Fourth in a Series on the Church in Politics

‟By the creation of this united church, we shall establish a religio-political body to which no government will dare say: ‘No.’ ” This was the opinion of a leading advocate of church union in Canada in the early twenties, and by 1925 the church-unionists’ lobby in Ottawa had succeeded in having the House of Commons pass a bill forcing all Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians into the United Church of Canada, whether they wished it or not. Although the bill was eventually modified by the Senate, the church-unionists’ views were not. The use of political pressure has characterized other inclusivist ecclesiastical bodies down through the ages, and the same desire for political power seems to dominate much present-day ecumenical thinking. This point of view flatly contravenes the views of the early Protestant Reformers.

The medieval church had constantly asserted its supremacy over the state, claiming wide political authority. Pope Innocent III (1161–1216) had accepted the feudal submission of a number of monarchs, including the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the king of England, and had instigated a sanguinary military crusade against the Albigensian heretics of southern France. Under his leadership the papacy had reached the highest point of its prestige and power, but it remained for Boniface VIII (1235–1303) in his bull Unam Sanctam to state most fully the papal claims to absolute universal sovereignty. Although in its early days the Church may have exerted political influence for many good ends, such as freeing slaves and protecting the poor, when it became influential men often entered the clergy merely to participate in its power, as an end in itself. This was one of the reasons for the increasing worldliness and spiritual decline of the Church.

The Protestant Reformation brought a radical change in this whole situation. Not only did the Reformers preach the biblical doctrines of justification and sanctification; their beliefs reached also to such matters as Christian stewardship, the nature of the Church, and the authority of the civil magistrate. They held very strong and rather revolutionary views, based on Scripture, that placed them in conflict with the church of Rome, which sought to dominate the civil state for its own ends. Thus the Reformation brought about not only a religious but also a political re-formation that helped many rulers in the developing national states to assert their rights against papal claims.

As in all their thinking, the Reformers sought to derive their ideas on matters of church and state from the Old and New Testaments. Both testaments asserted without equivocation that the civil authority was ordained by God just as much as was the priesthood (cf. 1 Sam. 8 and 16). And Paul in Romans 13:1 ff. upheld the same view even with regard to the pagan ruler who sat upon the Roman imperial throne in his day. Furthermore, in the Old Testament, kings such as Josiah and Hezekiah had at times to reform Jewish religious life against the wishes of the religious leaders. There seemed to be ample biblical support for stressing the independence of the civil magistrate from ecclesiastical control.

Another contribution to the Reformers’ views of the relation of Church and civil magistrate was Augustine of Hippo’s City of God. In this work Augustine clearly elaborated the idea that the state held a position very different from that of the Church, and also independent of the Church. Indeed, at times one gains the impression from Augustine that the state was the Kingdom of the Earth and the Church the Kingdom of God, so that the Church could not possibly have any part in the work of the state. The medieval church often interpreted his views as giving it the right to direct the civil magistrate; but to many in the sixteenth century, he seemed to speak more in terms of a clear separation of the functions of the two bodies.

Influenced by these and other writings, the Reformers’ view of the relation of the Church to the civil magistrate had its foundation in the strongly held belief that Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings. He exercises his lordship on behalf of his people, the Church, and he does so principally through two instruments, the Church and the civil government. Both Church and state are equally Christ’s possessions and derive their particular authority and responsibilities from his sovereign determination (Calvin, Institutes 4:1:1 and 20:4; Compend of Luther’s Theology, H. T. Kerr, ed., p. 216). Only the Anabaptists, who held the state to be established solely for the restraint of sinners, denied the authority of the civil magistrate over Christians and sought to separate themselves from his rule. All the other Protestants accepted this religious and political duality in society.

While the Reformers accepted it, however, they made a clear distinction between the functions, aims, and methods of the Church and those of the state. Christ’s rule in and through the Church has a spiritual objective, the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of the saints. This he accomplishes solely by spiritual means: the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, which are made effective in men’s hearts by no other means than the action of the Holy Spirit. This is the “power of the keys” that Christ bestowed upon the Church through the apostles before his ascension (Compend …, pp. 123 ff.; Institutes, 4:11:1 ff.). The Church’s objective and means are therefore exclusively spiritual.

This is true even of ecclesiastical discipline, a point on which Calvin comes out more clearly than Luther. When dealing, in the Institutes, with the Church as a means of grace, Calvin points to the importance of the Church’s disciplinary authority and insists that it is only spiritual:

For the holy bishops of the early church never exercised their authority by fines, imprisonments or other civil punishments; but as became them, employed nothing but the word of the Lord. For the severest vengeance, the ultimate punishment of the Church, is excommunication, which is never resorted to without absolute necessity. Now, excommunication requires no external force, but is content with the power of the word of God [Institutes, Allen’s translation, 4:11:5]

That this should be so is only natural, since the Church’s binding and loosing power was bestowed upon it by Christ solely for the spiritual edification and growth of his people.

How different, on the other hand, are the aims and instruments of the state. The work of the state is carried on in this world, for the civil magistrate has the duty and obligation of maintaining peace and equity among men upon earth. As Luther put it:

But the unchristian portion of people require another government, even the civil sword, since they will not be controlled by the word of God.

God has provided for non-Christians a different government outside the Christian estate and God’s kingdom, and has subjected them to the sword, so that even though they would do so, they cannot practice their wickedness, and that, if they do, they may not do it without fear nor in peace and prosperity [Compend …, pp. 216–18].

Calvin agreed wholeheartedly with these words when he stated that the civil government “provides that there may be a public form of religion among Christians and that humanity may be maintained among men” (Institutes 4:20:3). He did not think, however, that the state should lay down laws according to its own will concerning religion and public worship.

By what means is the civil magistrate to fulfill his duties? To this both Luther and Calvin replied: by the sword. They did not mean that the magistrate’s every action is to be violent, but they did insist that he has the right to employ coercive power against wrongdoers for the protection of both Church and state. In so saying, they accepted implicitly Paul’s statements on civil authority in Romans 13, upon which they both commented more than once. They believed that if peace is preserved, equity and justice guaranteed, and blasphemy and heresy prevented, a nation’s material and spiritual prosperity is ensured.

Someone may well point out that by giving the rulers power to preserve the Church from the attacks of blasphemers and heretics, the Reformers were giving them undue influence in the Church. This was true of Ulrich Zwingli, the Protestant leader in Zürich. Luther and Calvin, however, approached the matter from a different angle. While assuming that there would be only one church to a nation, they also held that the rulers would be Christians and so would humble themselves under the religious teachings of the Church (Institutes 4:11:4). They would therefore seek to make Christian principles effective in their rule over a Christian society. The Church, however, has no authority to dictate to the rulers or to determine their policy but must depend upon their application of Christianity according to their own conscience and understanding.

What if the rulers are papists or non-Christians? The Church cannot then depend upon the magistrates’ Christian commitment. Still it must constantly bear its witness to them, even as it does to Christian rulers. But there it must stop. Neither Luther nor Calvin thought that ecclesiastics should hold political office, nor did they accept the idea that the Church could dethrone monarchs or instigate insurrections against even the most oppressive rulers (Compend …, pp. 219 ff.; Institutes 4:11:9). Thus they set their faces firmly against the claims and pretensions of the medieval papacy.

In all of this, Luther, Calvin and their principal followers practiced what they preached. Luther never held any civil office, and Calvin did not become even a citizen of Geneva until 1559, when the town council invited him to do so—after twenty years of residence and work there. If the occasion arose, they spoke out clearly on moral issues or even made suggestions about other matters, such as the treatment of the poor. But they claimed no authority over the civil magistrates. Rather they concentrated on preaching the Gospel, instructing the people, and providing good examples as Christians. Their power and authority were moral and spiritual, nothing else.

After their days conditions changed somewhat, particularly in Germany, where the Lutheran Church tended to fall under the control of the princes. With the Peace of Augsburg (1555), it was finally determined that each ruler should decide the religious affiliation of his subjects. This gave the civil authorities an undue control over the Church. It applied, however, only to Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Calvinists in Holland, France, England, Scotland, and elsewhere with more or less faithfulness followed the Genevan Reformer’s precepts. The Scottish Reformed church strongly opposed the bestowal of political offices on ecclesiastics, and even in New England, concerning which we hear much talk of “theocracy,” the ministers did not hold magisterial office. Thus the Calvinistic tradition has always emphasized the importance of the separation of the functions and authority of the “two governments.”

In estimating the political influence of the Reformation, therefore, one must agree that the Reformation meant the emancipation of the civil magistrate from the overweening ambition of ecclesiastics. Not that it adopted the Machiavellian view that the civil magistrate should govern his actions purely by raisons d’état that had no moral content. The Reformers insisted that the magistrate, acting in his own sphere, was responsible for his action not to the Church or its leaders but solely and directly to Jesus Christ, the Lord of both Church and state. From this truth, which the Reformers brought out for the first time in a thousand years, have flowed many of our present political liberties.

Unfortunately, many present-day ecclesiastical leaders seem to have forgotten these views of Luther, Calvin, and other sixteenth-century Reformers. They fail to see that God has not mixed the two spheres but keeps them carefully separated. The state must not interfere with or try to control the Church, though some are always trying to circumvent this idea. At the same time, the Church cannot dictate to nor seek to control the state. It must content itself with preaching the Gospel and seeking by its moral influence to have Christian principles applied to contemporary problems. In this alone is its authority and in this alone its power.

In this panel three scholars discuss the new morality in the light of biblical ethics. They are: Dr. James Daane, director of the Pastoral Doctorate Program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a minister of the Christian Reformed Church; Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, chairman of the Department of Church History at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and a minister of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; and Dr. Leon Morris, canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral (Anglican) in Melbourne, Australia, where he is also principal of Ridley College. Moderator of the discussion is Editor Carl F. H. Henry ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.This is one of a filmed series of thirteen half-hour panels prepared for public-service television presentation and for use by church and college discussion groups. The series, “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” was produced by Educational Communication Association (P.O. Box 114, Indianapolis, Indiana 46204) under a Lilly Endowment grant.

Henry: Shouldn’t we expect morals or ethics to change, just as transportation does, so that what was good enough for our grandparents or godparents isn’t necessarily good enough for us? After all, is the old morality good just because it’s old? Or is the new morality rather immorality? And shouldn’t one’s moral decisions, after all, be one’s personal decisions?

Montgomery: I’m not very happy with this analogy between transportation and morality. It makes me think of the comparison between an elephant and a tube of toothpaste: neither one can ride a bicycle. It’s possible to compare any two things, but the question is, Is there any legitimate basis for the comparison? It looks to me as if in the New Testament the Christian morality is not a traditional morality. It’s set over against traditionalism. Jesus is constantly striking against the religious leaders of his day who obscured absolute truth through tradition. For him absolute truth is the most contemporaneous thing in the world, and therefore his morality is the most exciting kind of guidance for life.

Henry: That’s an important point, I think, that the New Testament morality is not simply a traditional morality.

Morris: I think we have to be very careful in talking about the new morality because the expression can be used in more ways than one. For some people the new morality is simply an out. They want an easy way in life, and they use the new morality as an excuse for letting down the floodgates and doing the things they want to do that deep down they know are wrong. But for other people the new morality is a very serious attempt to think through problems of ethics and to give to men of this day an approach which will be validly based. They think that the old traditional basing is quite in error. They would feel that traditionally the Bible stands as the standard, and they just don’t like that. Now this new morality poses the whole problem of where we find our standards. Are we to regard the Bible as simply giving us some nice thoughts of men of antiquity, or is it the very revelation of the living God himself?

Daane: I suspect that we can answer the question about change in morality by saying that moral responses change with the changing of the times. But the references, the objective moral standards, the Ten Commandments, if you will, by reference to which these acts are moral or immoral, do not change.

Henry: Well, let’s take a look at the new morality, or situational ethics, or existential ethics, as it’s sometimes called. We know that it rejects fixed moral principles and that it reduces everything, as it were, to love. As the Anglican Bishop John Robinson would say, in Honest to God, love and do as you please. After all, didn’t Jesus of Nazareth say that love is the new and great commandment?

Morris: Yes, but didn’t he also say that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it? It’s just too easy, in my judgment, to say that Jesus taught an ethic of love and then to put a full stop. He did teach love, but he also had a very high place for law. Take the Sermon on the Mount. You get a kind of refrain running through that: “You have heard that it was said to them of old time … but I say unto you.…” But all the time what Jesus does is to reinforce what had been said in old times. He never does away with it. For instance, he takes the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and he doesn’t say, “Let’s do away with that and from now on anybody who wants to can commit adultery.” Rather, he says “Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery in his heart.” You see, he takes the law and says: This is a good commandment; it ought to be kept, but it ought to be taken further. I think you will find that right through the teaching of Jesus there runs this emphasis on righteousness, on justice, as well as on love. Now, I’m not suggesting that we should take love lightly, but we ought to keep these things in balance.

Henry: You think it’s an oversimplification to reduce the whole of biblical morality to love?

Morris: Oh, yes.

Montgomery: Yes, Jesus places a great deal of stress on the combination of love and the keeping of commandments. For example, he says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” There is quite a contrast between this and the vagueness of the so-called new morality or situational ethics. Canon Rhymes—and Joseph Fletcher maintains much the same position—holds that one acts simply in order to bring about maximum wholeness in the other person, or to bring about the greatest benefits for a group. This just begs the question. What is maximum wholeness? What is the greatest benefit? Psychoanalysis, it seems to me, has shown in the twentieth century that people are really not aware of the degree to which selfishness strikes them in their actions. You know, the statement is made that a psychiatrist and a coal miner have a good deal in common. The psychiatrist goes down deeper, stays down longer, and comes up dirtier. He comes up with more evidence of the selfishness that operates in human life. In order to deal with the problem of selfishness, it’s necessary to have external objective standards by which our selfishness can be brought into the light.

Henry: Well, are you saying that the new morality is pervaded by a certain vagueness? That love as the new morality states it is quite ambiguous and lacking in content and direction?

Montgomery: Yes, very definitely. Love is a motive. It doesn’t in itself define the nature of the obligations.

Daane: It seems to me that you can put the matter this way. The new morality runs into difficulty when it appeals to love and when it appeals to Jesus without any specific biblical context. You spoke of wholeness a moment ago. Many of these Christocentric theologians appeal to Jesus to find out what a whole, new man would do in this area of sex and they run into a dead-end street, because Jesus didn’t happen to get married or court girls. Right at this point the attempt to separate Jesus and love from the total situation of the Bible makes the new morality run into something highly abstract and even blank.

Henry: What do you mean by a Christocentric ethic in contrast to a biblical ethic?

Daane: Well, I mean the people that appeal not specifically to the Bible but to Jesus and to the fact that Jesus says you have to love. Now in the area of love you can’t look to Jesus and looking at him alone find out how you ought to court your girl, because he set no example at this point. That’s what I mean by determining an ethic in terms of Jesus alone, apart from the Bible.

Montgomery: Is there any Jesus apart from the Bible? What kind of Jesus are they talking about? This is what bothers me. It looks to me as if one either obtains one’s portrait of Jesus and his ethic from the primary documents or develops this out of one’s self. One spins a Jesus out of one’s own self, as the spider spins …

Daane: Well, particularly in the area of sex, because no one has spun it out for you.

Henry: The term Jesus or Christ becomes a philosophical abstraction rather than anything really identifiable in terms of the historical Jesus.

Daane: Well, he isn’t a norm, I would say, at this point. Jesus by himself apart from the biblical context cannot be taken for a norm in the area of sexuality simply because he did not get married and raise a family or so far as we know practice sexuality of any kind.

Henry: Now, the new morality rejects fixed moral principles and concentrates, as you know, on immediate relationships between persons, and it finds in love alone the only fixed content of morality. Well, how does Christian ethics, authentically Christian ethics, differ from this? What difference does it make by way of contrast if one makes a moral choice in the authentically biblical tradition?

Morris: The point we’ve already made is that Jesus insisted on justice, on righteousness, as well as on love. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” You can parallel this in all sorts of ways. He kept telling people that if they wanted to follow him they would have to take up their cross day by day and follow him. This stands for an attitude of following in the steps of Jesus, doing the things he would have people do. He kept insisting that people must do righteousness, do justice, as well as do love. I think we get the New Testament quite wrong if we omit that particular emphasis.

Montgomery: Yes, and he never allowed the situation to determine the ethical involvement. He didn’t maintain an attitude of ethical relativity. This is the main difficulty, as far as I can see, with the new morality, that it allows the situation to determine the ethical principles and thereby really leaves the situation without ethical principles. For example, take the differences in morality one encounters in various cultural situations. I presume that among cannibals it’s a basic ethical principle to clean your plate. But I doubt very much that Jesus would have appreciated this kind of approach.

Daane: It seems to me that the distinction between the biblical morality and the so-called new morality at this point is that in biblical thought love is defined for you in precepts, in commandments, in moral imperatives. The heart of Christianity, after all, is that God so loved the world that he gave his Son. So the revelation of the essence of Christianity is the love of God, which means that we have to be told what love is. Now, in the new morality you decide what love is in the heat of the moment, maybe in the back seat of the car, in the moment of uncontrolled or well-nigh uncontrolled passion.

Montgomery: Which isn’t easy.

Daane: And now the Bible comes to you and tells you that this is love and that is love, but it doesn’t let you decide in every given situation or in any given situation just what is an act of love or is not. Hence, from the biblical point of view homosexuality is ruled out as one possible expression of love.

Henry: Let’s take the given moral situation in modern times. As I recall, the Kinsey Report projects—and one always has certain doubts about the reliability of statistical samplings—but at any rate it projects that almost half of the American college women have sexual relationships before marriage. And the American Family Service says—I presume also on the basis of a projection from a statistical sampling—that one in five brides is now pregnant at the time of marriage. Now that brings to mind a passage that would bear on this from Bishop Robinson’s Honest to God. I quote: “Nothing can of itself be labeled as wrong. Sex relations before marriage or divorce may be wrong ninety-nine cases, or even one hundred cases, out of one hundred, but they are not intrinsically so, for the only intrinsic evil is lack of love.” Now, I submit that if Bishop Robinson’s abandonment of fixed moral principles is right, his figures are capable of a complete inversion so that premarital intercourse and divorce might be right on his presuppositions a hundred times out of a hundred rather than one out of a hundred. What about the consequences of an unprincipled morality?

Morris: I think that if you have that kind of morality you are shot to pieces. Once you admit the possibility of an exception you can no longer have a morality that’s worth having, because, human nature being what it is, every one of us believes that the exception applies in his own particular case. The rule is for somebody else, the exception is for me. And the dikes are unleashed and the floods come in. A moment ago Dr. Daane was talking about what might happen in the back of a car. If you’ve got two teen-age kids in the back of a car and they’ve got in their minds firmly the idea that there can be exceptions in this matter of sex morals …

Henry: Because they love each other so much.

Morris: Exactly. They see themselves as different from other people. Nobody ever had to put up with the difficulties we have to put up with. Nobody ever loved as we love. So that there is just nothing to hold them. But where they have a firm grasp on great principles of morality, then they can say immediately, “This is wrong,” and they know where they are. It seems to me that one great weakness in the new morality is that it fails to give clear guidance to people who need clear guidance.

Henry: It’s interesting that here in the District of Columbia a couple of years ago a student at one of the local universities killed a coed because he loved her so much. This was his report to the police—a very interesting story.

Daane: Now on the basis of the new morality this could not be judged bad. Right?

Henry: Well, in Bishop Robinson’s Christian Morals Today, a later publication, after the storm over his earlier work, the bishop backtracks a bit. He says in regard to premarital sex relationships that there is a bonding element between sex and marriage which is so firm that one might almost invariably say that premarital sex is wrong. My point is that if the bishop is here saying that in this one situation, premarital sex, there is an objective principle that controls sex in all situations and places, he has introduced the very sort of principle he said was illicit and illegitimate to begin with. You cannot have both a principled ethic and an unprincipled ethic jumbled side by side. You’ve got to have one or the other, and I don’t think you can play Bishop Robinson’s tune on Gabriel’s horn.

Morris: It’s difficult. In that book he is desperately trying, it would seem to me, to preserve something like the traditional code of morals. You remember that he says that every society must have its net—that some nets are finer than others but that the net has to be woven by society. People then are kept within reasonable bounds. But what he never does, it seems to me, is show why there should be a net and why a net should have its strands in such and such a place. In other words, we’re back at the point I was trying to make a little while ago: The new morality offers no clear guidance for people who have to make an agonizing decision. They are thrown back on their own resources. They may be the exception to the general rule; there is just no way for them to know what is right.

Montgomery: The biblical morality is frequently criticized for not taking into account exceptions, for being simplistic. But it seems to me that exactly the opposite is true. It’s the new morality that is simplistic in thinking that somehow, magically, out of such situations as the teen-agers in the car, you get solutions to problems like this.

Morris: It asks too much of people.

Montgomery: Right. The Christian morality fully recognizes the difficulty of moral decision. Frequently a Christian finds himself in a position in which he must decide that one moral principle must be violated in favor of other moral principles, but he never vindicates himself in this situation. He decides in terms of the lesser of evils or the greater of goods, and this drives him to the Cross to ask forgiveness for the human situation in which this kind of complication and ambiguity exists.

Henry: There is a difference between the exception that is recognized as wicked and sinful and needing repentance and forgiveness and an exception that is tolerated as presumably moral.

Daane: The exceptional ethical situation creates even for Christian morality an exceptional amount of difficulty. But in Christianity there are exceptions. It seems to me that it is very indicative of the new morality that the exceptions, the most-far-out ethical situations, best illustrate its character. It’s the son and mother who alone are left after a nuclear war who then are left with the task of repopulating the race. It’s the mother in a concentration camp who if she gets pregnant with another man can return to her family. These exceptional ethical situations are most indicative and illuminating for the nature of this new morality, which makes the exception the prime thing rather than, as in biblical morality, the reverse. And as to the question why the new morality is attractive …

Henry: What gives it its appeal today?

Daane: It seems to me it is attractive for two reasons. Some people find it an excuse for sexual license. But others find that they warm up to the idea that what is demanded is love, which is certainly true enough; even Christians believe this. It depends, however, upon how you define love. The new morality leaves love undefined; it seems to me that this is one of its basic weaknesses.

Montgomery: Yes. Some people think also that contemporary psychology gives reason for moving in the direction of the new morality. But those who take this view are very much deceived. Psychology has come to the conclusion in recent years that there must be a structure of principle within which the individual operates. Without the structure of principle, the individual gradually comes to the conclusion that no one cares. If one attempts to bring up a child without any structure of principle, the child will keep pressuring to see if anybody out there really loves him to the extent of providing an opportunity for him to move by principle. And this means that if the structures are left out, the child or the adult destroys himself trying to create principle from within.

Daane: Which means that nobody loves to be utterly alone in the universe.

Montgomery: Right. C. S. Lewis has pointed out in his Preface to Paradise Lost that Milton’s greatness came from the fact that he used his genius within a framework and that this is characteristic of great art and literature through the centuries. It’s also characteristic of great morality.

Henry: Well, now, the new morality is not for many people who live by it an articulate view of ethical decision. If the Bible is taken seriously and man is a sinner who needs to be redeemed, isn’t this vagabond morality what people naturally live by? What about the Gentile world that early Christianity faced? Look at the first chapter of Romans.

Morris: I think that’s a very important point, because there are a lot of people today who’ve got the idea that traditional Christianity gives a morality that is good for people who are half inclined to be good anyway. But that doesn’t work in a time like the present, when there is very much license and people are doing all sorts of things they ought not to do. But they overlook altogether the fact that Christianity was born into a world like that. Take, for instance, such a man as Seneca, a great and good philosopher. He went on record as saying that chastity is simply a proof of ugliness. Or again, he says that innocency is not rare; it’s non-existent. This kind of statement could be paralleled again and again from the classical authors of the first century. Into that world Christianity came with its uncompromising demand that people put away altogether what passed for sex ethics in their day. Lecky, the historian of European morals, maintains that chastity was the one new virtue that Christianity brought into the world. Now whether or not you believe the truth of that, the important thing is that Christianity came into a world where it was accepted unquestioningly that continence was an unreasonable demand to make on any man—with the women, of course, it was different.

Henry: Gentlemen, I think we have come—if you’ll excuse me, Dr. Morris—to just about the end of our panel. We have only enough time left for a closing summary statement by each of the panel members.

Daane: I would say that the new morality is in part a concession to the times. Yet one ought to be a bit careful here, remembering what we have just been saying. I notice that most of the professional advocates of the new morality are men who are well on in years. Secondly, I would say that the new morality has an appeal against an excessive amount of legalism found in the whole church tradition. But its great weakness is that it leaves the central thing it demands, namely love, undefined, and it’s up to each individual to define it as he wills. At that point it becomes dangerous.

Montgomery: Ours is a day when concern for social justice has come to the fore to an extent unparalleled in many generations of the past. It seems to me that this is a time of all times when an absolute ethic is a necessity. If we are concerned about people who are disenfranchised, people who are suffering from cultural prejudice, and the like, we had better have a very clean-cut standard of ethics, so that prejudicial attitudes toward these people cannot be justified under any circumstances. This the Christian faith provides. The Christian faith says that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free; we are all one in Jesus Christ. This kind of absolute claim stands regardless of the particular cultural situation.

Henry: Dr. Morris.

Morris: Two things. It seems to me that the new moralists pay insufficient attention to the fact that God has made a revelation of himself in Scripture and that this revelation carries with it great principles which stand back of moral conduct. And the other thing is that this same revelation brings before us the Spirit of God himself, who helps men be the kind of people they ought to be.

Henry: Nothing we have said on this panel is intended to lessen the importance of love. But we have emphasized that love gains its direction from the commandments of God. The Ten Commandments are still the divine standard by which the whole world will be judged. Jesus Christ came to fulfill, not to destroy, the law, and both the Bible and Jesus, its central figure, agree that a holy life is the only wise life, the only strong life, and the only truly happy life. Thank you, gentlemen, for an illuminating and thought-provoking discussion.

Conversion to Christ means an entirely new dimension of living

The word on the lips of the peoples of the world today is “revolution.” Every few days we read in our newspapers of another revolution somewhere in the world; an old regime has been overthrown and a new regime has taken over. Conversion is a revolution in the life of an individual. The old forces of sin, self-centeredness, and evil are overthrown from their place of supreme power. Jesus Christ is put on the throne.

No one can read the New Testament without recognizing that its message calls for conversion. Jesus said: “Except ye be converted … ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Paul encouraged men to “be … reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20) and insisted that God now “commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Paul viewed his office as that of an ambassador for Christ—“as though God did beseech you by us” (2 Cor. 5:20). It was James who said: “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (Jas. 5:20), and Peter taught that we are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (1 Pet. 1:23).

In reading the New Testament we are confronted with many incidents of men and women who encountered Christ either personally or through hearing the message preached. Something happened to them! None of their experiences were identical, but most of them experienced a change of mind and attitude and entered an entirely new dimension of living.

In my opinion there is no technical terminology for the biblical doctrine of conversion. Many words are used to describe or imply this experience; many biblical stories are used to illustrate it. However, I am convinced, after years of studying Scripture and observing conversions in the lives of thousands, that it is far more than a psychological phenomenon—it is the “turning” of the whole man to God.

I would suggest three elements which in combination I have found most effective in conversion. The first is the use of the Bible. The Bible needs more proclaiming than defending, and when proclaimed its message can be relied upon to bring men to conversion. But it must be preached with a sense of authority. This is not authoritarianism or even dogmatism; it is preaching with utter confidence in the reliability of the kerygma. A. M. Chirgwin observed that the Reformers “wanted everyone to have a chance to read the Bible because they believed profoundly in its converting power.” This could be said of every great era of evangelism. I know of no great forward movements of the Church of Jesus Christ that have not been closely bound up with the message of the Bible.

Recently my attention was called to one of the most thrilling stories I have ever heard about the power of the Word of God. In 1941 an old Tzeltal Indian of southern Mexico approached a young man by the name of Bill Bentley in the village of Bachajon and said: “When I was north I heard of a book that tells about God. Do you know of such a book?” Bill Bentley did. In fact, he had a copy, he said; and if the tribe would permit him to build a house and live among them, he would translate the book into their language.

In the meantime, Bill returned to the United States to marry his fiancée, Mary Anna Slocum. Together they planned to go to Mexico in the fall. But when fall came, Mary Anna returned to Mexico alone. Six days before the wedding Bill had died suddenly, and Mary Anna had requested that the Wycliffe Bible Translators let her carry on his work. When she reached the village of Bachajon, the Indians had been warned against the white missionary, and instead of welcoming her, they threatened her that if she settled among them they would burn her house down. Settling in another part of the tribe, she began patiently to learn the Tzeltal language, translating portions of the Word of God, and compiling a hymnbook in Tzeltal.

Six years passed and Mary Anna was joined by Florence Gerdel, a nurse. They started a clinic to which many Tzeltals came for treatment. Mary Anna had completed the translation of the Gospel of Mark and started on the Book of Acts. A small chapel was built by the Indians who had abandoned their idols for the living Christ.

In the highland village of Corralito, a little nucleus of believers grew from five families to seventy Christians, and they sent for the missionary women to come teach them the Word of God. Mary Anna and Florence went and were warmly welcomed by all seventy, who stood outside their huts and very reverently sang most of the hymns in the Tzeltal hymnbook. In little over a year there were 400 believers. One of the most faithful was the former witch doctor, Thomas, who was among the first to throw his idols away.

By the end of the following year there were over 1,000 believers. Because of the pressure of the crowds, Mary Anna could make little progress in her translation work. Concerned, the Indians freed the president of the congregation to help Mary Anna with the translation while they themselves took turns helping in his cornfield. When unbelieving Indians burned down their new chapel, the Christian Indians knelt in the smoldering ruins and prayed for their enemies. In the months following, many of these enemies were soundly converted to Christ.

By the end of 1958 there were more than 5,000 Tzeltal believers in Corralito, Bachajon, and twenty other villages in the tribe. The New Testament in Tzeltal had been completed.

Mary Anna Slocum and another missionary moved to the Chol tribe, where there was a small group of believers who desperately needed the Word of God in their own language. Others came to help. Indians volunteered to build the much needed airstrip for the mission plane. As the believers multiplied, chapels large and small appeared throughout the area.

When the Chol New Testament was completed, there were over 5,000 believers in that tribe and thirty congregations. One hundred young men had been trained to preach and teach, and a number had learned to do simple medical work. A missionary wrote:

Formerly these Indians were indebted to the Mexican ranchers who lived in the area holding large coffee plantations. They also sold liquor. The Indians, before conversion, were habitual drunkards, in debt to these land-holders. To pay off their debts the land-owners forced them to work on their plantations whenever they needed work. After the Indians became Christians, they stopped their drinking, paid off their debts and began to plant their own coffee plantations. The coffee of the ranchers was left unharvested. As a result, the Mexican ranchers have been forced to sell the land to the Indians and are moving out of the area.

What a tremendous illustration of the power of the Scriptures! I am more convinced than ever that the Scriptures do not need to be defended but proclaimed.

Secondly, there needs to be a clearly defined theology of evangelism—not so much a new theology but a special emphasis upon certain aspects of the theology that has been in the mainstream of the Church throughout its history, both Catholic and Protestant. It is the theology that focuses attention upon the person and work of Christ on behalf of the alienated in every generation, the theology that invites sinful men to be reconciled to God.

Dr. D. T. Niles has written: “No understanding of Christian evangelism is possible without an appreciation of the nature of Christian proclamation. It is not an affirmation of ideals which men must test and practice; it is not an explanation of life and its problems about which men may argue and which in some form they must agree; it is rather the announcement of an event with which men must reckon. ‘God has made Him both Lord and Christ.’ There is a finality about that pronouncement. It is independent of human opinion and human choice.”

Thirdly, there must be an awareness that conversion is a supernatural change brought about by the Holy Spirit, who himself communicates the truth. At every evangelistic conference we hear discussion of “how we can communicate the Gospel to our age.” We must always remember that the Holy Spirit is the communicating agent. Without the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no such thing as conversion. The Scriptures teach that this is a supernatural work of God. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts men of sin. Jesus said: “And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). It is the Holy Spirit who gives new life. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5).

There is a mystery in one aspect of conversion that I have never been able to fathom, and I have never read a book of theology that satisfies me at this point—the relation between the sovereignty of God and man’s free will. It seems to me that both are taught in the Scriptures and both are involved. Certainly we are ordered to proclaim the Gospel, and man is urged to respond.

However, this one act is not the end of the matter. It is only the beginning! The Scriptures teach that the Holy Spirit comes to indwell each believing heart (1 Cor. 3:16). It is the Holy Spirit who produces the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), such as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. It is the Holy Spirit who guides us and enlightens us as we study the Scriptures (Luke 12:12). We are told that we can also be “filled” with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). The missionary expansion of the Church in the early centuries was a result of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19, 20) and no less of the joyful constraint created in believers’ hearts at Pentecost. They had been filled with the Spirit. This great event was such a transforming experience that they did not need to refer to a prior command for their missionary activities. They were spontaneously moved to proclaim the Gospel.

While there is no doubt that certain persons have a charismatic endowment by the Holy Spirit for evangelism (Eph. 4:11), yet in a sense every Christian is to be an evangelist. In little more than ten years, Paul established churches in four provinces of the empire—Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia. Before A.D. 47 there were no churches in these provinces. In A.D. 57 Paul could speak as if his work there was done and could plan extensive tours into the Far West without anxiety lest the churches he had founded perish in his absence for want of his guidance and support. Such speed and thoroughness in the establishment of churches cannot be explained apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit and a sense of responsibility for evangelism by every Christian.

The missionary responsibility was interwoven with the most important offices of the early Church. Each bishop was expected to be an evangelist and to encourage the evangelization of pagans in his own diocese. Some of the renowned missionaries of the post-apostolic period were Gregory Thaumaturgus of Pontus, who became bishop in 240 and carried on successful evangelistic work in his diocese; Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia, under whom a mass conversion took place; Ulfilas, who preached to the Goths; the enthusiastic Martin of Tours; Ambrose of Milan; and Augustine of Hippo. Almost all of these people were converts to Christianity and propagated their newly found faith with a Spirit-filled zeal reminiscent of the apostolic age.

I believe that if our clergy today were filled with the Spirit and out among the people, even on street comers, proclaiming the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, a new day would dawn for the Church. Paul said that in Corinth he did not use clever words or persuasive language. He said: “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). He knew that in the Cross and Resurrection there was power to change an individual and a society.

Conversion is the impact of the kerygma upon the whole man, convincing his intellect, warming his emotions, and causing his will to act with decision! I have no doubt that if every Christian in the world suddenly began proclaiming the Gospel and winning others to an encounter with Jesus Christ, the effect upon our society would be revolutionary.

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY who shared the vision of an Institute for Advanced Christian Studies can walk taller this week with the good news that this venture will make a modest beginning in 1968 (see editorial, page 26).

Many lonely church workers in the United States are surprised and gratified to discover that evangelicals in this land may number about 40 million. Only their isolation and competition keep them from achieving common evangelistic and spiritual goals, since numerically they constitute the largest religious grouping in American life.

Somewhere I have noted that, were evangelicals each to give only one extra dollar a year to some evangelical venture, they could see dramatic results. Some 800 of our readers posted a dollar to the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies—before there even was an Institute; others still have an opportunity to do so.

Ultimately the institute headquarters could be located in Philadelphia or New York, Boston, Washington, Berkeley, or some Midwestern city such as Ann Arbor. What is needed is a suburban estate or urban center with access to a major university complex and to adequate library research facilities. Such estates are often tax burdens. The dedication of an attractive site to the advancement of the truth of revelation in a secular culture could give bright new power and visibility to evangelical realities.

Not only creeping republicanism but also creeping secularism is developing in Canada as traditional Christian symbols are dropped from government along with traditional royal ones. The new national flag with a maple leaf as its main symbol has replaced the flag in whose top left corner appeared a Union Jack with its three crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick. Now parliament has made “O Canada” the national anthem, replacing “God Save the Queen.”

What the exact words of the new national anthem will be is still unknown. A parliamentary committee is working on a revision of a version that has been sung popularly but unofficially for two generations. The desire for revision is due in part to a dislike of the song’s several repetitions of the words, “We stand on guard for thee”:

O Canada, our home and native land,

True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts, we see thee rise,

The True North, strong and free,

And stand on guard, O Canada,

We stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, glorious and free,

We stand on guard, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

But a more important reason for revision is the present version’s failure to recognize the sovereignty of God in the clear and majestic way “God Save the Queen” did.

If a national anthem is to express the national character truly, and if Canada has not become a secularistic country, it is imperative that its anthem call on citizens to acknowledge their recognition of God as the ultimate ruler of the land.

Certainly the origins of Canadians’ life show this recognition of God as ruler. When in the sixteenth century Jacques Cartier landed on the shores of the Gaspe peninsula to claim the territory for the king of France, he planted a great cross to show that he came not only as a Frenchman but also as a Christian. And when the early British explorer Martin Frobisher came to Canada’s northern shores, the first act of his crew was a communion service conducted by their chaplain, Master Wolfall.

Confederation in 1867 showed the same conviction: both the title, “Dominion,” and the national motto, “From Sea to Sea,” were taken from Psalm 72.

Unless Canadians have now reached a point where the majority recognize no power above the temporal one, their national symbols must manifest this traditional conviction that God is “king of kings, lord of lords, the only ruler of princes.”

Believers in God should not allow themselves to think that this is a trivial matter because “what’s in a name?”—or a flag, or an anthem. The recognition of God’s sovereignty by a nation is one of the most fundamental principles in its political philosophy, and a failure to see that can be the first step toward a totalitarian state.

The late H. Richard Niebuhr contended that belief in God was the basic reason for the establishment in the American constitution of the system of checks and balances that prevents any one branch of government from arrogating undue powers. Some have said that this feature resulted from a theological tradition that stressed original sin and hence did not want to trust any human institution more than was necessary. But Niebuhr argued that the Christian belief in divine sovereignty was the really decisive influence, conscious or unconscious, in the thinking of the framers of the constitution.

Niebuhr’s thesis is cogent, because a belief in original sin is not enough to ensure democracy. Thomas Hobbes, for example, showed in the previous century that a strong awareness of human corruptibility could lead a person to advocate an absolute government as an effective policeman for keeping depraved man in check. Niebuhr was right. Only when people are clearly convinced that above them stands the Almighty God is there a sure way of guarding against inordinate pretensions by governments.

In speaking of “the mandate of heaven,” Walter Lippmann has expressed somewhat the same idea. Democracy, he says, requires belief in a higher sovereignty than the state’s. Historically, human rights have needed the recognition that above the government stands some higher power, such as a personal and sovereign God, or a higher law, such as the natural order. The loss of both convictions by large numbers in the nineteenth century, Lippmann says, prepared the way for the twentieth century’s acquiescence to the total claims of the state.

Christians and others should therefore take seriously the threat posed by the creeping secularism in such traditionally theistic countries as Canada and the United States. What may seem to some as quibbling over words is really a matter of great significance. A romantic idealization of secularity should not be allowed to bring about a naïve submission to what is a danger both to faith and to freedom.

Although revival is often spoken of glibly, with every little spiritual stir giving rise to speculation of a great awakening, the real thing does occasionally happen. The latest legitimate claim to revival belongs to the 112 million people of Indonesia, where in recent months there has been a historic surge in the Christian churches (see also April 28 issue, p. 42).

“It’s too early to put all the pieces together,” says Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, executive secretary of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, “but there can be no doubt that revival has broken out.”

Taylor says the best estimates show at least 200,000 conversions from Islam to Christianity within the last eighteen months. Mission boards are assigning top priority to getting help to the workers in Indonesia, now the world’s fifth-largest country. Nowhere before has there ever been a comparable response from Muslims—missionary experts often regard them as among the hardest people in the world to reach.

Christians in Indonesia are still very much the minority group there, numbering something less than 10 per cent of the total population. But many missions report startling statistics in baptisms and new church members. At the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin last fall, an Indonesian delegate declared that in one area hundreds of new Christians were virtually standing in line to be baptized.

Taylor says that the revival is showing itself in at least three ways. The first is through the enthusiastic witness of lay people who go out in small bands to evangelize. Some of them are illiterate and must rely on what Scripture they have memorized. These lay witnesses have had their best results among disenchanted ex-Communists who survived the bloody aftermath of the abortive 1965 coup in Indonesia.

According to Taylor, there has also been a tremendous movement among pagans, and thousands are known to have been burning their fetishes and idols.

In addition, there has been an unusually effective cell movement as a result of efforts among the Dutch Reformed, the largest Protestant group in Indonesia. Some older churches, however, are said to be resisting the new movement.

Reports of the awakening now include calls for more Bibles to meet the unusual demand. A number of teams of evangelists are said to be going about fanning the flames of the revival. Healings and other miracles have been reported, as well as all-night prayer meetings and mass confession of sin. All these signs are traditionally associated with genuine revival.

Missions

Radio Lumiere, operated by West Indies Mission, began broadcasting May 17 from a new 240-foot tower located in a mud flat near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. In three days the second-hand diesel that turns the power plant gave out, and technicians had to revert temporarily to an old sixty-foot hurricane-damaged antenna. A 1,000-watt transmitter has been ordered to replace the present 250-watter.

South Viet Nam government approved construction of a “missionary embassy” in Saigon by World Vision. It is to be built across the street from U. S. and British embassies along the prominent boulevard that leads to National Palace gates.

Missionary aviation training facilities of Moody Bible Institute will be moved to Elizabethton, Tennessee. The new site is said to offer better flying conditions than the present airfield, located two miles from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

A health-insurance program for missionaries is being developed by Christian Medical Society. The organization will serve as administrative intermediary between an insurance underwriter and mission boards. Wide participation will allow the underwriter to tailor coverage to the special financial and health-care requirements of missionaries.

A Dalat, South Viet Nam, ceremony marked publication of the New Testament in Koho, language of one of the nation’s largest mountain tribal groups.

Personalia

Hans Küng, much talked about young Roman Catholic theologian in Germany, will be visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York, during the 1967–68 spring semester.

Martin Niemoller, controversial German Protestant churchman and a member of the World Council of Churches’ presidium, is scheduled to be visiting professor at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, for the second semester of the 1968–69 academic year.

LeRoy Moore, Jr., a Southern Baptist clergyman on the faculty of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, will go to teach history at the Hartford Seminary Foundation in Connecticut.

William G. Chalmers was appointed president of the University of Dubuque (United Presbyterian), succeeding the Rev. Gaylord M. Couchman. Chalmers has been an area counselor for the United Presbyterians’ Fifty Million Fund. Couchman will remain at the university as director of church relations.

Dr. Herbert S. Anderson was elected general director of the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. He is currently a pastor in Portland, Oregon, and has served for three years as president of the Conservative Baptist Association of America. He holds a doctorate in theology from Princeton.

Commissioner Clarence D. Wiseman, 60, has been appointed national commander of the Salvation Army for Canada and Bermuda. Until recently, Wiseman was the head of the Army’s International Training College in London, England. He succeeds Commissioner Edgar Grinsted, who is now on a world tour before retiring in his native England in September.

Two faculty members have resigned at Berkeley Baptist Divinity School. Librarian Robert Hannen moves to Central Baptist Seminary, public-relations head L. Earle Shipley to a fund-raising firm in New York.

Dr. William J. Villaume resigned last month as president of Waterloo (Ontario) Lutheran University. Villaume cited a forthcoming report from a management consultant firm and said he felt “it would be advantageous for the board to be as free as possible from all long-range commitments so that planning for the future may not be hindered.”

Msgr. Vincent A. Yzermans, for three years the director of the United States Catholic Conference’s Bureau of Information, was named editor of Our Sunday Visitor. Educational background of the 41-year-old priest includes graduate study in journalism and communications arts at Notre Dame and Fordham.

Dr. Robert A. Traina became dean of Asbury Theological Seminary. He succeeds Dr. Maurice E. Culver, who plans to return to Southern Rhodesia to resume missionary work under appointment of The Methodist Church. Traina has been professor of English Bible at Asbury.

The Rev. Robert Pierre Johnson was elected general presbyter of the New York City Presbytery, the first Negro ever to be named to the post. Johnson has been pastor of Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C., and is regarded as an expert in inner-city problems.

Two teams of American church leaders, one dove and one hawk, went to Viet Nam last month with contrasting purposes.

A four-man team commissioned by the National Council of Churches was said to be making the trip to discover what meaning American policies and actions are having in that area. The group is headed by Executive Director Robert S. Bilheimer of the Department of International Affairs of the NCC.

The other team was dispatched by the American Council of Christian Churches. An ACCC news release said that “the purpose of this team going to Viet Nam at this time is to encourage out fighting men in Viet Nam to know that there are many churchmen in the United States who support them in this conflict against the atheistic Communist aggressors and to assure them of our prayers. Also this team wishes to make known to the public and to our elected leaders in Congress that we are for victory over Communism in Viet Nam.”

There was some speculation that at least one member of the NCC team might try to reach Hanoi. The announced itinerary included stops in Japan, Thailand, and Cambodia, as well as South Viet Nam. Traveling with Bilheimer were William Phelps Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; Episcopal Bishop George Barrett of Rochester, New York; and Dr. Tracy K. Jones, Jr., associate general secretary of the World Division of the Methodist Board of Missions and chairman of the NCC’s advisory committee on peace. All lean heavily to a dove-like stance and have been associated with numerous statements critical of U. S. military policy in Viet Nam.

The ACCC party planned to visit, in addition to Viet Nam, Korea, Formosa, Thailand, and Laos. The group included Dr. Marion H. Reynolds, Jr., president of the ACCC; Dr. John E. Millheim, general secretary of the ACCC; the Rev. James T. Shaw, executive secretary of International Christian Relief; and the Rev. Donald L. Gorham, southern representative of the ACCC.

The ACCC release said the churchmen would be “preaching to our fighting men, distributing gospel tracts and Bibles, visiting hospitals and chaplains, encouraging them spiritually as well as morally in this conflict.”

Meanwhile, a church in New York City said it has sold its stock in Dow Chemical Company—primary producer of napalm used in Viet Nam, according to the church—as a protest against civilian casualties in Viet Nam.

The church made a $7,000 profit on sale of the stock, which will go to several organizations working in Viet Nam to alleviate human suffering.

In announcing the sale, Cornelius McDougald, chairman of the board of trustees of the Community Church of New York, said, “We are chagrined and ashamed at the large number of civilian casualties in this war. We have seen reports that at least 50,000 civilian casualties will be admitted for treatment into Viet Nam hospitals this year, 1967. It is estimated that at least twice this number do not survive to reach the hospitals.… Most of them are victims of indiscriminate use of napalm and anti-personnel bombs.”

Chaplain Casualties

Seven American chaplains, six from the Army and one from the Navy, have died as a result of the Viet Nam war, according to information given by the U. S. Defense Department June 19.

Three of the Army chaplain victims were killed in action: Captain Michael J. Quealy (Roman Catholic), Captain James L. Johnson (National Baptist Convention, U. S. A.), and Major William J. Barragy (Roman Catholic). Two others have died as a result of wounds: Captain William N. Feaster (United Church of Christ) and Captain Ambrosio S. Grandea (Methodist). Lieutenant Colonel Meir Engel (Jewish) died in Viet Nam of a heart attack.

The Navy chaplain died in a fire aboard the U. S. S. Oriskany while attached to the Seventh Fleet off Viet Nam. He was Lieutenant Commander W. J. Garrity (Roman Catholic).

No fatalities have been reported among Air Force chaplains.

Baptists Cancel Out

A Delaware pastor spearheading a Baptist unity movement says the group’s 1967 conference, which had been scheduled for July 15–22, has been canceled because of lack of interest.

The announcement came from the Rev. Howard R. Stewart, chairman of the unofficial movement. It said “that the number of registrations coming in did not warrant continued plans for it.”

The meeting was to have been held in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

Winifred Davies

Miss Winifred Davies, a missionary to the Congo since 1946, was killed May 28 in a clash between national army troops and rebels. She had been held hostage by the rebels since August, 1964.

Miss Davies, in her forties, was a native of England. She served under the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

James Ira Dickson

Formosa’s best known Protestant missionary, Dr. James Ira Dickson, died last month at the age of 67.

Dickson founded the Taiwan Theological College and served as its principal. His wife, Lillian, operates the famous “Mustard Seed Mission.” They have served under the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Costly Apartheid

A Dutch Reformed theologian, Dr. Adrian D. Pont, will have to pay $27,777 to two leaders of the Christian Institute of South Africa, Dr. Albert Geyser and Dr. C. F. Beyers Naudé. A court in Johannesburg found Pont guilty of willful libel. In his church paper Die Hervormer he had, without mentioning the two men’s names, accused them of having united themselves with Communism to destroy white Christendom in South Africa.

The long-drawn-out court case drew international attention because Pont not only attacked the two churchmen but also argued that the World Council of Churches, the British Ecumenical Council, and the Netherlands Reformed Church had been infiltrated by Communism. Pont, in his defense, drew on material published in the United States by Edgar C. Bundy, Billy James Hargis, and Carl Mclntire.

Pont called Geyser and Beyers Naudé “persons of low morals who have sold their country, people, church, Protestant faith, Christendom, and God.” Their Christian Institute was organized by a group of South African pastors from several churches when three Boer churches refused to accept resolutions adopted by the controversial Cottesloe conference against apartheid. The institute fights for desegregation of South African church life and keeps contact with the ecumenical movement.

The court decision by Judge William Trollip is a book of 180 typewritten pages. Trollip concluded that Pont had indeed written about the two theologians who sued him for libel, even though their names had not been given. Trollip also said that Pont has never offered to apologize.

Pont has not had to break his piggy bank to pay the award. His church, smallest of the three Boer churches, has decided to pay it for him.

The verdict marks the second time the tiny denomination has had to pay out a major sum as the result of a court case. Five years ago it tried to dispose of Geyser, then teaching at the theological faculty of the church, calling him a heretic because he opposed apartheid. Geyser asked the highest court of South Africa to judge him. He was cleared of the accusation, and the church had to pay the costs of the case—almost $170,000 that time.

The church finally was able to rid itself of Geyser. After the first court case, its synod adopted a resolution forbidding its members to seek the aid of a worldly judge.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

Preaching To Communists

Evangelist Billy Graham planned to travel to Yugoslavia this week for services in Zagreb. It will be the first time he has preached in a Communist country.

Graham is to hold a press conference in his hotel in Zagreb, attend a reception for pastors, diplomatic guests, and government officials, and preach once on Saturday and twice on Sunday. Zagreb is the second-largest city in Yugoslavia, with 470,000 inhabitants.

Graham’s itinerary also called for a stop and his first preaching service in Italy—in Turin. The trip was to follow his All-Britain Crusade June 23-July 1, which with television and radio relays gave an unprecedented outreach to the 48-year-old evangelist.

On the way from his North Carolina home to Europe, Graham stopped in Washington to say that he was a convert to the government’s anti-poverty program. “Only by government action can we win the war on poverty,” he said. In a later radio address he criticized federal officials for lack of concern for law and order.

Communion And Health

The Communion chalice, sometimes criticized as a spreader of disease, gets a relatively clean bill of health in a report published in the old established British medical journal, The Lancet.

Three women scientists who conducted an investigation said the risk is slight. They wanted to find out to what extent bacteria are passed along with the common cup as it goes from person to person.

One important factor, they reported, is that it is wine that is drunk from the cup. The wine is about 14 per cent ethyl alcohol, they said, which is enough to kill some bacteria within two minutes and others within ten.

Furthermore, if the chalice is wiped with a clean cloth between communicants, the number of germs is usually reduced by about 90 per cent.

The study recalls the observations of the Apostle Paul, who warns against eating the bread and drinking the cup in an unworthy manner and notes with regard to violations, “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:30).

Fed Up With Liberals

One of Australia’s leading clinical psychologists, who made history as the first woman to be elected president of the West Australian Congregational Union, has resigned from that denomination to become a Baptist.

Mrs. Enid Cook, who had represented Australia at the International Congregational Council, left Congregationalism because she views it, in Western Australia, as “a dying church no longer sure it has a real witness in our community.” Moreover, she said that a proposed merger of Australian Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists seems “unattractive.” She characterized local Australian council of churches’ committee meetings as “among the most boring and useless I have ever attended.”

Mrs. Cook has a private practice in psychotherapy and holds degrees in theology as well as psychology. She says she has brought her professional services into a new integration with the conservative perspective, having seen afresh the power of personal conversion in clinical experience.

CRAIG SKINNER

To convert or not to convert? That was the question argued back and forth by evangelical, neo-orthodox, liberal, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox theologians at the second National Faith and Order Colloquium, held June 11–15 on the campus of Notre Dame University. The colloquium, arranged by the National Council of Churches, drew nearly a hundred representatives from a broad spectrum of theology within the structure of nominal Christianity. Notably absent were the Pentecostals and the far right American Council of Christian Churches.

The colloquium proved to be a landmark for conservative evangelicals. To encourage evangelicals and Roman Catholics to participate, the National Council leadership made it clear that involvement in the colloquium in no way aligned participants with the NCC’s ecumenical structure. Thus freed from any embarrassment or qualms of conscience, many conservatives were able to take an active role.

The official colloquium topic was “Evangelism in a Pluralistic Society.” The first National Faith and Order Colloquium, held last year in Chicago, dealt with conversion.

President James I. McCord of Princeton Theological Seminary delivered the keynote address. Position papers were read by Father Robert Hunt of Catholic University; Dr. Robert T. Handy of Union Theological Seminary, New York; Dr. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, Jesuit professor of sociology at Fordham University; Dr. Langdon Gilkey of the University of Chicago Divinity School; the Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, pastor of the Greek Orthodox Church of Our Savior in Rye, New York; and Dr. David O. Moberg, professor at Bethel College, St. Paul.

In a paper on the sociological approach to the study of evangelism, Moberg argued: “Theological differences regarding the meaning of salvation and the means of securing it are decisive. Christianity is divided over the goal of evangelism. Only for those who have a deep and sincere commitment to Christ can any ‘method’ be used effectively.”

In what proved to be the highlight of the conference, Dr. Colin W. Williams, member of the NCC staff and newly appointed head of the program for pastoral doctorates at Chicago Divinity School, said the old evangelical certainties are gone forever. In spite of past tensions between denominations, including the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, he described present denominational structures as irrelevant. Williams saw just one battle line: On one side, headed by the World Council of Churches, are arrayed the vast majority of mainline denominations, including (since Vatican II) the Roman Catholics. On the other side are the conservative evangelicals (in and out of the mainline denominations), whose leadership is found in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the National Association of Evangelicals, and certain conservative theological schools. Here are two opposing ecumenical circles, and the tension is very strong.”

When pressed by other participants, Williams avowed that he simply could not live comfortably in the same church with Billy Graham. Although he denies neither Billy Graham’s Christianity nor his sincerity, he said, he himself could not in clear conscience cooperate in his evangelistic efforts.

Williams maintained that the heart of the problem is the tension between the “Salvationists,” who emphasize personal conversion, and the “activists,” who insist that personal conversion must be supplemented by a social work of the Church that takes into account God’s “cosmic purposes” for mankind. To the charge that this was an oversimplification and that evangelicals, too, allowed room for social action, Williams replied that the tension is too great. He said the Graham type of evangelism, with its one-sided emphasis on personal salvation, tends to ethical immobility and endangers the structure of the Church by dividing it into two camps.

Something of a bombshell was dropped by Dr. Ernest van den Haag, professor of social philosophy at New York University and at the New School of graduate studies in New York City. Called in to present an “outsider’s” viewpoint, he amazed all the delegates and delighted many conservatives by challenging Christian ministers to “stick to their business” of preaching the Gospel of salvation from sin instead of dissipating their energies at tasks in which they have no business and, as often as not, no special abilities. By turning to social, political, and other issues, the Church and the Christian ministry today have lost their relevance. “Get back to the Church’s real business of personal faith,” was the psychoanalyst’s plea.

But for the conservatives, the most startling revelation was the deep concern for evangelism shown by participants from the National Council and by liberal theologians. Some, it is true, manifested concern chiefly in cautioning against evangelism as an activity of misguided Christian zeal. For many, however, there was deeply rooted anxiety over the proper role of evangelism and over how the Christian message can rightly be presented in a pluralistic world displaying many forms of Christianity—and particularly in the modern “one world” of many religions and secularistic philosophies. Unfortunately, because there was no agreement on what evangelism really is, the colloquium was unable to progress much beyond a statement of the seriousness of the problems.

This grasping after direction, evident throughout the discussions, was directly related to the general failure to bring in biblical norms. For one who was present both at the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin and at the Notre Dame colloquium on evangelism, no contrast was more obvious. At Berlin, the discussions were directly related to biblical authority. At Notre Dame, only two papers dealt directly with biblical material. To a conservative ear, all too often the criterion seemed to be: What sort of evangelism will succeed? The biblical mandate, however, gives a commission the Christian is not free to adjust.

Dr. Walter Harrelson, dean and professor of Old Testament at Vanderbilt University, delivered a paper full of excellent insights into the nature of the biblical commission to evangelize. Basing his conclusions primarily upon the Old Testament role of Israel’s witness to the nations, however, Harrelson argued that there is no biblical mandate requiring conversion from other religions. In a way reminiscent of Hocking’s liberally oriented Rethinking Missions of a generation ago, Harrelson decried the attempts of traditional evangelicals to convert the world to Christianity. Said he, “The goal of missions is not to make all nations (or religious groups) Christian, but rather to bear witness to the fact that life and good, wherever they are to be found, are the work of Christ. It is not a question of their joining our community to be right and in order; but rather, while remaining within their own religious community, of their securing the benefits of Jesus Christ.”

In the only other biblically oriented paper, Jesuit George W. MacRae of Weston College minutely examined the Great Commission and, using the exegetical processes of the Bultmannian school, came to the expected conclusion that Jesus never gave the great universal commission of Matthew 28; rather, this was the formulation of the early Church “in the spirit of Christ.” The only surprising element was that a Roman Catholic scholar should be advocating such theories. Indeed, throughout the colloquium, Roman Catholic scholars generally objected to the evangelical emphasis upon conversion. They insisted upon a wholly new orientation of their church’s conception of evangelism, an orientation more in accord with recent liberal views than with traditional conceptions, either Catholic or Protestant. Said Father Hunt, “In the past the Roman Catholic Church has felt it necessary to evangelize all non-Catholics; the Church now recognizes that there is an ecclesiastical community separate from us.”

From an evangelical perspective, the greatest weakness of the colloquium was the failure to define “evangelism” and the unwillingness of most participants to turn for the solution of their problems to Holy Scripture as the only infallible rule of faith and practice—as well as of evangelism.

Argentine Centenary

On May 25, 1867, a young Methodist minister arrived in downtown Buenos Aires riding the bay horse that soon became almost as famous as its rider. After tying the horse to a hitching post, the Rev. John F. Thomson, a handsome blackbearded Scotsman “whose top hat always sat precariously near the back of his neck,” went up the steps leading to the Methodist church on Cangallo Street.

A violent type of anticlericalism was the fashion, and so hundreds of young men went to hear the Protestant preacher. It was the first time a Protestant service had been held publicly in Spanish. According to a reporter who was present, Thomson spoke “with great eloquence, demolishing the superstitions of Rome.” This brought signs of approval from the anticlerical section of the audience, but interest soon vanished when the preacher gave a powerful address on “Christ and him crucified.”

This year evangelicals all over Argentina have been celebrating the centenary with public lectures, services of thanksgiving, radio programs, and a number of publications. On May 25 Bishop Sante U. Barbieri, ecumenical leader, addressed a large congregation at the American Church in Buenos Aires, only a few hundred yards from the spot where Thomson had preached 100 years before. He did not say much about Thomson the controversialist but pointed out that “the Methodist Church was born in the ecumenical movement … and must be ready to lose her identity when the moment to do so arrives, and God forms the wider community of one flock and one shepherd.”

According to a study published in May by Dr. Luis Villalpando, there are more than 400,000 members in the evangelical churches of Argentina, and the total evangelical community numbers over 1,000,000, roughly 5 per cent of the population.

From the evangelical perspective, these are current dangers: (1) a veiled universalism; (2) the temptation to preach the Latin American revolution instead of preaching Christ; (3) the survival of pietistic ghettos completely out of contact with reality; (4) an arrogant super-organized denominationalism; (5) a woolly type of interdenominationalism with very vague ideas about fundamental truths; (6) a lopsided emphasis on certain gifts of the Spirit.

However, the sound good sense of the average Argentine believer and his desire to obey God promise to hurdle these obstacles, which fortunately seem to affect church leaders more than the laity.

ALEC CLIFFORD

Riptides of ecumenicity ran strong last month as commissioners to the 107th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) served notice that they no longer desire their denomination to be a sectional church but are committed to plunging more deeply into ecumenical waters. In the wake of a battering debate on membership in the Consultation on Church Union, they voted 255–184 to remain as a full participant. Commissioners also ratified 405–16 further negotiations leading to union with the Reformed Church in America.

Half a mile away, the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America overwhelmingly endorsed continued efforts toward merger with Southern Presbyterians but rejected full participation in COCU 148–128, choosing to retain observer status. The favorable RCA-PCUS negotiation votes set the stage for acceptance next year of a plan of union by the national bodies. This will then be submitted for approval of presbyteries and classes and finally returned to the General Synod and the General Assembly for official ratification in 1969.

Reluctant to jeopardize delicate negotiations with the 240,000-member RCA (by then complicated by the General Synod’s rejection of COCU membership), the 955,000-member PCUS refused to invite other Reformed churches—specifically the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.—to join merger talks. The PCUS General Assembly was also unwilling to pass a resolution expressing “its gratitude to God” that the UPUSA in its “Confession of 1967” “has been led to this authentic, historical, contemporary confessional statement of its faith.” It did, however, commend the United Presbyterians Book of Confessions for study in the church and for consideration by the RCA-PCUS Joint Committee of Twenty-Four as it writes a confession for the new proposed church. Further opportunity for PCUS-UPUSA cooperation was provided by the assembly’s approval of the creation of union synods and presbyteries with other Reformed churches.

While Southern Presbyterians were unified in their desire to merge with the conservative Reformed Church in America, vigorous floor fights on a variety of issues showed a sharp cleavage between the dominant liberal advocates of COCU and the National Council of Churches and a strong and vocal minority of conservative evangelicals. The division was most vividly seen in debates on the election of the moderator, COCU, the Delta Ministry, a new publishing policy for denominationally owned John Knox Press, and a statement on American intervention in Viet Nam.

Dr. Marshall C. Dendy of Richmond, Virginia, executive secretary of the church’s Board of Christian Education, squeaked to a one-vote victory, 226–225, over his third cousin, Dr. Patrick D. Miller of Decatur, Georgia, in the race for moderator. Considered the more liberal of the two nominees, former jazz musician Dendy proved to be a forceful moderator. He expressed the wish that his church break away from its narrow geographical bounds and hoped that the RCA would “go into COCU with us.”

The COCU debate centered on whether full participation committed Southern Presbyterians to involvement in an emerging 25-million-member Protestant superchurch. Dr. William A. Benfield, Jr., chairman of the Ad Interim Committee for COCU, asserted, “Our participation means that we are in the mainstream of what I believe to be the most significant movement of ecumenism in the history of Protestantism in America. But our participation … has not and cannot commit our denomination to any change in the standards of our church.”

Presbyterian Journal Editor G. Aiken Taylor, the only PCUS commissioner present at the recent Cambridge meeting of COCU, replied by referring to statements from COCU officials that the consultation will put off drafting a final constitution for the united church until after the denominations come together but has a present aim of creating a de facto union before completion of formal structures. He called attention to a statement by COCU chairman David Colwell that remarkable strides are already being made in coordinating and consolidating the work of the boards and agencies of the participating denominations. Dr. William Kadel, president of Florida Presbyterian College, urged continuation in COCU since, he claimed, there are biblical, confessional, historical, and contemporary bases for such an action. Dr. Horace L. Villee, moderator of the Synod of Mississippi, objected to membership since “the consultation is working for a church union where doctrine and polity mean nothing.” After an hour and a half of heated exchange, the General Assembly voted to remain a full participant in COCU.

After approving a report aimed at resolving irregularities in the Synod of Mississippi and establishing a committee to help churchmen carry out its recommendations, the General Assembly debated continuation of its support of the NCC Delta Ministry. Dr. Kadel endorsed the Delta Ministry as “a principal witness to human need … that speaks to the church’s responsibility to serve … and provides an opportunity to forgive an institution within the church.”

The Rev. Lee Gentry of Cleveland, Mississippi, strenuously opposed it, claiming that “no permanently located minister [in the Delta] can say anything good about it.” He stated that “its methods are not Christian” as it divides lower-class Negroes from those in the middle classes, and sets Negroes against whites. “Where do you find creation of hostility [as a Christian method] in the Bible?” he thundered. The Rev. F. W. Hobbie of Staunton, Virginia, admitted the Delta Ministry had made mistakes but expressed appreciation for its “ministry of compassion, of service, of Jesus Christ.” The Rev. W. J. Stanway of Hattiesburg said the NCC project is “obstructionist,” “creates dissent and ill will,” and “is not concerned with the souls of the Negroes.” The Rev. James Baird of Gadsden, Alabama, called the assembly to choose between its own Mississippi committee and the Delta Ministry, claiming it was a question “not of concern but confidence.”

The assembly finally voted approval of the Delta Ministry, 222–214. An amendment by Dr. J. McDowell Richards, president of Columbia Theological Seminary, softened the blow by making it clear that the General Assembly “is not pointing the finger of criticism at Mississippi as more sinful than other sections of our church and … we do not approve all that has been done by the Delta Ministry.…” The sum of $25,000 is presently earmarked by the PCUS for the Delta Ministry.

Liberals scored another victory as the assembly approved a new publishing policy for its John Knox Press. The commissioners voted 292–117 to expand the range of books John Knox publishes by deleting the requirement, “and which are written by authors within the bounds of the evangelical tradition.” Moderator Dendy sought to justify the change by claiming that “the definition of evangelical is difficult to have agreement about” and the new policy facilitates “dialogue with Roman Catholics and others.”

Another heated debate resulted in approval of a resolution on American policy in Viet Nam. It stated, “we are deeply perplexed and anguished by the tragic war in Viet Nam,” and directed to the churches a series of questions that included these: “Should a government ever draw back from inflicting damage upon its enemies at the possible price of military defeat?” “Is there a worse evil than defeat?” “Are we truly committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as good news to the Communist as well as the capitalist, to the revolutionary as well as the conservative, to the stranger as well as the friend?” Many commissioners wanted a stronger PCUS statement of commitment to U. S. policy in Viet Nam. The resolution was passed as Moderator Dendy’s affirmative vote broke a tie in the assembly.

As the PCUS engaged in tempestuous verbal battles, the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America displayed a greater sense of unity. In addition to giving the green light to merger talks with Southern Presbyterians and the red light to participation in COCU, the synod acted to:

• Elect Dr. Harold Schut of Scotia, New York, president of the General Synod and Dr. Raymond Heukelom of Orange City, Iowa, vice-president;

• Reaffirm its Covenant of Open Occupancy in housing;

• Create one board of superintendents for its two seminaries, Western and New Brunswick;

• Merge its Boards of Education, World Missions, and North American Missions and its Stewardship Council under a new corporation.

• Submit to its forty-six area bodies a proposal to open the offices of elder and deacon in the church to women;

• Call on President Johnson to “assure territorial arrangements in the Middle East” that take into account the “relevant historical, human, and moral factors” that will result in a righteous peace.

The 1967 national church assemblies in Bristol showed a drift to the left by the PCUS and maintenance of a steady and generally unchanged course by the RCA. Whether the ecumenical tides in the two denominations will go in or out will be largely determined by action taken at their national meetings in 1968.

Presbyterians At Ottawa

The 93rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, meeting in Ottawa June 7–15, was told by its retiring moderator that he didn’t have time to waste “in the wilderness of ecumenical relations.” Speaking to a full house in Knox Church (which was founded 123 years ago when a group of Presbyterians favorable to Free Church principles withdrew from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church), Dr. Deane Johnston said that Presbyterians had a duty to their own church. “The Presbyterian Church suits us,” said the burly exarmy chaplain, “and preserves deep insights into God’s revelation which should not be allowed to perish from the church. As Presbyterians, we must be prepared to defend the doctrines of Reformation.”

The next day, the Papal Delegate to Canada, the Most Rev. Sergio Pignedoli, was introduced to the 260-member assembly by the newly elected moderator, Dr. John Logan-Vencta, 68, with the words: “What John Knox would have said at a time like this I would hesitate to say.” This was the first time that a Roman Catholic representative paid an official visit to the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

In spite of the new ecumenical climate in the Canadian churches, the visit did not go unprotested. The Rev. Hector MacRury of Toronto presented a formal protest to the General Assembly on the basis that the visit of the Papal Delegate was contrary to the Subordinate Standards of the Presbyterian Church as found in the Westminster Confession of Faith. MacRury referred his fellow churchmen to Chapter 25, Section 6: “Nor can the pope of Rome in any sense be the head thereof; but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God.” The protest was allowed to stand, but a vote commending those responsible for inviting the Papal Delegate was passed 122–46.

Ecumenical interests did chalk up one major victory, however. The assembly voted overwhelmingly to respond favorably to an invitation to join the Anglican and United Churches of Canada in their talks on union. Observer-consultants are to be appointed, and the move affirmed “that the term of reference of these observer-consultants be those indicated by the submissions from the presbyteries on the matter, namely that they confer in Christian charity with our brethren of other churches, but take no action which would commit our church without consent of the assembly.”

Another first at the 93rd General Assembly was the presence of voting women. By action of last year’s General Assembly, women were made eligible for ordination to the ministry and eldership. Several women have already been made elders, but though several have qualified for ordination to the ministry, none has crossed the boundaries of tradition.

J. BERKLEY REYNOLDS

Baptists On Divorce

The Ontario and Quebec Convention of the Baptist Church in Canada is asking the Canadian government to relax divorce laws. Adultery is now about the only grounds for divorce in Canada.

The 750 Baptist delegates who met at Peterborough June 9–12 drew up a resolution calling for consideration of divorce in cases of: insanity, when expert treatment over a suitable period of time has not produced a cure; chronic alcoholism or drug addiction; repeated acts of cruelty endangering health; repeated prison terms; disappearance for three years; and desertion for three years. The resolution reaffirmed the church’s adherence to Christian ideals in marriage and called for reconciliation attempts by both parties before the granting of a divorce.

Here is a first-hand account of a visit to the old city of Jerusalem immediately after its takeover by Israel. The report was written by Dr. Dwight L. Baker, chairman of the Baptist Convention in Israel:

The only churches damaged in the new city were the Roman Catholic church on Mt. Zion and St. Andrew’s Church of Scotland, opposite Mt. Zion.

A shell narrowly missed the Jerusalem Baptist Church, falling just beyond the gate into the street. The apartment of Frank Hooper, a Baptist, was another near miss. It was pocked by flying shrapnel, and a two-inch shell fragment tore into his daughters’ bedroom and lodged in a book. The title of the volume: This Singing World.

Near the border, St. John’s Anglican Church was not damaged, but the Finnish Mission School across the street took two direct hits. There were no injuries.

Two days after the firing ended, the government press office arranged a tour of the old city of Jerusalem for journalists. Many Arabs wore looks of deep disappointment, but most were ready to converse. Standing opposite the Damascus Gate, the assistant postmaster of the old city, a Christian, emphasized that Jews and Arabs had lived together before and could do it again.

From the northeast, near St. Stephen’s Gate, we approached the Haramesh-Sherif, commonly known as the Dome of the Rock. What must have been a miracle of restraint and accuracy in firing left the gleaming gold dome of the mosque untouched. The day before, an Israeli Muslim dignitary had been there. He had told newsmen that the courtyard is blessed by the Koran as second in sanctity only to Mecca. Pointing to the golden dome, he had recalled that according to the Koran, it was from this very place that Muhammad rode to heaven on his white horse, Burak.

A favorite topic of speculation among Israelis is the mosque area, also believed to be the site of the once glorious Temple of Solomon. Will there be an attempt to rebuild the temple and reinstate temple worship and sacrifices? The only official comment is that complete religious freedom will be preserved for all faiths.

Outside the unscathed Church of the Holy Sepulcher, five Israeli soldiers stood guarding the entrance. They told me that although Israelis were not permitted to enter, I could go in since I was a Christian. I declined, thanking them and explaining I had visited the church many times before.

A Greek priest who had been sitting and chatting with the soldiers responded with a smile when I asked him in Arabic how the church fared. “Better than before,” he replied, “thanks to these brave soldiers.” Such pleasant statements might not reflect the true feeling of the Christians, but again they might. The key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher has been in the hands of a leading Muslim family since the Muslim conquest. It is now not wholly unthinkable that the key might be passed to a committee of Christians who hold worship rights in the ancient church.

As I walked toward the American consulate near Mandelbaum Gate, I stopped at the Garden Tomb. The first gate, sealed long ago, had been blasted open. Inside no one responded as I called. Farther out near the center of the garden, partly hidden by thick foliage, three men were digging. I asked whether they could help me find the custodian, Solomon Matar. One of them pointed to the small gatehouse and replied, “He is in there. We are preparing to bury him.”

On the second day of the fighting, Matar had responded to persistent pounding at the gate. As he opened it, he caught a burst of machine-gun fire at point-blank range as Israeli soldiers rushed into the garden. Jordanians preparing for battle had set up a gun emplacement atop Gordon’s Calvary, overlooking the tomb. Apparently thinking the garden to be full of Jordan legionaires, the Israelis attacked. The Jordanian gun was silenced, but blood flowed again at Calvary. Three days later, an Anglican archbishop read prayers at the new grave in the garden, attended by six neighbors and the widow of the fallen keeper of the tomb.

The following reflections were written forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Harry W. Genet, assistant executive secretary of the Arabic Literature Mission in Beirut, Lebanon:

As the smoke of battle cleared, the opponents tallied the staggering human and material costs of the four-day war. At the same time, the slender missionary force in the Arab world was involved in a similarly dreary reappraisal of its drastically altered situation. Dislocation, isolation, and a new level of hostility are the formidable fresh obstacles to missionary advance in the Middle East.

Most disturbing of all has been the hardening Arab attitude toward foreigners. Missionaries who are glad to bear the reproach of Christ find instead that they are saddled with the reproach of being an Amerki or Ingleezi.

Beirut is no doubt as restrained as any Arab capital. But a routine check at the American embassy June 6 gave me a taste of the new bitterness. Trapped inside for two hours, I watched a youthful mob wreck autos, set a lower floor ablaze, and hurl rocks at windows until tanks cleared the area. Missionaries face the hard fact that for now at least they may be as much a liability as an asset to churches they helped plant.

Against a formidable array of obvious minuses stand a few easily overlooked pluses. For one thing, recent events will prod missionaries into exploring new avenues of witness that would survive ouster of foreigners. And the misery of Arab tragedy has opened up an overwhelming opportunity to show the compassion of Christ.