An Extraordinary Man Of God

I Stand by the Door: The Life of Sam Shoemaker, by Helen Smith Shoemaker (Harper & Row, 1967, 222 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Peter C. Moore, director, Council for Religion in Independent Schools, New York, New York.

This is a risky book to read, because it was a risk to know this man. A man thrice defeated for high office in the Episcopal Church, a man with an almost hypnotic effect on idealistic young men, a man variously described as a mystical pietist or an unscholarly enthusiast, Sam Shoemaker was unquestionably one of the most controversial clergymen this century has produced.

His wife, Helen, best known as the founder and executive director of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer, has revealed for us the many threads interwoven in this colorful life. Sam’s Maryland boyhood, his school and university career, his student Christian work in China and back at Princeton, his twenty-eight years as rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York, his deep involvement in the Oxford Group (now known as Moral Re-Armament), his nine years as Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh—all this is presented with vigor, humor, and great warmth, often in words from his own notes and diary.

The effect is to force the reader to come to terms with a style of Christian living and witness with which most people, even most Christians, are unfamiliar. One sees in Sam Shoemaker a number of extraordinary combinations: a free-wheeling response to the Holy Spirit, which made him so appealing to those dissatisfied with the institutional church, coupled with a deep appreciation of the historic structures through which God continues to work; an intense concern that individuals come to a personal commitment to Christ, together with a profound conviction of the Church’s role in the total life of the world; an infectious, never sentimental commitment to Christ, combined with an ease of manner in the company of happy pagans.

I recall a time when Sam Shoemaker, pointing to black and white tile squares on a kitchen floor, said: “People are like that. Most of us are not shades of gray. We’re black and white together, side by side within ourselves.”

The reader who is looking for black squares will not find them in this book. He may wonder if Sam Shoemaker was an easy man to work with. He may ask how in the midst of so much success he managed to remain humble. He may question whether his robust personality ever got in the way of his spiritual effectiveness. Perhaps a biography cannot and ought not to attempt to answer questions like these.

But what no question can obscure is the fact that here was a rare, gifted human being who yielded himself to the task of winning men and women to Christ. Always a loyal and faithful parish priest, Sam nevertheless had an eye out wherever he was—on a university campus, at a conference, at a party—for the potential convert. Thousands were brought face to face with themselves and face to face with their Lord and Saviour through a talk with him in private. Hundreds more are in the Christian ministry today because of his tireless zeal in confronting young men with the challenge of this vocation.

The book vindicates Sam Shoemaker from charges of being against institutions and against social concern. Mrs. Shoemaker claims that much criticism of him stemmed from resistance to the spiritual challenge which his profound and obvious commitment communicated.

I Stand by the Door is filled with sketches of people whom Sam Shoemaker loved and in whose lives he was used by God. He had the remarkable gift of making friends and acquaintances, high and low alike, feel as if they were of vital importance to him, and thus of vital importance to God. He was able to speak boldly about God to others, because he allowed God to speak boldly about others to him.

Three movements that Sam Shoemaker helped to found—Faith at Work, The Pittsburgh Experiment, and Alcoholics Anonymous—are described in a separate section of the book. Each testifies in a different way to his belief in the power of small groups as vehicles for individual and social renewal.

I repeat, this is a risky book to read. You will not be lulled to sleep by its often lyric passages. You will not be entertained with stories of bishops and ecclesiastical politics. You will not be tickled with fashionable heresies nor comforted with reassuring orthodoxies. You will sometimes laugh, sometimes cry. You will burn with anger and indignation, you will be ashamed, you will pray, you will rejoice. Most significantly you will—if you permit it—be deeply moved and deeply challenged by a spiritual movement that even now is confronting men and women with the claims of the Christian life and pointing them to the power available for living it.

Bringing Barth Into Focus

Karl Barth and the Christian Message, by Colin Brown (Inter-Varsity, 1967, 163 pp. $1.95, paper), is reviewed by Fred H. Klooster, professor of systematic theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reading for Perspective

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

• Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology, edited by Ralph G. Turnbull (Baker, $8.95). Every minister should have this scholarly source book on preaching, hermeneutics, evangelism, counseling, and other aspects of practical theology.

• Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics, by Paul Ramsey (Scribners, $5.95). A Princeton theologian offers trenchant criticism of the “new morality” and insists on some form of “rule-agapism” for a viable Christian social ethic.

• Crisis in Lutheran Theology, by John Warwick Montgomery (Baker, $1.50). An analysis of new emphases within Lutheran theology seen in the light of historic doctrinal foundations. All Lutherans should read this.

Anyone who attempts to summarize the whole of Karl Barth’s voluminous Church Dogmatics has set himself an almost impossible task. But Colin Brown has done an outstanding job in this small book, which is probably the best introduction to Barth’s theology for the beginning student. Even long-time students of Barth will find the focus on main themes rewarding, the interpretation of debated issues challenging, and the suggested central theme inviting.

Colin Brown, tutor at Tyndale Hall in Bristol, England, evaluates Barth from a solidly evangelical, Reformed standpoint. Recognizing that there is much to learn from Barth, he is concerned “neither to whitewash nor to condemn wholesale.” He attempts a sympathetic understanding of Barth’s thought and an evaluation of Barth’s approach to the Christian message.

The author gives us a biographical chapter, a concluding chapter of summary and evaluation, and a brief note on books about Barth, in addition to the main part of the book the three middle chapters. Two of these middle chapters set forth Barth’s view of the Word of God and the knowledge of God and of the bankruptcy of natural theology—the themes of Church Dogmatics I/1 and I/2. The most significant chapter, however, deals with Barth’s Christ-centered view of God, creation, and reconciliation and thus summarizes the themes of the extensive ten parts of Church Dogmatics II, III, and IV. Obviously the nuances and complexities of Barth’s thought cannot be included in such a compact treatment, and there is no substitute for a first hand study of his work. But Brown sketches the main themes quite well.

Brown contends that the underlying unity in Barth’s thinking, the Ariadne thread, is his Christ-idea or covenant concept:

[Barth] saw a union of God and man implied in the union of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. To this union he gave the biblical name of the covenant. And in the light of the covenant Barth reshaped the entire Christian message.

Barth’s entire theology is a series of variations on this theme. But this covenant concept or Christ-idea rests upon dubious exegesis and actually conflicts with the Christian message of Scripture. Barth’s Christ-idea is a Procrustean bed upon which “some important aspects of New Testament teaching had to be stretched to make them fit, while others had to be lopped off.” In the last analysis “Barth is guilty of Brunner’s charge (a charge which Brunner is himself open to) that he has erected a ‘natural theology on the basis of a statement that has a biblical core.’ ”

Therefore, Brown maintains that the “focal point of conflict between orthodoxy and Barthianism” concerns Christ and the covenant. Over against Barth’s view of a single, all-embracing covenant of grace in Christ, Brown pleads for the Reformed contrast between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, for this involves the biblical view of creation perfection, Adam’s historical fall into sin, and Christ as judge of unbelievers and saviour of believers.

In evaluating Barth’s view of Scripture and the Trinity, Brown is somewhat less satisfying. Although he himself endorses Warfield’s high view of Scripture and makes some significant criticisms of Barth’s view, he thinks evangelicals have often been too harsh with Barth’s view of revelation. Brown’s weakness here lies in his analysis of Barth’s views. He fails to see that the Christ-idea or covenant theme is already present in Barth’s view of revelation, though admittedly less clearly expressed. Brown thinks that this retrograde development of the Christ-idea came to focus in 1942 with the publication of Volume II/2. If only Brown had seen that the Christ-idea is already present in Barth’s view of revelation, and that Scripture is simply the witness to revelation, he would have seen that the gulf between Barth and the Reformers is as great here as it is at the point of the Christian message in general.

Linked to this is his evaluation of Barth’s view of the Trinity. All too quickly Brown dismisses the view that modalism is present in Barth’s theology and asserts that Barth’s teaching on the Trinity is “a penetrating analysis of New Testament teaching.” At this point Brown is inadequate and superficial. Barth’s view of the analogy between revelation in its threefold form and the doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in the same Christ-idea that Brown so clearly sees in other parts of the Church Dogmatics and regards as the “comprehensive error” that has cast a shadow over the whole of Barth’s thinking. Here too the gulf between Barth and evangelicalism is greater than Brown admits. This difference, however, is due, not to inadequacy in Brown’s evangelicalism, insofar as it is evident from this brief work, but rather to his inadequate interpretation of Barth’s views.

Many provocative observations and interpretations are made throughout the work. Brown suggests that Barth does not regard revelation as encounter and does not play off personal over against propositional revelation. On the basis of a 1956 quotation he states that Barth now holds that “there is an objective revelation of God in nature.” These are disputed points, and Brown has done little more than affirm them. He contends that it is Barth rather than Paul Tillich who has come to grips with modern thought and culture. And he believes that Barth presents the elements of a solution to the contemporary debate over the meaning of religious language.

Brown has said that Barth’s “work might have gained twice as much had it been half the size.” Perhaps Brown’s stimulating little book might have gained twice as much if it had been twice the size.

Sociological View Of A Church

To Comfort and to Challenge: A Dilemma of the Contemporary Church, by Charles Y. Glock, Benjamin B. Ringer, and Earl R. Babbie (University of California Press, 1967, 268 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi, assistant professor of history, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

This is an evaluation by sociologists of a poll on political and social issues answered by 100 bishops, 259 priests, and 1,530 parishoners of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

Two facts immediately limit the usefulness of the survey: (1) The respondents to the poll came from one denomination. Their responses cannot be taken to hold true for the Church at large, as the authors suggest. (2) The survey was made in 1952; this study of the survey was not published sooner because of various intervening demands upon Glock, the senior author. The authors’ contention “that the portrait to be drawn reasonably characterizes the church-at-large, then and now” must surely be subject to question in the light of the many developments since 1952.

The authors developed a scale of involvement for the parishioners on the basis of frequency of church attendance, membership in church organizations, the reading of church periodicals, and so on. It is an interesting comment on the denomination of Bishop Pike that “the sponsors of the 1952 study felt questions pertaining to religious beliefs might offend respondents.”

The survey seemed to confirm the “comfort theory” of the Church’s function. At one extreme, young, upper-status men, with complete families tended to be least involved. At the other extreme of involvement were elderly, lower-status women with neither spouse nor children. “In sum, the church offers a refuge for those who are denied access to valued achievements and rewards in every day American life.” Since many of those who are deeply involved in the Church are involved because they need the Church’s comfort, they are not naturally responsive to the Church’s challenge to change the inequities of society.

The authors do not suggest that the Church abandon its function of comforting in order to challenge its parishioners. They are realistic enough to see that a one-sided emphasis on such matters as civil rights would alienate many members who need the Church’s comfort.

They offer three positive suggestions to enable the Church to challenge its members as well as it comforts them: (1) The Church should decide which deprivations (e.g. bereavement, old age) should be comforted and which (e.g. poverty) should be corrected. (2) The Church would be more effectively served by a dual structure—the parish to comfort and problem-oriented, interdenominational groups to challenge. (3) The Church should educate its parishioners in applying Christian principles to all areas of life. Two of the authors (with one dissenting) suggest that this education may be more effectively achieved by the presentation of both sides of an issue rather than a partisan position.

Book Briefs

Faith and Speculation, by Austin Farrer (New York University, 1967, 175 pp., $5). The well-known Oxford theistic philosopher gives a restatement of his arguments for the divine existence in an essay especially recommended to any swayed by the God-is-dead fantasy.

The Parables, by Don O. Via, Jr. (Fortress, 1967, 217 pp., $4). The subtitle, “Their Literary and Existential Dimension,” indicates the strength and weakness of this new study of the parables of Jesus. A promising start in a fresh literary appreciation ends up in tangled existentialism.

God and Word, by Gerhard Ebeling (Fortress, 1967, 53 pp., $1.50). The author stands at an active frontier of European theology and speaks to the American scene with a strong Brunner-like accent.

The Formation of Christendom, by Christopher Dawson (Sheed and Ward, 1967, 309 pp., $6). The doyen of Roman Catholic literary critics offers a popular treatment of Christian history, defending the thesis that Catholicism preserves the idea of the Church as a universal spiritual society.

The Church as a Prophetic Community, by E. Clinton Gardner (Westminster, 1967, 254 pp., $6). Yet another volume on the role of the Church in the secular order, but with the secularization of the sacred and the sacralization of the secular, we are left in a tizzy.

The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America, by J. Stillson Judah (Westminster, 1967,317 pp., $7.95). A source-book on modern para-religious vagaries such as spiritualism, theosophy, and Christian science. Contains much useful biographical data and fills an obvious gap.

The Theology of Existence, by Fritz Buri (Attic Press, 1965, 112 pp., $4). A translation of Buri’s 1954 volume that clarifies his shift of position away from the so-called Berne school and left-wing Bultmannians. His new stance is that of Heilsgeschicte, but of an existentialist, not Cullmannian, type, and begs the whole question of history.

The World of the Patriarchs, by Ignatius Hunt, O. S. B. (Prentice-Hall, 1967, 178 pp., $5.95). An up-to-date, readable, and useful summary of modern discussion on Genesis 12–50 that draws upon archaeological data and form-critical studies. A Roman Catholic scholar is here grappling with problems of historicity and theology in the Old Testament and leans toward (while not fully accepting) a heilsgeschichtlich approach within the framework of the Roman encyclical.

The Christian Church is awakening to the New Testament truth that the personal witness of all Christian laymen as well as ministers is essential if the Gospel of Christ is to penetrate the world. To have maximum impact, laymen must be wholeheartedly committed to Jesus Christ and biblically and theologically informed. A thorough knowledge of the Bible is necessary both for vigorous advancement of the Christian faith and for discernment and effective resistance of the false gods and false theology found in vital sectors of modern culture and the institutional church.

Faithful study of the Scriptures should be augmented by the study of works by Christian scholars and writers that help one handle the biblical record and comprehend the swirling moral and theological issues of our day. To induce laymen limited in biblical knowledge to undertake a reading program that will lead to theological literacy, we here recommend as a starter twenty books from various areas of religious study.

The list includes books to be devoured at one sitting and basic works to which the reader will return again and again. The books are not necessarily the greatest scholarly tomes in their fields but do present substantial and sometimes brilliant expositions within the intellectual grasp of most laymen with a bent for learning. Pastors also would do well to read and use these volumes and order them for their church libraries.

Contemporary Theology

CREATIVE MINDS IN CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY, edited by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (Eerdmans, 1966,488 pp., S6.95).

The bristling activity in theological studies in the twentieth century is now significantly influencing the message heard from our pulpits. This symposium of essays by prominent evangelical scholars on the thought of Barth, Berkouwer, Brunner, Bultmann, Cullmann, Denney, Dodd, Dooyeweerd, Forsyth, Gore, Niebuhr, Teilhard de Chardin, and Tillich will challenge the minds of readers and help them understand current happenings in the Church. Although complexities in theological formulations will at times make this book rough going for some laymen, they will be richly rewarded by the biographical sketch, exposition and evaluation of teachings, and bibliography found in each article. Editor Hughes writes on the creative task of theology.

Systematic Theology: Reformed

REFORMED DOGMATICS, by Herman Hoeksema (Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966, 917 pp., $14.95).

In this recently published volume on dogmatics the late Professor Hoeksema seeks to be true to the Bible, theocentric, and faithful to the Reformed creeds and dogma of the Church. He systematically considers the major topics of theology: introduction to dogmatics, God, man, Christ, salvation, the Church, and final events. Premillennialists will take issue with his amillennial position. Except for an occasional Hebrew, Greek, or German word, the lay reader should be able to plow his way through this singlevolume work and thereby learn content and procedures in systematic theology.

The Basis Of Authority: Revelation

REVELATION AND THE BIBLE, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Baker, 1958, 413 pp., $6).

Twenty-four evangelical scholars discuss different aspects of divine revelation, the doctrine that undergirds all Christian theology. They recognize the Bible as special revelation, inspired of God, recognized as authoritative by Christ, authenticated and interpreted by the Holy Spirit. Consideration is given to the biblical canon, principles of interpretation, archaeological confirmation of Scripture, and reversals of destructive biblical criticism. This volume is crucial for laymen in light of the curent down grading of scriptural authority.

Old Testament: Survey

UNDERSTANDING THE OLD TESTAMENT, by Bernhard W. Anderson (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 586 pp., $10.60).

Although this volume cannot be labeled “conservative,” we nonetheless recommend it for its wealth of material on the unique, sacred history of Israel. Anderson sees the Old Testament as a narrative of God’s action wherein he initiates a historical drama “that has changed human perspectives and has altered the course of human affairs.” He follows Israel’s pilgrimage as a covenant community from the Exodus to the Maccabean period, considering her faith, culture, political fortunes, literature, economic status, and religious practices.

New Testament: Survey

THE NEW TESTAMENT: ITS BACKGROUND, GROWTH, AND CONTENT, by Bruce M. Metzger (Abingdon, 1965, 288 pp., $4.75).

Designed as a first-year college text, Metzger’s survey of the New Testament examines its message against the backdrop of its historical setting and the literary development of its text. The New Testament is viewed not as just a collection of interesting documents but as the “very truth of the New Covenant” between God and man. The Princeton professor presents vital material on life in the apostolic age and offers a balanced view of current New Testament scholarship.

Biblical Criticism: Old Testament

A SURVEY OF OLD TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION, by Gleason L. Archer, Jr. (Moody, 1964, 507 pp., $6.95).

Archer brings an abundance of biblical knowledge and findings of modern scholarship to bear on problems of Old Testament general introduction (textual, canonical, and historical matters) and special introduction (authorship, date, purpose, and integrity of each of the thirty-nine books). Consistently evangelical, he argues for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and offers a serious criticism of the documentary theory. Special attention is given to such problems as the historicity of Adam and the Fall, the date of the Exodus, the long day of Joshua, the characteristics of Hebrew poetry. The book is fairly heavy but instructive.

Biblical Criticism: New Testament

THE NEW TESTAMENT AND CRITICISM, by George Eldon Ladd (Eerdmans, 1967, 222 pp., $3.95).

From an evangelical perspective Ladd shows that biblical criticism is a necessary method of studying the Bible, the Word of God that has come in history through the words of men. He explains the purposes and methods of different types of criticism: textual, linguistic, literary, form (relating to the Gospels), historical, and comparative religions criticism. He recognizes that though the critical study of the Bible is not necessary for grasping the truth of redemption in Christ, it does help one better to understand the message in its historical setting.

Bible Commentary

THE NEW BIBLE COMMENTARY, edited by Francis Davidson. (Eerdmans, 1960, 1,199 pp., $7.95).

Probably the best evangelical one-volume Bible commentary available, this sturdy volume brings together the contributions of fifty scholars who seek to make the biblical text understandable to the lay reader. It offers general articles on scriptural authority and the various classes of literature of the Bible and an introduction, outline, and commentary for each book.

Bible Dictionary

THE NEW BIBLE DICTIONARY, edited by J. D. Douglas (Eerdmans, 1962, 1,375 pp., $12.95).

This spacious storehouse of biblical knowledge is well worth its price. It contains 2,300 articles on such topics as archaeological discoveries, geography of the Holy Land, Christian doctrine, institutions in Jewish life, historical personages, biblical versions, and plants and animals in the Bible. Helpful maps, photographs, and tables are included.

Christian Doctrine

BASIC CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, 320 pp., $6).

This comprehensive overview of the great teachings of the Bible consists of studies by top-flight evangelical scholars that first appeared in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Editor Henry has assembled forty-three scripturally documented articles on such doctrines as the Trinity, decrees of God, predestination, atonement, justification by faith, the millennium, heaven and hell. The book will help anchor Christians adrift in their understanding of God’s revealed truth.

Apologetics

MERE CHRISTIANITY, by C. S. Lewis (Macmillan, 1964, 190 pp., $1.25).

Every layman should be acquainted with Lewis’s sparkling expositions and formidable defenses of Christian truth. Mere Christianity combines three of his most incisive and widely read books, The Case for Christianity, Beyond Personality, and Christian Behaviour. Lewis has a knack for cutting through specious arguments against supernaturalism and the Gospel and for communicating the reasonableness and joy of Christian faith. Laymen will also be fascinated by three other apologetic works by the “apostle to the skeptics”: The Screwtape Letters (Macmillan, 1962, 172 pp., $.95), The Problem of Pain (Macmillan, 1962, 160 pp., $.95), and Miracles (Macmillan, 1963, 192 pp., $.95).

Life Of Christ

THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF JESUS CHRIST, by James S. Stewart (Abingdon, 192 pp., $1.50).

Stewart relates the events in the life and ministry of Jesus in accordance with the chronological framework in the Gospels. He examines Jesus’ teachings on the Gospel of the kingdom, God as father, the great confession, the royal law of love, and social questions. The passion, death, and resurrection are seen in relation to Christ’s exaltation as the living Lord of life.

The Church In Mission

THE INCENDIARY FELLOWSHIP, by Elton Trueblood (Harper & Row, 1967, 121 pp., $2.50).

The renowned Quaker professor realistically discusses the minority status of committed Christians in a world where opposition to the Gospel is growing. Citing the need for strong pastoral and lay leadership, he sets down practical conditions for church renewal. He commends the “toughness and tenderness” of “rational evangelicals” and calls the Church to carry out the purpose of Christ, who “came to cast fire upon the earth.” Trueblood’s book has the power to ignite laymen to action.

The Gospel And Modern Man

WORLD AFLAME, by Billy Graham (Doubleday, 1965, 267 pp., $3.95).

Graham confronts the deepening degradation in the moral, intellectual, and social dimensions of life today and shows how the Gospel of Christ alone offers hope for people. The evangelist offers an impressive amalgam of Scripture, illustrations, and explanations as he discusses sin and salvation, death and resurrection, personal transformation and social involvement, and Christ’s return and world judgment. This book, Graham’s best, pulsates with life just as his sermons do.

Christian Social Responsibility

INASMUCH, by David O. Moberg (Eerdmans, 1965, 216 pp., $2.45).

Moberg challenges evangelicals to be aware of the profoundly social aspect of the Christian’s spiritual life. After laying the foundation of biblical teaching on social responsibility, he considers how the Church can carry out its service to society. Although some evangelicals may object to certain of his views on church social-action practices (such as his hedged support for “church resolutions”) and be less than enthusiastic about some of his recommended readings, laymen nevertheless will be stimulated by Moberg’s bold and incisive discussion.

Church History

THE STORY OF THE CHURCH, by A. M. Renwick (Eerdmans, 1960, 222 pp., $1.25).

In 222 fact-filled pages Renwick traces the growth and development of the Church during nineteen tumultuous centuries. The early heresies, the leading church fathers, the papacy’s height (1073–1294), the Reformation, and the modern missionary movement receive terse but accurate treatment.

Evangelism: Comprehensive View

THE CHRISTIAN PERSUADER, by Leighton Ford (Harper & Row, 1966, 159 pp., $3.95).

Ford calls for mobilization of the whole Church to evangelize the whole world through the use of every rightful method. He recognizes the importance of using many means to communicate the biblical message in relation to present-day needs but stresses the key role of committed laymen in a total evangelistic strategy.

Evangelism: Personal Witnessing

How TO GIVE AWAY YOUR FAITH, by Paul E. Little (Inter-Varsity, 1966, 131 pp., $3.50).

This brief and bright volume, written particularly for college students, is a biblically based, intelligent, and practical guide to personal evangelism. Little discusses the who, what, why, how, and where of communicating the Gospel in everyday life. He deals with people’s needs, common objections to the Gospel, witnessing principles, and preparation of the witness.

Cults

THE KINGDOM OF THE CULTS, by Walter R. Martin (Zondervan, 1965, 443 pp., $5.95).

Martin analyzes and evaluates thirteen cults and provides an apologetic contrast from the viewpoint of biblical theology. He discusses the Bible’s perspective on false teachings and shows the psychological structure common to cults. Among the groups treated are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormonism, Zen Buddhism, the Black Muslims, Anglo-Israelism and Herbert W. Armstrong’s message, and Unity.

Christian Living

SETTING MEN FREE, by Bruce Larson (Zondervan, 1967, 120 pp., $2.95).

Larson’s new book is no exhaustive biblical treatise on Christian living but a warm, person-to-person conversation on how Christians may enter into the authentic style of life to which Christ calls them. Sprinkled with humor, personal examples, and practical principles, this easily read book points the way to joyful service by the believer.

All that most people in the world see of Christ is what they see of him in the lives of Christians. If we do not honor him in our relations with others, we fail at the point that really counts.

We who identify ourselves as evangelicals are often guilty of attitudes and behavior totally inconsistent with our Christian profession. Although we strongly assert our concern for the verities of the faith, we too easily show little of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

It is sobering to realize that we can destroy our Christian witness by a careless word or thoughtless action. Our observers may say, “If that is the meaning of being a Christian, I want no part of it.”

One of the pitfalls for the theologically conservative is spiritual pride. Convinced of the facts of our faith, we may forget that it is not orthodoxy that saves but Jesus Christ. We rightly believe the biblical revelation of Christ’s person and work; but we may develop pride in our faith rather than in the saving grace of God.

Another pitfall is the ever present tendency to be Pharisaical, to thank God that we are not as other men. We pat ourselves on the back because we are not guilty of some weakness we see in others or do not have some habit we regard with distaste. Many true Christians are excluded from fellowship by other Christians who regard themselves too highly. Let us beware lest we sin against God and our brothers in this matter. We can reach others only where they are, not where we wish them to be. That was our Lord’s approach and it must be ours. To draw about us the cloak of self-righteousness smothers our witness.

Some years ago a dedicated minister worked for months trying to lead a rather notorious character in his community to the Lord. Finally he succeeded in getting the man to agree to come to a church dinner where a businessman was to give his witness to the power of Christ. When the man arrived at the church, the odor of alcohol was strong on his breath. Aware of it and embarrassed, he said to the minister, “I think I should leave.” The minister replied: “No, you stick with me and no one will know which of us smells like liquor.” His sense of humor (he had never taken a drink in his life) along with his loving attitude won that man to the Lord, and in succeeding years the man became an outstanding Christian. We all must realize, as this minister did, that in seeking to win men to Christ, we must accept them as they are.

In these days when there is so much emphasis on social reform, when social betterment seems to have crowded out the Gospel of redemption from sin in the minds of some, there is a real danger that in reaction to this imbalance we will neglect our clear responsibility to the needy. Compassion and loving concern must be a part of the life of the Christian. Without them our profession is empty. With them the love of Christ can make our witness effective.

Worsening race relations in many areas bring another call to Christians to search their own hearts. Christian race relations begin in our attitudes and continue in our outward contacts with others. We deplore violence in others; but are we ourselves always courteous and considerate, always concerned to create a climate in which the love of Christ can be manifested?

Another pitfall for the evangelical is the development of a spirit that actually rejoices in evil. Contrary to Paul’s admonition, we rejoice in iniquity and revel in the moral and spiritual failures of others. How interesting it is to savor a juicy story about some Christian who has fallen! And how often we forget that we too might be tempted and fall.

To the discredit of those involved, Christian fellowship has sometimes been broken over secondary matters, things on which godly people often differ. This does not honor the Lord nor further the work of God’s Kingdom.

Do we have a chip on our shoulder? Do we carry around a set of hypersensitive feelings? Do we go about looking for defects in others? Such attitudes make the bearer miserable, as well as those who must deal with him.

Many conservatives fail inexcusably in the matter of common courtesy and graciousness. I know some extreme liberals who put us to shame by their kindness and consideration of others. Paul’s word to Timothy speaks to all Christians: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to every one.…” (2 Tim. 2:24, RSV). How often we forget that “a soft answer turneth away wrath,”—with disastrous results to our effective Christian witness!

Some persons who are widely reputed to be conservative Christians lead lives totally inconsistent with their professions. Some engage in immorality or other disgraceful behavior even as they proclaim their orthodoxy. Did you say, “Impossible for me”? “Let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).

Boasting of one’s orthodoxy is a pit-fall into which some fall. Our boast is in nothing we are or do but only in the redeeming grace of a loving God. Spurious spirituality is easily recognized. A trust in orthodoxy as an end in itself is presumption at best and often pure pharisaism.

For any Christian, the lack of an adequate devotional life means spiritual starvation. I have known people who affirmed their faith in the Bible “from cover to cover” but who at the same time knew nothing about it. Their affirmation may have sounded pious, but their ignorance of the Word revealed the true state of their hearts. Likewise, without a prayer life in which prayer is as natural as breathing, the spiritual nature shrivels and dies.

Then, too, there is a form of spiritual laziness that presumes on the grace of God and stunts spiritual growth. Orthodoxy is no excuse for laziness. Christ has saved us to serve him and our fellow man. We cannot hide behind a facade of conservative beliefs while we do nothing to witness to the love of God.

The Christian who honors his Lord is not the one who, like the Pharisees, boasts of his orthodoxy but the one who day by day seizes every opportunity God gives him and tries in every way possible to glorify the One who has redeemed him.

Belief in all that the Scriptures teach about the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Christian’s foundation. On that sure foundation he should build a life consistent with that faith. There are pitfalls all about, but the One who saves will also keep.

L. NELSON BELL

Dear Citizens Of Secular City:

Like a jeweled empress enthroned on majestic hills between mighty ocean and sparkling bay, San Francisco has long reigned as the Queen of Culture in the West. A closer look at her during a recent visit to old stamping grounds there revealed, however, that she is fast losing her regal qualities and beginning to resemble a bawdy madame. As a boisterous hostess for hippies, chippies, and spooks, she now provides a haven for more weirdos than the magic kookdom of Los Angeles ever entertained.

Naturally I visited Haight-Ashbury hiptown. Wading through six congested city blocks of long straggly hair, outlandish but fashionably filthy togs, colorful free-flowing posters, and shop after tourist shop stocked with incense from India and huaraches from Mexico, I realized that the forlorn hippies had something to tell us. As I decoded it, their message was that the way to uninhibited joy can be found through a life of uninvolved non-conformity, spent in squalor, subjected to the hazards of dangerous drugs, bolstered by a philosophy of love leading each night to a different bed partner, and devoted to the unfettered pursuit of True Art. The grim daily existence of the Flower Children showed, however, that their way of life was no bed of petunias.

While the hippies overran Hashbury, the chippies blanketed the Tenderloin district. In three blocks no less than twenty trollops pathetically peddled their wares with no apparent interference from cruising patrolmen. The attention of passersby was diverted from the scarlet lassies’ beguiling propositional attempts only when bewigged, tight-skirted gay boys swished past. One of the girls cordially received your writer’s Christian witness but afterward continued her hooking. She had heard it before and had no desire to quit her $100 a night profession.

My reference to spooks pertains to San Francisco’s Anton Szandor La Vey, founder and high priest of the Church of Satan, and the witches and wizards that follow him in practicing the diabolical Black Arts. In my visit with the Irreverend Mr. La Vey, I learned of his unusual relationship with the late actress Jayne Mansfield. But let me tell you about that next issue. (How’s that for a teaser?)

Sophisticated San Francisco—front-runner in suicide and alcoholism rates, pioneer of the topless bore, and mecca for sensualists and occultists—seems to be gaily opening her Golden Gate to the decadence that threatens to engulf us all.

With eyes open wide in a wide open city, EUTYCHUS III

Lost?

Most of Mr. Lytle’s criticism of the United Presbyterian Church (“They Are Taking My Church Away From Me,” Aug. 18) could also be applied to the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., to which I belong. However, I feel he makes two fundamental errors of which all of us are guilty at times:

The UPUSA or any other church is not “my”, “his,” or “their” church; it is Christ’s church.

The lay commissioner (as well as the clergy) should not first represent members of his church, but rather Christ.

If teaching and ruling elders at all levels attempted to look first to Christ, as King and Head of the Church, for leadership and guidance, we would be less likely to find ourselves in opposition to one another.

RODNEY BONCK, JR.

Williamsburg, Va.

After reading Mr. Lytle’s lament I can only say he needs to do more homework on the Confession of 1967 itself and then take another look at his own faith. The implications of what he says are that loyalty to the Bible ranks over loyalty to Christ.

HOWARD J. HANSEN

Bradford Woods Community Church

Bradford Woods, Pa.

The article makes a number of allegations without adequate analysis or substantiation.… Most pastors, I believe, would like to see more regular attendance and interest upon the part of elders in their churches. Why is it that so few elders want to get involved? Why is it that when a presbytery acknowledges the elders’ plea and schedules presbytery meetings on Saturdays, or in the evening, the elders cannot attend anyway?

Other allegations include that of a united “establishment,” which becomes his “straw man”; the assumption that converted man has power in his society, to change society’s ways; the assumption that individual action is the way, the method of the Bible. I believe that a case could be made of examples in the Bible of corporate pressure exerted by the people of God to bring about change, or at least to focus attention upon needs.…

He seems to find the Confession of 1967 as a whole statement of faith while it actually only is concerned with one doctrine, i.e., reconciliation.…

The church called United Presbyterian did hope for a concise statement arising out of the 1958 union, and C’67 is not. There are those, and they seem to be dominant right now, who are concerned only with social action or “mission” (so called) as the whole gospel without the telling of the Good News. There are those bent on material gain without a concern for spirituality.…

Mr. Lytle makes a diagnosis of sickness but offers no cure. This, I fear, is the greatest sickness within the United Presbyterian Church today. We can oppose, but we cannot affirm, and this, ultimately, is the Devil’s triumph.…

Let us begin to work and pray for some positive cures. Let us realize that the Gospel is both corporate and individual, and that to emphasize one or the other is defeating. Let us get on with both mission and evangelism, both helping and saving, both deed and word.

DONALD R. HYER

First Presbyterian Church

Arkport, N. Y.

And Found

The panel discussion, “Is Sunday School A Lost Cause?” (Aug. 18), touched on a subject which has been of great concern to me for a number of years. I sincerely hope that any pastor reading it will pass it on to those responsible for the Sunday school of his church.

I have taught in a Sunday school for sixteen years, and problems brought out in the panel discussion are not new to me.… I have some suggestions: prayerful study, not less than eight hours a week.… Learn how to study the Bible.… Build a library to enhance your lesson material. Visit in the homes of your pupils. Continue to learn to teach. If these things are done, I will guarantee that you will go to your class ready, willing, and eager to teach—and discuss.

J. JACKSON

Charleston, W. Va.

I hear more pep talks on Sunday-school advancement than on any other subject with the exception of the doctrine of holiness. Although I have lived in five church districts, none of my pastors has ever attended a Sunday school class with any degree of regularity.…

If the clergy consider the Sunday school class not worthy of their presence, then our denominational headquarters should put less emphasis on Sunday-school enrollment.

ARTHUR R. KNIGHT

Independence, Mo.

The panel meant a great deal to me. Something has happened in the field of Sunday school. Even more will have to happen. I do not mean that we must be radical in our changes, but we must present Jesus in ways different from the way we presented him and the Gospel even a quarter century ago.

L. H. RANEY

General Director

Christian Education

Department

Baptist Missionary

Association of

Texas

Lancaster, Tex.

The Flowering Left

Thanks for printing “An Analysis of the New Left: A Gospel of Nihilism,” by J. Edgar Hoover (Aug. 18). I must thoroughly object, however, to the indiscriminate lumping together of those who oppose the American effort in Viet Nam, civil disobedience, draft-resisters, law-breakers, and those who desecrate the American flag.

CHARLES L. AMMONS

Pastor

Marvin Methodist Circuit

Berryville, Va.

J. Edgar Hoover has just reversed that old phrase: “The state exists for man; man does not exist for the state.” We are now to condemn any man who seeks freedom from the agony of shaving in the morning as well as those who like to strum on a guitar or write. I have the feeling that Mr. Hoover would dictate to the young the questions they may ask, and these questions would include, “Communists are less than human?” and “Change (i.e., revolution) is evil, isn’t it?”

GEORGE H. MARTIN

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

If Mr. Hoover is correct in his analysis of the New Left as a mood, it most assuredly affects many more people than are on the rolls of Students for a Democratic Society and the other groups. Why not permit another writer, having a different vantage point than Mr. Hoover’s, to expand on the paragraph beginning, “What does all this mean?”

RICHARD S. SCHLIEPSIEK

St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. Hoover’s strident platitudes and caricatures hardly get to the real problems and valid prophecies of this growing movement. God moves in mysterious ways, and he may be saying much to us through this movement without our having to endorse or join it.

DAVE STEFFENSON

Campus Minister

First Methodist

Church and Wesley Foundation

Laramie, Wyo.

Lutheran Resolution

Your report on the convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (News, Aug. 18) reads: “The delegates rejected a bid to require members to accept literal interpretations of such biblical matters as the six-day creation.”

Wherever you may have gotten this information, it was wrong. The resolution adopted reads as follows:

WHEREAS, Scripture teaches and the Lutheran Confessions affirm that God by the almighty power of His Word created all things in six days by a series of creative acts …

Resolved, That the Synod reaffirm its faith in the united testimony of Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions on the aforementioned teachings; and be it further

Resolved, That the Synod reject and condemn all those world views, philosophical theories, exegetical interpretations, and other hypotheses which pervert these biblical teachings and thus obscure the Gospel.

I would like to add that I am an interested reader of your periodical and find it stimulating, even where I cannot agree.

FREDERIC E. SCHUMANN

Pastor and Editor

The Pittsburgh Lutheran

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Politics In Church

After reading “Passing the Plate to Washington” (Aug. 18), I concluded that Ian Henderson, author of Power Without Glory: A Study in Ecumenical Politics, reviewed by J. D. Douglas in the same issue, had a supportable point after all.

Among other statements in David E. Kucharsky’s article which might serve as fodder for Henderson’s thesis in Power Without Glory, is this one: “For a long time, Protestant leaders stood up to Roman Catholic demands for public money. More recently, however, their resistance has dwindled in the spirit of ecumenicity.”

Sometimes it may take the “doctrinally radical” to show us the error of our ways.

KURT C. HARTMANN

Editor

The Southern Lutheran

LaVernia, Tex.

Editorial Penetration

I find myself being more estranged as time passes from the National Council of Churches’ viewpoint on the Viet Nam situation as well as in several other of its political-social preachments; I hope its basic policies will change as I find so much good in its over-all position. On the other hand I thought your editorial (Aug. 18), “Are Churchmen Failing Servicemen in Viet Nam?,” excellent and a penetrating analysis of some of the rather naive preachments of NCC leaders who take a unilateral position on world politics.

PAUL L. KITLEY

Bridgeport Community Church

Bridgeport, Mich.

Denouncing The Defense

The vicar of Cambridge University’s main church, Canon Hugh Montefiore, should have been tarred and feathered and run out of town for his ugly and evil remark (“Defending Homosexuality,” News, Aug. 18). The Archbishop of Canterbury should have had this done to him also for having nothing better to say on the subject than he did.

Jesus Christ our Lord loved his fellow man—this meant he loved every man, woman, and child in the world, not the stupid, ugly meaning thought up by Canon Montefiore.…

There are some things too ugly to ever repeat, and Canon Montefiore’s remark is one of them.

I bet you won’t print this letter!

EDNA M. JOLLY

Clarksville, Tenn.

Each year some 32,000 authors in America attempt to crack the book-sales barrier with new volumes in a variety of fields. Chances are relatively remote that a religious book will become a bestseller, as have such recent entries as World Aflame by Billy Graham, The Gospel According to Peanuts by Robert L. Short, and Are You Running With Me, Jesus? by Malcolm Boyd. Yet American publishers, recognizing the growing demand for religious books, are boosting their promotion of them. In the first six months of 1967, reports Publishers’ Weekly, 890 new books and new editions were published in the religious field. Religion ranked fifth in total number of new titles, following sociology and economics (1,714), education (1,483), juveniles (1,131) and science (1,072).

Our preview of new religious books for the fall of 1967 shows an interesting assortment of titles. Readers who thought the “God-is-dead-no-he’s-not” stream of books had subsided may be surprised to find still more books on a deathly theme: Atheism Is Dead by Arthur J. Lelyveld, The Premature Death of Protestantism by Fred Benbeaux, Jr., The Grave of God by Robert Adolfs, and Who Killed God? by Thomas A. Fry, Jr.

Religious writers are learning the value of the provocative title. Particularly intriguing new ones include Grace Is Not a Blue-Eyed Blonde by R. Lofton Hudson, Christ the Tiger by Thomas Howard, For God’s Sake Laugh by Nelvin Vos, Never Trust a God Over 30 edited by Albert Friedlander, I’m Not Mad at God by David Wilkerson, and On Not Leaving It to the Snake by Harvey Cox.

Fall offerings reveal continued preoccupation by religious writers with the ecumenical movement, the relevance of Christianity to modern man, and liturgical renewal. A host of new biblical studies, especially commentaries on New Testament books, show that the upsurge in this vital field is not subsiding. Significant topics that will receive more play than usual this fall include the relation between Christians and Jews and between the Bible and science. In theology, readers may look for more treatises on dialectical and radical theology, several books on the thought of Luther, two analyses of Tillich’s thought, two appraisals of the Pike controversy in the Episcopal Church, and an important volume on developments in Lutheran theology by John Warwick Montgomery.

The following books, arranged under convenient headings, are selected from those scheduled for release by American publishers this fall. They give promise that profitable and exciting reading lies ahead for devotees of religious literature.

AESTHETICS, ARCHITECTURE, MUSIC:ABINGDON will publish A Theological Approach to Art by R. Hazelton. FAITH AND LIFE,The Children’s Hymnary edited by A. Hartzler and J. Gaeddert. FUNK AND WAGNALLS,High Gothic by H. Jantzen. HAWTHORN,Christian Sculpture by V. H. Debidoar. OXFORD,Castles and Churches of the Crusading Kingdom by T. S. R. Boase.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE: From ABINGDON will come The Concept of Willing by J. N. Lapsley and Faith to Act by J. Boozer and W. Beardslee. BAKER,Evolution and the Modern Christian (P) by H. M. Morris. BOBBS-MERRILL,The God I Want by J. Mitchell and The Concrete God by R. James. EERDMANS,The Encounter Between Christianity and Science by R. H. Bube and Christianity and Humanism by Q. Breen. HARPER & ROW, Kingship of God by M. Buber, The Essence of Faith According to Luther by L. Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion by L. Feuerbach, and Philosophical Faith and Revelation by K. Jaspers. HAWTHORN,Spiritual Writers in Modern Times by L. Sheppard, Christian Initiation by A. McCormack, and Why I Am a Christian by L. Sheppard. HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON,The Peasant of the Garonne by J. Maritain. LIPPINCOTT,Christ the Tiger by T. Howard. MACMILLAN,A Time To Build by M. Novak. MOODY,The Christian Stake in Science by R.E.D. Clark. NEWMAN,Sartre: The Theology of the Absurd by R. Jolivet. OXFORD,Science and Faith: Towards a Theological Understanding of Nature by E. C. Rust. PRINCETON,Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship by V. Eller and Divine Science and the Science of God by V. Preller. ST. THOMAS,Heredity: A Study in Science and the Bible by W. J. Tinkle. WORD,A Second Touch by K. Miller and Adamant and Stone-Chips by V. R. Mollenkott.

ARCHAEOLOGY:BAKER will offer Jerusalem Through the Ages (P) by C. F. Pfeiffer. MCGRAW-HILL,The River Jordan (revised edition) by N. Glueck.

BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIES:BEACON HILL PRESS (of Kansas City) will issue Beacon Bible Commentary, III, by M. Chapman, W. T. Purkiser, E. Wolf, and A. F. Harper. CAMBRIDGE,The Letters of Paul to the Ephesians, to the Colossians and to Philemon by G. H. P. Thompson, The Letters of Paul to the Philippians and to the Thessalonians by K. Graystone, and A Letter to Hebrews by J. H. Davies. EERDMANS,Book of Isaiah, II, by E. Young. INTER-VARSITY,Genesis (“Tyndale Old Testament Commentary”) by F. D. Kidner. JOHN KNOX,Introduction to the Bible by K. J. Foreman et al., John by F. V. Filson, and Acts of the Apostles by A. C. Winn. JUDSON,Hebrews by L. O. Bristol. MOODY,James, Faith in Action (P) by G. C. Luck and Jude, the Acts of the Apostates (P) by S. M. Coder. REVELL,The Dictionary of Religious Terms by D. T. Kauffman. ZONDERVAN,The New Compact Bible Dictionary edited by A. Bryant.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, GENERAL:BAKER will present How to Search the Scriptures by L. M. Perry and R. D. Culver and Baker’s Pictorial Introduction to the Bible by W. S. Deal. BROADMAN,The Bible: God’s Word to Man (P) by S. A. Cartledge. JUDSON,God’s Word in Today’s World (P) by S. de Dietrich. MOODY,The Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands by C. F. Pfeiffer and H. F. Vos and Exploring the Scriptures by J. Phillips. REGAL,The Israeli/ Arab Conflict and the Bible (P) by W. Smith. WORLD,The Bible Through the Ages by Frank, Swain, and Canby.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, OLD TESTAMENT:AUGSBURG will print Handbook to the Old Testament by C. Westermann. EERDMANS,Job: Our Contemporary (P) by H. H. Kent. HARPER & Row, When the Gods Are Silent, by K. H. Miskotte. JUDSON,The Beginnings of Our Religion by E. M. Baxter. OXFORD,The Hebrew Kingdoms by E. W. Heaton and The Jews from Alexander to Herod by D. S. Russell. UNITED CHURCH PRESS,Come Sweet Death by B. D. Napier.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, NEW TESTAMENT:ABINGDON will come out with The Character of Christ by H. Bosley and From Religion to Grace (P) by J. Crosby. BAKER,Studies in the Life of Christ: The Middle Period by R. C. Foster. BROADMAN,Luke’s Witness to Jesus (P) by H. E. Turlington and Can I Believe in Miracles? (P) by R. L. Murray. CAMBRIDGE,Carmen Christi: Philippians ii, 5–11 by R. P. Martin and The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church by M. F. Wiles. EERDMANS,The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament by W. S. LaSor. JOHN KNOX,No Idle Tale by J. F. Jansen and The Old and New Man (P) by R. Bultmann. LIPPINCOTT,Jesus in Our Time by J. McLeman. PAULIST,Jesus Is Lord: Paul’s Life in Christ (P) by J. Blenkinsopp and The Risen Christ in the Fathers of the Church by T. P. Collins. REGAL,The Man Jesus by K. N. Taylor. UNITED CHURCH PRESS,Jesus, Persons, and the Kingdom of God by R. G. Gruenler (published jointly with Bethany Press). WORD,A Functioning Faith by B. Simmons. WORLD,The Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles by J. H. E. Hull and Jesus: Man and Master by M. C. Morrison. ZONDERVAN,The New Testament from Twenty-six Translations edited by C. Vaughan and The Women of the Bible by H. Lockyer.

BIOGRAPHY:EERDMANS will bring out We Spoke for God by J. C. Reid and Bishop Pike: Ham, Heretic or Hero (P) by F. Morris. HAWTHORN,God and Myself by H. Graef. MOODY,More Oceans to Cross by F. Johnston, Walk in My Woods by M. Epp, Mover of Men and Mountains (P) by R. G. LeTourneau, and Pelendo: God’s Prophet in the Congo (P) by A. E. Anderson. PAULIST,Martin Luther (P) by J. M. Todd. REVELL,No Time for Losing by F. Tarkenton. SCRIBNER’S,Jonathan Edwards and the Visibility of God by J. Carse. WORD,Born to Climb by D. Hillis and Living the Great Adventure by R. Engquist. ZONDERVAN,Moody (P) by J. C. Pollock.

CHURCH HISTORY:ABINGDON will publish Pioneers of the Younger Churches by J. Seamands. AUGSBURG,Martin Luther: The Reformation Years (P) edited by R. E. A. Lee. BOBBS-MERRILL,The Churches of the Nineteenth Century by J. L. Altholz. HERALD,Lost Fatherland by J. B. Toews. JOHN KNOX,Luther as Seen by Catholics (P) by R. Stauffer and The Canadian Experience of Church Union (P) by J. W. Grant. MACMILLAN,The Voluntary Church: American Religious Life Seen Through the Eyes of European Visitors (1740–1865) edited by M. B. Powell. MOODY,Who Was Who in Church History by E. S. Moyer. OXFORD,Mitre and Sceptre (P) by C. Bridenbaugh. PRINCETON,The Christian Socialist Revival (1877–1914) by P. d’A. Jones. REGNERY,The Historical Road of Anglicanism by C. E. Simcox. SEABURY,Church and State in Confrontation by H. Stroup.

DEVOTIONAL: From ABINGDON will come God in My Day by G. Asquith. AUGSBURG,The Magnificat: Luther’s Commentary (P) and Readings in Luther for Laymen, edited and compiled by C. S. Anderson. BAKER,When the Rain Falls: Comfort for Troubled Hearts by H. H. Hobbs and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progess, Facsimile Edition. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP,I’m Not Mad at God by D. Wilkerson. BROADMAN,God So Loved, He Gave by R. L. Middleton. EERDMANS,A Varied Harvest by F. E. Gaebelein. HARPER & ROW, In the Hands of God by W. Barclay. MOODY,Salt in My Kitchen (P) by J. W. Lockerbie and Devotional Talks from Familiar Things (P) by V. Whitman. REGAL,How to Be a Christian Without Being Religious (P) by F. Ridenour and It Didn’t Just Happen by E. Barrett. REVELL,I Walk a Joyful Road by C. Lane and Daily Readings from W. E. Sangster.ZONDERVAN,Make Love Your Aim by E. Price and Meditation Moments for Women by M. Stamm.

DRAMA, FICTION, POETRY:ABINGDON will put out How the Littlest Cherub was Late for Christmas by M. C. Johnston. BROADMAN,The Crosses at Zarin by J. B. Mosley. HAWTHORN,Mansions of the Spirit edited by G. A. Panichas. HERALD,Pilgrim Aflame by M. S. Augsburger. MOODY,Rivers Among the Rocks by E. M. Clarkson. SEABURY,Religious Dimensions in Literature (P) edited by L. A. Belford. UNITED CHURCH PRESS,Best Church Plays (P) by A. Johnson. WORD,The Word Not Bound by J. Killinger.

ECUMENICS, INTER-FAITH DIALOGUE:ABINGDON will offer Who Speaks for the Church? (P) by P. Ramsey. BAKER,The Ecumenical Mirage by C. S. Lowell. BOBBS-MERRILL,The Religious Imagination by R. Rubenstein. HAWTHORN,A Reporter Looks at American Catholicism by B. McGurn. LIPPINCOTT,We Jews and You Christians by S. Sandmel. MACMILLAN,Conflict and Consensus: Religious Freedom and the Second Vatican Council by R. J. Regan. NEWMAN,The Jews, Views and Counterviews: A Dialogue by J. Danielou and A. Chouraqui. OXFORD,The Second Vatican Council (P) edited by B. C. Pawley and Our Dialogue with Rome (P) by G. B. Caird. PAULIST,Ecumenical Theology No. 2 (P) by G. Baum, A Practical Guide to Ecumenism (P) by J. B. Sheerin, and The Second Living Room Dialogues: The Church in the World (P) by W. B. Greenspun and Mrs. T. Wedell. SCRIBNER’S,Elder and Younger Brothers: The Encounter of Jews and Christians by A. R. Eckardt. SEABURY,The Dialogue of Christians and Jews (P) by P. Schneider. UNITED CHURCH PRESS,The Church Swept Out (P) by R. W. Weltge. WORLD,The Vatican Council and the Jews by A. Gilbert.

ETHICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND CULTURAL STUDIES:ABINGDON will come out with Glossolalia (P) by F. Stagg, E. G. Hinson, and W. E. Oates, My Job and My Faith by F. Wentz, A Christian and His Money by J. Crawford, and The New Eve by K. Nyberg. AUGSBURG,Whatever You Do (P) by J. Burtness. BAKER,Creative Questions on Christian Living by R. Heynen. BETHANY PRESS,Storm Over Ethics by J. C. Bennett et al. (published jointly with United Church Press). COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,The Middle-Class Negro in the White Man’s World by E. Ginzberg. EERDMANS,The Vietnam War: Christian Perspectives edited by M. Hamilton and Christian Letters to a Post-Christian Era (P) by D. Sayers, edited by R. Jellema. HARPER & Row, Toward an American Theology by H. W. Richardson. HAWTHORN,Parents on Trial by D. R. Wilkerson. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON,A Catalogue of Sins by W. F. May. INTER-VARSITY,We Want to Live (P) by R. Grossley. JOHN KNOX,The Modern Vision of Death (P) edited by N. A. Scott, Jr., and Sunday Night at the Movies (P) by G. G. Jones. JUDSON,Keys in Our Hands by H. Wallace. NELSON,Youth Considers Doubt and Frustration (P) by P. Holmer. PAULIST,The Kingdom of Downtown: Finding Teenagers in Their Music (P) by L. M. Savary. REGAL,How to Succeed in Family Living (P) by C. M. Narramore. SEABURY,Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years by D. Kitagawa. UNITED CHURCH PRESS,The Paradox of Guilt (P) by M. France. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO,Belief and Disbelief in American Literature by H.M. Jones. WORD,Resources for Christian Social Concerns by W. Pinson, Jr., and Sing a New Song, Man by B. Pannell. WORLD,Religion that Works by J. Bruere.

LITURGY, WORSHIP:BETHANY PRESS will present The Place of the Sacraments in Worship by J. D. Joyce. BROADMAN,Christian Worship: Its Theology and Practice by F. M. Segler. JOHN KNOX,Presbyterian Worship in America by J. Melton and Let Us Worship God by J. F. Jansen. NEWMAN,A Living Liturgy by P. Chapel. PRENTICE-HALL,The Protestant Faith (P) by G. W. Forell. WORLD,A Sourcebook for Christian Worship edited by P. S. Mc-Elroy. JUDSON,The Christian Calendar in the Free Churches (P) by N. H. Maring.

MISSIONS, EVANGELISM, CHURCH OUTREACH:ABINGDON will bring out As Close as the Telephone (P) by A. Walker. AUGSBURG,To the End of the Earth by R. A. Syrdal. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP,A Wall of Fire (P) by M. Monsen. CAMBRIDGE,British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837: The History of Serampore and Its Missions by E. D. Potts. EERDMANS,Winning a Hearing by H. Law and God’s Impatience in Liberia (P) by J. C. Wold. JOHN KNOX,Buddhism and the Claims of Christ (P) by D. T. Niles. MOODY,Highlights of Christian Missions by H. R. Cook, Revolution in Evangelism (P) by W. D. Roberts, and Land Beyond the Nile (P) by M. Forsberg. NELSON,Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Missions edited by B. L. Goddard. PAULIST,The Laity: The People of God (P) by J. M. Todd. REGNERY,The Convent in the Modern World (P) by M. O’Keefe. REVELL,Creative Christian Living by W. W. Wiersbe. SCRIBNER’S,Conversion to the World by H. J. Schultz. WORD,Showdown in the City by K. Chafin, The Integrity of Church Membership by R. Bow, and Big Day at Da Me by B. Pierce.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY (PREACHING, COUNSELING, CHURCH ADMINISTRATION): From ABINGDON will come The Cooperative Parish in Nonmetropolitan Areas by M. T. Judy. AUGSBURG,The Renewal of Liturgical Preaching by G. M. Bass. BAKER,Glory of the Ministry (P) by A. T. Robertson. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP,Divorce and Remarriage by G. Duty. BETHANY PRESS,In Christ’s Place by R. E. Osborn. EERDMANS,Count It All Joy by W. Stringfellow. HERALD,Learning to Work Together (P) by A. Roth. JOHN KNOX,To Resist or To Surrender? (P) by P. Tournier and To Understand Each Other by P. Tournier. KREGEL,Christian Reformed Church Government by H. Spaan. LIPPINCOTT,Fidelity and Infidelity by L. J. Saul. MOODY,Toward the Senior Years (P) by M. Parsons and Straight from the Shoulder (P) by M. Johnson. NEWMAN,Christian Presence in the Neighborhood by P. Talec. PAULIST,Man in Search of God (P) by J. J. Kavanaugh and From the Housetops: A Pastor Speaks to Adults (P) by E. Stevens. PRENTICE-HALL,Enthusiasm Makes the Difference by N. V. Peale. SCRIBNER’S,The Church in the Way by J. E. Dittes and Insearch: Psychology and Religion by J. Hillman. SEABURY,Partners in Preaching: Clergy and Laity in Dialogue by R. L. Howe. WORD,The Awesome Power of the Listening Ear by J. W. Drakeford and A Quest for Reformation in Preaching by H. C. Brown, Jr.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION:ABINGDON will issue On Becoming Human (P) by R. Snyder and Being There for Others (P) by T. McEachern. BAKER,Blueprint for a Successful Sunday School (P) by L. H. Raney et al.BETHANY PRESS,A Design for Teaching-Learning: The work of the Cooperative Curriculum Project.BROADMAN,Creative Teaching in the Church School by P. W. Sapp. EERDMANS,The Doctrines of the Christian Religion by W. W. Stevens. JOHN KNOX,Where Faith Begins by C. E. Nelson. JUDSON,The Youth Years by W. H. R. Willkens and Bible Stories to Tell by E. Whitehouse. MCGRAW-HILL,Never Trust a God Over Thirty: New Styles in Campus Ministry edited by A. Friedlander. MOODY,Youth and the Church edited by R. G. Irving and R. B. Zuck. SEABURY,Ministry for Tomorrow by N. M. Pusey. STANDARD,Toward Christian Maturity (P) by S. Southard.

SERMONS:BAKER will put out Journey To Calvary by B. Smith, Once Upon a Tree by C. Miller, Witness to the Resurrection by E. Parson, and Seven Words from the Cross (P) by R. G. Turnbull. BEACON HILL PRESS (of Kansas City), God Still Speaks in the Space Age by J. R. Smith. BIBLICAL RESEARCH PRESS,Sermons of William S. Banowsky (“Great Preachers of Today”). HARPER & ROW, Call for God by K. Barth. REVELL,Who Killed God? by T. A. Fry, Jr., and More Sermons I Should Like to Have Preached by I. Macpherson. STANDARD,1010 Illustrations, Poems and Quotes by G. B. Wheeler. WORD, …And Thy Neighbor by S. Shoemaker.

THEOLOGY:ABINGDON will print Paul Tillich: Retrospect and Future (P), a symposium with introduction by T. A. Kantonen. AUGSBURG,Contemporary Forms of Faith by P. R. Sponheim. BAKER,Creeds of Christendom, I and II, by P. Schaff, Crisis in Lutheran Theology (P) by J. W. Montgomery, and Christian Faith in Focus (P) by G. Spykman. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP,Speaking in Tongues by L. Christenson. BETHANY PRESS,Jesus, Persons, and the Kingdom of God by R. G. Gruenler and A Man and His Religion by G. C. Jones. BOBBS-MERRILL,Theology in America edited by S. E. Ahlstrom and Radical Theology Reader edited by T. Oyletree. EERDMANS,Covenant and Community by W. Klassen. HARPER & ROW, The Theology of Hope by J. Moltmann, A Question of Conscience by C. Davis, The Bishop Pike Affair by W. String-fellow and A. Towne, and If This Be Heresy by J. A. Pike. JOHN KNOX,The Beginnings of Dialectic Theology, I, edited by J. M. Robinson and Fifty Key Words in Theology (P) by F. G. Healey. KREGEL,God’s Program for the Ages (P) by F. A. P. Tatford. LIPPINCOTT,The Premature Death of Protestantism by F. Denbeaux, Tillich: A Theological Portrait by D. H. Hopper, and A Theology of Things by C. Bonifazi. MACMILLAN,Memory and Hope: An Inquiry Concerning the Presence of Christ by D. Ritschl and On Not Leaving It to the Snake by H. Cox. NEWMAN,God Is a New Language by D. S. Moore and Toward A Christian Ethic: A Renewal in Moral Theology by W. H. Van der Marck. REINER,Inspired Principles of Prophetic Interpretation by J. Wilmot. SCRIBNER’S,Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer by J. Moltmann and J. Weissbach and The Glory of Man by D. E. Jenkins. SEABURY,Sex and Christian Freedom: An Enquiry by L. Hodgson, Jesus Our Contemporary by G. Ainger, Introduction to Theology (P) by M. H. Micks, No Cross, No Crown: A Study of the Atonement (P) by W. J. Wolf, and The Presence of the Kingdom (P) by J. Ellul. SHEED AND WARD,Prayer as a Political Problem by J. Daniélou, Belief Today by K. Rahner, and Revelation and Theology by E. Schillebeeckx. UNITED CHURCH PRESS,The Living God and the Modern World (P) by P. Hamilton. WORD,Grace Is Not a Blue-eyed Blond by R. L. Hudson. WORLD,Atheism Is Dead by A. J. Lelyveld and A Handbook of Christian Theologians (P) edited by M. E. Marty and D. G. Peerman. YALE,Theology: The Presence of the Word by W. J. Ong and Fate, Logic, and Time by S. M. Cahn.

ROBERT L. CLEATH

A great weakness is apparent in the modern pattern of the Christian churches. Local churches have become so institutionalized that many members think of their responsibility only as sustaining and promoting the institutional church. Running the machinery has become the foremost concern of both clergy and laity, and little time or energy is left for going out beyond the church walls to reach non-Christians personally. A typical church member will think he is doing his job adequately if he invites a non-Christian to his church, then waits patiently for the minister or the evangelist to do the converting.

The thinking that underlies this modern pattern might be called a “fortress mentality.” The local church is like a fortress. There Christians are secure and everything is orderly. Christians hold dress parades within the fortress, impressing themselves and visiting dignitaries with their successful interior build-up. Often they have lost the will and the courage to venture out to battle in the secular wilderness.

The average pastor has this fortress mentality. His first concern is membership, program, edifice, and finances. His second is his denomination. If he longs for fellowship with his peers, he finds it among his fellow ministers. If he is frustrated by the limited opportunity within his own church, he finds expression in the denominational program. Many ministers spend very little time evangelizing non-Christians and devote more and more time to board meetings, committees, denominational gatherings, and ministerial fellowships.

As the pastor goes, so goes the congregation. The laymen too become church-minded. When they rise to positions of responsibility within the local church after years of minor service, they usually have not developed the desire or the ability to evangelize. And they resent newcomers who have. Evangelistic zeal and ability on the part of new Christians calls into question the dedication of complacent church members. Therefore, if zealous members begin to go out to call on non-Christians, complacent members criticize their efforts. If the pastor decides to go out to call on non-members, the old guard are likely to complain of being neglected. Presumably their pastor is wasting his time on people who don’t support the church.

To avoid being misunderstood I must clarify my position at two points. First, I am not making a sweeping judgment of all pastors and all laymen. Many notable and glorious exceptions are free of the fortress mentality. Many local churches are world-directed. Second, I am not against the local church but against the local-church fixation. I am not against the fortress; I am against the fortress mentality. Local churches are ultimately established by the Lord and not by men, and Christ is pleased to dwell in them, bless them, and establish his witness through them in the world. But it is certainly presumptuous to think that Christ is satisfied with the state of the local churches today.

How can we overcome the fortress mentality? The answer can be found only through prayer, diligent study of the Scriptures, and faith that expresses itself in persistent experimentation.

I have a concrete suggestion—“paratroop evangelism.” The name comes from the military maneuver of dropping soldiers by parachute into the midst of the enemy as advance units to capture and hold strong points beyond the front line. The principle in paratroop evangelism is to send laymen out into the world outside the church walls to win those who would never step inside.

These men should give this task top priority in their lives and commit themselves to winning specific people. They should forego all activities within the local church except corporate worship, prayer, and Bible study. Four or five such men should meet once a month in an evangelistic workshop to pray and to share their experiences in personal evangelism. Attendance at these monthly meetings must be given top priority, above all other responsibilities. When one of these men has led someone to Christ, he is to guide him closely in prayer, Bible study, and training in personal evangelism, so that the new convert immediately becomes another “paratrooper” working in the secular world.

In due time paratroop evangelism will bring into the local church new Christians with fresh dedication to build the church and to continue the evangelistic outreach.

No doubt many pastors will hesitate to set aside their few key laymen for such a program. They will say that these laymen are indispensable for jobs within the church. But this is a sure road to stagnation. In this situation, very few new adult members come into the church. The same few people are asked to serve over and over again until they are spiritually and physically exhausted. Many resign. Those who do stay on for decades become the old guard, resistant to any change.

Although the temporary sacrifice of the presence of key men in the church may be great, the only alternative to an evangelistic outreach in a church is stagnancy.

After the 1967 Presidential Prayer Breakfast, a group of newspaper correspondents and religion writers in Washington, D. C., met for a symposium. They discussed the special duty of laymen whose vocations engage them influentially in the mass media in a time of moral crisis.

Participants were Leland A. Bandy, Washington correspondent of the “Columbia (S. C.) State”; Mrs. Lillian Brooks Brown, TV-radio program coordinator, American University; Louis Cassels, religion editor, United Press International; Miss Ella F. Harllee, president, Educational Communication Association; David E. Kucharsky, associate editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY; Edmund B. Lambeth, Washington Bureau, Gannett Newspapers; Al Manola, editor, NAHB “Journal of Homebuilding”; Caspar Nannes, religion editor, “Washington Evening Star”; and William Willoughby, Washington correspondent for Religious News Service. Moderating the discussion was Editor Carl F. H. Henry ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Henry: Everyone here presumably has a spiritual commitment and is related to the world of the mass media in a time of moral crisis in world history. A few years ago when I was interviewing Charles Malik, former chairman of the United Nations General Assembly, he said in the course of the interview, “Jesus Christ is the hinge of history.” Now, if we are church-related, and vocationally engaged at frontiers of the mass media, in a time of ethical and spiritual crisis, does some special obligation accrue to us to give visibility to Jesus Christ as the hinge of history? And if so, how? Again, over and above being skillful journalists in respect to all that good journalism implies as a vocation, do we have any responsibility of putting the right questions to our generation, of forcing upon it a struggle for answers to the right questions? Is it our duty to force a critical examination of accepted values and unconscious assumptions?

Lambeth: This is the first time that I’ve ever really attempted to answer this question—not from an individual point of view, because we’ve all sweated out stories, asking ourselves how we should handle them, and whether we are being honest, in reporting—but in a corporate sense, having to sit down with colleagues and thresh around the problem.

Kucharsky: It might be well to look back in history and see how people in related professions have done. So far as journalists go, the only monumental case that I can think of is Milton’s Areopagitica, which does a tremendous job of relating faith to a current problem—a problem that was current then and is even current now. Certainly in the field of literature and art, people were creative as a result of their Christian commitment in a way that we’re not seeing today.

Lambeth: The thought that lodges in mind this morning as an obvious opener is that some of the most responsible and hard-hitting daily journalism comes from non-Christians. I think that needs saying, first because Christians obviously have no monopoly on editing or reporting skill. Neither do Christian journalists have any corner on commitment to solving the problems that plague us now, twenty centuries after the time of Jesus. But most importantly, I think the point needs to be made because one of the significant contributions a Christian reporter can make may lie in an area that is rooted in but goes beyond his daily duties.

Bandy: I agree that our moral obligation extends beyond our professional lives. I think it extends to our own private and personal lives.

Cassels: But anybody who tells you that you can do Christian service only “after hours,” in a part-time way, when explicitly talking about what the Bible says, does a great disservice. For Christ spoke of the believing community, the community of faith, as a leaven that is most effective when it is lost into the loaf. It doesn’t stand up and say, “I am the leaven, look at me.” It just does its work. I think you are most truly discharging your Christian vocation when you are being a good newspaper man. If I understand it correctly, Martin Luther’s doctrine of vocation, which is one of the unsung glories of the Protestant heritage, says precisely this. It is not only when the cobbler is on his knees praying that he is being a Christian, but also when the cobbler is on his bench making a good pair of shoes. From what I heard, you are discharging your Christian vocation now, and I’ve no doubt you’re doing it tremendously well. You should know this, and have the satisfaction of knowing that your nine-to-five work is a true Christian vocation.

Henry: Let’s agree that at the very least Christianity has implications for everyone’s private morality, and for a spirituality that requires personal commitment. But the cobbler who doesn’t make a good pair of shoes can do as much harm to his Christian testimony through his vocation as all the time that he spends …

Lambeth: I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t deny that. If I had to weigh the two in the balance, I would probably say being a good reporter is the more important on a percentage basis. But when the question is asked, what special obligation is on our shoulder by relationship to the media, then over and above that I feel that Martin Marty hits on a valid point. Let me quote a review of Marty’s work by Time magazine (Dec. 7,1964): “Marty speculates that the embattled Christian minority—now 28 per cent of the world population—will continue to shrink under the advance of hostile systems and because of its own internal weaknesses. Only those Christians who are ‘heavily oriented toward Biblical interpretation, historical thought and contemporary analysis’ can, in Marty’s view, minister to a changing world. ‘It may be questioned,’ he writes, ‘whether the churches have really taken seriously the possibility that the believing community might virtually disappear.’ ” I don’t accept the view—and I don’t think many do—that only those Christians heavy on biblical training and contemporary analysis can minister to today’s world. Far from it. But Marty seems very close to the mark when he says that such persons are sorely needed in a world that increasingly challenges the idea of Jesus as Lord. It would seem that a source of such talent, perhaps neglected, is the daily and weekly press. Certainly no group has a better window on the “real world”—of poverty amid affluence, of rapid technological change and scientific promise, of bureaucracy, both public and private.

Bandy: We as journalists should report these problems—poverty, civil rights, and so forth. But as individual Christians I think we sit back, and while aware of these problems, all we do is sit around and discuss them. I think there is a question of involvement as individual Christians which comes up here.

Nannes: I’d like to put it in the press frame, as far as I’m concerned. Your question here is, What duty does the fact of our vocational relationship to the mass media impose upon us in this time of moral and spiritual crisis? I think we should divide our jobs, particularly those of us directly concerned with newspapers, into two areas. First, there is the area of just reporting a meeting. I think one would satisfy his Christian responsibility by reporting the meeting honestly, fairly, and completely; I don’t think one has any right to go beyond that when meeting such as we did here today [the Presidential Prayer Breakfast], The other aspect is when a writer has a place where he can express himself with some allowance for subjectivity, as one does when writing a column. And in that sense one can bring out Christian convictions in relation to the questions that are affecting and plaguing the world today. But as working newspaper men I think we must clearly differentiate those two areas.

Henry: Do you all accept the premise, if I represent it rightly, that interpretative reporting is allowable only in the writing of columns and doesn’t in any way intrude into news?

Cassels: Interpretative reporting shouldn’t get subjective. There might be a middle ground between the two.

Manota: Everybody who works in Washington and knows anything about the newspaper business recognizes how far the Washington Post, for example, has gone beyond the bounds of what was normally considered interpretative reporting when its news stories express opinions.

Willoughby: I have serious misapprehensions about the religious press falling unwittingly into the trap I choose to call ecumenical overkill. By that I mean the practice of ascribing, often to the point of ludicrousness, the flavor of the ecumenical spirit or ecumenism to anything and everything, regardless of how insignificant or fabricated the interfaith aspect of an event might be. For instance, Francis Cardinal Spellman and Billy Graham were invited to the White House for lunch with the President. United Nations Ambassador Arthur Goldberg also was there. I played the story straight, for what I saw it was worth, and noticed afterwards that the wire services had done the same. But a rewrite man encased the whole thing—not at all designed as an ecumenical encounter by the President—in the overworked language of ecumenism: the Catholic archbishop, the Baptist evangelist, the Disciples President, and the Jewish ambassador. It mattered only secondarily that the real concern was front-line reports by the religious leaders on the war in Viet Nam. A thin, tawdry veneer of “ecumenical spirit” was made the illicit carrying force of a story that moved along well on its own legitimate merits. Ecumenism and manifestations of the ecumenical spirit are legitimate forces at work in the world today. The faithful newsman, naturally, is fully aware of that and reports it for what it is. But he also is able to see behind the scenes. Much that, on the surface, at least, appears to be genuine interfaith, ecumenical concern is but a thinly disguised promotion gimmick under the label of a peace rally, a congressional hearing, or a rights protest. Public relationists know full well that if in some manner they can get the interfaith aspect across, they’re going to get much more space in the news media than if they did it denuded of the banner of ecumenism. As I see it, ecumenism is a powerful force at work among the religionists of our day. But it can carry its own weight. Newsmen need to discern the props planted by enthusiasts and at the same time not add props of their own. Ecumenical overkill only garbles the real message.

Lambeth: I want to second what Caspar Nannes said about a rigid line between news stories, interpretative stories, and columns of opinion. The point I am trying to make will be completely missed if I leave an impression that biblically based interpretation of events is something I recommend for the daily or weekly press in this country. Indeed, there are compelling professional and other reasons to keep the daily or weekly press secular. Readers, it should go without saying, are entitled to objectivity. Interpretation, when it is needed, should be free from a reporter’s theological leanings. But in the nation’s magazines of opinion and perhaps on the air waves, a newsman—committed, yet not a zealot—can make an important contribution. None of this is to downgrade the daily, nine-to-five work of a journalist attempting to be a Christian. The story—accurate, objective, and fully told—is a good day’s gift. Some will say, for good reasons, that this is enough. Yet I think an obligation—no, I should say opportunity—exists for the Christian journalist to enter a larger dialogue. It is not so much that he has any special corner on “truth” as it is that he moves in orbits that can contribute uniquely to the placing of modern life in a Christian context.

Henry: My impression is that the line is not to be drawn between interpretative and non-interpretative reporting. All history is selective, and probably no one has to be more selective in the reporting of facts because of pressures of space and time than the journalist writing a news story. He has to distinguish between what he thinks is important and what he thinks is unimportant. And isn’t the difference between interpretative reporting and objectionably subjective reporting a recasting of material to reflect highly subjective prejudices? Isn’t the wisdom of the ages a proper climate for all interpretation? Doesn’t it lead us again to the question of raising the right issues or pressing upon our generation the need to answer certain basic questions about the values and uncritical assumptions of our time? Would this in any way intrude upon our proper journalistic role?

Manola: It seems to me that you’re trying to force us to say that people in the communication media should use their position to get across either the wisdom of the ages or their own personal wisdom. The Washington Post for thirty years had a city editor who was a devout Catholic. If a robe slipped off a bishop, there was a big story in the Washington Post. Down South, if an editor happens to be a Southern Baptist, the front page is full of it. This is absurd.

Cassels: I think the biggest danger of all in our business is succumbing to the temptation to be a propagandist instead of a reporter. The people who do succumb to that temptation invariably believe they are doing it for a righteous cause. They’re always sure God is on their side.

Bandy: Well, I’m not involved in religious writing as such on Capitol Hill, which is 100 per cent pure politics. But I feel that as a Christian I have a moral obligation to report the news honestly, fairly, and objectively. And as a Christian I do not think my life is divided between the secular and the sacred. I feel that everything I do is sacred. But that doesn’t mean I have to be a crusader in my hard news copy for theology or religion. I think I am setting an example as a Christian by reporting the hard news honestly, fairly, and objectively.

Henry: I just don’t yield the premise that anyone is wholly objective in reporting information. If those of us now gathered around this table were reporting the events in the New Testament Gospels, or the Acts, some very illuminating material would likely be deleted or recast.

Cassels: I would much rather have these people reporting it than somebody who thought that he should put the stamp of what he deeply believed to be right and true upon whatever he expressed. The most wicked, essentially unchristian, and sinful thing a reporter can do is to smuggle into his treatment of a story his own deep convictions, because the person who is most certain of his own righteousness is precisely the one who is most likely to do a propaganda job.

Nannes: Every once in awhile we’ve gotten into discussions with some of our people whose meetings we are covering. They become quite indignant about the fact that we may report something which is unpleasant to them. I feel very strongly that newspapers must not be propagandists for religion or any religious body. But 96 per cent of what religion and religious bodies do is good, and just the solid reporting of it is doing a service without our going out of our way. On the other hand, we should not be asked to gloss over errors—and worse—that sometimes occur among church people. To do that is not honest reporting, or being an honest Christian or religious man, at all. Now as to the question: sure, no man can be completely objective, because in his selection of what he is going to write about, his own personal evaluation must come in. But there is all the difference in the world between somebody who is trying as hard as he can to be objective and somebody who is trying to slant a story so as to reflect his own particular views.

Memo To Missionaries

You can’t find a single evangelical magazine in the United States on the average newsstand, not a single one. As a matter of fact, you can’t find any religious periodical of any kind, evangelical or otherwise. And with all the millions of magazine pages printed in this country each week, covering everything from stamp collecting to skiing, not one publication is used primarily for newsstand evangelism. Spiritually hungry souls have no publication readily available to help them find Christ. How can we address another culture when the culture that we’re most familiar with has no such medium? At this all-important phase of modern communication, we’re closed off from the world, hiding our light.

Another major point on which our communications breakdown occurs is the lack of liaison with the secular press. What kind of contact do you have with the foreign correspondent in the area that you serve and the people that work even with the national newspapers, people who are the professional communicators and who will reach the mass audiences? How many of you have ever called upon a foreign correspondent in your work overseas, just for any reason at all—to befriend him, perhaps, or to give him a tip?

Don’t worry about getting your work publicized; that’ll come in time, because he’s after stories much more than you’re after getting your work publicized.

People want to read about what’s going on in the foreign missionary enterprise. And yet CHRISTIANITY TODAY receives less missionary news than any other kind. We’re flooded with other news, but it’s hard to come by good missionary news, to find out what’s going on in foreign countries where Christians are proclaiming the Word of God. Then you good missionaries, for some reason or other, sit on the news until it’s too stale for us to use, or you fail to give us the substance of the story. I sometimes despair. Why can’t we get at least a few people overseas to write some engaging copy with color and clarity?

I believe the work of the Lord would be enhanced if all persons connected with religious work would be prepared to recognize a news story.

I think we need people today who are bold and who are willing to be guided by the Holy Spirit and pioneer in new territory, and I commend it to you in the area of literature.—DAVID E. KUCHARSKY, associate editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in remarks to Evangelical Literature Overseas regional conference in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

Willoughby: A news writer on religion needs to be careful that he does not carry his own bias on religion into his stories. I, personally, am of conservative Protestant persuasion in religion and of liberal persuasion in politics and social implementation. Others of you, I know, are of liberal theological persuasion. It is easy for you and me, if we are not extremely careful, to approach religious news with our own biases, through jaundiced eyes. I do not mean that we would editorially distort our reporting, but we could editorialize either by emphasis or by underemphasis. For instance, a writer of liberal theological persuasion or with a theologically libertarian viewpoint might tend to downgrade a Billy Graham or an “old-time religion” oration by Senator Everett Dirksen—or, at the other extreme of the conservative spectrum, what might be a perfectly valid statement made by Carl Mclntire on a timely and pertinent topic. On the other hand, anything a Malcolm Boyd, Harvey Cox, or even Bishop Pike might say would get top billing. In other words, if the liberal writer thinks Boyd or Cox or Pike is more relevant to today’s needs (and the writer must make this evaluation on what he personally thinks the needs of man and the Church are), he will give him the copy, no matter what he says (or how). Another man on the other side of the religious scene, regarded in the writer’s eyes as not sophisticated in his view and therefore less relevant, will be passed over or toned down. The conservatively oriented writer, on the other hand, might look askance at Boyd or Cox or Pike and tend to give them the same treatment. But, in the final analysis, so far as the public is concerned, does one man’s pronouncement necessarily carry more validity than the other’s? Are, too, the views of a Bishop Pike any less irresponsible than anything a Carl Mclntire might say? Does it necessarily follow, carrying the argument a step further, that merely because the religion editor of a newspaper happens to be a Unitarian, the most extensively quoted messages appearing in the Monday columns are those of Unitarians, when there are hundreds of ministers in the same city each Sunday who are saying something at least as significant?

Manola: Reporters should not be judges. They are onlookers; they have a responsibility to let people know as factually as possible what they see and what is happening. The thing that I’m afraid of is that in order to bring one’s Christian commitment into his work, and show it in his work, one is going to have to judge and evaluate people and actions from the standpoint of that commitment.

Willoughby: There exists among some writers on the religious aspect of the news the foregone conclusion that religious and quasi-religious organizations are always the “good guys” in a dispute, and that, for example, any government agency involved is to be numbered among the “bad guys.” Since much of the news on religion that has strong religio-political bearings originates in Washington, it is unfortunate that this news is still so loosely probed. Many times the real significance is occluded because a writer or editor is carried along on the spur of some potshot at a government agency or individual.

Henry: Must religious reporting cover movements and events only within the assumptions of the particular groups that are making the news? It ought of course to reflect those assumptions faithfully, to give visibility to the assumptions on which the work is being done. Can it with propriety set these assumptions alongside other long-range assumptions in assessing the distinctiveness of any movement? Does the discussion of long-range concerns from the lively perspective of history involve a reporter in any objectionable manifestation of subjectivism?

Harllee: Could I ask, in the field of journalism here, what the function of the denominational newspaper is as opposed to the secular newspaper? Is there a special justification in the denominational newspaper, let us say, for this type of approach?

Nannes: Of course, the denominational newspaper, by the mere fact that it is a denominational newspaper, has—I don’t know whether the word bias is too strong—but at least a point of view which we accept, just as when we read a column. We know a certain columnist will reflect, let us say, a liberal point of view, and when we start reading his column we accept that premise immediately. It’s the same with denominational newspapers. They completely justify their existence, and I like to read them. But their approach is completely different from that of the ordinary newspaper.

Brown: How far do I carry personal commitment and how far do I carry professional mandate? I’m a television producer at the American University. I’ve just put on a new show which I’m sure I put on because I’m a Christian. It’s going to be called “Communicate!” The thirteen shutters will each feature a chaplain of a different faith, and each chaplain will bring interfaith students to the cameras in one of our major television stations simply to kick around the ideas that they have—in other words, to communicate with each other. My personal commitment has made me do something in the field of religion. But my professional mandate from a commercial station is that I make it interfaith and hold no jurisdiction over the chaplains as to subjects and over what students say.

Manola: I can sympathize with you because I’m a member of the executive committee of the Radio and Television Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. We have produced programs which they tell me resulted in $3.5 million worth of free time, including the network slice. Our radio and TV programs include the “sell,” but it’s “soft.”

Brown: I think that kids are beating their brains out to figure out who they are, whether they’re Christians or whether they’re beatniks or what. Giving them a chance to talk this over with a responsible person helps them sort out all their opinions. Making it totally interfaith and giving it no mandate at all is really maybe the best you can do. But my show is not a religious show.

Harllee: It’s so frustrating in a sense, because the whole issue is raised here in the broadcasting field. My experience has been that we really have a terrible dilemma. From our mail we keep discovering that religion has yet to be a personal thing as far as reaching the man where he is out there in the television audience or radio audience. You can theorize, you can be impersonal, you can try to be impartial; but it seems to us that the need of people remains a real need. They look to a personality who can interpret this.

Bandy: I think the problem of shrinking Christianity is that we’ve got too many professionals and not enough laymen working at it.

A Princeton professor protests the worst incursion of churchmen into political affairs since the Middle Ages

THE EDITOR

The 1966 Geneva Conference on Church and Society fanned into a crackling fire the long-smoldering discontent of many churchmen and laymen over the political activity of the World Council of Churches. Last week this criticism gained strength through the publication of a sharply worded book entitled Who Speaks for the Church? (Abingdon, $2.45). In it Dr. Paul Ramsey, a well-known Princeton professor, turns a piercing spotlight of condemnation upon the ecumenical establishment’s involvement in political policymaking.

Professor Ramsey not only castigates the WCC hierarchy for procedures and conclusions of the Geneva Conference but also declares that neo-Protestant political incursion shatters all Reformation precedent and the modern Roman papacy in welcome contrast.

Ramsey was an invited observer who as “co-opted staff” attended background discussion sections barred to other observers in Geneva. His bold rejection of WCC procedures and policy pronouncements therefore greatly embarrasses conciliar spokesmen who recently have dismissed all protest as an unworthy reaction either of right-wing extremists or of ecumenical malcontents. Ramsey’s brilliant, hard-hitting critique of ecumenical ethics is more important, and more authentic, than any volume yet to emerge from the Geneva Conference on Church and Society.

“As a Protestant,” he writes, “I, at least, am resolved to stand with Luther against both pope and council, or the pope in council, Visser’t Hooft in council, or Blake in council, unless I can be shown from Scripture and sound reason.”

Ramsey’s criticisms of conciliar political involvement are not unlike those appearing in recent years in CHRISTIANITY TODAY and in this writer’s volume on Aspects of Christian Social Ethics. Ramsey asserts that: (1) the list of policy-making specifics is both beyond the competency of the Church and beyond the facts; (2) the right of church bodies to take a particular stand on controversial secular issues is questionable; (3) there is no “common” mind in the Church and among churchmen on the meaning of a “responsible society”; and (4) rather than prolong the pretense that the Church is a maker of political policy, the Church should nourish, judge, and repair the moral and political ethos.

As he calls contemporary Christianity to clarify the Church’s message about the meaning of Christian life in the world today, the Princeton professor vigorously criticizes the NCC and WCC for wrong methods and wrong goals. Since his volume appears on the threshold of the NCC Study Conference on Church and Society, to be held October 22–26 in Detroit, Michigan, it inevitably raises the question whether that program as it stands will perpetuate the errors of Geneva, or whether its procedures will be altered. Detroit seems to presuppose that the Geneva report, which engages the churches in world economic involvement, has Christian warrant. Actually, as Ramsey states, “the Geneva Report cannot be made the basis or a basis for future discussion.”

Ecumenical discussion of socio-political matters, Ramsey insists, is currently being deflected to specific policy questions, and the institutional church is hurriedly being mobilized behind a staggering number of resolutions that support particular positions. The appeal to “what God is doing in the world” to promote ad hoc positions camouflages a “distintegrated Christian understanding” (p. 21) resulting from the secularization of the Church, says Ramsey; moreover, the repeated WCC appeal to the Old Testament prophets ignores the fact that the Church is not related to the state as was Israel.

Ramsey, a cautious supporter of U. S. involvement in Viet Nam and a critic of pacifist pleas for unilateral withdrawal, concedes that his personal views on many important social issues differ from those of the ecumenical establishment. His criticism, however, is not that the ecumenical movement has endorsed wrong particular positions (and that it should have endorsed his own alternatives) but rather that the Church has advocated positions that cannot be adduced from Christian social ethics as such.

“Identification of Christian social ethics with specific partisan proposals that clearly are not the only ones that may be characterized as Christian and as morally acceptable comes close to the original and the New Testament meaning of heresy. It introduces divisions into the life that may properly be a confession of the faith of the church.”

An authentically “ecumenical ethics,” Ramsey insists, will mean that churchmen “will no longer be able to speak as if there is a closer identification between Christian social ethics and the policy making of the Secular City than was asserted even in the Middle Ages.”

Ramsey’s criticism reaches back to the Sixth World Order Study Conference (St. Louis, 1965), a conclave that in addressing the political scene exceeded what could clearly be said “on the basis of Christian truth and insights.” Such statements adopt “a pose of being prophetic in criticism of present policy and in support of some alternate policy” although they involve churchmen beyond their competence and arrogate to the Church decisions that belong to the state. What these churchmen offer to modern statesmen is not the “political wisdom” of the Church but a biased reading of the issues in the interest of some particular line of action.

Ramsey scorns the notion of some leading ecumenists that their “specific-policy-making exercises are events in salvation history.” The Church and Society Syndrome, as he depicts it, assumes that “satyrlike statements of moral fact” are “within the scope of prophecy and precise preaching, and within the competence of Christian deliberation.… Unless statements of ethico-political principle are distinguished from specific applications the integrity of the secular office of political prudence is clouded.”

“Protestantism, especially, has today conjoined assertedly momentary prophetic response to God’s will and action with concrete political decision making, to the confusion of all distinctions concerning what can and what cannot be said in Christ’s name. This is confusion of terms and of competencies that has replaced … the various mixtures of ‘church’ and ‘state’ that formerly prevailed.”

The shrewd device of declaring that a select group of churchmen speak only for themselves and not for the Church encourages irresponsible utterances, Ramsey says; what churchmen say to the Church and to the world ought to be governed, rather, by Christian truth. What impresses the communications media and the public is not preliminary NCC General Board disavowals that it speaks for all Christians but the specific proposals about military strategy and political specifics. As Ramsey puts it: “What goes out to the world is a particular statement that will have the same actual or aspired influence on public policy as if it had been unanimous, and as if it had been asserted to be the Christian thing to do.”

Behind The Scenes At Geneva

Professor Ramsey’s critique surveys both the theology and the methodology of the Geneva Conference on Church and Society and evaluates its specific commitments on Viet Nam and on nuclear war. Were the procedures adequate for reaching responsible conclusions? In what was billed as a “study conference,” he remarks, the “major miracle” occurred that 410 people in two weeks drew up 118 paragraphs of conclusions—and precisely the conclusions, moreover, that would provide the “American curia” with apparent world ecumenical support for promoting its predetermined prejudices.

The Geneva “study conference” procedures, Ramsey states, actually were largely a revision of WCC policy conference procedures in New Delhi, and only a “semantic distinction” may be drawn between reports sent to the churches for study, resolutions to the churches, and conclusions. President John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary insisted that rather than simply transmitting reports to the WCC for study, consideration, and consequent action, the conference adopt conclusions to publicize its statements (press coverage was prearranged for the final plenary sessions).

Ramsey notes “the prima facie lack of adequate deliberation” to sustain the numerous findings. By the time subsections were less than midway into their discussions, they had to devote their sessions to preparing reports for correlation with conclusions. “The conference was simply not a deliberative body.… There was nothing very dialogic about it.” In discussing 118 complex and often specific judgments on crucial world problems, the 410 participants managed to produce 160 single-spaced mimeographed pages of material. In the actual sessions, debate was limited to the most controversial issues, and a five-minute time limit for comment was soon cut to three. Never did more than half the registered participants vote on such issues.

Ramsey does not raise the question why these 418 participants were assembled in Geneva, and not others. He does assert, however, that the American curia made its weight felt in the political pressures of the conference, and that observers readily noted the atmosphere of a political convention. Although more laymen than churchmen were invited, the uninvited included precisely those Christian laymen who are decision-makers in the middle echelon of government.

The shallow commitments hurriedly pushed through Geneva, from the plea for inclusion of Red China in the United Nations to the plea that the U. N. place Rhodesia under economic siege, are unworthy of being labeled serious Christian reflection, Ramsey adds. “That the section … or conference plenaries said anything after deliberation is a chimera and a procedural hoax. No one should even cite the authority of Geneva 1966.”

The Geneva verdict that U. S. military engagement in Viet Nam is unjustifiable was inspired, says Ramsey, by certain American churchmen and others of like sympathy. The initial draft committee even included an observer hostile to American policy. Of the committee draft Ramsey remarks, “One can discern … the fine hand of John Bennett in these paragraphs taken as a whole.” The four members of the committee were: President Bennett of Union Theological Seminary; Metropolitan Nicodim of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church; a Lebanese lawyer; an Indian businessman (an observer).

Ramsey, in fact, gives such penetrating criticisms of the Geneva commitments and provides such balancing factors that one wonders why this point of view was denied effective platform presentation by the Church and Society engineers and was unrepresented on the committee. Not only does he critically analyze a one-sided telegram sent to President Johnson by Geneva participants; he also deplores a telegram sent to the foreign minister of North Viet Nam over the name of Jon L. Regier, NCC associate general secretary for Christian life and mission (this division supervises the Department of International Affairs as well as a special action-for-peace group led by Robert Bilheimer). This telegram to North Viet Nam, which was signed by seventy-five Americans at the Geneva meeting, protested U. S. involvement in Viet Nam and any escalation of the conflict.

Ramsey On Political Ecumenism

The oddity is that contemporary ecumenical social ethics evidences less acknowledgment of the separation between the church and the office of magistrate or citizen than was clearly acknowledged by the great cultural churches of the past—except perhaps by the claims made by the bull Unum Sanctum (Boniface VIII, November 18,1302).

This is, indeed, the most barefaced secular sectarianism and but a new form of culture-Christianity. It would identify Christianity with the cultural vitalities, with the movement of history, with where the action is, with the next and even now the real establishment.…

We should be resolved to say no more about responsibility in society until we have done something about responsible deliberation, and the procedures necessary for this to be made possible, at conferences sponsored by the churches, the NCC and the WCC. I at least would not be able to sleep nights if I thought that decisions of my government concerning problems of middle-range importance and urgency were resolved as rapidly and carelessly and necessarily with as little debate as the Geneva conference presumed to teach particular conclusions of earthshaking importance—which with unnoticed irony often implied irresponsibility on the part of one or another government.

As a Protestant, I, at least, am resolved to stand with Luther against both pope and council, or the pope in council, Visser ’t Hooft in council, or Blake in council, unless I can be shown from Scripture and sound reason.

There is nothing wrong with “dialogue” except that this is not the way to promote it; nor responsible deliberation either, except that this was not it.

A Christian theologian or ethicist would have to be out of his mind to regard the working group paper on “Theological Issues in Social Ethics” produced at the Geneva conference as the basis (or even a basis) for future discussion in any other than the trivial sense that it may on occasion be useful to start talking.

Unless it can be made clear in what way Christian teaching can as such substantively and compellingly lead to these conclusions then this is simply to put the engine of religious fervor behind a particular partisan political point of view which would have as much or as little to recommend it if it had not emanated from a church council.…

The shrewdest device yet for accomplishing this purpose is the reservation that the resolutions and pronouncements on all sorts of subjects advising the statesman what he should do which issue from church councils (or from groups like the Clergy Concerned over Vietnam) in fact do not represent “the church” (or Christian morality) but only the views of the churchmen who happen to be assembled.… They are not in the position of the statesman who has to correct one policy by another and to bear the responsibility for any cost/benefits he may have left out of account. One can scarcely imagine a situation that to a greater extent invites irresponsible utterance.…

Radical steps need to be taken in ecumenical ethics if ever we are to correct the pretense that we are makers of political policy and get on with our proper task of nourishing, judging, and repairing the moral and political ethos of our time.

To pay attention to the distinctive and basic features of Christian social ethics … would make for a proper hesitation in faulting the consciences of our fellow Christians.…

Some may say, this critique of ecumenical social ethics is directed against an abuse of a basically correct undertaking in and among the churches. My thesis, however, is that the abusus (policy directives) has become usus—it has become the fashion—and that one will not sense the strength of the case for a radical reformation in the aims of church social teachings unless he begins by acknowledging this to be true.

Their task should be the nurture of a Christian ethos within the autonomies of the modern world, and not by manifold thought and action to attenuate that ethos still more by eliding it into worldly wisdom.

Prudential political advice comes into the public forum with no special credentials because it issues from Christians or from Christian religious bodies.

Does the older ecumenical movement hope to transcend the peoples among whom Christians are mingled in this world, not in the direction of clearer statement of Christian action-relevant perspectives upon the world’s problems, but in the direction of a universal view of concrete political policies for the world’s statesmen?

For ecumenical councils on Church and Society responsibly to proffer specific advice would require that the church have the services of an entire state department.

The Geneva condemnation of nuclear war (“nuclear war is against God’s will”), asserts Ramsey, does not “push very far into the nuclear problem or the responsibility of governments in the use of power for peace and justice in a nuclear age.” The condemnation, he points out, could be read as a sweeping indictment not only of unlimited destruction but of any use of nuclear weapons in any war, even for deterrence—and that, says Ramsey, “would be impossible and morally wrong.” Geneva stressed proportion of force to rule out nuclear power; the Vatican Council by contrast stressed discrimination.

Ramsey reveals that in the formulation of the Church’s point of view on peace in a nuclear age, not a single participant from any of the world’s four nuclear powers was included among the conference speakers on this theme. The only positive analysis was by the West Berlin theologian Helmut Gollwitzer, champion of nuclear pacifism, who declared that there is “general agreement” that the tests of justice in war have lost validity (their validity was apparently presupposed, however, says Ramsey, when it came to condemning the U. S. role in Viet Nam).

Ramsey characterizes the theological working group at Geneva as “a homeless waif.” He criticizes the paper on “Theological Issues in Social Ethics” on both procedural and substantive grounds and deplores its “mini-Christian analysis” of world problems. Speakers, he observes, had more to say about revolution and its relevance than about theology. What theology there was, was mainly a “truncated Barthianism”—Christological-eschatological dynamic monism, to use the lingo of the professionals. On the one hand, “creation” was reduced to the processes of historicized “nature”; on the other, Christ’s “ever coming present triumph over the powers” was emphasized. The “contextual revolutionary-Christocentric eschatologism” of Geneva collides with mainstream ecumenical theology and with Roman Catholic theology, contends Ramsey, which emphasize the sequence of Creation-Law-Gospel and look for Christ’s triumph over all powers only at the end of the age.

The Decline Of Ecumenical Ethics

So radical has been the shift of orientation in ecumenical ethics that today, Ramsey says, not only do the NCC and WCC alter their own traditional stance, but they also relate to an authentic Christian ethic far less constructively than does the church of Rome. “Not even the ‘magisterium’ of the Roman Catholic Church has in recent centuries, if ever, gone so far in telling statesmen what is required of them.”

Even the older “Faith and Order” models are far superior to the present “Church and Society” image. During the past fifteen years, Faith and Order discussions have experienced a kind of renewal through a concern with basic questions that determine the whole of theology, says Ramsey. But Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft, in his farewell address as general secretary of the WCC, defended the right of church bodies to take a specific stand on controversial social and political issues.

Ramsey approves the way in which Vatican Council II and also John XXIII spoke with socio-political relevance; they pointed directions without ecclesiastically binding the conscience of statesmen, quite in contrast to neo-Protestant ecumenists’ practice of addressing specific directives to political leaders. He commends the social encyclicals of John XXIII, the addresses of Paul VI, and the affirmations of Vatican II for not presuming ecclesiastical competence in policy-making. Although many ecumenists proclaim the end of the Protestant era, they display less ability than Rome, Ramsey suggests, to distinguish church from state, and assume competence to formulate detailed answers to all public questions.

The Church’s attempt to avoid mere “counsels of perfection” by adducing particular policy formulations, Ramsey continues, not only leads to a miscarriage of Christian ethics but also betrays churchmen into supporting bare abstractions. The Church’s pushing of a specific course of action upon a statesman, in the absence of a comprehensive framework of political policy, is as much a matter of useless advice as is political generality: “A bag of specifics is still a generality in relation to actual policy” (p. 29). Equally useless is the alternative of specifically condemning a present course of action and then offering only some indefinite generality as an alternative—advice to “end the bombing,” for example.

But an even worse prospect, warns Ramsey, is that ecumenical politicians may view the Church as “a surrogate world political community” with its own “shadow state department” that tells the governments of the world what to do. Some churchmen, in fact, contend that the Church’s stature in political involvement should be improved through the drafting of more “experts” to address ecumenical specifics to the world. But “it is the aim of specificity in the church’s resolutions and proclamations that should be radically called in question.” And even if the Church were to draft experts, says Ramsey, since the experts themselves disagree, the ecumenical curia could still be expected to protect its own prejudices.

For many years ecumenical politicians have demeaned as deficient in social conscience all evangelical critics of their policy-making intrusions into secular affairs. Professor Ramsey speaks not only from within the conciliar movement as an active Geneva participant but also as a member of the American Society of Christian Ethics and as an author of numerous books in the field of morals. Already one spokesman for the WCC hierarchy has privately remarked that Ramsey lacks the humility to conform his views to the weightier opinions of fellow ecumenical theologians. What neo-Protestant Christianity may now be expected to witness, therefore, is either a bolder assertion of the infallibility of the ecumenical curia or a deeper testing of the ability of ecumenical politicians to foist their personal biases upon secular leaders in the name of the Protestant churches.

Twice each year, in February and September, we devote an issue to religious books. Good books, like good friends, add vision and zest to life; to live without them is like inhabiting a windowless house.

To my amazement my own library has grown to almost 10,000 volumes. Now crowding my office, they will enhance study and basement at home when shelves are ready.

This literary reserve is an incomparable treasure that I began searching out as a college student. Ransacking used book stores here and abroad for the best of the past, I annually added some of the best of the present also. During long years of seminary teaching, the routine included reading a new book weekly in my field.

Books sometimes come alive in unexpected ways. On my shelves Machen and Renan stand sentry a few feet apart, and Barth and Brunner and Bultmann, and Plato and Dewey and Augustine. Their ideas clash loud as thunder on the Potomac, but their personal silence is like judgment morning. This destiny is a sobering invitation to any author to meditate long, silent weeks on what needs most to be said to our time. A spigot that refuses to be turned off does not always make the profoundest contribution to the watershed of words.