John E. Morse, church-building head of the United Church of Christ, said the tight money market and high interest rates are hitting hard at badly needed church building programs. “We can’t continue at this rate,” he said.

Cincinnati Presbytery approved a citywide congregation to focus solely on racial reconciliation, believed to be the first of its kind in the country. Members drawn from existing churches must pledge full commitment of time and resources to reconciliation for at least one year. The congregation will use buildings of other congregations but have its own pastor.

The Rev. William Parrish quit as executive of the Greater Milwaukee Council of Churches, along with a council hospital chaplain, because of the council financial emergency. The council president said churches are facing a squeeze because some people don’t like their social activism.

By the end of next month, sixteen missionaries of the United Church of Canada and United Church of Christ will leave the Portuguese colony of Angola because of harassment of Western missionaries and persecution of African Protestants.

Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist representatives in Ireland announced their intent to pursue church unity. The proposal goes before this year’s denominational conventions.

Anglican Bishop John Tiarks of Chelmsford, England, ordered a complete ban on infant baptism unless parents and godparents take a special preparation course. If the sessions reveal parents are not seeking church membership and instruction for the child, a service of blessing will be substituted.

The official magazines of the Anglican and United Churches in Canada published a joint editorial supporting merger of the denominations, and called the present target of 1974 reasonable.

Miscellany

Two days before the end of the term, Union Theological Seminary suspended classes in support of the student strike at neighboring Columbia University.

The head of a new prison-visitation program by peace churches said at least seventy-four conscientious objectors are in federal prisons because they refused to register, registered and later changed their minds, or were refused CO status by draft boards.

The International Union of Gospel Missions voted at this month’s Roanoke convention to establish contacts with U. S. Health, Education, and Welfare officials to gain a voice in discussions of alcoholic rehabilitation and mental health. The union represents 260 U. S. rescue missions and a dozen in Canada.

Ministers opposed to Social Security on religious grounds must file Form 4361 with the government by next April 15.

The Federal Communications Commission may fine the radio station at Bob Jones University $1,000 for running Pepsi-Cola ads that apparently are a lottery.

A team of 130 Inter-Varsity students and twenty staffers reported more than forty decisions for Christ during Easter-week student evangelism on the beaches at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The thirty-five affiliates of United Bible Societies last year gave away or sold at below cost more than 100 million Scriptures.

Associate Director C. Stanley Lowell of Americans United for Separation of Church and State charges in a new pamphlet that “the practical effect” of America’s Viet Nam policy has been an image of “establishing the Roman Catholic religion in Viet Nam.”

Some 2,000 professions of faith were reported in eight days of meetings by Texas evangelist James Robison, 24, sponsored by 137 Phoenix, Arizona, churches, mostly Southern Baptist.

Christian Medical Society sent 160 doctors and dentists to give two weeks of free medical care in the Dominican Republic.

Sixty-three of the world’s one billion Christians met April 21–27 in Beirut, Lebanon, for closed-door strategy on economic development. This was the first time Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholics had met officially for such discussion, and some enthusiasts said it was the biggest cooperative effort since the East-West schism of 1054.

The official report won’t be out until sometime this month, but a conference “statement” revealed the basic position. It urged Christians everywhere “to campaign or lobby for development by all means at their disposal and to give governments, parties, leaders and agencies no peace until the whole human race can live with reasonable ease and hope in its planetary home.”

It also asked the Vatican and the World Council of Churches to set up the Beirut planning committee permanently as an “active agent of Christian education and action.”

The executive of the conference planning committee, Father George H. Dunne, is the first Roman Catholic to have headquarters at the WCC’s Geneva offices and the first person jointly appointed, paid, and directed by the Vatican and the WCC. Summing up Beirut, he said that for the first time the world’s three Christian groupings “are joining forces and pooling resources in a worldwide campaign to awaken mankind to a realization that an increasing chasm divides the rich from the poor, and to quicken the Christian conscience to a sense of responsibiltiy and of moral obligation.”

The impetus of the conference came first from disappointment among church leaders at the failure of United Nations development work and at lack of action by the Church itself (though one speaker noted that the Vatican and WCC churches spend $350 million a year on development, more than all U.N. agencies combined).

Then there was the WCC’s 1966 Geneva meeting on church and society—still a point of controversy among Protestants—and its call for a professional WCC-Vatican study on development. Half a year later Pope Paul VI presented the world with his encyclical On the Development of Peoples, in which he proclaimed that “the new name for peace is development” and urged bold reforms. The joint committee and appointment of Dunne followed in the fall of 1967.

Monsignor Joseph Gremillion, secretary of the increasingly influential Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace, saw Beirut not only as a follow-up to Geneva and the papal encyclical but also as “an excellent preparation for the World Council’s Uppsala Conference in July” and “a continuing fulfillment of Vatican Council II.”

In a message to the conference, the Pope said, “If perfect union between the Christian confessions is not yet achieved on doctrinal grounds—however praiseworthy may be the efforts for rapprochement—there is at least one field in which ecumenism can attain concrete and immediate results: it is the one which is the subject of your meeting.” A similar greeting from WCC headquarters said it was fitting that “a first fruit of the spirit of wider ecumenical cooperation” should be a conference on world development.

Although officials said the meeting was intended to be exploratory, the first sessions went so well that it turned into a working conference.

Most conferees were laymen—social, economic, educational, and political “experts.”¹Papers were presented by Kenya’s economics minister Tom Mboya (in absentia), British economist Lady Jackson (Barbara Ward), Director Horacio Godoy of the Action Committee for Latin America, and Vice-President Max Kohnstamm of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe. Only six participants were invited from the host nation, Lebanon. All but one of the sessions were closed to the press. Even the initial reception for conferees was so selective that few Protestant clergymen in the area were included.

Many Protestants think Catholic-Orthodox opposition to all but the “rhythm” method of birth control is a severe hindrance to economic development. The 1,300-word conference statement devoted only one sentence to this issue. It advocated that “appropriate policies to slow down accelerated population increases—policies which respect the rights and religious beliefs of each family—be given the priority they need to lessen the prospect of possible famine in the next two decades and to give the hope of better diets, health, education, and responsible family life.”

The conference recommended church “political action” with the following program for the 1970s: Contribution by developed nations of 1 per cent of their gross national product to poor nations, hopefully by 1970, and more later, with a similar amount added from private investment. Easing of credit terms. Expansion of technical-assistance manpower. Stabilizing of prices for primary products. Programs that stress agriculture, “labor-intensive industries,” schools and clinics, and advancement of all the people, rather than military buildup, formation of “industrial giants,” prestige projects, and monopoly by a few.

The developing nations, for their part, are to remove social obstructions to progress (no mention was made of social effects of non-Christian ideologies), stress education toward “modern attitudes and capacities,” establish economies with “adequate taxation and stimulus to local saving,” and form regional common markets.

The conference also urged widespread educational programs to change attitudes in rich nations, and increasing use of international agencies to channel development funds.

In short, the conference advocated the sort of international economic program that has been recommended in previous meetings and papers of the World Council of Churches.

Two Muslims participated in the conference, and the statement stressed that Christians must act “with all men of whatever creed, or none.”

Specifically Christian elements were sparse in the conference statement. Statement of the responsibility of Christians to influence political and economic structures for human dignity will cause some to rejoice. But others may find misleading the summons to change social structures and thereby eliminate “the causes of the evil, whose symptoms alone [we] could treat before.”

Roman Catholic economist Barbara Ward stated fervently that the missionary movement will not function as it should in the next decade unless the missionary is “a dedicated servant of national and international development.” The implication of this and other statements was that calling the world to repentance and faith in Christ will soon be out of date in a developing world in which the Church, hand in hand with all the world’s religions and ideologies, will eventually bring in the millennium. In reply to a question along this line, one WCC official—a Protestant—referred to the old Protestant overemphasis on faith and regeneration, then added, “Remember, we will be judged by our works, not by our faith!”

Beirut raises again the question whether accelerated political and economic activism will replace the Church’s original calling. The movement could also woo the Church to think that, after all, the only real panacea for man’s sin, the world’s crises, and church divisions is “the great moral imperative” of world cooperation for the fully human development of man by man.

Yet smug criticism of the Beirut conference by evangelicals in comfortable America will be an inadequate response in a time when one-fifth of the world’s people (mostly in the “Christian” West) are living off four-fifths of the world’s resources and millions remain victims of poverty, injustice, ill health and war—and when more than half the world has not yet heard the Gospel.

MALIK: SOCIAL-ACTION DANGERS

Charles Malik is one of the best-known residents of Lebanon, where the Vatican and the World Council of Churches held last month’s economic conference (story above). Perhaps no other avowed Christian now living has had as distinguished a career in international affairs. The Lebanese diplomat has served as president of the United National General Assembly, the U. N. Security Council, and the Human Rights Commission.

In an interview at his home in Rabiya, Lebanon, the 61-year-old Malik said he was “gratified” that the conference was held in his nation and called WCC-Vatican cooperation “a great augury to the future.”

Malik believes the Church must speak “authoritatively” on all kinds of issues “as occasion arises and demands,” and says that “at the present moment the social and economic question, in its widest sense, is most acute and urgent.” But the Church must always speak for Christ’s glory, “not in the name of any idea or ideal” unless it clearly flows from Christ.

All Christian action, he said, “should be motivated by our love for and our closeness to Jesus of Nazareth.” He recalled the Scripture that in the Last Judgment men will claim they have done wonders in Christ’s name and he will reply, “I never knew you.”

“Socializing of the Gospel is a tremendous danger today,” Malik said. “This does not mean there are no objective social truths and problems which need to be dealt with. But it is very easy for modern man to crucify Christ again on the cross of social betterment and regeneration of society.”

Malik advocates a “hierarchy”: First, Jesus Christ himself. Second, confrontation of the human soul with Christ, resulting in an acute sense of personal sin and unworthiness, and then in repentance and faith. Third, amelioration of society and introduction of justice and economic development.

“Christ is not for the sake of society and social betterment, but all these things are for the sake of Christ and to his glory,” he said. With all the local, national and international problems, compassion and love of neighbor is a “major demand today. It is just for this reason it could be a terrible snare, deflecting our mind from the one thing needful.”

“I can lose myself in social service and I will do lots of good. But if I thereby lose Jesus Christ himself my social activity will do me no good, even in the Last Judgment.” The Bible must be taken “as a whole,” he said, but “contemporary bias” tends to remove the Last-Judgment aspect from Matthew 25.

Malik, a Greek Orthodox layman, believes “the greatest danger today is to substitute justification by works for justification by faith. There can be no real faith without works, as the Bible affirms. On the other hand, there could be magnificent works without faith. If I give all my money to the poor, if I sacrifice myself for social causes, if I have all knowledge and if I can predict the future prophetically and perfectly—in other words if I am a perfect social worker but without love, which of course is impossible without faith in Jesus Christ who himself bestows upon me his love—then, as Paul said, ‘I am nothing.’ ”

JOHN E. FERWERDA

THE CROSS OVER SYDNEY

Australia gave evangelist Billy Graham a memorable sendoff last month. A crowd estimated at 100,000 turned out for the closing service of a nine-day crusade in Sydney, largest city in the nation. They packed out the sprawling Sydney Showground and spilled over into an adjacent cricket field.

“The cross is the strongest evidence of God’s hatred of sin,” Graham said. “But it is also a glorious exhibition of God’s love.” He stressed that the cross is man’s only way of salvation and the only possible basis for brotherhood.

From the stadium, Graham and his team sped directly to the airport to board a Pan Am jet for the United States. Preparations were already well under way for Graham’s next major effort, the ten-day Pacific Northwest Crusade scheduled to begin in Portland, Oregon, May 17. Three of the Portland meetings are being videotaped in color to be shown throughout the United States and Canada in June. The crusade is due to close two days before the crucial Oregon primary.

In Sydney, a metropolitan area of well over two million people, the crusade made church history. The seven nightly services and two Sunday-afternoon meetings attracted a total of 417,000. Of this number, 22,420 responded to Graham’s appeal to make commitments to Christ, and 70 per cent of these were described as first-time decisions. Landline relays carried the audio part into 127 towns and cities. A television network decided to show a film of the closing service throughout Australia that night.

Particularly obvious and heartening in Sydney was the interest and response of uncommitted young people and the energetic participation by the believing youth in the churches. Even though orthodox theology still ranks number one in Sydney church life, agnosticism is common among the rank and file, particularly among youth. But for one reason or another, teens turned up at the Showground in droves. Munching apples and puffing on cigarettes, even during the sermon, they served notice that they would not melt easily. At each invitation, however, hundreds did make the break, and left the stadium committed exponents of the cause of Christ’s Gospel. The measure of eager involvement ran counter to widespread adolescent indifference toward the modern church.

The 49-year-old Graham was impressed. He has noted a similar tendency among youth in the American and British crusades, though perhaps on a smaller scale. “Young people are searching for something to believe in,” the evangelist told Sydney newsmen. “I’ve given up on the older generation.”

Graham’s most effective sermon with the youth was based, remarkably enough, on David’s encounter with Goliath. Graham drew parallels with such modern “giants” as nuclear weapons, the population problem, and obsession with sex. But basically the sermon was a vivid portrayal of the young Hebrew shepherd’s felling of the fearsome Philistine. That night, 4,510 decisions were recorded.

Appeal to young people was enhanced by team musicians Cliff Barrows, BevShea, Tedd Smith, and John Innes, and by a 2,500-voice choir and a swinging foursome known as the Kinsfolk. Three sons and a daughter of Canon A. E. Begbie, chaplain general of the Australian Army, make up the folk group. Still in their twenties, the Kinsfolk are first-rate musicians who vary their fare from Bach to rock.

The Australian autumn treated the crusade kindly. Sydney’s location on the shores of the warm South Pacific gives the city a semi-tropical climate with little or no real winter. The area is known for an abundance of rainfall, but not a drop marred the meetings. Daytime temperatures were in the seventies. Only on one or two evenings did the thermometer dip into the fifties. Each night was clear, and all who looked could see the Southern Cross constellation in the sky. It aptly symbolized access to the other Cross being proclaimed by the gospel messenger.

No one in Sydney backed the crusade more enthusiastically than the distinguished archbishop of the local Anglican diocese, the Most Reverend Marcus L. Loane, whose refreshingly biblical outlook sets the ecclesiastical pace in what has been called the most evangelical city in the world. The 56-year-old Loane is the first native Australian to hold the post; all his predecessors came from Great Britain. He oversees 506 churches with a membership that constitutes one-third of the area’s total population.

“Americans trace their spiritual heritage to the Pilgrim fathers, and we Australians to the prodigal son,” says Loane. The jest is an allusion to the convicts who were Australia’s first white settlers. The archbishop, for whom church history has been a specialty, notes that through the intervention of English philanthropist William Wilberforce, evangelical chaplains accompanied the first ships that brought the convicts to Australia in 1788. Loane traces the evangelical orientation of his diocese back to this fact. He also credits Moore Theological College with perpetuating evangelical influence. Still another factor, he says, is the constitution of the diocesan synod, in which there are two laymen for each clergyman.

Throughout the history of Australia, there has been a battle between Puritanism and paganism. According to Loane, Graham’s 1959 crusade came at the crest of a spiritual tide. “But the tide has been running the other way lately,” he says, “as a result of the affluent, permissive way of life.”

Loane seeks to arrest the drift not only by preachment but also by personal example. When he was named archbishop in 1966, he ordered his annual salary cut from 13,500 to 8,000 Australian dollars (about $1 to $1.12 U. S.). He also replaced the big foreign-made limousine that went with the job with an Australian-assembled compact car. Loane works in an austere office on the ground floor of the Diocesan Church House. His windows look out upon busy George Street, a symbol of Sydney’s dominant role in South Pacific trade.

Another supporter of the Graham crusades was high-church Archbishop P. N. W. Strong of Brisbane, who is Anglican primate of Australia. Strong lent his backing to Graham’s weekend series in Brisbane, then traveled south to attend the crusade in Sydney.

It was while Graham was preaching in Sydney that word came of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Graham called his team together and gave serious consideration to returning to the United States for the funeral, but decided against it because of the complex travel problem involved. The evangelist did send flowers and a letter of condolence to the widowed Mrs. King.

Graham plans to return to Australasia to speak in cities where he had planned to go this year, before a lingering lung ailment forced a schedule curtailment. He is now planning 1969 crusades for Melbourne, Australia, and for Auckland and Dunedin, New Zealand.

Israeli Protestant Status

Six Protestant denominations in Israel are seeking government recognition of their community. If it is granted, under Israeli law they will gain full jurisdiction over marriage, divorce, wills, adoption, and other matters of their members’ personal status. The law, a carry-over from Turkish and British rule in Palestine, was retained when Israel became independent twenty years ago.

The churches took on the complex application procedure (it requires six years to complete) to end discrimination. They feel the law withholds rights and services from their members and hinders evangelism because potential converts hesitate to join an unrecognized community.

Baptists, Lutherans, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Mennonites, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance—together less than half of Israel’s Protestants—comprise the community seeking recognition

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

—Dag Hammarskjöld

A cloud of ecclesiastical dust rose from Dallas this month as leaders of America’s newest denomination clashed over how to resolve social ills.

Alluding to urban unrest, Bishop Wilbur K. Smith of Brazil declared, “You are only beginning to experience some of the tensions which arise in societies where there is too great a disparity in economic and social conditions.”

The old Methodist Church and, to a lesser extent, the Evangelical United Brethren were verbally committed to the social-activist emphasis. But in the new church, born out of a two-week Uniting Conference in Dallas (see May 10 issue), a militant element was seizing the initiative, demanding deeds along with words. The conflict came when their proposals met the restraining influences of the moderates and conservatives among the 1,255 delegates.

The militants won conference endorsement of non-violent civil disobedience “in extreme cases” but lost a bid for recognition of selective conscientious objection, in which would-be draftees could decide which wars are morally acceptable. President Johnson was commended for peace initiatives but chided for failing to keep his word to start talks anywhere, any time.

As part of a campaign for social reform through economic boycott, the conference rebuffed one of its own elder statesmen, Dr. Charles C. Parlin, a New York lawyer who is co-president of the World Council of Churches. Much to Parlin’s distaste, a report supporting the Methodist Board of Missions’ removal of a $10 million portfolio from the First National City Bank of New York won conference concurrence by a decisive show of hands. The board’s action was designed to protest bank policy in participating in a renewed line of credit to the apartheid government of South Africa.

Parlin, who has been a director and legal adviser of the bank, said he knew of nothing the bank had ever done of which he would be ashamed. He declared: “I have fought this principle of economic pressure to bring about your point of view consistently throughout my church life. This does violence to the principle. I have toured the South on numerous occasions, speaking to groups of laymen, pleading with them to continue their contributions, although they disagreed with some of the principles involved in the Board of Missions, the World Council, and the National Council of Churches. I feel that this action by the Board of Missions pulls the rug out from under me in the cause which I have espoused.” Parlin later predicted that “laymen will withhold contributions as protest, and this could be disastrous to the church and councils of churches.”

The conference also endorsed Project Equality, an ecumenical program that seeks to persuade religious agencies to do business only with firms that vow fair-employment practices. The Nashville-based Methodist Publishing House came under fire for allegedly discriminating against Negroes and labor unions and for paying excessive salaries to top executives. Publisher Lovick Pierce disclosed he earned $55,000 annually, more than twice the wage of Methodist bishops. A committee was formed to investigate.

Delegates approved creation of a Commission on Religion and Race, but a clause stipulating multi-racial composition was struck out by the Judicial Council. The commission’s powers were somewhat uncertain. The new denomination retains ten racially segregated annual conferences, and conference delegates beat down all legislation to dissolve them. A Fund for Reconciliation was launched with a goal of $20,000,000. Again, the conference did not say clearly how the money would be raised and where it would be used on racial and poverty problems.

To the grass roots, the most startling development in the Uniting Conference was deletion of a requirement that ministers abstain from tobacco and alcohol. The principle had been widely violated and seldom if ever enforced. But many Methodists still consider smoking and drinking questionable behavior. Delegates adopted a “resolution of interpretation” which says that the changes call for “higher standards of self-discipline.”

The most eloquent defense of abstinence came from Dr. Roy Nichols, pastor of Salem Methodist Church in Harlem, whose speech was promptly repudiated by a black-power lobby. The most frequent argument against the abstinence requirement was that it alienated young seminarians. One observer put it candidly: “Too many refrigerators of the seminary students won’t stand inspection.”

Delegates voted to retain a requirement that only “the pure, unfermented juice of the grape” be used in communion. Supporters of a proposal to relax the measure complained that it cramped their ecumenical style by keeping them out of communion services in which wine is used.

Ecumenicity is indeed a growing issue for Methodists. Of particular significance in the days ahead is what the denomination will do about the Consultation on Church Union. Delegates voiced support of Methodist participation in COCU’s creation of a plan of union for nine denominations, but the move was perfunctory, with little debate. More definite action is expected at the 1970 conference, the Methodists’ fourth “quadrennial” in six years, in Baltimore. One consolation for Methodists if they decide to enter COCU is that they will dominate it numerically. The new denomination now boasts more than 11 million members.

The Uniting Conference voted unanimously to instruct its Commission on Ecumenical Affairs to extend a “warm welcome” to union talks with the three Negro Methodist denominations in COCU, which claim a membership of more than 2,500,000. The action, however, was less than an all-out effort. Little progress can be expected as long as the United Methodist Church is unable to rid itself of present racial structures.

Methodists also have to cope with substantial disenchantment from former EUB churches. The EUB Pacific Northwest Conference had asked for authorization for local churches to withdraw. The Montana Conference had requested permission for withdrawal of the entire conference. In the Erie conference, at least thirteen local congregations have petitioned to leave. Church officials have denied all such requests, and the Dallas delegates tabled a resolution that encouraged interdenominational union on the local level, fearing it might provide a convenient exit for dissident EUB congregations. Legal challenges are already under way.

The EUB Church approved the merger by a narrow margin. Nearly a third of the old denomination was strongly against union with the Methodists, mainly on the grounds that the Methodists were much too liberal theologically.

Some of the EUB churches that are swallowing hard and staying in will find welcome fellowship in a growing group of evangelically orthodox Methodists headed by the Rev. Charles Keysor of Elgin, Illinois. Keysor, former managing editor of the big Methodist family magazine Together, now puts out a quarterly aimed at consolidating evangelical concerns in Methodism. But he takes pains to keep the group from becoming a divisive element and thus exerts minimal influence upon the establishment.

The really influential lobbies in Dallas were the Black Methodists for Church Renewal, a new group, and the four-year-old Methodists for Church Renewal. The latter has often been described as adhering to the philosophy of Joseph Mathews’s controversial Ecumenical Institute of Chicago. The “renewal” groups met regularly in caucuses to plan strategy. Their achievements in the conference were limited, but their influence is expected to continue and increase. Their approach, siphoning off Methodist resources into militant social action, may be largely propagandized in a successor publication to Concern, an official monthly of the old Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns that had been suspended.

From the evangelical standpoint, the saddest aspect of the Dallas conference was that radical activists were confronted merely in pragmatic dimensions, either through emotional appeal or by parliamentary maneuver. “What will they think back home?” was a frequent but ineffective rebuttal. Virtually no one challenged liberal presuppositions at the idea level, much less on biblical ground. If theologically orthodox Methodists are to become a more significant force, they will need to counter the drift of their new church with more viable and rational alternatives.

NEW FACES

A 40-year-old former Presbyterian next week becomes general secretary of the United Methodist Board of Evangelism. The Rev. Joseph H. Yeakel previously headed the evangelism board of the EUB Church. The Rev. Kermit Long, who held the similar post in the premerger Methodist Church, will be associate general secretary.

Yeakel joined the United Brethren while attending their Lebanon Valley College. He and his wife and five children will move to Nashville this summer.

As to his theological commitment, Yeakel says, “I find myself with integrity in both camps.” He believes that in evangelism “the church must put its resources at the point of pain.”

Other key selections:

• As dean of the embattled seminary at Drew University: Dr. James M. Ault, professor of practical theology and director of field education at Union Theological Seminary, New York (after a shakeup of Drew trustees).

• As president-designate of the United Methodist Council of Bishops: former EUB Bishop Reuben H. Mueller.

• As the last new bishop of the EUB Church: the Rev. Paul A. Washburn, who served as chief EUB apologist for the Methodist-EUB merger.

RACIAL AGENDA FOR CATHOLICS

The U. S. Roman Catholic bishops issued a major statement on the racial problem at their meeting last month in St. Louis and set up an ecumenical action agency to do something about it. A unanimous statement, strengthened by floor amendments, said “it would be futile to deny” the Kerner Commission assertion that white racism is largely responsible for the present crisis.

Smarting, perhaps, from complaints of church racism at a Detroit caucus of Negro priests, the bishops said the first task for Catholicism is “total eradication of any elements of discrimination in our parishes, schools, hospitals, homes for the aged and similar institutions.” Second was a duty to give generously to urgent needs of the poor, though religious funds alone “cannot possibly meet the complex needs.”

The Pope’S ‘Little Portion’

The week before the United States and North Viet Nam met in Paris, Pope Paul revealed that he had offered Lateran Palace or the Vatican as a site for the negotiations.

“Our little portion of territorial independence” was offered officially “so that, if other choices were lacking, the first meetings could be held here without any interference from us,” he said.

Religious News Service said the proposal was probably made April 29 or 30 through U. S. Apostolic Delegate Luigi Raimondi, and to Hanoi through the Vatican embassy in Paris.

The Pope hailed the decision to open talks on the Viet Nam war, but admitted his hope for peace is “not unmixed with fears.”

The Pope also disclosed he will fly to Colombia in late August to address the world eucharistic congress and the Latin American bishops’ meeting.

The bishops said that if private industry can’t provide work for unemployed Negroes, “then it becomes the duty of government to intervene.” They also advocated strict enforcement of the new national open-housing law.

The bishops voted $25,000 to set up an “urban task force” which will work with the National Council of Churches and the Synagogue Council to aid such racial programs as Project Equality and Operation Connection. Most Catholic help will come from voluntary efforts in local dioceses, but Pittsburgh’s Bishop John Wright estimated church aid would be “in the millions.”

The U. S. urban office is part of a major reshuffling of the Washington, D. C.-based Catholic secretariat. The new organization, which will begin functioning July 1, results from a $90,000, ten-month study. Directing the tightening-up will be new General Secretary Joseph L. Bernardin, 40, who succeeds Bishop Paul Tanner, recently reassigned to St. Augustine, Florida.

Another new office will be a personnel secretariat, designed to cope with the increasing shortage of priests. The number of U. S. priests dropped last year for the first time in decades, mostly because of net loss of 671 priests in religious orders. The bishops also discussed guidelines for the 143 local clergy senates and forty independent clergy associations that have sprung up in the post-conciliar church. The local groups decided earlier this year to form a national organization.

A major sign of ecumenical links was the revelation that bishops’ representatives huddled privately with NCC leaders in Detroit three months ago and that both sides agreed to keep hands off the current U. S. Supreme Court suit on the New York law that requires loan of public textbooks to parochial-school students.

From the closed-door meetings, the U.S. bishops issued a general statement supporting President Johnson’s Viet Nam bombing pause. But major treatment of war and peace will wait half a year, when the bishops will issue a “church in the modern world” pastoral letter.

MAY DAY VICTORY

The Christian Labor Association of Canada hailed a May 1 judicial decision in its battle against secular unions. CLAC, a recognized bargaining agent for 3,300 workers in seventy-six locals, had taken to court AFL-CIO unions that claimed exclusive rights to deal with employers.

The case grew out of a walkout at a Chatham, Ontario, construction site three years ago. The AFL-CIO strike forced a supplier to cancel his contract with a firm employing CLAC-represented workers. Final outcome was an injunction issued by the chief justice of the Ontario Supreme Court forbidding the AFL-CIO from interfering with CLAC.

CLAC is led by young, Dutch-born Gerald Vandezande, who feels Christian social responsibility should motivate orthodox believers to join in biblically-based power blocs. Among his evangelical supporters is Toronto’s Dr. William Fitch, who plans to raise the issue at next month’s Presbyterian Church assembly.

CANADIAN APPEAL

West Ellesmere Church in suburban Toronto decided this month to appeal to the August national meeting of the United Church of Canada for the right to call the minister of its choice.

In an unusual move, the local presbytery had refused approval of the call to the Rev. J. Berkley Reynolds, a conservative in theology, fearing the choice might split the 1,000-member congregation (see March 29 issue, page 40). The action was later upheld by the executive group of the Conference (regional) Settlement Committee. The congregation’s board then overwhelmingly voted for a national appeal. One member called the committee’s verdict “a total disregard of the congregation.” Conference committee Chairman Norman Pick, one of the few officials outside the congregation who would talk, said the congregation could not appeal the latest ruling.

At a three-hour conference committee hearing, two pro-Reynolds laymen told the committee the division in the congregation is healing and some of the anti-Reynolds minority faction would now support the call.

Reynolds will go along with the congregation in making the appeal, which he views as a test case. He says that if it fails, he will probably just leave without a fuss. He has been interim preacher at the church this year while completing a doctorate.

AUBREY WICE

VIET CONG SOUVENIRS

Peanut brittle and hot tea graced the menu. Soldiers brought gifts, including a comb made from a napalm canister. The occasion was a farewell party in the camp commander’s bomb shelter for Dr. Marjorie Nelson and Miss Sandra Johnson, who were being released last month after fifty-two days in National Liberation Front prisons.

The Viet Cong cared well for them, reported Dr. Nelson, who had worked with an American Friends rehabilitation program in South Viet Nam. They provided the doctor and the International Voluntary Service teacher ample amounts of rice. “Before I left,” Dr. Nelson said, “I was eating twelve bowls a day.” Their shoes, inadequate for mountain hiking, were replaced with boots.

Dr. Nelson was “impressed by the caliber” of the medical care she received when she became ill with dysentery. Her major frustration was Viet Cong refusal to allow her to work. “They said it wasn’t necessary. They are very proud and determined to be self-sufficient.”

She was interrogated only once, though her captors initiated many political discussions. The soldiers wanted to hear about life in the United States, which they hoped to visit after the war. “When they asked me if I wanted to go home, I said, ‘Not yet.’ Then I explained that I was opposed to the war and wanted to help the Vietnamese.”

“I am very grateful that this happened to me,” said the Quaker doctor. “Throughout the whole experience I felt the presence of God. I feel this experience was a demonstration of what love can do.”

Her purse and its contents, including her money, camera and film, and passport, were returned when the women left the camp. Soldiers escorted them to a Vietnamese home where they caught a bus for Hue.

Back in the United States, Dr. Nelson visited her father; her mother had died shortly before news of Dr. Nelson’s impending release became public. Her only brother was aboard the ketch “Phoenix,” which had delivered medical supplies to North Viet Nam.

The Friends’ Quang Ngai rehabilitation program for civilian victims of the war will be reopened next month. The work was suspended during the Tet offensive last February when Dr. Nelson and Miss Johnson were captured.

Baptist Barth

“I am about to depart the scene with a bad reputation,” predicts 81-year-old Karl Barth. He expects “ecclesiastical-theological isolation” to follow the view of baptism expressed in his “last larger work,” volume IV/4 of Church Dogmatics.

A quarter-century ago, Barth questioned the “habit, or bad habit,” of infant baptism. Now the Reformed theologian also rejects a “sacramental or sacramentalistic” view of baptism as a human attempt to “manipulate” God. Baptism with the Holy Spirit brings the repentance and renewal, he holds. Water baptism is man’s liturgical response to the change already brought by God. Thus a free faith decision is needed before baptism.

Can the Church become a mature missionary force if it continues “to dispense the baptismal water with the same disrespectful prodigality it has demonstrated” for two millennia?, he asks.

CHISEL NO MORE

The church should be a “happening,” said a National Council of Churches staffer this month. He was speaking to architects and churchmen about the form of the building, not the content of the message or the order of worship.

Dr. Roger Ortmayer said churches should be designed so they are “amenable to the new sculptor’s art which uses electric circuits and amplifiers instead of hammer and chisel.” Churches will have to incorporate “the wonder of moving light” that “will be as integral to the rituals now being developed as were wall mosaics to the Byzantines or colored glass to the thirteenth-century pilgrims.”

Religious architecture is one way to tell the world that “God is alive!” said Robert L. Durham, and it can be “a tool for better communities” in a day when “man is awakening to the need for better environment.”

Part of that better environment, according to Durham, president of the American Institute of Architects, is churches and synagogues whose buildings “make possible a more meaningful expression of society’s religious conviction.” Those buildings should be works of art, he said, and can be in this affluent society where “for the price of one martini per person any American city could afford a major piece of art in its public square every night in the week.”

At least two speakers at the Miami Beach conference pointed out hindrances to achieving works of art in religious architecture.

The effort to avoid congregational conflicts is self-defeating, according to Dr. Arthur M. Cohen, director of communication and a group-processes laboratory at Georgia State College. He warned that buildings become the permanent results of the poor decisions that result from uncreative use of conflict.

Without interpersonal encounters, the degree to which architecture reflects the aesthetic whims and preferences of an age and of a congregation cannot be evaluated. He urged church members to be less passive and to study group dynamics in order to learn the process of reaching decisions that will recognize religious man’s unfinished state and need of continuous evaluation.

The Guild of Religious Architecture presented its honor award for the monastery renovation of the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. The new design, said the citation, “follows the tradition of style change and happily transforms the original space into a superlatively simple interior fitting for its contemplative role.”

ADON TAFT

Novelists In Christian Focus

John Updike, by Kenneth Hamilton, Kathleen Raine, by Ralph J. Mills, Jr., Günter Grass, by Norris W. Yates, and Saul Bellow, by Robert Detweiler (Eerdmans, 1968, 48 pp. each, paper, $.85 each), are reviewed by Ann Paton, professor of English, Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.

For those of us who find most literary criticism blurred, slanted, or truncated because its angle of vision is not our own, the Eerdmans series on “Contemporary Writers in Christian Perspective” answers a felt need. Under the editorship of Roderick Jellema, the booklets have in common their length (forty-eight pages), their apparatus (a selected bibliography of works and criticism), and their aim: to bring major writers into Christian focus at a high level of perception and scholarship. Because each essayist is free to go about achieving this goal in his own way, the series exhibits a refreshing variety of approaches and styles.

Robert Detweiler, obviously enthusiastic about his subject, measures Saul Bellow’s stature and finds him, like that other Saul, head and shoulders above not only the rest of Israel but Gentile novelists as well. Bellow is the representative Western man for whom the old categories of Christian and Jew are losing their absolute validity, whose writing is informed by both Judaism and Christianity, and whose aim is to reconcile and unify. Because he speaks the word of affirmation, Bellow invites viewing from the Christian perspective, which, in its via-death-to-life patterns, is also his own. With special reference to Herzog and The Adventures of Augie March, Detweiler analyzes five elements of Bellow’s art—fictional perspective, language and image, setting, characterization, and action—and shows how each opens up a theological understanding of human experience. He is at his best in his analysis of Bellow’s language and the function of the word/Word in Christian doctrine. Finally, he shows that Bellow’s characters are elucidated in their personal relationships by Martin Buber and in their actions by Friedrich Gogarten.

Reading For Perspective

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

• Who Was Who in Church History, by Elgin S. Moyer (Moody, $6.95). A new revision of a helpful volume of thumbnail sketches of seventeen hundred people whose lives influenced the course of the Christian Church.

• The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, edited by Ronald H. Nash (Presbyterian and Reformed, $9.95). A fascinating, challenging Festschrift on the encyclopedic thought of the outstanding evangelical Protestant philosopher of our day.

• God in Man’s Experience, by Leonard Griffith (Word, $3.95). A Toronto minister offers perceptive expositions of twenty-one selected Psalms “written in the ink of personal experience” that will stimulate readers to study these profound hymns of faith in greater depth.

Norris Yates hears a different kind of “Yea” rising out of the apparent wreckage in the works of the conspicuous and controversial Günter Grass. American readers will be especially grateful for his biographical summary of Grass. The poems and plays are touched on, but it is from the three novels (The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, and Dog Years), with all their grotesquerie, fable, obscenity, fantasy, pathos, symbolism, and whimsy, that the great affirmation emerges: Man is a seeker after truth. Yates concludes with an incisive judgment of Grass’s defects and of his attitude toward the Christian faith.

John Updike: apologist or skeptic? fizzle or flame? Kenneth Hamilton sees as the key to Updike his “sense of place”: his conviction that the world has a center and that the center is in remembered things. To apostles of absurdity, Updike’s world seems too small and his sense of place a heresy. If Updike’s world is small, it is deep, for his fiction is preoccupied with showing how the “mysteries” of sex, religion, and art, encountered early in life, color mature existence. Updike’s judgment on our civilization is that we have cut ourselves off from the sources that nourish our good. This judgment is most explicit in Poorhouse Fair, his Horrible Utopia novel. Hamilton’s comments on Rabbit, Run clarify the relation of the book’s strong sexuality to its motto from Pascal: ‘The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart.…” Hamilton treats The Centaur as a companion piece showing that not all human hearts are hardened against the motions of grace. Updike’s short stories are variations on the same great themes. Hamilton has succeeded admirably in analyzing individual works, but he has not made sufficiently clear how the “mysteries” and the Wordsworthian natural piety he sees in Updike are related. He admits, “Updike remains something of a puzzle. Even his basic stance as a writer is hard to pin down.”

Not so Miss Kathleen Raine. Ralph Mills has taken full advantage of the fact that Miss Raine is an articulate poet who knows her theory of poetry and her own place in the literary mainstream. Using Miss Raine’s statements, as well as his own analysis, Mills first delineates Miss Raine’s basic assumption that reality exists on several planes and that poetic symbols, arising from within, partake of metaphysical reality and thus disclose transcendent truth. Defining the poet not merely as maker but also as seer, Miss Raine aligns herself with Blake, Coleridge, Eliot, and Sitwell. Mills shows her, in her Collected Poems and The Year One, to be a severely self-disciplined and dedicated writer who transmits the religious vision that has been granted her: an identification with the unchanging energies of the universe, and an awareness of transcendent meaning and of the divine principle hidden in things. Readers interested in the theory of poetry will find Mills’s well written essay especially illuminating.

Each of the essays gives sufficient summary and biography to support the criticism. Each acknowledges other criticism and goes on to present a personal judgment informed by thorough knowledge both of the author’s works and of the techniques of modern criticism. Some readers may wish for a more explicit exposition of Christian doctrine as it is present in or absent from a given writer’s works; but surely one can see the specifics for himself, once the shape of a writer’s work has been delineated from a Christian perspective.

An Arab Strikes Back

Bitter Harvest, by Sami Hadawi, (New World, 1967, 346 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by G. Douglas Young, president, American Institute of Holy Land Studies, Highland Park, Illinois.

Sami Hadawi is a Christian Arab who was born in Jerusalem when it was still a part of the Ottoman Empire. From 1920 to 1948 he served the British mandatory government and from then until 1955 the government of Jordan. Later he served various Arab governments at the United Nations. He writes well and with emotion presents what he considers to be the Arab side of the Palestine story, 1914 to 1967. His case would probably be very convincing to one who had never heard the other side of this story, was not perturbed by threats of additional genocide as the solution to political problems, or had little knowledge of the ancient and modern history of the Middle East.

Hadawi’s last sentence, his final conclusion, is: “The Arabian desert is bound to rebel again and the Zionist intruders will be cast into the sea from whence they came and we shall have peace again in the Holy Land.”

Peace at the price of genocide! One had hoped that in the years since the Nazi era the world had progressed beyond genocide as a final solution to man’s problems.

Strange twistings of history occur throughout the volume. Romans, not Arabs of the desert, expelled the Greeks. Byzantines, not Arabs, expelled the Romans. Mohammed’s Arab takeover did not come until the seventh century A.D.! The Arab Nabateans and Itruraeans came as power only in Hellenistic times, centuries after David and Solomon. How odious is this debate of prior occupancy!

As a Jordanian, Hadawi did not have access to the matters taking place across the border in Israel, and no doubt many of his inaccurate statements and onesided emphases are the result of this. “Israel prevents the travel of an Arab outside the country unless he undertakes to sign away his right to return,” he says. But I myself know many returned Israeli Arabs. The Samua incident (November 13, 1966) he calls “naked aggression devoid of any justification.” He is apparently unaware of the fourteen infiltration attacks against civilian villages and homes made out of Samua into Israel that provoked the action in Samua that stopped those attacks.

We read that “the impotence of the U. N. and the double-dealing of the American President are responsible for the 1967 war.…” One might have thought that the closing of the straits at Sharm-el-Sheikh, the moving of heavy armor across the Sinai toward Israel, and the radio releases in which Egypt’s President Nasser, then the leader of the Arab nations, threatened to drive the Jews into the sea, were at least contributing factors! Hadawi justifies the murderous raids of the al-Fatah against civilian targets in Israel. In his view, the Scriptures rule Israel forever out of the plans of God; it has been superseded by another Israel, the Church.

This volume will contribute little, if anything, to peace and may weaken the resistance of some to genocide as a solution.

How Does God Reveal Himself?

Has Christianity a Revelation?, by F. Gerald Downing (Westminster, 1967, 315 pp., $6), and The Self-Revelation of God, by J. Kenneth Kuntz (Westminster, 1967, 254 pp., $7.50), are reviewed by Leslie R. Keylock, assistant professor of theology, St. Norbert College, West De Pere, Wisconsin.

Carl Braaten opens his recent book, History and Hermeneutics, by saying, “Roman Catholic theology today is catching up with Protestant theology; it is no longer sure of what it means by revelation.” The two Protestant works here being reviewed clearly reflect the revival of concern with the concept of revelation in an age when historical criticism has led so many Protestants to soft-pedal any idea of a biblical revelation. But when Braaten concludes that “there is no doubt that any theology which deserves to be called Christian will include the notion that man’s knowledge of God presupposes God’s revelation of himself,” he would find in F. Gerald Downing a vigorous dissenter.

Downing’s thesis is that Christian talk about God’s revelation of himself in Christ is neither biblical nor meaningful. He insists, rather, that the biblical writers say God remains a Deus absconditus (concealed) even in his saving activity in Christ, and that only in Hellenistic thought (Hermetic literature, Gnosticism, Philo) is knowledge of God himself the pure awareness of absolute being. To prove his hypothesis he devotes two chapters to a careful analysis of the biblical and related vocabulary of revelation, one to a survey of Christian thought on the subject after the first century, and two to a linguistic analysis of the word “revelation” (he concludes that its normal use by theologians is illogical and incoherent). In a final concluding chapter Downing argues for a “Christianity without revelation,” and suggests that the key to understanding the Bible is to be found rather in the theme of salvation or redemption.

Incidentally, though one of the major quarrels in the theology of revelation in this century has been between those who speak of the truths of revelation (propositional revelation as connected with such names as the evangelical Protestant J. I. Packer and the Catholic M. C. D’Arcy) and those who insist that God reveals himself and not truths (personal revelation as defended by Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and their successors), Downing concludes that both groups “are saying much the same thing” and that to speak of revelation as personal encounter is really just as “intellectualistic” as to speak of the revelation of truth in propositional form.

In the Old Testament, says Downing, God never reveals himself; rather, he lets his people know that he is concerned about them (Downing admits that God in the Old Testament does reveal his demands). He makes himself known only indirectly and darkly at best, through visions and dreams, and never intimately or explicitly enough to warrant the label “revelation.”

Despite the similarity in title to Downing’s work, J. Kenneth Kuntz’s The Self-Revelation of God is quite dissimilar in content. His purpose is to use the form-critical method to analyze selected Old Testament theophanies. He gives a ten-sided definition of theophany that should probably be considered definitive: “a temporal, partial and intentionally allusive self-disclosure initiated by the sovereign deity at a particular place, the reality of which evokes the convulsion of nature and the fear and dread of man, and whose unfolding emphasizes visual and audible aspects generally according to a recognized literary form.”

With such an overall biblical definition, Kuntz then proceeds to examine the three accounts of the theophany on Mt. Sinai and selected theophanies connected with Israel’s patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and prophets (Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Second Isaiah) and with three psalms (18; 50; 97). He concludes his study of Old Testament theophany with some reflections on the cultic Sitz im Leben of biblical theophanies.

These two books are so different that comparison is probably unwarranted. Kuntz’s book is descriptive and for those who are biblically literate at times extremely elementary. It reflects careful training but leaves the impression of lacking creativity and originality. So many of the questions a scholar might expect to find discussed in a book about Old Testament theophanies are missing. The title of the book is really inappropriate, and I failed to see any value in the frequent transliterations of the Hebrew text. Perhaps I anticipated the kind of tangible results from the application of form criticism to the theophanies we have come to expect from German scholars, usually provocative even if often unconvincing.

Downing’s book, on the other hand, is not only thoroughly descriptive but at the same time problematic, creative, and stimulating. It is hard for me to overstate my appreciation for this book, even though I frequently disagreed with it. Its breadth and the thoroughness of its research are commendable. It is the kind of book that will force evangelicals to re-examine some of their basic assumptions; it calls for a creative response from them.

My major question about the book would be this: Does Downing do more than show that it is unbiblical to speak of a revelation by God of himself in the mystical sense of a divine-human encounter as defended by neo-orthodox thinkers? Theologians like Macquarrie agree that I-Thou encounters are meaningful only between human persons. But is it then justifiable to jump to the conclusion that Christianity has no revelation at all?

This book should receive a wide reading in evangelical circles if for no other reason that that it demolishes the main plank in the neo-orthodox attack on propositional revelation and forces its readers to think through exactly what they mean when they say that God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.

Social Impact Of The Gospel

Followers of the New Faith, by Emilio Willems (Vanderbilt University, 1967, 290 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Samuel Southard, director of research, General Council of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Willems, professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, presents cultural change and the rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile. His survey is based on fifteen months of field research and a critical evaluation of English, Spanish, and Portuguese books and articles.

Willems found that Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Pentecostal groups were agents of social as well as personal change. They stressed sobriety, honesty, and marital fidelity, qualities that traditionally have not been stressed among Latin Americans. The sects also laid emphasis on the duties of all church members in evangelism, teaching, and church administration.

This new teaching led to the development of a sense of personal strength among the poor, who before had felt powerless. It also brought a change in family structure, so that women became able to require sexual morality from their husbands. In the community, Protestants were sought as business partners, employees, and servants because of their emphasis upon thrift, sobriety, industry, and education.

These personal and social changes might have been a disruptive force in the Latin culture, but Willems found that Protestantism was able to adapt itself to a culture that departed far from the middle-class American assumptions of the major mission boards. In making this adaptation, Protestantism kept its doctrinal standards but ministered to the poor and despised in a way unknown in America since pioneer days. In fact, Willems considers the growth of Protestantism to be primarily in the “pioneer” areas of Brazil and Chile.

The study of Protestant growth in pioneer areas led Willems to a second major conclusion: that Protestantism grew under conditions of social change. The new faith was well received in the new industrial areas, especially among immigrants from rural areas. It was also well received in rural areas that had been bypassed by the hacienda system, and where an independent peasantry had been allowed to develop. The highest concentration of Protestants is in those areas where the new faith could give meaning to people who had been torn away from their traditional moorings.

The entire volume will be of interest to students of religion and cultural change. The concluding chapter would be of special interest to persons responsible for missionary strategy in Brazil and Chile. Willems is to be especially commended for his attention to the varieties of Pentecostal groups that have grown so rapidly in Brazil and Chile.

Armchair Travel To The Holy Land

Everyday Life in Bible Times, edited by Melville Bell Grosvenor (National Geographic Society, 1967, 448 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by B. Clayton Bell, minister, First Presbyterian Church, Dothan, Alabama.

Let me invite you to take a tour of the Holy Land. It will cost only $1,600, and we will visit such places as Rome, Corinth, the cities of Paul’s missionary journeys, Egypt, and Palestine. On this tour we will, of course, see the Bible lands only as they are today.

If you want to save $1,590.05, you can tour these lands as an armchair traveler, thanks to the National Geographic Society. This volume enables you not only to view the Bible lands as they are today but also, through text and artists’ conceptions, to get a glimpse of life in the land of promise in the days of Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, and Paul—all with the unsurpassed quality and beauty common to National Geographic publications.

The text is written by reputable biblical and archaeological scholars. Supernatural elements in divine history and in mythology are treated with respect. There are 528 illustrations (more than three-fourths in full color) and thirteen maps. A pocket inside the back cover contains a large map of the entire Middle East and, on the back, a more detailed map of the Holy Land from Baalbek to Beersheba. Both maps show the territory occupied by Israel as of June 10, 1967.

This volume will be a worthwhile addition to any home library. It will delight both the armchair traveler and the serious Bible student.

The Man Who Saved Quakerism

Robert Barclay, by D. Elton Trueblood (Harper & Row, 1968, 274 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Burney H. Enzor, minister, First Baptist Church, Bonifay, Florida.

As author-educator-lecturer, Trueblood notably fills a dual role as speaker to today’s total Christian community and speaker for his own Quaker faith. In this volume the Christian philosopher is a historian as well, filling a gap in Christian—particularly Quaker—history and biography.

The opening chapter, tediously documented, pegs Barclay in history. The author states, “The most important thing to say about Robert Barclay’s place in history is that he, more than any other person, saved Quakerism from extinction.” He sees as Barclay’s “crucial contribution” the “ministry of intelligence,” at its peak in his Apology.

The biography is divided into two parts: life and thought. The several chapters in Part I are pages of praise. Barclay’s hundreds of faithful Quaker descendants are said to attest to his faithfulness as a father. As a prisoner, he exemplified the lesson, “best thing in worst times”; his prison years were most productive and vital. As a minister he was a faithful servant in writing, speaking, visiting, and corresponding. As courtier in contact with nobility, especially King James, he saw influential persons as a challenge for Christian witness. One has to read carefully to find an adverse line about the life of Barclay. Is the author too kind?

But when he moves into Part II, Trueblood frees his sensitive, critical mind to probe. He admits that careful scrutiny of Barclay’s “authority of experience” shows it to have real pitfalls. The clergy will be challenged by Trueblood’s discussion of “The Revolutionary Ministry.” In another place he touches a nerve in his own people when he says, “The Quakers have ceased to quake.” The final chapter, “The Modernity of Barclay,” gives him the chance to say some things in his own voice while yet remaining in the context of biography. The embers of his recent book The Incendiary Fellowship glow again in this Part II.

Trueblood is an eloquent apologist for the apologist and usually improves Barclay’s auguments for the modem thinker. The extreme position on the sacraments is well thought out and deserves commendation for exalting the “real” above the ritual itself. But it is an extreme that demands too much explaining. How could Barclay and his biographer abandon the literal water, bread, and wine that communicated genuine spiritual joy for the New Testament Christians? The partial exegesis of the related passages is biased. The symbols are rejected because they stand for what the apologist stands for. Strange?

The author’s multidimensional scholarship is once again evident in this volume. Yet one should not buy the book simply because its author is Elton Trueblood; it may prove disappointing to those without particular interest in Christian history and thought of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless we may say about this book, “Well done!” It succeeds in creating a deeper appreciation not only for Barclay but even more for his people, the Quakers, and most of all for his Lord, Jesus Christ.

Country-Style Ministry

Town and Country America, by Giles C. Ekola (Concordia, 1967, 123 pp., paper, $1.25), and The Cooperative Parish in Nonmetropolitan Areas, by Marvin T. Judy (Abingdon, 1967, 204 pp., $4.25), are reviewed by William G. Jamison, professor of applied theology, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

In this day of emphasis upon specialized inner-city and suburban ministries, it is good to have these two helpful books on nonmetropolitan areas. After all, as these authors remind us, nearly 40 per cent of the nation’s people live outside metropolitan areas (areas with 50,000 or more inhabitants, of which the U. S. Census Bureau counts 212). Certainly we need to train men and women for ministry to these 60 million Americans who live in rural, village, town, and small-city situations.

The authors see the need for church leaders in nonmetropolitan areas to be well grounded in sociology, particularly those aspects concerned with community. A leader should make a detailed study of his community and apply to it the principles of community development, as Ekola sees “congregation development” and community development as inseparable, but he hastens to say that the church in its organized form should never become directly involved in community development. Rather, the church is to provide the opportunity for worship and to educate believers for service in the larger community.

Unfortunately, neither author discusses the nonmetropolitan family. But the family is the primary group in any community; with it one begins his study of community.

Judy speaks about the cooperative parish out of a wealth of experience and research, and he should be commended for careful attention to details and definitions. Ekola’s concise presentations on human relations in town and country, the influence of leisure and recreation, and water and soil pollution, are excellent, probably the best available. Ekola provides a short but sound biblical doctrine for community involvement and development; this is an unfortunate omission in Judy’s book. Judy, a Methodist, and Ekola, a Lutheran, cite many examples of parish life in their own denominations and use their particular denominational jargon; but translation to another church setting is not difficult.

Renewal—Not Liquidation

The Gospel for an Exploding World, by H. Franklin Paschall (Broadman, 1967, 128 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by E. Milford Howell, secretary of missions and stewardship, Baptist Convention of Maryland, Baltimore.

Since becoming president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1966, H. Franklin Paschall has traveled to nearly every state and to many foreign mission fields. He has seen and felt the explosive condition of our world and speaks about it in this book with frankness, warmth, and a firm conviction that the Gospel of Christ is the only answer.

In the first part of the book Paschall vividly describes the problems of our “exploding” world. Then, in the bulk of the book, he preaches the Gospel as plainly as it has ever been preached, showing its application to the world situation he has described. Forcefully, without pulling any punches, he points men and women to “the Gospel for our times.”

The last chapters of the book discuss the mandate Christ gave to his disciples: to take the Gospel to the world. The reader who comes to these chapters after the strong preaching of the center section cannot fail to realize that he himself shares in this mandate.

Paschall reminds us that “true churches have a place in the purpose of God and Jesus Christ”:

Institutional churches are under bitter attack today. Some say they are no more than ghettos of Christianity and islands of real estate.… Others say at best that churches are irrelevant and at worst an obstacle to genuine human experience.… Let us face our sins honestly, confess them and repent from them. Let us break out beyond ourselves—beyond our frozen orthodoxy, organizational routines, religious rigamarole, prejudice and pride—and minister to the world. But let us see the difference between trying to renew the churches and trying to liquidate them.… Christians cannot successfully bypass the church and minister to the world.

Laymen and ministers who want to do their part to change the world through the Gospel of Jesus Christ will welcome this forceful, challenging book.

Book Briefs

God, the Atom, and the Universe, by James Reid (Zondervan, 1968, 240 pp., $4.95). Reid discusses in laymen’s language how the “Big Bang” hypothesis of the creation of the universe harmonizes with the Genesis account.

A Devotional Treasury from the Early Church, compiled by Georgia Harkness (Abingdon, 1968, 160 pp., $3.50). Well-chosen, enduring selections from the writings of the Church Fathers—Ignatius, Polycarp, the Didache, and others—with appropriate introductions by Dr. Harkness.

The Wind Blows Wild, by Bernard Palmer (Moody, 1968, 191 pp., $2.95). The author of the Danny Orlis series offers adults a Christian novel set in the far north of Canada.

The Greatness of the Kingdom, by Alva J. McClain (Moody, 1968, 556 pp., $6.95). A reprint of a major work in dispensational theology (reviewed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 12, 1959, pp. 38 ff.).

Not Forgetting to Sing, by Nancy E. Robbins (Moody, 1968, 179 pp., $3.95). Dr. Robbins tells the heart-warming story of her medical missionary work at the Dohnavur Fellowship in South India.

A Sourcebook for Christian Worship, edited by Paul S. McElroy (World, 1968, 239 pp., $6.95). An excellent anthology of prayers, Scripture selections, and sentences for various aspects of worship services. Helpful resource book for ministers.

Paperbacks

Inside Jerusalem: City of Destiny, by Arnold Olson (Gospel Light, 1968, $.95). The president of the Evangelical Free Church describes conditions in modern Jerusalem against the backdrop of biblical teaching and his own experiences there.

The Old Testament Understanding of God, by J. Stanley Chesnut (Westminster, 1968, 192 pp., $2.45). Chesnut uses a topical-chronological pattern to trace Hebrew conceptions of God.

The Modern Vision of Death, edited by Nathan A. Scott, Jr. (John Knox, 1967, 125 pp., $1.95). Provocative observations on contemporary attitudes toward death by Amos Wilder, Hans Morgenthau, Joseph Haroutunian, Paul Tillich, and others.

Mountains Singing, by Sanna Morrison Barlow (Moody, 1968, 352 pp., $1.29). The thrilling story of how God has prospered the work of Gospel Recordings, under the direction of Joy Ridderhof and Ann Sherwood, in the Philippines.

A mental-health commission has reported finding that of those persons with problems who seek help outside the immediate family, 42 per cent turn to clergymen. A pastor, then, unless he is entirely inept and doesn’t belong in the ministry at all, will find himself counseling, whether he is trained in it or not.

How does pastoral counseling differ from other forms? First, it begins with the sovereign God as revealed in Scripture, not with men. Perhaps this can best be understood when pastoral counseling is seen in contrast to secular psychotherapy or counseling. The many secular theories fall roughly into two general emphases: biological or environmental determinism and humanistic indeterminism.

Biological or environmental determinism, represented by, among others, the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and the stimulus-response theory of John Collard and Neal Miller, views man as a product of inherited determinants or environmental influences. Man is an irrational, conditioned or determined animal. Often he is seen as evil or at least as a tabula rasa, a clean slate, upon which life writes its experiences. In either case he is not guilty, because he is not responsible. This school generally takes a pessimistic view of man.

Humanistic indeterminism, seen in the client-centered counseling of Carl Rogers, depicts man as a responsible being capable of self-enhancement or self-actualization. This school of thought is generally quite optimistic: given the proper psychological climate, man can become what he chooses.

The Christian view, starting with the sovereign God, takes these two contrasting views and unites them in hope.

God’s sovereignty, in contrast to the hopelessness and irresponsibility of psychological determinism, guarantees the hope of surmounting circumstances and undergirds man’s personal responsibility. Rather than destroying human freedom or negating human intervention in circumstances, God’s sovereignty is the very ground of such possibilities.

God’s sovereignty, in contrast to the optimism of psychological indeterminism, reckons realistically with the crippling problem of evil in man and provides the basis for hope of change through Jesus Christ.

Secular counseling can be very effective; but its effectiveness is due to the common grace of God and to the application of his truth, though often out of focus or context. The secular counselor is dependent upon God, though he may not know it. But only the pastoral counselor—or the Christian therapist—enters the counseling relationship with a realistic view of man and a genuine hope of healing.

Unlike forms of counseling that stress the horizontal relation between man and man, pastoral counseling has in view a two-dimensional relationship. The pastor is aware that God is involved also. He sees the counseling relationship as a divine communication as well as a human one. This does not mean that there is a division in the counseling relationship so that the pastor first talks on a human level and then turns to God on another. Nor does it imply a Barthian emphasis, where to be consistent the counselor must remain silent so God can speak. There is a sense in which God is over and in all that takes place in counseling. Yet it is helpful to be aware of these two dimensions.

The human communication is generally the initial stage, and it continues throughout counseling. It is the level of exploring the problem. When people come into the pastor’s study, they are not just looking for solutions. Very often they do not recognize, or are unwilling to face, the real problems. The pastor’s godly love, sincerity, and knowledge of human nature are most important in helping these persons face themselves honestly. During this exploratory phase, the pastor should concern himself with active listening and empathetic understanding. He must hear the total person. He must learn to listen not only to what is said but to how it is said—to be aware of both the words and the feeling.

For example, try saying aloud, “Pastor, do you really mean God can love me?,” in several tones, emphasizing different words. Notice the variety of feelings—ridicule, doubt, hope, and others—that can be expressed. Very often human communication is a major part of pastoral counseling, but its purpose is to prepare the way for the second dimension, divine communication.

In the divine phase, the pastor communicates, either directly or indirectly, God’s perspective and God’s resources in relation to the person’s need. By his life and by the words he speaks he bears witness to God. The parishioner may need to be sustained by the pastor’s faith in his behalf until he is able to trust God personally.

Use of the Scriptures can be the major means of bringing the divine dimension into counseling. Here are some guidelines:

1. Refer to the Scriptures only when it is appropriate to do so. If a parishioner says, “Pastor, do you really think God answers prayer?,” he may mean, “I have real doubts and want to talk about my doubts.” Or he may mean, “I would like to see what the Bible says.”

2. It is better to turn to a passage and read it with the person rather than to quote proof texts. Of course, it is good for the pastor to memorize Scripture; but he should know both the text and context and be able to turn to the passage so the parishioner can see the words himself.

3. Remember to let the Bible be its own authority. One goal of pastoral counseling is to develop dependence on God through his Word, rather than on the pastor. By referring to God’s authority, the pastor stands as a fellow human being, not as an authority in God’s place who elicits dependence on himself.

4. The pastor doesn’t have to prove the inspiration and authority of the Bible in order to use it. Unless the parishioner questions this, it is better to assume that the Bible is inspired and use it. As Spurgeon has aptly said, release the lion and let him defend himself!

5. Try to explain biblical truth in common language. The pastor need not refrain from using such words as sin, guilt, and grace, but he must be sure the parishioner knows what they mean.

6. Do not assume that the person understands the passage. Discuss it. Let him say what it means to him.

7. Give Bible homework if the person shows interest. This may help develop habits of personal study and encourage direct dependence upon God.

8. Finally, use the milk of the Word and not the meat. The person in need must be met where he is and helped as he is willing and able to grow.

The divine dimension may also be communicated through prayer. When it is specifically related to what has been taking place in counseling, prayer is the means of turning together to God and recognizing his authority in life.

Although the Christian pastor does not, of course, have all truth, he does have a unique orientation for counseling and unique resources in God through his Spirit.

—GEORGE ENSWORTH, assistant professor of pastoral psychology, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts. The Minister’s Workshop: Two-Dimensional Counseling