Professor Bruce Shelley notes that “the decline in denominational loyalties is apparent on every hand.… We are living in days when a kindly little old Roman Catholic lady will light up at the mention of Billy Graham’s name and promise to attend his meetings faithfully, and when a Greek Orthodox priest will use Scripture Press literature for Vacation Bible School.”

Shelley, who teaches church history at Denver’s Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, makes the observations in the opening article of a two-part series on ecumenism in United Evangelical Action, official monthly magazine of the National Association of Evangelicals. The series comes, appropriately enough, on the threshold of NAE’s twenty-fifth anniversary, when the organization can be expected to look soberly at itself and ponder its own future in today’s ecumenical drift.

NAE claims two million members among its affiliated churches and a “service constituency” of some ten million. The eight-million gap represents people who are in sympathy with the organization and draw from its services but whose denominations do not officially belong. There are additional millions of American evangelicals who have no tie with NAE whatsoever; many belong to denominations within the broader conciliar movement and are disillusioned over Neo-Protestantism’s neglect of evangelical and evangelistic priorities and its growing interest in Roman Catholic rapprochement. Several staunch evangelical denominations remain aloof.

These non-aligned evangelicals are the cause of more and more discussion. There is a growing feeling that the time may have come for a revitalized NAE that would be found appealing to evangelicals with no present interdenominational connections. Some feel the present strengths of NAE ought to be preserved and new dimensions added. Others feel that an entirely new evangelical organization transcending NAE is in order.

The NAE situation was made a bit more fluid early this year with the resignation of Arthur M. Climenhaga as executive director. Climenhaga left after being nominated to an administrative bishopric in his Brethren in Christ Church. He will continue to be active in NAE but on a voluntary, non-salaried basis. Meanwhile, new leadership is being sought, and some observers feel the choice will go a long way toward determining NAE’s future.

Another factor will be the outcome of the organization’s twenty-fifth anniversary convention. It is scheduled for April 4–6 in Los Angeles.

The general convention theme will be “Beyond the Social Gospel.” Under this theme, a spokesman said, “we will seek to show the weakness and inherent ineffectiveness of today’s liberal social gospel, and to show the strength and viability of the evangelical cause when it is properly oriented biblically.”

“In all of this,” he adds, “our main objective will be to arrive at a philosophy and theology for evangelical involvement of Christian church and citizen in the social concerns of today.”

TOP TEN NAE DENOMINATIONS¹Source: Yearbook of American Churches, 1967

Note: Among leading non-aligned groups are Southern Baptists, Missouri Synod Lutherans, Churches of Christ, American Baptist Association, Seventh-day Adventists, Salvation Army, Christian Reformed, General Association of Regular Baptists, Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), and Baptist General Conference. Together the non-aligned groups represent a larger constituency than the nine-way merger proposed by the Consultation on Church Union.

Protestant Panorama

Women of the Episcopal Diocese of California show a great desire to win people to Christ, according to a poll taken by the University of California at Berkeley. Nearly two-thirds of the women also thought church leaders should not join a civil rights demonstration if it would lead to their arrest.

Three United Presbyterian officials got special State Department permission to witness ceremonies in which an ecclesiastically autonomous Presbyterian denomination was created in Cuba.

Wesleyan Methodist churches have ratified a merger of their denomination with the Pilgrim Holiness Church. The union is to be consummated in June, 1968. The merged group will be called The Wesleyan Church.

Personalia

The Rev. Benjamin Haden, minister of Key Biscayne (Florida) Presbyterian Church, is succeeding Dr. D. Reginald Thomas as preacher on “The Bible Study Hour” radio broadcast. The program, made famous by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse, is sponsored by the Evangelical Foundation, Inc., which also publishes Eternity, a Christian monthly with offices in Philadelphia.

Dr. Arnold B. Come was elevated to the presidency of San Francisco Theological Seminary after serving as acting president since November of 1965. Come, who has taught at the California campus since 1952, holds a doctorate in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. His new appointment was effective February 1.

Helge Alm, secretary of missions of The Methodist Church in Sweden, was elected president of the Swedish Missions Council. He succeeds C. G. Diel, who was named bishop of the Tamil Church in India. The council sponsors 1,520 missionaries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

A Dutch Baptist pastor, F. E. Huizing, told tax collectors he will subtract 15 per cent from his assessment in protest against government military spending. Huizing, former president of the European Baptist Federation, doesn’t want others to follow his example, however.

The Rev. E. N. O. Kulbeck, editor of the Pentecostal Testimony, official organ of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, was elected president of Canadian Church Press.

Ronald A. Ward, 58, well-known evangelical expositor and former New Testament professor at Toronto’s Wycliffe College, is resigning his parish in Norwich, England, to come to Stone Church (Anglican) in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Rolfe Lanier Hunt, formerly chief of the editorial section of the U. S. Office of Education and a public-school specialist with the National Council of Churches, has been named editor of the NCC’s International Journal of Religious Education.

Miscellany

Roman Catholic and National Council of Churches film panels gave their first joint award to “A Man for All Seasons,” much-lauded drama of Thomas More. The NCC also cited “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” and—after hot debate—the sordid “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for portraying the “human predicament.” The Catholics honored the late Walt Disney.

In Ottawa, members of Parliament angrily challenged measures taken by the U. S. Treasury Department to block Quaker shipments of medicines to North Viet Nam via Canada. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, it was reported that the U. S. Treasury Department had frozen a Quaker group’s bank account.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Louisville plans to award as its basic theology degree a master of divinity in place of a bachelor of divinity. A new curriculum structure will allow each student to take up a specialty.

The American Board of Missions to the Jews is establishing a new department to enlist and train evangelists.

Provincial police scoured the area around Ste. Agathe, Quebec, last month to find dozens of children who were missing when the government raided the monastery of the Apostles of Infinite Love, a French-based Roman Catholic rebel sect. The government charges that the children, raised communally by newly celibate parents, lack proper food, education, and health precautions.

An Oklahoma Baptist missionary turned in an estimated fifteen million trading stamps in exchange for a six-passenger airplane he will use in Brazil. The Rev. J. Gerald Price said the stamps were saved over a period of six years by members of the North American Baptist Association.

Thirty-year-old Robert Petersen was convicted of possessing marijuana in Santa Cruz, California, despite his plea that use of the drug was essential to the practice of his religious beliefs. A number of clergymen testified in his behalf, but the judge said he questioned Petersen’s sincerity.

Nearly 2,000 clergymen and 400 seminary students who oppose the Viet Nam war rallied in Washington, D. C., and by February 1 had launched a national campaign.

The two-day interfaith meeting was called by the ad hoc committee of “Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Viet Nam.” Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., committee leader and emcee of the closing meeting in Washington, said the organization began as a “galvanizing group” a year ago but is now a “movement.”

The movement asked persons from various cities to spend thirty hours during February organizing anti-war cells, and asked each of the participants, who paid a $12 registration fee, to give $25 (contributions go through the National Council of Churches and are thus tax deductible). The committee called a three-day fast beginning on Ash Wednesday, which is also the Buddhist New Year and the start of a Viet Nam holiday truce.

The Rev. Richard Neuhaus, a Lutheran, said the fast should be “used very carefully for strategy purposes … education, and strategic mobilization.”

Neuhaus called on local groups to start counseling centers for young men facing military draft or men already in uniform who don’t like the war. He also urged that thousands of clergymen holding 4-D (divinity) deferments apply for reclassification as conscientious objectors because “we want our exemption to count morally.”

Another project will be continued lobbying with congressmen in Washington, although many participants seemed to feel local action such as peace vigils, discussion groups, education, and letter-writing would achieve greater results.

While in the capital, various state delegations made the rounds of offices of their senators and representatives. They drew dove-ish responses from freshmen Republican Senators Brooke, Hatfield, and Percy, but there was much discouragement among many of the neophyte lobbyists.

In the closing rally, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, a Roman Catholic, came close to opposing the war (“We must be prepared to pass a harsh moral judgment on our commitment …”). Ernest Gruening of Alaska, the only senator who lists no religious preference, restricted his remarks to the political situation. “There is no justification whatever for our being there and no good could come of it.… Any way out would be an improvement over what we’re doing.”

The Senate’s other outspoken war critic, Oregon’s Wayne Morse, said he opposes the war because, “as a religious man, I do not intend to walk out … on my religious responsibility to my generation.” He said his Congregational Church teaches that “when you sit in the holy of holies of your conscience, you do not sit alone, but with your God.”

The rally was held at the headquarters church, New York Avenue Presbyterian, once peopled by such historic hawks as Peter Marshall and Abraham Lincoln. The minister there, Dr. George Docherty, came out against the war in a December sermon. A native of Scotland, he was a “Christian pacifist” in 1943. Docherty joined Coffin and Robert McAfee Brown in calling on fellow Presbyterian Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense.

During a protest march in front of the White House (three blocks from the church), about 200 counter-demonstrators from the American Council of Christian Churches represented the hawk position.

The Clergy and Laymen Concerned issued a policy statement drafted by Brown declaring that the war is immoral. It called for an end of bombing of North Viet Nam, acceptance of Viet Cong spokesmen at peace talks, and increased negotiation efforts at the U. N. and elsewhere.

Pope, Podgorney Confer

Diplomatic observers speculated over the significance of the January 30 meeting between Pope Paul VI and Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny. It marked the first time that a Soviet chief of state and a Roman Catholic pontiff have conferred.

Official information was lacking, but Vatican sources indicated that the two had discussed peace possibilities in Viet Nam and diplomatic channels between Moscow and Vatican City. A brief communiqué said they had also talked about the long decline of Roman Catholic strength in the Soviet Union.

Bishop Dibelius Dies

Berlin’s Bishop K. F. Otto Dibelius, 86, who defied both Nazis and Communists on Christian grounds, died January 31. He had been in failing health since suffering a stroke last November shortly after participating in the World Congress on Evangelism.

Dibelius first achieved fame in 1933 when he was removed as Lutheran superintendent in Berlin after he refused to recognize the church overseer appointed by Adolph Hitler. The next year he joined other churchmen in the Barmen Declaration, which asserted the primacy of Christ and opposed nationalization of the churches. He was arrested three times, tried and acquitted, and forbidden to speak or publish.

At the end of World War II, the trim-bearded Dibelius became bishop of the city divided between East and West and later scarred by The Wall. He was an outspoken critic of Communism. During those years, he helped unite several bodies into Germany’s

Evangelical Church (EKID), and was a president of the World Council of Churches.

Dibelius left his Berlin bishopric less than a year ago. He had resigned five years earlier but stayed on when East and West could not agree on a replacement. His 1961 farewell address seemed a legacy upon his death:

“I beg my church … never to surrender to the powers of this world. I pray that God may keep the Church free from the temptation to succumb to the spirit of agitation and propaganda which rages all round it.”

Satanic Nuptials

Former carnival worker and burlesque pianist Anton Szander LaVey, now a “high priest of the Devil,” made box-office history in San Francisco last month by performing the first Satanist wedding (see editorial, page 30).

Joined in the wedlock “conceived in Hell” were ex-Presbyterian Judith Case, daughter of a leading New York Republican, and Marxist journalist John Raymond, who used to be a Christian Scientist. The altar decoration was red-haired Lois Murgenstrumm, 21, a “witch” who reclined in the nude as a symbol of carnal pleasure. LaVey was outfitted in cape and horns.

Although some guests puffed marijuana, the chemical theme was more important at an earlier Bay epic in which the couple took 250 micrograms of LSD each before the ceremony because, the groom said, “People who are really where they are, who are already there, are that much more there with LSD.” The Rev. William L. Dunahoe of Oakland’s unorthodox Church of the Brotherhood of the Way asked, “Do you love each other for the foreseeable future?” and intoned, “O.K. You’re married.”

Cdgm Back On The Budget

The Child Development Group of Mississippi, an anti-poverty project dear to the heart of America’s ecumenical churchmen, is getting $4.9 million in federal funds for the current fiscal year. Another $3 million is being promised next year. Government officials announced formally the first grant in late January following a tentative agreement several weeks before. The CDGM program was in jeopardy for a time following charges of irregularities. Aid is contingent upon the United Presbyterian Board of National Missions assuming full financial responsibility for CDGM.

Fleeing U. S. ‘Persecution’

Unless the Supreme Court acts, many of America’s 50,000 Amish may migrate to other countries rather than give in to such pressures as Viet Nam draft calls and compulsory attendance at modern high schools.

The National Committee on Amish Religious Freedom soon will ask the high court to overrule the Kansas Supreme Court, which upheld fines and jail sentences against Amish parents who refused to send their children to a public high school.

Support for the appeal has materialized quickly. Dean M. Kelley, executive director of the Commission on Religious Liberty, National Council of Churches, has joined the Amish defense committee, and the American Civil Liberties Union has offered help. An Amish defense fund has drawn more than $5,000.

Members of one sect of “Plain People,” the “Chapman” Mennonites, are moving en masse from Pennsylvania to British Honduras this year. Twenty families have already started farms in the Central American country, and forty more are selling their homes to join the migration. One of their leaders, Martin Weaver, said the move was a result of “a combination of the war and the school situation. Many of our younger members feel they can no longer practice our faith in the United States of America.”

Most draft boards are willing to classify members of the historic peace sects as conscientious objectors, but they refuse them farming deferments and order them to duty in alternate service programs, particularly in state mental hospitals. There, Amish bishops complain, the young men are forced to use trucks, electric lights, and other modern conveniences they eschew at home. As draft quotas have increased because of the Viet Nam war, more and more Amish have been required to spend two years of service in the outside world.

A far more serious threat, Amish leaders feel, is the continuing effort of professional educators to force the Plain sects either to send their children to modern schools or to have their sectarian schools staffed by teachers from the outside world.

Kansas requires teachers to have degrees from accredited colleges. Many Amish rural schools are taught by schoolmarms who have only an eighth-grade education, although they take pride in demonstrating that their children accomplish more in basic skills than students in modern schools. Some Amish compromise by hiring teachers who have graduated from colleges run by more liberal Mennonites, such as Goshen in Indiana and Eastern Mennonite in Virginia. But this doesn’t always satisfy state authorities, nor does it resolve the problem of what to do after the eighth grade.

Some Amish bishops have decided that a suit in defense of individual rights to preserve their way of life is different from a lawsuit for civil damages and thus have agreed to cooperate in the upcoming legal battle. They will not be direct parties to the action, however.

The elders seek to shield their children from the twentieth-century environment pressing in on them and to maintain an ancient way of life that forbids the use of modern conveniences and all worldly amusements, such as television and movies.

British Honduras, eager to improve its agricultural production, has told emigrants they will face no military draft, can have whatever schools they want without government interference, and can live in isolation from the modern world.

But the United States has been a good home for the conservative Mennonites, and the prospect of mass migration is painful. They would prefer to retain their present settlements in areas marked by good fields, well-kept homes, a complete absence of crime, and signs warning motorists to watch for slow-moving horse-drawn vehicles.

An obvious disadvantage of the Honduras move is the conflict between the tropical climate and the head-to-foot black garb of the Plain People. Mennonite colonies were planted in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America over recent decades, and serious hardship resulted. Several colonies in Mexico were abandoned because of droughts. Most of the previous Latin American settlements were established by Russians who fled to escape the Czar and, later, the Communists.

Some U. S. Amish are considering a move to British Columbia, Canada, where the government is seeking settlers for virgin lands opened by new roads for the first time.

It would be ironic if thousands of Amish refugees were to flee the United States 225 years after William Penn’s famous invitation to persecuted European Anabaptists to settle in Pennsylvania.

GLENN D. EVERETT

To the University of California’s Berkeley campus—freshly embroiled in turmoil over the sudden firing of President Clark Kerr—came new conflict last month centering on militant Christianity and Billy Graham.

It was touched off when Dr. William R. Bright brought 700 staffers of his world-wide Campus Crusade for Christ to the campus for a week-long “work” convention, the first since Bright started the organization in 1951. CCC board member Graham addressed a breakfast gathering of 300 faculty members and a noon crowd of 8,000 students on the last day of the session.

All week, CCC activists buttonholed students with straightforward, person-to-person gospel appeals. They staged noon rallies before thousands and conducted evening meetings in scores of residence halls. They infiltrated “The Forum,” a popular Telegraph Avenue coffeehouse frequented by hippies and budding political radicals, and scored many conversions there. Nightly they put on high-quality programs at a 3,000-seat theater. They saturated surrounding neighborhoods with a visitation campaign, and in the campus Plaza area they manned Christian literature tables next to tables run by such groups as the Campus Sexual Rights Forum, the leftist Students for a Democratic Society, and the Maoist-oriented Progressive Labor Party.

By the end of the week almost 1,000 decision slips were tabulated, not including more than 150 inquiry cards checked in at the Graham meeting.

Widespread criticism resulted. The Daily Californian editorialized that it had no objection to religious discussion activities but that “there are limits to these activities which should not be overstepped, and this group of zealots has managed to transgress those boundaries with gay abandon.” It complained that students had been roused from bed by early-morning telephone calls—a charge denied by Bright but one that made Bay Area headlines. Campus editor John Oppedahl admitted that he could not substantiate the complaint.

The editorial claimed further that the crusade workers were “unfair” in their persistence with those who declined to listen “to the continued sales drive.” It went on to liken the crusade to an early American tent show, whose promotion “falls far short of the dignity of the product.”

One former CCC’er who is now a UC student said many Christians on campus were offended by the “bombardment from outside.” She complained, “These outsiders failed to consider the mood of this campus; their razzle-dazzle methods are out of style here.” She did praise the local CCC unit—responsible for about four hundred campus conversions last year—for its rapport with UC students.

Asked by the press to comment on criticisms of CCC militancy, Graham answered, “People get zealous over everything else—Why not Christianity? At least they are proclaiming, and not protesting.”

The crusade began January 23, the first school day after Kerr’s dismissal. At noon about 3,000 of UC’s 26,000 students flocked to the steps of Sproul Hall, an assembly site immortalized by Mario Savio and fellow protesters. Expecting to be led in a giant protest over the Kerr incident, the crowd was surprised to find the steps had been reserved by CCC. Some drifted away, but most stayed to hear folk singers. CCC leader Jon Braun stepped to the microphone and explained the crusade. When catcalls and boos arose from a segment of the beard-and-sandal set, Braun boomed, “We are revolutionaries! We don’t like the world the way it is either. We are against racial hatred, poverty, war, and immorality. God did not intend the world to be like it is. The only solution to our problems is Jesus Christ.”

On Wednesday the New Left took the Sproul steps to air the Kerr issue but lost most of its audience to a nearby CCC rally. Irritated, some New Left adherents vented their anger over the competition in Daily Californian pages.

But to a large degree, it was the campus radicals who seemed to give the most intense hearing to the CCC personal workers. They often concluded interviews with a warm handshake and a grateful “Thank you for talking with me.”

Explained local CCC chief Ted McReynolds, “Ideas are at a premium on this campus. These students are searching intellectually, and they will genuinely listen to your ideas.”

And listen they did. Bright had an interview with self-professed Communist Bettina Aptheker. One worker told of a student who had been on an LSD and sex binge and had prayed that God would forgive him. Another reported that eleven in a fraternity group of twenty-one became Christians on the same night. A Hong Kong student accepted Christ at a chance meeting in a restaurant. Story after story of such encounters was told in morning testimony meetings.

When Graham arrived on campus, he was asked about a university-wide rule stating that UC facilities “shall not be used for the purpose of religious worship, exercise, or conversion.” Graham said he thought that the events of two years ago—an allusion to the Free Speech Movement—had “dealt with the subject.”

One university official supported Graham’s right to speak freely and said, “If it’s all right for students to speak without restriction about a pseudo-religion such as Marxism, we wonder about enforcing a rule aimed at an established faith.”

Dr. Burton Moyer, chairman of the physics department, presided at the faculty breakfast meeting with Graham Friday morning. He had hoped to get at least 500 of UC’s 3,000 faculty members to attend, but only 300 showed up.

An Episcopal student chaplain, asked to give the invocation, instead read a statement that many felt was more a swipe at Graham than a prayer to God. In it he urged deliverance from “a narrow dogmatism that might obscure thy glory.”

During the hour-long question period after Graham’s speech, there was a surprising lack of hostility toward the evangelist. He fielded potentially explosive questions and artfully dodged taking a stand on the Viet Nam war.

Other questions dealt with resurrection, Christian social involvement, problems of guilt, ethics without Christ, and the place of non-Christian religions.

To a near-capacity crowd of collegians at the open-air Greek theater, he declared, “Man needs God as much as he needs air or sex. This unsatisfied longing for God is the reason for the sense of emptiness in the student world. When you enter university life you are pressured to experience sex, LSD, and pot. Why not experience Christ instead?” A rumored protest against Graham failed to materialize.

Graham touched some of the most relevant issues on the UC campus. A sizable number of its students are enmeshed in increasingly severe problems. LSD and marijuana usage is soaring.

The Bay Area is also a focal point for the “sexual revolution.” The campus-based Sexual Rights Forum, whose members hawk such lapel buttons as “Fondle Me” and “If It Feels Good, Do It,” is linked to the Bay Area’s Sexual Freedom League. The SFL sponsors nude dances and parties, beach excursions, and weekend outings to the mountains. Most participants are college age. At least one church sponsors social functions for homosexuals. The homosexual population of the Bay Area is estimated at well over 100,000.

Graham had warned at the faculty breakfast that a moral vacuum results if spiritual needs are unmet, and that into such a gap steps “a Hitler or Communism, pot or LSD, sex sins or suicide.” He reminded the teachers that every 1½ hours an American student kills himself. Suicide is second only to auto accidents as a cause of student deaths.

After the Berkeley visit, Graham went south to UCLA and drew the first overflow crowd in the four-year-old student speaker series. As he spoke to an audience of 6,000 that had been shifted to giant Pauley Pavilion, anti-war demonstrators carried such signs as “Go to Hell Billy.” The evangelist asked those who wanted to accept Christ to attend a later meeting in the student union.

Reagan On Religion

Although the Presidential Prayer Breakfast (adjacent story) gets the most publicity, similar sessions occur on the state and local levels, including one last month on Inauguration Day in the nation’s most populous state, California. New Governor Ronald Reagan said prayer is “the most logical and proper way to begin anything,” including his administration.

Among speakers were Jewish and Roman Catholic clergymen and Don Moomaw, hulking ex-All-America footballer whom Reagan calls “my pastor.” Moomaw, a strong evangelical and minister of Hollywood’s Bel Air Presbyterian Church, told the breakfast that Reagan is one who seeks first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

The new Republican governor, seen as presidential timber by GOP conservatives despite a past divorce, said, “I don’t believe that any one of us could conceive of carrying on and meeting the problems of our state without the help of God.” In fact, he said part of the reason for unrest at the University of California Berkeley campus was that parents of students there weren’t religious enough.

Although Reagan often attends Moomaw’s church, he’s a member of the fashionable Beverly Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), where longtime employee Mrs. Bessie Newport says “Ronnie has very definite Christian convictions and would stand by them.” She said Reagan contributes regularly to the church, where he transferred his membership from First Christian Church of Dixon, Illinois, his boyhood congregation.

Moomaw thinks Reagan “will never do the immoral or dishonest thing as he understands it.” There are reports that Reagan recently was led to Christ. In regard to the governor’s religious beliefs, Moomaw was wary of betraying private confidences. “I don’t know really what being a Christian means to him. I assume from my association with the governor that he and his family are people of prayer. Yes, he gives evidence of being a Christian, and I know only one kind, and that is one who is born again.”

Hayley Mills: ‘Decision For God’

Actress Hayley Mills tells of her Christian conversion at Billy Graham’s 1966 London Crusade in the February issue of Motion Picture. An article by Rose Gordon describes how the attractive 20-year-old screen celebrity walked the aisle at Graham’s invitation on the final night of the Earls Court meetings.

“Yes, it’s true,” Hayley was quoted as saying. “I was converted.… What it means is becoming a Christian. That is, someone who actually lives as a Christian rather than just having been christened and not doing anything about it.”

The article further quotes her as saying, “I was interested in the crusade and had read much about it. But it wasn’t until the last night that I went up to the rostrum when Billy Graham asked for volunteers to profess their belief in God. And I went forward to answer his call to make a decision for God.”

“I feel that my life has taken on a deeper meaning than it had before, and I have found a new kind of happiness with my conversion.”

Born into the Church of England, Hayley Mills now says she attends Baptist services.

The Prayer Breakfast

Speaking from a head table featuring such diverse Democrats as Georgia Governor Lester Maddox and Robert Weaver, first Negro Cabinet member, President Johnson said, “We know that in the hour of decision, faced with tormenting choice, none of us can be certain we are right.” But “we believe the whole drama of human history is under the scrutiny of a divine Judge.”

The main speaker at the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast was a layman, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Fowler. Episcopalian Fowler said he has a “conviction that the need is clear and the time is ripe for a spiritual reformation,” and he called upon national leaders to live lives worthy of Christ’s example.

Quoting Pope Paul and the Apostle Paul, Fowler expressed hope for worldwide renewal. And speaking to the United States, he said, “If there was ever a time for Christian behavior combined with national greatness, it is now.” This doesn’t mean “national arrogance or self-importance,” he said.

The treasury secretary, who noted that he is “a layman in a highly secular activity,” also urged the congressmen and other national leaders present to form small groups to read the Bible and “discuss the relevance of Christ and his teachings.” He said there is a need for the “individual and personal commitment which God requires.”

The presidential breakfast, an idea that has spread to many nations, is the outgrowth of weekly prayer breakfast groups from the U. S. House and Senate. Senator George Murphy of California, a Roman Catholic, speaking in a half-whisper because of a throat operation, said these weekly meetings are “one of the most rewarding and substantial experiences of my life.” Speaking for the House group, Representative G. Elliott Hagan said the President and all wielders of political power “realize and publicly recognize that there is access to an even greater power through faith and prayer to God through Jesus Christ his Son.”

Human birth is the most commonplace miracle on this planet. But this private joy is fast becoming a public sorrow. Now that humanity is counted by the billions, the mathematics of the mass warns of widescale starvation in fifteen years. It may be this century’s great moral crisis.

Romanticists of fertility like to say that birth control would have cheated the world of seventeenth child Johann Sebastian Bach, fifteenth child John Wesley, or even eleventh child Cardinal Ottaviani, the conservative who heads the Vatican’s latest commission on contraception.

All Christian groups accept some form of family planning. Gazing across the great ecumenical divide, Roman Catholics permit only the “rhythm” method of periodic abstinence from sexual relations, while Protestants generally accept mechanical or chemical preventatives as well.

Rome merely believes what the Protestants did until several decades ago. The U. S. state laws against birth control recently overthrown were Protestant hangovers. In Roman Catholic France and in Canada, where Protestants were dominant until recently, any artificial contraception is still illegal, though the prohibitive laws are seldom enforced.

The closest thing to a Protestant consensus is a 1961 policy statement of the National Council of Churches. (On this issue, the council doesn’t speak for Eastern Orthodoxy, which generally holds the Roman position.) The NCC said “motives, rather than methods, form the primary moral issue.” But a few Protestants, at least, wonder about that.

Some fear wide availability of birth control has encouraged youths to be promiscuous. Limiting control to married couples only seems impossible. The “pill,” for instance, is used for medical treatment as well as contraception. Conservative Protestants are usually mum on the issue, but once in a while some speak out—often with a Roman accent. Writing in Eternity five years ago, Illinois physician Stanley Anderson virtually said that the use of birth control amounts to disobedience and lack of faith in God.

When that was written, the “pill” was still experimental, and Planned Parenthood was advising against use of the new intra-uterine device (IUD). But both techniques are now used by millions. Still, however, biologists lack information on the effects of these methods. In fact, they aren’t really sure how the IUD works.

The pill—which is relatively expensive and must be taken daily—is popular among affluent, sophisticated people, while the IUD is the most feasible means of mass birth control for developing nations. Though only about 95 per cent effective, the IUD is inexpensive and, once the small loop or ring is inserted in a five-minute operation, requires little attention. An estimated 1.3 million women now use the IUD in India, and South Korea credits 400,000 IUD insertions with a significant drop in its birth rate.

The United Nations reports that world population grew by 70,000,000 during 1966, as food production per person in developing countries dropped by 4 to 5 per cent. Last month, U. S. aid director William S. Gaud predicted that by 1980, “one billion additional mouths will be added to those areas of the world least able to feed them.”

Thus birth control is increasingly important in U. S. foreign policy. When President Johnson urged population planning on the world in his 1967 State of the Union address, the Vatican press—apparently sensing he had more than rhythm in mind—issued a rebuke. A few weeks later, Secretary of State Dean Rusk made one of his strongest statements yet:

“We shall need more food, but more food is not the long-term solution. We must continue developing of better instrumentalities for population control.… Changes in mores are in process in many parts of the world, and the approach is becoming international.”

An indication of scientific hesitancy is seen in the fact that a committee of the U. S. Food and Drug Administration is studying the safety and effectiveness of IUDs and should report by mid-year. Although ethical discussions on birth control tend to be divorced from biology, scientific evidence leads such Christians as William F. Campbell, a missionary doctor in Morocco, to fear that use of the IUD is “a kind of abortion.”

The biological question is at what point the IUD stops human life—before or after the male sperm fertilizes the female egg. The ethical question is whether a fertilized egg is a human being—whether the IUD may be the mechanism for microscopic murder.

Campbell, writing in the Christian Medical Society Journal, admitted that science is unsure whether eggs become fertilized when the IUD is used. Majority opinion, however, appears to be that the IUD does not prevent fertilization but rather keeps the already fertilized egg from nesting in the wall of the uterus.

Because of this possibility, Campbell rules out the IUD, as well as the experimental “morning-after pill,” which is taken to stop implantation of a fertilized egg.

Campbell is apparently the first Protestant to raise the moral issue in print. The current Journal carries a few replies accusing Campbell of legalistic nit-picking à la Rome. Church of the Brethren medical missionary John S. Horning raises the rival theory that the IUDs do not cause “death or disruption after fertilization” but somehow make the ovary release the egg before it is ripe enough to be fertilized. Another theory is that the IUD interferes with fertilization in the area where egg and sperm normally meet.

Unless the IUD is “proven to be an abortive mechanism,” Horning thinks it would be a greater sin to frustrate birth control than to use a method “which we think might just possibly produce abortions.” In his work with poor Indians in Ecuador, Horning reports “95 per cent success” with IUDs and “95 per cent failure” with Campbell-approved methods.¹Campbell says Christian morality permits use within marriage of “condoms, diaphragms, spermicidal drugs, medicine to suppress ovulation, and drugs to suppress formation of sperm in the male.”

Speaking from India, a pressure point in population, IUD proponent Dr. R. B. Conyngham of the Christian Medical Association says, “It is only presumed that fertilization does occur. There is no evidence that implantation occurs … and that abortion then results.”

But what if science proves that the IUD seals the doom of an already fertilized egg by stopping implantation, or even by later abortion, as some evidence suggests? This is the basic moral issue. Campbell contends that any fertilized egg is already a “human person” because “the total potential for future development, carried in genes from the father and the mother, is present.”

Similarly, Notre Dame scientist Julian Pleasants says that “implantation, placentation, and birth merely change the form of nutrition; they do not change the character of the embryo.” Germain Grisez of Georgetown University says Vatican II clearly outlawed IUD’s “since these quite likely interfere with life already conceived.”

Dr. Donald Chan, gynecology professor at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, says he can find “no scriptural basis one way or the other” to decide when a human being first exists, so he presents the latest scientific evidence to Malayan Christians and lets them decide whether the IUD is moral.

A substantial group of Protestants would agree with Dr. Milton O. Kepler, an Episcopalian who teaches a course in religion and medicine at George Washington University. To him, abortion is “removal of an implanted ovum.”

Campbell’s position could prohibit not only IUD’s but also birth-control pills, taken by millions of women. Most popularly written articles on the pill talk of its “anti-ovulant” effect—prevention of release of the egg by simulating conditions of pregnancy.

But Edward Tyler, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted two other effects of progesterone-estrogen combinations: making the cervical mucus impenetrable to sperm, thus acting like a diaphragm; and making the womb unsuitable for implantation of a fertilized egg. America, the Jesuit weekly, noted this evidence in opposing this type of pill.

A Lutheran physician in California, Dr. A. Giesbret, not only opposes the IUD on the abortion grounds but also feels that the pills—even if they only act to suppress ovulation—are “completely immoral and contrary to natural principles.” He says he knows several Protestant physicians who agree.

Whatever Protestant viewpoint develops, on the basis of numbers the Roman position is more important. Among Roman Catholics searching for a liberal view is Virginia physician Rudolph Ehrensing, who has written for National Catholic Reporter. On the question of when human life begins, he hopes the church will decide that “the fertilized ovum is not a human person, that the full human being comes into existence only in, say, the third week or the third month after conception. Then an ‘abortion’ before that time—the preventing implantation … might be moral under some circumstances.”

In this month’s McCall’s, Roman Catholic columnist Clare Boothe Luce contends that “any physically harmless birth control means, short of sterilization (which is sexual suicide) and abortion (which is self-violence and infanticide) should be accepted by the Church.” What’s more, she believes Pope Paul will apply his “courage and consummate prudence” and come to a similar conclusion.

But popes do not contradict previous Vatican pronouncements. The birth-control belief has a long history, including a 1588 bull by Pope Sixtus V that condemned contraception by “magical evil deeds” and “cursed medicines.” In a 1930 encyclical that apparently falls under the dogma of papal infallibility, Pius XI said “any use whatever of marriage, in the exercise of which the act by human effort is deprived of its natural power of procreating life” is sin. In authoritative but not infallible statements, Pius XII interpreted this as permitting rhythm but not the pill and other methods considered unnatural.

Also, the Pope can’t condone methods he believes to be immoral, despite an impending crisis of starvation. At least he’s worrying about the problem from all angles. Many Protestants—staggered by the moral aspects of present and future suffering—give scarcely a second thought to the moral aspects of the various methods. Many others give scarcely a first thought to either.

Merger Plan, Installment One

After five years of negotiation between the Reformed Church in America and the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), the first installment of a plan for merger of the two groups was mailed to congregations in late January.

The 106-page pocket-size booklet deals with “form of government” for the proposed new Presbyterian Reformed Church in America. The negotiating committee’s timetable calls for release of sections on disciplinary procedure and worship in June and on organizational structure and doctrine in August. Target date for submission of a complete plan of union is 1968.

Just before sending out the first section, the Joint Committee of Twenty-four declared that the merger it proposes is “the only viable possibility of union before us either now or in the immediate future.” But after that, the Permanent Committee on Inter-Church Relations of the 950,000-member Southern Presbyterian Church suggested that discussion with the smaller RCA is only one of the ways the denomination should pursue Christian unity. It specified talks with the United Presbyterian Church and the Consultation on Church Union. After the Presbyterian General Assembly’s surprise decision in 1966 to become a full participant in COCU, the RCA General Synod asked for an explanation. The Joint Committee’s “only viable possibility” statement is intended to guide the next assembly in its answer. Whatever decision the Presbyterians make will be under the watchful eye of the 230,000-member Reformed Church, whose synod meets simultaneously with the Presbyterian assembly this June in Bristol, Tennessee.

The policy draft is not proposed for adoption at Bristol but is certain to stir debate there. It is labeled a “first draft presented for study and suggestion,” and the committee is asking the grass roots to send comments.

The document generally follows the present Presbyterian Book of Church Order in format and content, with some important differences. It includes some RCA practices, and some procedures not spelled out in the constitution of either denomination.

The graded system of courts would use Presbyterian names (session, presbytery, synod, general assembly), but the RCA consistory (elders and deacons sitting as one board) would be retained at the local level.

Presbyteries would be authorized to name a “general pastor” to oversee relations between congregations and their clergymen—an office new to both churches. However, he would have no administrative authority, and would report to the presbytery through a committee on pastoral relations.

New ordination vows are proposed for ministers, elders, and deacons. Candidates would be asked to affirm that they “sincerely believe the Gospel of the Grace of God in Christ Jesus as revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and as truly set forth in the doctrinal standards of the Presbyterian Reformed Church in America.”

Presbyterian ordinands now are asked if they “believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice,” if they “sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.” The draft follows current RCA forms for clergy ordination except that the vow omits the promise to “reject all errors” contrary to the Bible and doctrinal standards.

Another likely issue is the amending procedure, which would require a two-thirds vote of presbyteries—compared to three-fourths under current Presbyterian practice—to approve another church merger or amend doctrine.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

The Moon Martyrs

Edward White, II, one of the most outspoken of U. S. astronauts on the subject of religion, had sewn three tokens into the left leg of his space suit just before the June, 1965, flight during which he became the first American to walk in space.

He carried a miniature cross, a star of David, and a St. Christopher medal that had been blessed and sent him by Pope John XXIII. White later explained:

“I took these things to express, a bit, the great faith I had in the people and the equipment we were using for the mission. I had faith in myself, and in Jim [McDivitt], and especially in my God. Faith was the most important thing I had going for me on the flight;”

White also said that this faith in God and colleagues kept him calm when he had dangerous difficulty reclosing the hatch after the space-walk.

A dreadful human error seemed inevitable someday in the race to the moon. It came in an instant on January 27, during the first full dry run for the Apollo mission that had been scheduled for this week. White, Virgil (Gus) Grissom, and Roger Chaffee were burned alive within seconds in their Apollo capsule on the Cape Kennedy launch pad. The cause may not be known for months, if then.

Instead of tokens, the 36-year-old White had planned to take a miniature Bible with him into space this time.

Like many other astronauts, White found time for church work despite his demanding profession. He was a lay speaker and member of the official board and Christian education commission at Seabrook Methodist Church, one of several modern Protestant churches that have sprung up in suburban Houston, Texas, to serve the burgeoning National Aeronautics and Space Administration community.

White’s closeness to the church’s life added a special poignancy to the half-hour memorial service for him last month. The Rev. Conrad Winborn said, “The fullness of Ed’s life, his giving of himself, makes the loneliness and separation intolerable but, paradoxically, bearable. He gave deeply and fully of himself, and we have been the recipients of a priceless and eternal treasure.”

Earlier the same morning, another memorial service was held at the same church for Grissom, 40, who attended there. It was conducted by Roy Van Tassell, minister at the Church of Christ in Mitchell, Indiana, where Grissom had retained his membership. “The real person is not just a body any more than a home is just a house,” Van Tassell preached. “Jesus spoke of Lazarus’ death as sleep. Death is just a door from this life to the next. We take off the garment of mortality and put on the garment of immortality. I’m sure that is the feeling Virgil Grissom had when his time came. He was ready to go.”

Chaffee was the youngest of the trio (31) and the only one who had not been in space before. At a service for him at Webster Presbyterian Church—the day before the services honoring his fellow astronauts—the Rev. Ernest A. Dimaline said Chaffee died in a mission to “create, discover, search, and find answers.” He tied man’s space quest to God’s command in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” The preacher added, “This is man’s purpose because man is the highest form of creation now known to us.”

After White’s death, Mrs. Kenneth Done of Salt Lake City, a Mormon religious instructor, reported the contents of a letter White had sent her when she asked about his beliefs after the 1965 walk in space:

“I can tell you I believe that law and order exist in God’s creation and that God has surely given life to others outside our earth. There could be places where there is life similar to our own. We would be egotistical to believe ours is the only life among all those possible sources. As to evidence of God’s presence during our journey and that short period I walked in space, I did not feel any nearer to him there than here, but I do know his sure hand guided us all the way.…”

The Heart Of Christian Ethics

Theological Ethics, Volume I: Foundations, by Helmut Thielicke, edited by William H. Lazareth (Fortress, 1966, 697 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Ellis W. Hollon, Jr., associate professor of philosophy, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

In this book, Helmut Thielicke, professor of theology at the University of Hamburg, does three valuable things:

First, he makes justification central to ethics. Thielicke will not acquiesce to Barth’s conclusion that the Law is only the form of the Gospel, whose content is grace. This shatters the key position of justification, that miracle of God which must be placed at the heart of any Christian ethics. Thielicke makes the radical distinction between Law and Gospel the criterion by which to test the legitimacy of a theology, since only such a strict distinction can maintain the historicity of revelation: “The monistic teaching in Barth’s theology … finds expression in his obliteration of the antithesis between Law and Gospel, leads to timelessness, the elimination of salvation history, and hence a philosophical world view.”

Thielicke sees as his own task the “declining” of “the doctrine of justification through all the case forms in which it appears within the grammar of our existence.” He says that his basic concern is “to formulate an evangelical ethic for which the fact of justification is decisive.” This means that evangelical ethics is completely different from all philosophical ethics: “Evangelical ethics … takes as its starting point not the goal but the presupposition of the ethical act. It proceeds from the fact of justification as accomplished and given.…”

This “gift,” justification, makes us Christians; yet we are also, in sanctification, called upon to produce good fruits. How can this seeming contradiction between the indicative and the imperative be resolved? Thielicke says:

The automatism of works must be seen in relation to an act which needs constantly to be repeated, namely, that personal … act of decision in virtue of which I turn either to the flesh or to the Spirit, in order to receive the orientation of my existence from either the flesh or the Spirit.

Thielicke feels that this close interrelation of person and work touches on the basic concern of an evangelical ethics grounded in justification and that it “marks the decisive boundary which separates evangelical ethics from all philosophical ethics.”

Second, Thielicke establishes a challenging dialogue with Roman Catholicism. This is done primarily in connection with the imago Dei doctrine. He believes that Roman Catholicism’s interpretation of the “image of God” is ontological rather than personal, since it holds that the imago corresponds to the natural endowment of man (“free reason”), and since it separates this “neutral” thing from the similitudo, the “likeness,” which depends on man’s voluntarily seizing and actualizing his final destiny. This means that “man is capable of co-operating in the work of salvation.”

But Thielicke will have none of this. To think personalistically instead of ontologically “is to see all the realities of human life exclusively in terms of the personal relatedness of God and man, or more precisely, in terms of the fellowship between man and God given in Christ.” The imago Dei is neither an immanent quality nor the relic of such a quality; rather, “the command of God the creator and the corresponding obedience of man his creature together describe the fellowship with God which we call the divine likeness.” After the Fall, this image is “really present,” but only in the “negative mode which implies negation of the original fellowship with God.…” Since it is rather a “relation to God” than an ontic quality, “it can attain to the positive mode only in the one who is ‘our peace,’ i.e., the prototype of our unfallen position: only ‘in Christ.’ ”

Third, Thielicke offers illuminating “models” of Christian behavior. The two “situational” models he examines are “compromise” and the “borderline situation,” with the models of compromise perhaps being more important. “Compromise” involves especially the problem of the white lie.

“White lies” can arise either in an unjust situation or in a situation of agreement. In the former, such as in the interrogation procedures of a totalitarian state, the “enemy” has lost all claim to truth; thus, a “compromise” cannot in that case be called “unchristian,” because there “it is possible that an individual or a group has forfeited its claim to truth.”

In the latter situation is found the problem of the truthfulness of a physician in dealing with a person having a fatal illness. Thielicke holds that the patient must be gradually led to realize that he, himself, as a person is to die, so that he is not dehumanized at the end of his life. Yet this kind of procedure only once again reveals that the physician himself, like his patient, is a fallen man living in a fallen world: “In the depths of every human situation we discover evidence of the fact that our world is a fallen world still awaiting its redemption.”

By way of criticism, I would point out that Thielicke’s outspoken opposition to any philosophical Weltanschauung does not prevent him from using philosophical perspectives himself if the occasion seems to demand them. For instance, he says that “the specifically ‘Christian’ element in ethics is … to be sought explicitly and exclusively in the motivation of the action,” but surely this is not incompatible with the Kantian insight concerning the Categorical Imperative.

The attempt to seek a “philosophical principle” is not in itself necessarily unevangelical. The very fact that the two parts of the Bible are called “testaments” signifies that they “testify” to something that demands meditative reflection to be fully understood. Thielicke says that any philosophical principle will always, for the evangelical thinker, have at hand “a corrective drawn from the history of salvation”; but I would suggest that this very process of inference (“drawing from”) involves the use of philosophical principles—such as the principle that “the nature of a thing is always to be ‘defined’ in terms of its telos or goal.”

Thielicke is also guilty of some inconsistency in theological language. He says in one place that, contra Brunner, “there is no such thing as a capacity for hearing that corresponds to the fact that man is addressed.” Yet in a later passage he declares that “even in the negative mode man still remains responsible.” Does not the word “responsible” connote “an ability to respond,” as Brunner maintains? Thielicke himself later admits that “surely Emil Brunner must ultimately be right in some way in his unwearying insistence that the Gospel does not address itself to sticks and stones, to oxen and asses, but to men.”

These two criticisms do not invalidate the valuable contributions made by this book. May I suggest that Thielicke’s three important achievements in the realm of theological ethics make this book a must for every minister as well as a viable option for teachers interested in the problems of ethics?

Don’T Underestimate The Ancients

Archaeology and Our Old Testament Contemporaries, by James L. Kelso (Zondervan, 1966, 192 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Earl S. Kalland, professor of Old Testament, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

In an age egotistically proud of its scientific gadgetry, this little work ought to jolt one into a better view of man as he really is. The author’s claim that “to underestimate the God of the Old Testament” and “to underestimate its finest people” are “two common mistakes in Old Testament interpretation today” gets ample support in his fourteen short chapters. Although Kelso doesn’t say so, overestimation of the brilliance and ability of twentieth-century man produces this underestimation of ancient man. Any correction of our failure to give proper value to the character and abilities of ancient man will prove salutary.

Kelso’s fetching chapter titles overpopularize his main theme of the contemporaneity of the Old Testament people. His thesis is nonetheless correct. Of course, the Israelite judges were not exactly like the leaders of today’s new nations, nor did Solomon acquire even one Ph.D. Yet these analogies (and a dozen others) have a basic truthfulness and show the relevance of the Old Testament to our times.

Kelso’s simple and lucid style should make the book attractive to the average Christian reader. Yet the work is no less authoritative because it is easy to read. The wealth of Kelso’s knowledge of archaeology is evident as he describes the persons and times of famous Old Testament leaders from Abraham’s day to the inter-testamental period. The lessons taught are well worth learning.

The book is evangelically biblical. It warms the heart of one whose high view of Scripture is coupled with a fondness for its truth. Not bibliolatry but a biblically centered faith in the God of the Bible as the true God is evidenced on every page. Though not a book of doctrine, it nevertheless imparts evangelical doctrine.

This informative volume should be in the library of every Christian teacher and minister.

Pentecostal Panorama

Pentecostalism, by John Thomas Nichol (Harper & Row, 1966, 264 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by John E. Dahlin, professor emeritus of history and political science, Northwestern College, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This is a major contribution in the treatment of the history of the Pentecostal movement from its origin at the turn of the century to the present. To write such a history is no small task, for this movement has expanded into nearly all areas of the earth. The volume shows comprehensive research, and the documentation is excellent.

Nichol brings forward many important personalities of the movement. One is Charles Fox Parham, the leader of the “Full Gospel” emphasis in the United States at the beginning period. Parham strongly advocated healing, baptism with the Holy Spirit, and speaking in tongues, three points of doctrine that have been emphasized throughout the history of Pentecostalism. Then there are certain unusual personalities in American Pentecostalism, including Aimee Semple McPherson, Tommy Hicks, and Oral Roberts. Nichol also considers prominent Pentecostal leaders in many other lands, such as Lewi Petrus of Sweden and T. A. Barratt of Norway. The reader is impressed by the magnitude of the Pentecostal movement.

The author’s Pentecostal background does not color his work; he is sympathetic but not biased. The book was written, he says, not to defend Pentecostalism, but to provide a comprehensive history of it. He has avoided controversy by omitting a theological interpretation of Pentecostalism. Such an interpretation, or a serious evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, would have been welcome.

Nichol designates Pentecostalism as a “third force” in Christianity. This seems unwarranted, since the movement has, according to him, not more than 8,000,000 adherents. Moreover, there has been continuous fragmentation during its history, as Nichol admits.

To cover the entire history of Pentecostalism in one medium-sized volume is impossible. Some of Nichol’s discussions are meager. Yet his work will be exceedingly useful as a competent and objective survey of this important movement within Protestantism.

Reading for Perspective

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

• Ancient Orient and Old Testament, by K. A. Kitchen (Inter-Varsity, $3.95). A British scholar applies ancient Near East data to problems of Old Testament chronology, history, and literary criticism and calls for a critical reassessment of widely held liberal theories and methods.

• Valiant for the Truth: A Treasury of Evangelical Writings, compiled and edited by David Otis Fuller (Lippincott, $5.95). Stirring selections by thirty-three great Christian leaders from the first to the twentieth centuries; excellent biographical sketches written by Henry Coray.

• Religion: Origins and Ideas, by Robert Brow (Inter-Varsity, $3.50). Religion in the life of man: original monotheism, development and degeneration of priestcraft, revealed Christianity compared with other religions.

Meet The Great Ones

How I Changed My Mind, by Karl Barth, edited by John D. Godsey (John Knox, 1966, 96 pp., $3) and I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reminiscences of His Friends, edited by Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman (Harper & Row, 1967, 238 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, professor of church history and historical theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

These two small and attractive works merit attention, not for any great contribution they make to theology or church life, but for the insight they offer into two notable figures of our age.

The Barth book has as its core the three essays on the theme “How I Changed My Mind” that Barth wrote for the Christian Century. These refer to the decades 1928–1938, 1938–1948, and 1948–1958. To them the editor has added an introduction on Barth up to 1928, an appendix on his life after 1958, an epilogue on a recent visit to Barth, and some photographs of Barth at various ages from twenty-three to seventy-nine. A useful biography is given also.

The essays should not mislead us, for they are mostly about matters other than theological. Perhaps the most illuminating points are the reference to the final abandonment of a philosophical basis and method and the depiction of Bultmann’s theology as a “resumption of the theme and method of the type of theology fostered by Schleiermacher.” Barth also attempts an apologia of his attitude toward East-West relations.

The work as a whole is clearly not of any serious importance. Nevertheless, those who want a readable, almost chatty introduction to Barth, with some insights into the man as well as the teaching, will welcome this book.

Although it was composed in a different way, the book about Bonhoeffer accomplishes something of the same end. It contains, not material by Bonhoeffer himself, but information and impressions contributed by a whole group ranging from his twin sister Sabine to men like Reinhold Niebuhr and Bishop G. Bell. These impressions are arranged chronologically so as to give us portraits of Bonhoeffer from his childhood to his imprisonment and execution. The essays vary greatly in size, nature, and content, according to the length and depth of acquaintance. All reflect in some degree the greatness of the man, though the ones that verge on hagiography are the least helpful.

In view of the way Bonhoeffer is often portrayed today, the combination of deep and simple piety with his theological endowment and activity is particularly worth noting. So, too, is his serenity through all the trials and adversities of the Hitler period. The book also gives us many sayings that acquire an added dimension in the light of Bonhoeffer’s destiny. Whether or not one wishes to follow Bonhoeffer in his theology, or even in the political decisions that led to his death, the stature of his by no means religionless Christianity comes out strongly in this well-arranged and very readable collection.

Operation Ignition

The Incendiary Fellowship, by D. Elton Trueblood (Harper & Row, 1967, 121 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Ilion T. Jones, professor emeritus of practical theology, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California.

This latest of Dr. Trueblood’s many books reaches the level of the others in quality, value, and relevance. The “fellowship” is the Christian Church. The adjective is suggested by a number of New Testament passages that contain the word “fire,” especially these two: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49); and, “There appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them” (Acts 2:3).

The contents of the book may be summarized as follows:

The early Church was “created” by the fire that was kindled by Christ’s public ministry, his death and resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the evangelistic and missionary zeal of the early Christians. These Christians were “on fire” with a faith to which they were wholly committed. That faith was not a “vague religiosity”; it survived largely because it was specific and definite. “They believed that God really is, that He is wholly personal, that He is like Christ, that He has a particular interest in each individual of the human race, that Christ was telling the truth when he said ‘No one can come to the Father but by me,’ and that God’s purpose involves moral distinctions.”

Our world today desperately needs that kind of redemptive fellowship centered in Jesus Christ as the antidote to the evils of civilization and as the solution to its problems. To be effective, perhaps even to survive, the Church must be renewed by the same faith, the same zeal, that characterized the New Testament fellowship.

How can this renewal be accomplished? The conditions are costly. Renewal “cannot be brought about either by a new set of gadgets or by the rearrangement of the lives of uncommitted people.” The Church must have a definite faith in God as a reality, as a Person, as a living Spirit in the hearts of men. “There is no possibility of renewal unless we are always living on the spiritual frontier.” A new order will not be established by social engineering per se; rather, it will be established by changed men who recognize the “intrinsic necessity of Christian evangelism,” who are willing to be regarded as “quiet fanatics,” but who also realize that all their efforts must be “rational” and that they must be “disciplined followers and disciplined minds.” Hence they must be continuously engaged in “hard thinking”; they must devise new ways of putting their faith to work in every profession and in every area of the world, new ways of preparing laymen to become ministers, scholars, and evangelists for these purposes. In short, the Church “is intended to be an incendiary fellowship and nothing else.” It must be always engaged in “Operation Ignition.”

This, then, is Dr. Trueblood’s message in this book. Anyone who concludes that he is seeking to make the modern Church a mere duplicate of the New Testament Church misunderstands this message. What he is saying, rather, is that a modern Church that is dominated by the faith, equipped with the spiritual resources, and fired with the zeal of the New Testament fellowship can and ought to be a creative, constructive force in our day. Dr. Trueblood suggests a number of significant changes essential to these ends and challenges church leaders to outthink the philosophers, scientists, sociologists, and social engineers of the day.

Rightly understood, this book is directed, not to either liberals or conservatives, but to all who call themselves evangelicals. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” through this modern prophet of God.

What Does It Mean?

Meaningful Nonsense, by Charles J. Ping (Westminster, 1966, 143 pp., $2.25), and Language, Hermeneutic and Word of God, by Robert W. Funk (Harper & Row, 1966, 317 pp., $7.50), are reviewed by Lawrence E. Yates, professor of philosophy and Greek, Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.

Both these books deal with the language of faith. In Meaningful Nonsense, Ping convincingly demonstrates that when words are given to faith, they are meaningful. He begins by a via negativa, showing that the philosophical method of linguistic analysis indicates that the facts of faith are unverifiable and therefore meaningless. Even though rationally nonsensical, however, this nonsense is meaningful, because it is the expression in faith of an encounter with a response to a living God. Therefore, the mode of expression must necessarily be always symbols and analogies.

Can the language of encounter be verified? Assuredly, says the author, not in static experiment but in the dynamic experience of the one who has been overcome by God’s love revealed in a historic person, Jesus of Nazareth.

This book is thoughtfully written and will well repay a careful reading. It is not a theological treatise. The style is engaging and non-technical.

In contrast, Language, Hermeneutic and Word of God is a technical work. James M. Robinson on the dust jacket describes it as “the beginning of a new kind of theology in America.”

The Barthian methodology, says the author, sees the biblical text as human language and hence culturally conditioned. As interpretation of God’s word, it points beyond itself to the divine word, which, because divine, is beyond the reach of the interpreter; that is, the Word is within the word. Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling, Continental theologians who are former students of Bultmann, reverse the direction. By focusing the salvation event in language itself, they see the text as divine language wherein Jesus Christ interprets man, who in faith responds in terms of confession. In thus stressing the historical Jesus they differ from Bultmann.

Professor Funk, who follows Fuchs and Ebeling, applies this method to the parables. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, “language event” is the wordless action of the Samaritan who acts in love. Thus the language event “which grounds the Samaritan’s action precedes the language event which the parable may become for its hearers.” Hence the parable interprets man.

Funk further examines Paul’s discussion of sophia (wisdom) in First Corinthians. Christ as sophia has been partially or totally eclipsed in and by the language of the Corinthians, who see sophia as “free floating speculation.” Paul uses their language but from his personal experience of the living Christ as language event “seeks to shatter the word determined by sophia on the word of the cross” (the true sophia), as Jesus in the parable strove to shatter the whole legal tradition on himself as the Word.

This new approach is highly commendable. The positive proclamation of the living God is sorely needed today, for the question is, as Funk observes, “whether the words spoken from the pulpit and in the counseling chamber carry with them the reality of God’s redeeming grace.” If this new hermeneutic can help to achieve this end it will be most welcome. Specialists will particularly appreciate the grasp and discussion of the positions of Van Buren, Ott, Ogden, and Bultmann.

Does It Merit A Prize?

Believing and Knowing, by Emerson Shideler (Iowa State University, 1966, 196 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Charles C. Ryrie, dean of the Graduate School, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Although this was a prize-winning book (“most significant new book by an Iowa author in 1965”), it will not be a winner to many evangelicals. Its subject matter and many of its insights do make it a significant work, but its conclusions leave something to be desired for anyone who looks to the written Word for authority.

Essentially, this book is another attempt to deal with the apparent struggle between religion and science. The author, who teaches philosophy and religion at Iowa State, flatly rejects the idea that liberalism’s accommodation to science has provided the answer. His reason is simple: The resurgence of biblical theology has put to flight the old liberalism and reopened the question. By “biblical theology” the author does not mean Bultmannian demythologizing or fundamentalist identification of the words of the Bible as the words of God, but rather the view of a personal revelation of God that demands response from man but is not dependent on an accurate, non-mythological Bible.

Working from this conception of biblical theology, Professor Shideler goes on to delineate the areas of religious and scientific knowledge. He says that the religious question (“Who?”) is answered by a meeting of persons (God and man), while the scientific question (“What?”) is answered in neutral terms identical for all persons. The religious answer of personal encounter is not without its objectifying elements, however, the firmest being the resurrection of Christ. Yet it does not necessitate propositional revelation. Here, of course, is where the evangelical will disagree with the author. On the other hand. Shideler says that the scientific answer, though usually considered to be wholly objective, also involves subjective interaction with other scientists and with the purpose of the investigation. Thus religion and science do not operate within mutually exclusive frameworks. The limitations the author places on science are well reasoned and worthy of careful reading. But the limitations he places on religion are directly related to his unsatisfactory view of the Bible.

The conclusion is that man must look at religion and science at the same time and learn from both. This is fine—except for the important fact that the view of religion the author points us to is not entirely biblical. Herein is the key to solving the problem this book raises. Divorce biblical theology from the highest view of Scripture, as Shideler does, and one has to conclude that man must live in this dialectic tension. But let the Scripture reveal both personal and propositional truth and stand as judge of all truth, from whatever source, and the ambiguity of the human situation (which is all this author can leave his reader with) disappears.

Book Briefs

Everyone in the Bible, by William P. Barker (Revell, 1966, 370 pp., $6.95). Ever wonder who Abagtha, Nekoda, and Zizah were? You will meet them along with 3,000 others in this complete biblical Who’s Who.

You Shall Be as Gods, by Erich Fromm (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 240 pp., $4.95). A radical interpretation of the Old Testament by a psychoanalyst who believes that the concept “God” is one of many poetic expressions of the highest value in humanism.

The Creative Edge of American Protestantism, by Earl H. Brill (Seabury, 1966, 248 pp., $5.95). A competent history of Protestant activism and an uneven discussion of several social issues, with trenchant material on Christian education and refreshingly balanced comments on our nation’s racial sins. By the Episcopal chaplain at American University.

The Cross in the Marketplace, by Foy Valentine (Word, 1966, 122 pp., $3.50). To an age that has “limited vision of poverty but unlimited poverty of vision,” Valentine offers Christian insights on the race question, the Communist threat, the new morality, and Christian social action.

The Church in the Thought of Bishop John Robinson, by Richard P. McBrien (Westminster, 1966, 160 pp., $3.95). A Roman Catholic scholar admits that J. A. T. Robinson is neither a professional theologian nor a systematiic ecclesiologist, then proceeds to answer a question no one has asked.

The Early Christian Doctrine of God, by Robert M. Grant (University Press of Virginia, 1966, 141 pp., $3.50). From the perspective of contemporary theology, Grant attempts to trace the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. He denies that such a trinitarian doctrine as that found in Athenagoras’ writings “always existed in the Christian subconscious.”

The New Smith’s Bible Dictionary, edited by Reuel G. Lemmons (Doubleday, 1966, 441 pp., $4.95). The first revision in twenty-five years of a well-known treasury of biblical information.

Man’s Search for Himself: Modern and Biblical Images, by Leo Scheffczyk (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 176 pp., $3.95). An intriguing discussion of the image of man seen in the Old and New Testaments and modern philosophy and literature. Scheffczyk writes, “the God-man proves to be the open sesame which opens for us the door to man.…”

The New Americanism and Other Speeches and Essays, by Robert Welch (Western Islands, 1966, 209 pp., $4.95). A collection of the major speeches and essays of the founder of the John Birch Society, all pointing to “less government, more responsibility, and a better world.”

Presbyterians and the Negro—A History, by Andrew E. Murray (Presbyterian Historical Society, 1966, 270 pp., $6). A candid discussion of American Presbyterians’ poor record in penetrating the Negro community during the past two hundred years.

Kierkegaard: An Introduction, by Hermann Diem, translated by David Green (John Knox, 1966, 124 pp., $3.50). A Tübingen professor presents a theological introduction to the great Dane and explains his influence.

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, by Thomas Merton (Doubleday, 1966, 328 pp., $4.95). A prolific monastic takes us on a tour of his personal reflections and meditations during the 1960s.

The Christian Funeral: Its Meaning, Its Purpose, and Its Modern Practice, by Edgar N. Jackson (Channel, 1966, 184 pp., $3.95). The Christian funeral is seen as an opportunity for worshiping God, meeting human needs, and affirming the faith. Includes twenty sample meditations.

Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal, edited by John H. Miller, C. S. C. (Association and University of Notre Dame, 1966, 656 pp., $12.50). Key participants in Vatican Council II relate the happenings and meaning of the historic conference.

The Rise of Moralism: The Gospel from Hooker to Baxter, by C. F. Allison (Seabury, 1966, 250 pp., $9). Allison argues that seventeenth-century moralistic theology corrupted Anglican orthodoxy and led to eighteenth-century deism and present-day secularism.

Voluntary Associations: A Study of Groups in Free Societies, edited by D. B. Robertson (John Knox, 1966, 448 pp., $9.75). Essays in honor of James Luther Adams that probe the theory and practice of voluntary associations, particularly religious groups.

Teaching about Sex—a Christian Approach, by John C. Howell (Broadman, 1966, 149 pp., $3.95). Discussing sex from an informed Christian perspective, Howell encourages participation by the church in sex education. Recommended.

Studies in Isaiah, by F. C. Jennings (Loizeaux, 1966, 784 pp., $5.95). A conservative commentary on Isaiah originally published in Our Hope a generaration ago.

Events and Their Afterlife, by A. C. Charity (Cambridge, 1966, 288 pp., $9.50). A Bultmannian approach to typology in the Bible and Dante’s Divine Comedy.

The Old Lighthouse, by James R. Adair (Moody, 1966, 157 pp. $2.95). An editor of Scripture Press relates the remarkable skid-row ministry of Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission.

The Minister’s Manual (Doran’s), 1967 Edition, compiled and edited by M. K. W. Heicher (Harper & Row, 1966, 372 pp., $3.95).

The Douglass Sunday School Lessons, 1967, edited by Earl L. Douglass, assisted by Gordon L. Roberts (Macmillan, 1966, 386 pp., $3.95).

Which Way to Lutheran Unity?: A History of Efforts to Unite the Lutherans of America, by John H. Tietjen (Concordia, 1966, 176 pp., $4.95). A review of attempts at Lutheran union from colonial days to the present. An appeal for full fellowship among Lutherans today.

Dear Saints And Sinners:

Time was when you could count on our leading theologians to thunder forth against the seven deadly sins—pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust—in no uncertain terms. And formerly you could expect Esquire magazine to devote itself to making immorality tantalizing to all red-blooded Americans. But alas, the mop has flopped. Now many young princes of the church advise us that these deadly acts, if carried out with the right motive in the proper context, may be living demonstrations of love. And a recent issue of Esquire, using a bit of satire and feminine pulchritude, delivers a lesson in morality by calling attention to our preoccupation with a new septette of sins. Will somebody please stop the world? I want to get off!

Esquire scrutinizes “our age of realism, of psychological insight, of truth” and jocularly states, “the quaint belief that lust, pride, avarice, and all the rest of them were really ‘sinful’ passed quietly in the Sixties.” Now the seven deadly sins that sear our souls are chastity, poverty, anonymity, age, failure, ugliness, and constancy.

Esquire’s sagacity is undeniable. For surely every member of the Pepsi generation cringes at the possibility of being (1) inexperienced, (2) non-affluent, (3) uncelebrated, (4) over thirty-five, (5) unsuccessful, (6) unattractive, and (7) rooted.

But what about our theological promoters of contextual ethics? Can they afford to remain deaf to the prophetic word of this worldly journal? Dare they continue to bury their heads in the passé pages of Playboy and neglect the satirical proclamation of the “Magazine for Men”?

A voice greater than Hefner is being heard in the land. And the boys at Esquire are having a great time chuckling at all of us. Especially at those for whom none of the seven old sins is necessarily deadly or even always sinful.

Venially, EUTYCHUS III, EsQ.

Excellent Beginning

Your editorial, “Viet Nam: A Moral Dilemma” (Jan. 20), is an excellent beginning in raising for evangelicals the question of the justice of American action in Southeast Asia. You are to be commended for your clear call for biblical thinking and for your insistance that Christians cannot sit by, passively approving of the actions of their government, lest they suddenly find themselves guilty of serious violation of God’s law.

PAUL D. STEEVES

Lawrence, Kan.

For a pacifist to argue that the war in Viet Nam is illegal and unjust is ridiculous, since there can be no legal and no just wars for the pacifist. For the man whose conscience is troubled by “the undeclared war,” let him remember that the United States is fulfilling a treaty agreement approved by the Senate, and the Congress continues to vote funds to prosecute the war effort. Nobody likes the war and everybody wants it ended. If the critics of the war would spend less time criticizing U. S. involvement and spend more time working for an equitable solution—plus a little praying—it might end sooner than they think.

G. BLACKMORE

Silver Spring, Md.

It is good to see the historic Christian positions toward war raised in reference to the present war in Viet Nam. Too often we derive our ethics of whether to follow the government in a war on secular sources such as Machiavelli rather than on the basis of the Christian faith we profess.…

Would it be unpatriotic for the churches or even individuals to question the actions of the government in war? For me, the patriotic slogan, “My country right or wrong,” means that whether my country is right or wrong it is still my country and I have responsibility for seeing that it is right. When my country is wrong, even when I oppose its wrongness, then I share in its guilt. I feel that an interpretation that says I must follow my country even when it is wrong without trying to see that it be right sets my country above my allegiance to God, is idolatry, and must be rejected.

GEORGE BLAU

Decatur, Ga.

Many thanks for your thoughtful exploration of a problem which should concern every Christian American. A continuing dialogue on this issue would be appreciated.

GORDON WHITNEY

Trenton, N. J.

Christianity On Campus

Elton Trueblood’s response (Jan. 6) to the question of how he would exhort college and university students “in regard to their commitment to Christ and the opportunities for Christian penetration in the oncoming generation” is most significant.

For Christian students to pray together, to share the relevance of biblical faith to various disciplines, and to discuss and plan ways of penetrating the diverse segments of the academic community is essential if they are to mature spiritually as well as mentally. Unfortunately, many frustrated evangelical students are afraid to expose themselves to Scripture and ideas around them and choose rather to spend their college years blindly following charismatic leaders who offer a predigested program, complete with ready-made answers to all questions.…

The unstructured honesty of Christian students grappling with truth in small groups has been, and continues to be, of extreme value to both the Christian students themselves and those around them. Harvey Cox recalls in The Secular City that when he was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship “sponsored scores of student-led Bible studies, where the discussions were often hotter and more valuable than those carefully supervised by clergymen” (p. 224). During my own undergraduate years at UCLA, I “found myself” and learned practical lessons in discipleship and mission in similar groups.

DONALD G. DAVIS, JR.

Department of Special Collections

Fresno State College Library

Fresno, Calif.

Alive And Working

Please correct the erroneous statement in the Lippincott advertisement of Mal Forsberg’s newest book, Last Days on the Nile (Jan. 20, p. 18).

The Sudan Interior Mission is very much alive! In fact, we have perhaps more vital force than ever before. Dr. Forsberg’s book describes last-day missionary efforts in the southern Sudan, which does not affect the on-going work of 1,318 missionaries, actually working across the broad expanse of Africa, south of the Sahara (formerly all called “Sudan”).… It says nothing of any “tragic end to the Sudan Interior Mission.”

IAN M. HAY

North America Director

Sudan Interior Mission

Plainfield, N. J.

Injustice In Jail

I noted with great interest your small news article (Jan. 6) entitled “Turks Jail Preaching Trio.” My interest stems largely from the fact that I know two of the jailed “trio” personally; in fact one of them is my former roommate.… Since I am in direct contact with him and have received two letters from him since the inception of his recent incarceration, I feel I must correct some of the information which you have received from your government sources.

First of all, his name is not Geoffery W. Cobb but Jeffry W. Cobbe. Second, Jacquith, Magney, and he were not engaged in proselytizing activities in violation of Turkish law. Not only had the mayor of Midyat (the town where they were arrested) granted them permission to distribute their literature there, but more important, the constitution of the Turkish government guarantees such freedom of religious expression.

According to Cobbe’s correspondence with me, the local officials holding them in prison have realized they cannot legally sentence the three men. Since, however, they have noted “how little pressure the American consul is putting on them,” they intend to keep them in jail “until higher officials make them release us or we give them a bribe ($600.00 or so).” Cobbe continues, “We are beginning to see that justice here is a matter of money and not laws. Since we aren’t about to bribe any official, no matter how long we stay here, our only recourse is through you to exert force on the Turkish officials to release us. All I can say is that any resemblance to justice in their legal system is purely coincidental”.…

Third, it is not exactly true that the three imprisoned men “serve under a small American mission board.” All three are associated with the Operation Mobilization crusades of Send the Light, Inc. (with headquarters in Wyckoff, New Jersey), but each is technically on his own in his evangelistic ventures in Turkey. Moreover, Send the Light is not actually a mission board as such.

Finally, not only Magney but Jacquith and Cobbe as well have been arrested before on similar charges, Cobbe once or twice before in other parts of Turkey!

JOHN S. OLDFIELD

Senior Student

Conservative Baptist Theological

Seminary

Denver, Colo.

Read My Sermon

Your editorial, “Why Hurry a New Confession?” (Jan. 20), prompts me to send a copy of the sermon, “The Case of the Sad Advertisement,” which deals with what one of my colleagues has characterized as “This Sad Ad.”

CHRISTIANITY TODAY does no service or honor to the cause of truth in quoting, as did the advertisement, the sections of the confession on “political, social, and economic controversies” out of context. This is a particularly blatant matter when quoting out of context creates misleading and false impressions; when choice is obviously made to omit the theological basis of concern in each of these matters; and when the only phrases used in quotation are those which taken by themselves may be bound to raise questions but provide no answers.

CHARLES R. EHRHARDT

First Presbyterian

Phoenix, Ariz.

Since your editorial referred to the large advertisement of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, something can be said about its deception. Its appearance in major newspapers raises some questions about motives but also was a grief to many of us who have questioned the position of the Confession of 1967. We would have hoped for integrity from men who know Presbyterian polity and the Westminster documents. The ad raised two issues.

It states:

How far the authors would go in humanizing the Bible can be realized in this excerpt from the new Confession:

“The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times in which they were written. They reflect views of life, history and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding.”

It seems almost deliberate to cite this to an uninformed public without giving the accompanying paragraph, which reads, “The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written. The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel” (italics mine). We may have wished for the word “infallible” to appear somewhere in the statement, but to omit the paragraph is deceptive.…

Later in the ad, when it speaks to what the new confession has to say about the involvement of the Church in social, political, and economic issues, it tells of the “radical changes,” and then, to offer authority that the Church should not take a position, it says: “The Westminster Confession states it clearly: ‘Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical, and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth’ ” (Chap. XXXI, No. 4.) Again it seems deliberate that the sentence was not completed. This is the way it reads in the true text: “Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical, and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate” (italics mine).

DONALD C. IRWIN

First Presbyterian

San Diego, Calif.

• Our editorial quoted C ’67 passages cited by Presbyterian Lay Committee to support its claim that C ’67 departs from biblical infallibility and involves the institutional church in political matters. Further C ’67 quotations do not refute the Lay Committee’s contentions.—ED.

If you read Monday Morning … you may have been as amazed as I to find in the January 16 issue (p. 31) the following statement of impartiality from the “national offices” of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.:

Adoption or rejection of the proposal “now is in the hands of the presbyteries,” and the church’s national offices are being careful to avoid “even appearing to be attempting to influence these presbytery decisions,” he [William P. Thompson] said.

To clarify points attacked by the lay committee, a Public Relations Memorandum has been sent by the Presbyterian Office of Information to executives and stated clerks of all synods and presbyteries. Along with a statement by the Rev. Theophilus M. Taylor, secretary of the General Council, the Memorandum suggests that judicatory officials share Dr. Taylor’s analysis with pastors, continue to encourage careful consideration of the Confession of 1967 on its merits, help pastors and elders resist efforts to turn them from their studied convictions, and avoid being dragged into battle with the lay group in public news media.

My own reflection is: It is amazing how impartial you can be, when you have an Office of Information to push the official line and argue the case for you in “all synods and presbyteries.”

DONALD C. SMITH

First Presbyterian

Levittown, Pa.

Which Evangelicals?

You seem to make some statements for evangelicals which tend to represent only the (many) evangelicals who are in agreement with you.

Your discussions of the NCC usually find the NCC or “those committed to ecumenism” on the one side and the “evangelical Christians” on the opposite side in a strict they-we dichotomy. We evangelicals who belong to denominations which are a part of the NCC and who are heartily appreciative of the opportunities which this ecumenical setting provides are confused as to where we are supposed to fit.

We feel even less represented when you speak of the evangelical position on social action. For example, despite your denials, we advocate church support and recommendation of specific legislative programs; and we feel that socialism can be a Christian philosophy.

STEPHEN MOTT

Somerville, Mass.

Not Guilty

I should not have replied to Rabbi Solomon S. Bernards’s letter (Jan. 20) in which he accuses me of “distortions” and “misrepresentations” of facts; but since he represents the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, which is considered by Jews and non-Jews the most powerful and influential organization of American Jewry, I feel obliged to reply.…

Contrary to his … interpretation of my article, I merely stated in it how Christians could proclaim the Gospel to Jews without offending them. I emphasized that a Jew should not be required to leave his people or any of his customs when he accepts Christ as his Messiah. He may remain within the Jewish fold (if he is not expelled) just as various other dissenters (Reformists, atheists, and so on) remain “Jewish.”

Contrary to the A.D.L. rabbi’s accusation, I have always firmly believed in the indestructibility of the Jewish people. I am the editor of a paper called The Everlasting Nation. Like all true followers of Christ, I believe that the Jews are an Am Olam (an everlasting people), who, as stated in God’s Word, are to be a holy people, a kingdom of priests, a light unto all nations, and a blessing to the whole world.

JACOB GARTENHAUS

Atlanta, Ga.

Many Jews have looked for long years for the coming of their Messiah as foretold in Old Testament Scriptures. Will they be less than Jews when he comes and they receive him?

MARIE STRACHAN

Santa Barbara, Calif.

In Praise Of The Principles

I have read “Evangelical Principles and Practices,” by Gordon Harman (Jan. 6), several times, and each time I rejoiced in my heart at the straightforward manner in which the writer set forth such wonderful truths. I agree 100 per cent with all he has written and shall look forward with keen interest to the second part.

CHARLES R. BEITTEL

Pastor Emeritus

Otterbein Evangelical United

Brethren Church

Harrisburg, Pa.

I think one point needs clarification. He said, “Evangelicals in all the main Protestant denominations have been celebrating Holy Communion with one another at interdenominational activities ever since the Reformation.” Well, if Scripture would authorize such a practice, it would authorize the performance of baptisms in the same context.

The truth is, the ascended Christ left a legacy, not of loose interdenominational activities, no matter how useful we may consider them today, not a youth organization, not men’s, not women’s, not even Bible societies—but a church. But the problem is, Christian people when they get together, instinctively wish to observe the Lord’s Supper. This instinct is right. The vehicle chosen may be incorrect.

EDWARDS E. ELLIOTT

Garden Grove Orthodox Presbyterian

Garden Grove, Calif.

The Most Important

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is certainly the most important magazine we receive, and has been a great help.…

MRS. R. S. SEDZIOL

Cincinnati, Ohio

It is not easy to be honest with God. Rarely do any of us face up to actualities when we pray. But whom do we think we are fooling? Either we think God is very obtuse or else we presume upon his grace and mercy and salve our consciences with the feeling that he does not know or does not care.

We may try to sweep our sins under the rug, assume a hypocritical air of innocence, and go our own willful way. But God sees no rug, only the unconfessed and unrepented sins that form a barrier between us and him. These sins may be sins of the spirit (such as unbelief, pride, jealousy, envy, censoriousness) or of the flesh (such as lust, intemperance, love of money, dishonesty).

Failure to be honest with God is a continuing source of unhappiness, frustration, and ineffectiveness as Christians. On the other hand, complete honesty in confessing all sins, whether they be of thought, word, or deed, brings peace of mind and spirit and is the first step to a life of usefulness as a Christian.

Psalm 139 tells us that God knows our every thought and motive. “Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether” (v. 4, RSV). There is no place to which we can flee and escape God. The darkness cannot cover us: “even darkness is not dark to thee, the night is as bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee” (v. 12).

Little wonder that David ends this psalm, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (vv. 23, 24).

Our unwillingness to be honest with God may stem from our failure to realize his all-seeing eye. “Before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13). Is this a frightening thought? Far from it. It is comforting to know that God, who knows and sees into the depths of our hearts, sees our feeble aspirations for righteousness and meets them with his own loving concern and help.

David knew well the difference between being honest with God and trying to hide his sins. When he prayed, “Clear thou me from hidden faults” (Ps. 19:12b), he was admitting the tendency to think that things done in secret are unknown to God. In Psalm 32 he tells of the anguish of soul he suffered when he did not confess his sins and the joy and peace that came with honest confession.

What we are in our hearts God already knows. Why foolishly pretend that we are something else? We often deceive others, but we can never deceive God.

How are we dishonest with God?

Think about our prayers. When we pray, “Forgive our sins,” do we not hasten by or gloss over that lustful thought and pretend it has escaped God’s notice? Do we not conveniently ignore the dishonest act, the “cutting of a corner” in a business deal, rather than explicitly confessing it? Often we harbor envy or jealousy against someone; do we confess these specific sins?

There can be no honesty with God without confession and repentance. Because these essentials are evaded, individual Christians and the Church are weak.

There can be no power in prayer if between us and God there stands unconfessed sin. “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18). The confession of guilt is the door to forgiveness. Repentance is the sure way to be heard.

We are also not honest with God until we are willing to submit to his will in every area of our lives. Christ did not come to redeem us so that we should live thereafter according to our own desires. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God wants the best for his children and that the best is found only in conformity to his will. There is no honesty in thinking we can hold to God with one hand while we cling to the world with the other. Honesty demands that we obey him in every plan and in every part of our lives.

We are not honest with God until we admit the enormity of our own sinfulness—confessed to him in detail—and the enormity of his love, mercy, and forgiveness in Christ.

To presume upon the grace and mercy of God without confessing and repenting only adds to our sins. The Apostle Jude speaks of “ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness” (Jude 4b), while Paul speaks of the idea of sinning that grace may abound as a “ghastly thought” (Phillips). Are not most of us guilty of claiming mercy and forgiveness without giving honest thought to open and full confession?

Honesty with God is both intellectual and emotional. It demands truthfulness in our estimate of ourselves, a recognition of the nature of sin and its many manifestations in our own hearts. David says, “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart,” and, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51:6, 17).

God, the One who is Creator and Preserver of life, the One who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, the One who is altogether holy and sovereign, is full of love, mercy, and compassion. Honesty demands that we come to him in humility and contrition, hiding nothing, confessing all. In this way we receive the pardon, blessings, and fellowship he is so anxious to give. To approach him in any other way is sheer presumption. To think we can hide anything from him or evade the truth before him is folly.

The Prophet Jeremiah was honest with both God and man. Today we should heed his words: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practice kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the LORD’ ” (Jer. 9:23, 24).

The Apostle Paul was equally honest with God. In all his letters, one senses his unswerving determination to see himself and the world around him in the light of God’s revealed truth, and because of this he speaks to us today. Aware of his past, he spoke of himself as the chief of sinners. Aware of God’s redemptive work in his own heart, he could speak of being crucified with Christ. Such honesty has its great reward—complete surrender to and identification with the living Saviour.

As I search my own heart, I realize how often I have failed to be honest with God. And I know such failure stifles my Christian life at the very point where it should be strengthened.

How absurd it is to think we have deceived the One from whom nothing can be hid. The best way to change is to start being honest. Hide nothing from God, and you will find a joy and peace that can come in no other way.

An analysis of official documents of the World Council of Churches issued at the 1966 Conference on Church and Society

The 1966 Conference on Church and Society held by the World Council of Churches took place last July at Geneva, Switzerland. There were participants from 70 countries, including all the Socialist bloc except Albania and Red China.

At the end of the Conference, the participants issued a formal message to thank God for bringing them together, and for granting them “this experience of the world community which is emerging in this age of advanced technology and social revolution.”

The word “revolution” was a leitmotif of the Conference, occurring and recurring throughout the various working papers which were only recently released in revised and edited form. Evidently, the World Council of Churches holds gradual evolutionary change to be inadequate in our times and even undesirable.

The participants’ message states, “we Christians cannot escape the call to serious study and dynamic action.” These are to be directed toward four issues: “Modern technology …; The need for accelerated development in Asia, Africa and Latin America …; The struggle for world peace …; The problem of just political and social order and the changing role of the state.”

Concerning point four, the participants’ message states, “Here a fundamental issue is the function of law in our revolutionary times and its theological foundation.”

The Conference message goes on to say:

As Christians, we are committed to working for the transformation of society. In the past, we have usually done this through quiet efforts at social renewal, working in and through the established institutions according to their rules. Today, a significant number of those who are dedicated to the service of Christ and their neighbor, assume a more radical or revolutionary position. They do not deny the value of tradition nor of social order, but they are searching for a new strategy by which to bring about basic changes in society without too much delay. It is possible that the tension between these two positions will have an important place in the life of the Christian community for some time to come. At the present moment, it is important for us to recognize that this radical position has a solid foundation in Christian tradition and should have its rightful place in the life of the Church and in the ongoing discussion of social responsibility.

All the foregoing is put forth without any attempt at definition of terms. What is meant by the radical, revolutionary position? What is meant by the transformation of society? How does the World Council of Churches define a “just” political and social order? The Conference message acknowledges “a wide variety of points of view” among the participants due to their diversity of situations and different perspectives in social questions. The participants say they discovered that dialogue is possible between those representing different positions and that such discussion exposes “the limitations of our thought and challenges us to greater faithfulness.”

It is not clear what the World Council of Churches’ participants in the Conference on Church and Society mean by faithfulness. In the Soviet Union and satellite nations, the governments are not merely non-Christian or unchristian, they are anti-Christian. Written with apparent objectivity, a part of all the Conference documents reflects the position taken by the Communist regimes as expressed by clergymen who have consented to go along with these regimes and are therefore tolerated by them for propaganda reasons. Has this Communist radical position “a solid foundation in Christian tradition,” and should it have “its rightful place in the life of the Church” and also in “the ongoing discussion” of social responsibility?

What, today, is the World Council of Churches’ concept of social responsibility—is it one of moral and spiritual aloofness from any choice between Christian and anti-Christian?

The Conference message states, “In many parts of the world today, the Church represents a relatively small minority, participating in the struggle for the future of man alongside other religions and secular movements. Moreover, it can hope to contribute to the transformation of the world only as it is itself transformed in contact with the world.”

Is the Church, a self-confessed relatively small minority, going to be transformed by secular contact with anti-Christian and non-Christian majorities? If so, how will the Church survive? And how does the World Council of Churches reconcile such a position with its own statement, “As Christians, we are committed to working for the transformation of society working in and through the established institutions according to their rules”?

The rules of the established institutions of the Socialist societies are anti-religious, anti-Christian, and atheistic. How can a Christian work according to such rules? Would the Church work for the transformation of society by working in and through the established institution of the Mafia according to its rules?

Christian Neutralism

The first and main document in the World Council of Churches’ Conference on Church and Society is entitled “Economic Development in a World Perspective.”

The introduction brands as “a scandal and an offense to God and men” the existing imbalance between rich and poor countries.

In a section dealing with the changing economic and social pattern of the advanced countries, the Conference summarizes “three types” of economic policy:

… There are those who argue for the moral virtues of the market economy (because of its impartiality, its treatment of everyone as equal in status), and the importance of freedom of individual choice and of economic incentives in the making of decisions which will lead to development. They are suspicious of government intervention, doubt the usefulness of detailed forecastings, and rely on short-term controls to ensure a steady rate of growth. They emphasize the use of the price system to allocate resources for growth, and are suspicious of efforts to adjust income levels by manipulating prices.…

Others hold that, in the 20th century, the welfare state and a mixed economy are the essential means for furthering desired social objectives and the most rapid growth. While recognizing that free enterprise has its proper place, and that the price system is the best mechanism in many situations, they stress that in other situations the price system does not work, and government action is more effective than free enterprise. They see a role for nationalized planning. They stress the need for overall control of investment by whatever means are most suitable. They see a place for framework plans outlining a future path for private industry. They tend to decide between government and private enterprise planning on pragmatic grounds, though some would have a bias in favor of government action.

Still others hold that economic life is best organized in a single centrally planned economy, with no private ownership of the means of production, though with some freedom of consumer choice and occupation. Even though economic incentives are used, resources are allocated according to a central plan and there is a state monopoly of international trade. In recent years, there has been more interest among those who advocate this view in the use of prices and profit incentives within the framework of a centrally planned economy. Some who advocate this type of organization believe it will not come about without revolutionary overthrow of the existing order, whether violent or non-violent. They believe that only a society of this kind can achieve a maximum rate of growth, can distribute widely the benefits of growth, and can assist the successful development of poor societies.

Having more or less described capitalism, socialism and communism without courage to name names or call spades, the World Council of Churches then goes on to bless all three with the statement that they “have shown themselves capable of rapid economic growth and wide distribution of income.”

Not a single word in the Conference document reflects the fact that the Soviet Union and other nations with centrally planned economies have been unable to produce a self-sustaining agriculture, have been forced to adopt some profit and price incentives to rescue their bankrupt economies, and have been unable to develop wide enough distribution of income to permit consumers any but the narrowest choice of goods and services. Not a single line in the document contrasts the low productivity of welfare state economies to the high productivity of the private enterprise ones. Moreover, not a single line refers to the present stagnation of the centrally planned economies which are falling further and further behind the advancing economies of West European nations, to say nothing of Japan and the United States.

The World Council of Churches’ report on economic development in a world perspective states flatly that all three economic systems—free enterprise, welfare state and centrally planned—can be supported by Christians “not as ends in themselves” but to achieve “ends for which men were made. The role of Christians is to be critical participants in the societies in which they find themselves.”

How can Christians be critical participants in anti-Christian Communist societies that forbid criticism? Russian Orthodox Archbishop Alexei, who resides in Moscow, would not have been able to help govern the Conference in Geneva as one of its presidents had he dared to be critical of the Red regime in the USSR. The price of his Christian participation in that society is his absolute obedience to and acquiescence in its tyranny.

Though the World Council of Churches’ report on economic development is replete with lofty humanitarian concepts and most idealistic exhortations, it also is full of ill-founded slogans and clichés, many without the slightest foundation in fact. Thus the report contains such sweeping assertions as, “Mechanization has meant lighter work, but it has also brought with it monotony, boredom and frequently a form of organization in which employees can have little sense of responsibility for or real interest in their work.”

With all due respect, this is pure bunk. Is a laborer picking cotton by hand less bored than one operating a cotton-picking machine? Is a woman sewing a fine seam by hand less bored than one operating a sewing machine?

It is a modern Liberal myth, indeed a Leftwing anti-business intellectual superstition, that a man or woman who operates a machine to earn his or her living turns into a machine.

In a free society—and how can a Christian conscientiously support any other?—no machine can turn a human being into a soulless, heartless, conscienceless robot. The biological law of the differentiation of the species guarantees individual reaction to similar circumstances, and certainly this law must be counted among the greatest of God’s gifts to mankind, though it is consistently disregarded by the disciples of Karl Marx. Happily, the fact that no two blades of grass, no two petals of flowers and no two thumbprints of human beings are alike is what spells doom to Marx’ concept of an egalitarian scientific society.

Christian Taxation

The transfer of capital from rich nations to poor ones is the World Council of Churches’ main concern in the report on economic development. The Council’s aim is set forth as follows:

One hopeful sign of our times is the growing sense of international responsibility for assisting in the development of the economically less advanced nations. External aid is most helpful when it serves as a catalyst for internal efforts, is related to the mainstream of a nation’s development strategy, and is directed toward its longterm rather than its short-term growth needs.

Unfortunately the level of government contributions has only rarely been determined in consultation with the receiver. These contributions, even to international agencies, are voluntary, short-term commitments. However, the transfer of capital and skill through governmental channels must be considered as a longterm process, and more formal, medium or longterm arrangements and commitments are becoming increasingly necessary for the efficient operation of these agencies and the carrying out of development programs.

What is the World Council of Churches aiming at?

The answer lies in the conclusion to the foregoing argument for longterm transfer of capital. “Eventually,” declares the Council’s Conference report, “these may lead to an ‘international budget’ and ‘international taxation.’ ”

Such a budget and such a system of taxation could be accomplished only under a system of World Socialism in which the Marxian doctrine “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would be supreme.

Inevitably, then, the World Council of Churches’ report on economic development stresses “the key role of the state and the public sector” in the process. The Council calls for “gradual imposition of supranational approaches upon national efforts.” It also adopts the anti-capitalist doctrine, “The fundamental problem [in the transfer of capital from rich to poor nations] is that the goal of the businessmen—to make profits—sometimes conflicts with the goal of governments—to increase the social product and to distribute it equitably.”

Purporting to be a Christian document, it fails to point out many of the principal reasons for poverty in many lands—for example, polygamy, the worship of sacred cows and monkeys, the ban on eating pork and the husbandry of plant-destroying, desert-creating goats, the practice of tribal blood rites—and places basic blame on the modern businessman’s legitimate, constructive and truly useful search for profits essential to capital savings and investment.

Through three dozen pages, the Conference report on economic development moves slowly but surely toward a radical goal, taking utmost care to avoid those words and phrases which might shock an American reader believing in the free system that has made our nation into a fountainhead of benefactions to needy humanity, and might cause such a reader to reject the report as thoroughly alien. Finally, after lengthy persuasive pontification, the report lists a series of recommendations closely resembling the old Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist plan for One Socialist World, the plan that was eventually proposed to the United Nations in the Havana Charter of 1947, but was wholly rejected by Congress and President Truman, the plan that still later was presented at the United Nations in 1951 under the name “SUNFED” (Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development) and was again rejected by Congress.

Anyone familiar with the Havana Charter, the SUNFED scheme, and Gunnar Myrdal’s “An International Economy” will recognize the almost complete similarity between these documents and the World Council of Churches’ report on economic development.

It calls for grants instead of loans by rich nations to poor ones and for “rationalization of distribution … under the auspices of the United Nations.” (Italics in original.) The report calls for “elimination of the adverse effects of price fluctation and terms of trade” and also “the establishment of world commodity marketing boards.”

Christian Deportation

The 1966 Conference report then calls for measures that beggar the imagination in trying to conceive of the resulting injustice, suffering and horror, all amounting to a hell paved with good intentions that would exceed in tortures even the grimmest fantasies in Dante’s “Inferno.”

Obviously believing that a desired end justifies any means, the Conference report proposes:

the deliberate transfer of non-capital and non-technical intensive industries to countries with insufficient capital but abundant man power, and the acceptance of the problems involved in the fundamental restructuring of economies in the developed countries which that entails.

At this point, it must be remembered that a few years ago some Latin American socialists at the United Nations Economic and Social Council actually proposed that the United States get out of the textile manufacturing business so that Central and Latin American countries could have a Western Hemisphere monopoly of it! What would be the fate of thousands upon thousands of U. S. textile workers was of no concern to the socialist planners eager to help the economic development of backward Latin nations.

The Latins’ plan was relatively innocuous, however, when compared with that of the World Council of Churches. Its 1966 Conference report declares:

The fundamental restructuring of the world economy necessarily implies temporary dislocation and possible suffering for a large number of people. The first task of the churches in this situation is to speak to the government or power structure responsible and to insist that prior measures be taken to prevent or at least to minimize and alleviate the difficulties which individuals and groups may have to face. Only after every preventive measure has been taken should the Church prepare people to accept and overcome these problems and impart the vision of a wider world order for which restructuring is a necessary preliminary.

Whew! It is necessary to pause and take a deep breath before launching into horrified analysis of what the foregoing really means.

It is not an exaggeration to say that nuclear war could not inflict greater suffering on people than the mass restructuring of the world economy, with mass transport of populations and mass transfer of non-capital and non-technical industries from the developed nations to the backward nations with insufficient capital and over-population.

Evidently the World Council of Churches—professing to be Christian—has adopted the cold-blooded, blood-curdling cynicism of “humanitarian” Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal who called for redistribution of land (land reform) in India and other underdeveloped nations even though “It will almost always reduce temporarily the marketable surplus of agriculture, and it is easy to imagine cases where sheer starvation in the towns may be the result.” (“An International Economy,” page 183.)

How many millions of people would be dislocated, ruined, enslaved, tortured and murdered under a World Council of Churches’ plan to restructure the world economy, and to redistribute wealth among nations by arbitrarily allocating the right to engage in this or that kind of industrial manufacture? Will it be as many millions as those who perished in the Bolshevik collectivization of agriculture in Russia or in the establishment of the Red Chinese communes? Was any past crime committed in the name of Christianity during the darkest ages of history of greater magnitude than that contemplated in the World Council of Churches’ “Christian” document? Does the organization really believe that millions of employed workers in developed countries will supinely accept abandonment of their industries in favor of poverty-stricken peoples in backward lands, while wage earners in advanced nations furnish the backward ones with the capital and know-how to establish these industries on faraway continents?

How could the Church “prepare” people in advanced nations for such suffering?

The World Council of Churches’ document envisages preparation for such enslavement as establishment of “an ethic of altruism and justice which will make these measures intelligible.” The document goes on to state, “In the developed countries this would involve active support by the churches of such specific measures as severance pay, industrial retraining, higher unemployment benefits and mobility subsidies.”

Could any advanced economy endure such stress?

Can one really believe that a Swiss worker in an embroidery factory, a Belgian worker in a lace factory, a New England worker in a cotton textile factory, or French or Italian worker in a vineyard could be persuaded by the Church to forfeit his means of livelihood so that it could be taken over by an African worker in Somalia, a Latin worker in Guatemala, an Arab worker in Algeria, a Bantu worker in South Africa, a Buddhist worker in Laos?

Christian Dictatorship

To effect such redistribution and restructuring of the advanced nations’ economies in favor of the backward ones, there would be only one possible way—total enslavement of populations in advanced and backward nations. For this there would be required a World Dictatorship and the reality was recognized by the World Council of Churches which called for a “World Economic Plan” for “the ultimate aim: an international division of labor …”

To help bring about such totalitarianism, the 1966 Conference report on economic development calls for replacing the present forms of aid by the rich nations to the poor ones “by a system of international taxation.”

Since by far the greatest part of such aid is now rendered by the United States, the heaviest burden of international taxation would fall on Americans.

To obtain this, the World Council of Churches calls for “church participation in political education” in order “to produce the political will for a world economic and social order compatible with Christian conscience.” The Council’s 1966 Conference also calls for “social education designed to help society understand and accept the costs of world economic development.”

In total disregard of the United States Constitution, the American participants in the Council’s Conference in Geneva supported without evident dissent or formal protest the participants’ recommendation that “the Church” urge governments “to introduce economic, political and social education into national school systems” for support of the Council-proposed measures, including “a diminution of national sovereignty.”

If all this is not a call for world socialism, then what is it? The fact that it is made by a handful of “Christians” in the name of “God” is characteristic of the moral decline of the West, of its fall into the bottomless pit of revolutionary nihilism of the kind that gave rise to Stalinism and Hitlerism, and made the Fifth Column a satanic force more potent and injurious than a nuclear bomb.

The Whited Sepulchre

It seems that what the World Council of Churches proposes in its World Economic Plan is a world-whited sepulchre full of dead men’s bones. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Council sanctions violence and civil disobedience in its second Conference document on “The Nature and Function of the State in a Revolutionary Age.”

The sanctioning of violence and civil disobedience is preceded by a lengthy philosophical discussion of the nature of power and its exercise by the state. The basic fault in the discussion—from the truly Christian point of view—is that it fails to differentiate between Caesar and God and thus renders unto Caesar that which belongs to God, and renders unto God that which belongs to Caesar.

In discussing the nature of power and the State, especially in developed countries, the document states:

Power, as the capacity to get things done, is essential to any person or society. As Christians we believe that it originates in God, that human power is part of the dominion God has granted man. Like all God’s gifts, it is subject to misuse. The Christian concern is that all human power be used to benefit man rather than to abuse or betray him.…

Technology increases concentrations of power in large, intricate organizations. The state has a moral responsibility for initiating and directing the uses of power, for supervising the sharing of power, for keeping the use of power responsible, for relating the power of any given society to that of other societies.

As we examine the operations of power within the state, we discover that the actual functioning of power may be far different from the formal allocation of power, e.g., constitutions and laws are not always accurate guides to the centers of power in a society. Legal rights may be effectively denied to those who lack the economic means for their exercise. In seeking a responsible society, we need to discover the operations of power, unveil the hidden centers of power, and hold all power accountable to men and God.…

In the foregoing, it must be noted that nothing is said about the effective denial of legal rights to those who lack political means for their exercise in Communist-dominated nations where The State is judge, jury and prosecutor.

It is a logical consequence of this omission, therefore, that the very next paragraphs in the World Council of Churches’ document set forth an entirely neutral position in discussing “The exercise of power by the state.” These paragraphs are characteristic of a moral relativism now confusing all the basic issues confronting congregations of Christians delegating responsibility to a small group of representatives at international conferences. The paragraphs state:

We have asked ourselves the question, “Should the state be the only repository of power?” and we have found that the answer is no.… Christians and their fellow men may honor and respect the state, but they cannot give it the ultimate allegiance that is due to God alone.

But beyond this agreement, we find major differences among ourselves. Some of us regard the state as only one instrument of society—a unique instrument having some jurisdiction over all people and all other organizations, but still one institution among others. Those holding this conviction emphasize the importance of diversity of sources of power within society, and of a system of checks and balances.

Others among us give the state a more encompassing role. They see the state as the effective organ of community as against the dangers of excessive individualism, and they regard the nationalizing of the means of production in the framework of central planning as a basis for responsible participation of citizens in political life.

Are the imprisoned poets in the Soviet Union guilty of excessive individualism? Is Cardinal Mindszenty guilty of it? Ah—let us weep for Dr. Zhivago! Was the musical genius Serge Prokofiev guilty of excessive individualism and deservedly forced to make public apology for his deviation from the Communist Party line by writing his great symphony on the tragedy and spirit of man?

Come The Revolution

It is natural, then, that the World Council of Churches regards the changing relationship between “state and law” as a “dialectical process moving from improvement to improvement and simultaneously from error to error” and that “Revolutionary action needs law to keep open the path to further change.”

It is entirely natural, too, that the participants in the World Council of Churches’ 1966 Conference on Church and Society in Geneva, Switzerland, raised the question, “What is the Christian attitude towards the ‘law of revolution’ which is conceived by revolution itself?” The Conference also asks, “What are the criteria for an acceptable ‘law of revolution’?” and then says that Christians may exercise their influence on the “law of revolution” that it may not be misused against the principles of human rights. But though there is frequent reference to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is nowhere reference to individual property rights or any condemnation of “revolutionary law” as it has been applied by Fidel Castro and other dictators to justify firing squad executions and expropriations of private property and investments without adequate compensation.

Categorically, the World Council of Churches’ Conference on Church and Society rejected the concept that it is enough for Christians “to seek to save souls and improve individual characters on the assumption that good people will produce good government.” Declaring that Christians must be concerned “for the structures of society” as well as for the moral qualities of individuals, the Conference declared it is “imperative” that Christian involvement in politics “become conscious” and active. There is no reason, states the Conference, “why ministers of the Gospel should not play an active political role, although certain church and civil laws limit them.”

Evidently the participants in the Conference do not regard these church and civil laws as insurmountable barriers to ministers’ political action. The Conference document recognizes there are “special issues of Christian participation” and goes on to state:

Political involvement at times confronts Christians with especially difficult issues such as the use of constitutional or extra-constitutional methods of political action, the use of violent or non-violent action, and the rights of minorities or other oppressed groups within the life of a nation.

From this, inevitably, proceeds the following Conference statement:

… In many cases where legislation violates an acceptable constitution, and no speedy means of legal relief are available, the Christian may be called to civic disobedience (sit-down strikes, passive disobedience or deliberate violation of laws). In cases in which the constitution itself is inadequate, the Christian is called to work for its amendment in the interest of firmer guarantees of human rights. Where such changes are impossible, the Christian may come to the conclusion that he has no alternative but to violate the constitution in order to make possible a better one.… We understand that laws may be defied in the defense of the constitution, and that the constitution may be defied in defense of human rights.

Is it any wonder that law and order are breaking down in Western society in general and in the United States in particular? How can laws be defied in defense of a constitution?

Proceeding from relativism to confusion, then to anarchism and nihilism, the Conference document argues that the question often emerges today “whether the violence which sheds blood in planned revolutions may not be a lesser evil than the violence which, though bloodless, condemns whole populations to perennial despair.”

The Conference next declares that the state “has the function of serving all its citizens. This includes the obligation to make provision for free discussion and criticism. We recognize the desirability of different political structures and institutions in varied situations and stages of development, all subject to the same will and purpose of God.”

There is no mention in all the foregoing argument of free elections though lack of them in socialist nations dooms whole populations to despair.

The second World Council of Churches’ Document in the 1966 Geneva Conference on Church and Society ends with a prayer “for the daring faith that obeys God as he leads us out of our old securities into new ventures.”

There is no explanation of what are the old securities. With a World Economic System as the point of destination, Christians are urged to set sail in a Sea of Change with a non-directional compass and revolutionary law for a rudder.

Revolution For Peace

The third document issued by the World Council of Churches’ 1966 conference in Geneva is entitled “Structures of International Cooperation—Living Together in Peace in a Pluralistic World Society.” It is a modern gospel for revolution and declares:

… the function of the state in God’s purpose is to provide, if necessary by lawful coercion, that order which enables men to live in peace and justice with one another. Human experience as well as Holy Scripture shows us that the power of laws is required to compel man to respect the rights of others. While this remains true in our day, many circumstances in the modern world force men to revolution against an unjust established order.

There is no satisfactory explanation of what are the present day circumstances that “force men to revolution.” There is only the sweeping assertion that this is so, and there is no censure of professional anarchists and agitators seeking to foment revolution in even the most prosperous and advanced societies.

In the Conference documents, one generalization follows another in almost unending sequence. Thus there is the unequivocal statement, “war between states results from the present disorganized and unjust political and economic conditions of international society.…”

To ensure peace, social justice, prosperity for all, the equality of men, to decrease tensions and increase cooperation, the Conference proposes “a supranational authority” over “the two major nuclear powers” and calls for the elimination of international trade conducted according to market rules in order to free all people from hunger, misery and poverty. Just how international trade conducted without market rules will accomplish Utopia is not explained, but the over-all implication is that socialism will solve all human problems.

The World Bank is severely criticized, for example, for being “more concerned with monetary stability than with growth” in the relationship of developed to underdeveloped nations. Yet monetary instability is one of the greatest deterrents to growth in any nation.

The World Council of Churches’ Conference not only recognized the “revolutionary mood” of the most active and influential groups in the “Third World” (meaning Asia, Africa and Latin America) but also endorsed these groups’ impatience with any kind of development that is not “rapid.” Such rapid change must be achieved—so the Conference says—“if necessary, by violence.”

What should Christians do?

Let heads roll. Then help mop up the blood.

Here is the “Christian” proposal:

No generally valid over-all prescription can be given for the ways in which changes in the organization of political and economic power in developing nations should occur and how Christians should respond to such changes.…

There are, however, at least two generalizations which can be made about the approach of Christians to the reorganization of the structures of power in the “Third World.” One is that wherever small elites rule at the expense of the Welfare of the majority, political change toward achieving a more just order as quickly as possible should be actively promoted and supported by Christians. The second is that, in cases where such changes are needed, the use by Christians of revolutionary methods—by which is meant violent overthrow of an existing political order—cannot be excluded a priori. For in such cases, it may very well be that the use of violent methods is the only recourse of those who wish to avoid prolongation of the vast covert violence which the existing order involves. But Christians should think of the day after the revolution, when justice must be established by clear minds and in good conscience. There is no virtue in violence itself, but only in what will come after it. In some instances significant changes have been made by non-violent means, and Christians must develop greater skill and wisdom in using these.

The remainder of the third Conference document is a plea for world disarmament under supranational control and for the settlement of international conflicts. There is a plea for peace in Vietnam and the statement, “the massive and growing American military presence in Vietnam and the long continued bombing of villages in the South and of targets a few miles from cities in the North cannot be justified.”

The Conference also calls for the admission of Red China to the United Nations and declares, “The United Nations is the best structure now available through which to pursue the goals of international peace and justice.”

Radicalism For Youth

The World Council of Churches’ Conference on Church and Society entitled its fourth and final major document, “Man and Community in Changing Societies.”

The emphasis in this document is on social change created by modern technology that is “radically new in history.” In accordance with the currently fashionable way of regarding technology as changing the relation between man and nature, the forms of human relationships and of social structure, the Conference document calls for accommodation to change in secular society, and for a Christian faith promoting a unity of mankind “which transcends political and economic factors.” All the contemporary fashionable theories about men, women, children, families and sexual relations are taken into account with avant garde sociological interpretation. Everything is put into question, viz., “In affluent societies the transferal to other institutions of many functions of the family, and the increasing interest in (as well as experience of) emotional and sexual attachment outside marriage raise the question of whether the family does or does not have an important role in society and in social change.”

Perish the thought that the Church should hold any but the most advanced views on contraceptives, sterilization, unmarried mothers, divorce, and all existing “value systems.”

Perhaps the entire document can best be characterized by the following two quotations:

• “The danger of integrating young people in existing structures is that the need for radical change will thus be covered up.”

• “The concept of authority has to be rethought.… Honest sharing of doubts and uncertainties by both adults and youth is a first requirement here. All this we shall have to learn together. It calls for renewal and continuity of education of those who traditionally held [sic!] positions of unquestioned authority—parents, teachers, ministers. It also calls for a careful scrutiny of what theology and, primarily, the Bible has to teach us. In a courageous and imaginative approach to authority, the Church could experiment for the whole of society.”

Why should the Church become transformed into an experimental institution?

“The problem of the contemporary structure of the Church,” declares the Conference document, “is that it was devised for a past form of society, which was static, generally agrarian, and religiously conformist.”

Was society ever static?

The whole history of mankind refutes such a concept. Has the Church been static? Of course not. But the Christian ethic, let us pray, was permanent.

How can the contemporary structure of the Church become suitable for present and future forms of society?

The answer given by the World Council of Churches’ 1966 Conference on Church and Society is that the churches, “in all forms of mission and ministry,” must make full and effective use “of the insights and data of the social and behavioural sciences.”

Are these insights and data truly scientific or are they merely empirical deductions and interpretations?

St. Paul gave the answer:

O, Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and opposition of science falsely so called.

Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.

Every Christian faculty member on a state university campus is well aware of the number of students who, coming from backgrounds in which the fundamentals of the Christian faith have been stressed, yet find themselves quite at sea in the swirling currents of intellectual give-and-take on the campus. They cannot distinguish between fact and opinion, between problems peculiar to the Christian and problems for which nobody has a ready answer. I have on my desk at the moment the papers of such a young student. He has come from an obviously Christian home and has now discovered the wider world of the mind. Caught between conflicting currents, he is drawn toward psychology, sociology, and philosophy. But he is improperly equipped and is even foundering in his academic progress by neglecting his mathematics, English, and history for these other new enticements. No doubt there is stormy concern back home about this young man’s faith while all this is going on.

The coin has another side. When I was a young seminary student, I was appalled to hear an area secretary of the Sudan Interior Mission say that the mission would no longer accept as candidates those graduates of Bible schools and other Christian institutions who had not taken some of their work on a secular campus. I have since learned firsthand that there is such a thing as intellectual give-and-take on the mission field and that Europeans, Americans, and Russians are exporting psychology, sociology, philosophy, political theory, and above all a tough-minded practical atheism, right along with their dollars, direction, and detergent.

Many pastors at home know this situation well also. They find their congregations very much caught up in a world whose convoluted stresses and strains produce many complex concerns that must be cleared away before the pastor can get to the underlying issues of sin, righteousness, and judgment. And although academicians are supposed to reside in ivory towers, we all are aware of the stress of intellectual confrontation with systems of thought that are no closer to evangelical Christianity today than they were when Christ stood below Pilate at the steps of the Praetorium.

Why not devise a plan in which evangelical students could receive their training right in the midst of that distillation of the world—its drives, its problems, and its proposed solutions—that is the modern university? Certainly higher education has recently undergone some changes that lend support to the suggestion. One Christian university is imaginable; indeed, it is more than that, in view of the need for dedicated and able Christians in positions of leadership. But how can we think of providing the plants, facilities, libraries, teachers, salaries, and retirement plans necessary to meet the competition when we must think of a large number of Christian institutions?

One of the new breezes in Academia is decentralization, which is picking up speed on many state university campuses. Michigan State has residential units that include classrooms and faculty offices. The Santa Cruz campus of the University of California is designed wholly along this line. The University of Michigan seems ready to bet some $14 million on the idea. And there are many others. Perhaps the eagerness of university administrators to have a separately financed, adequately designed and administered college on or near the campus may outrun that of many evangelicals to provide it. What could the university lose with an adjunct that provided housing, scholarship support, special counseling, and good students?

I propose, therefore, that a separately administered college be established on or near a major university. It should have a residence hall housing some 500 to 700 students. (This number is suggested in view of building and maintenance costs.) The college should offer facilities for instruction and counseling, recreation, and dining.

The essence of the program should be special counseling for academic performance and for the special interests and problems of Christian young people. There would also be certain courses for these students, who would be regularly enrolled in the university and pursue their major studies there. These two might be combined as follows:

1. First year. First semester: one hour per week of counseling. This weekly meeting of the student and a staff member could deal with adequate performance in university courses, with direct help for problems; with the student’s theological outlook and related questions that arise in connection with his studies; and with the student’s long-run purposes in acquiring a college education. Information about possible majors and their relation to Christian service, and the challenge of Christian service in relation to pastoral work, missions, secular careers, personal testimony—all this should be thoroughly aired in individual sessions with a person of faculty status and mature insight. The second semester could be given over to tutorial sessions, an hour per week, for which the student would prepare papers on topics related to his major interests and their involvement with his obligations as a Christian. After written criticism of the papers, each should be redone and then form the basis for a formal meeting with the tutor. These sessions should be academically impeccable as well as theologically sound. They should be a great help with the student’s other work on campus, since they would demand integration of specific areas of study with each other and with the student’s developing world-view. They would also provide explicit help with what is usually a great problem for university students: getting sufficient instruction and practice in written and oral communication.

2. Second year. A three-credit course, both semesters, on the history of evangelical Christianity. Presumably, university credit could be secured for this course, if there were adequate staffing and sufficiently cordial relations with whatever is present on campus in the way of a religion department.

3. Third year. A three-credit course, again for both semesters, that in my view ought to be the most significant single offering of the program. It would concern the relation between evangelical theology and the modern world. It ought to take up in turn the issues of the modern world and the evangelical view on those issues. Although it would be directed by one man, the course should include a wide range of visiting lecturers who could present their own special interests within this framework. The course might well use lectures plus structured discussion, individual research, and writing.

4. Fourth year. A three-credit proseminar for two semesters on the general subject of Christianity and the student’s own field of major interest. The course could begin with the student’s survey of his field, its major problems, and its recent developments. This could be followed by a paper on the relation of Christianity to that field and then another on the student’s ideas on how to present a Christian testimony within that field.

At the same time students would also be fulfilling the university’s requirements for a major field of study. They should be encouraged, and indeed helped, to participate in the regular honors program of the university. Every effort should be made to secure exemplary academic performance from the students and also to take advantage of any competitive situation that might develop with other living units and student-interest units on campus. This is an area in which much imagination could be exercised.

Along with this essentially academic program, for most of which regular university credit should be sought, there ought to be a careful consideration of the other sides of college life. This should begin with the counseling program, formally established during the student’s first year and continued during the rest of his stay. Efforts to bridge the gap between classroom instruction and personal counseling should be a matter of primary concern to the college staff. As much as possible, the distinction between the actual classroom situation and informal discussion of the issues raised in all courses should be erased. Staff members who have worked with students in the initial counseling and tutorial program should remain active in their contact with the advanced work of those students and in considering the issues that arise from this work.

Categories Of Admission

In the selection of students for the college, the admision standards of the university to which the college is attached would clearly have to prevail. This is so, not only because the college students must be accepted by the rest of the campus, but also because the added interests of the college could then demonstrate to all the strength of the college idea. Moreover, at any university the registrar has the discretionary power to admit marginal students; therefore the college would have enough leeway to provide itself with the student population that would best fit its aims.

I suggest three categories of admissions: Scholarship I, Scholarship II, and Regular Admission.

Scholarship I should be a group of students, building up to thirty or so, who receive full-support scholarships. They should be selected from a group having combined SAT scores above 1300 and ranking in the top 5 per cent of their high school graduating classes. A 3.8 gradepoint average should be required for maintaining this scholarship. Scholarship II should be a living-expense scholarship group, numbering some fifty students, for whom the requirement would be combined SAT scores of 1200 and a high school graduating rank in the top 15 per cent. For both groups, other factors, such as precise high school program, outside activities, and evidence of creativity should be considered also. The rest of the students, those in Regular Admission, should have a Verbal SAT score above 450 and be from the top 50 per cent of their graduating classes.

All entering students should be able to subscribe to a doctrinal statement stressing a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, his Lordship, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the student’s intention to devote his life to Christian service, whatever his vocation might be. A question of strategy arises at this point. Arguments for having a limited number of uncommitted students not only are very persuasive but also have been proven valid in many places, most notably in Roman Catholic schools. But all students should agree to participate fully in the program of the college and to abide by its rules.

Choosing The Staff

The problem of staffing the college is most crucial. The director should have the rank of full professor at the university to which the college is attached. The college would pay half his salary for the time he devoted to administering and teaching at the college. In my opinion it would be best to choose a person already established at the university, to forestall possible suspicion about the college’s programs and facilitate acceptance of the courses it offers.

In many ways the choice of a director will determine the success or failure of the college. He should be a thoroughly grounded Christian, able and producing in his own field of study and fully convinced of the value of the college. He should also be capable and imaginative as an administrator and have personal access to all divisions of the university. The director must function at the discretion of a college board of trustees and answer to them. As trustees I suggest two faculty members of the university, at least two nationally known persons with expertise in Christian education, and several other persons from various fields of Christian service and business.

The director should be assisted by seven persons with full faculty qualifications. Hopefully, at least some of them would have part-time appointments in various departments of the university. There should be a historian to give the course on the history of evangelical Christianity, and a person with theological training and reputation to give the course on modern theology. The other assistants should represent science, social science, and the humanities. Ideally one of them would have special language competence.

Each of these persons must be fully acceptable to the university as a regular faculty member even though he may not hold an appointment there. Every effort should be made to open the full resources of the university to these persons’ particular interests in teaching and research. As they acquire partial obligations to the university, their time should be replaced in the college so that there would still be the equivalent of at least 7½ full-time faculty members. Those who are particularly concerned with counseling and tutoring should have access to the university offices of counseling and guidance, for consultation and for integration of the college’s guidance procedures into the overall guidance system.

How Much Will It Cost?

Cost estimates have proven difficult, and the figures I mention should be taken with a grain of salt. A building that would house 700 students and provide recreational facilities, some classroom space, dining rooms, and administrative and faculty offices would probably cost about $4.5 million. I am told that this could be self-amortized and maintained over a forty-year period at an annual cost of $1,100 per student, including summer occupancy. Academic staff costs would come to approximately $75,000 per year, and supporting staff would add another $20,000. Thirty full-support scholarships would cost $60,000 per year, and fifty at half that would come to $50,000. Library acquisition could be managed for about $8,000 per year. Therefore, exclusive of building and development costs (which, it is hoped, could be met by the money students pay), the annual budget of the college would come close to $215,000 per year. I think that this is somewhat less than the average cost of maintaining a small college of 500–700 students. Keep in mind that these figures are only approximations.

However, the actual design of the college, its staff, and programs is not our problem at present. I have offered these suggestions only to give some concreteness to the basic proposal. Many variations suggest themselves. One proposal has come to me urging full academic dress for lectures and for a weekly dinner and other attempts to provide the general atmosphere of an Oxford college.

This proposal that I have outlined includes a number of ideas in current academic ferment. Those that are not original can be found in Axelrod, “New Patterns of Internal Organization,” in Emerging Patterns in American Higher Education. Tutorial instruction, counseling that is integrated with subject matter as well as performance problems, the structured integration of all the student’s course program, special attention to communication skills, proseminars for advanced students, the maintenance of close faculty-student identification—these are a good share of the problems and proposals with which educators are now grappling. By working these and other new ideas into its program, and by making it possible for teachers to give close attention to the plans and needs of individual students, the college might well find itself providing leadership in these areas to the university as a whole. In doing this it could take advantage of the fact that its students originally came together out of a common interest and, using the student support this could engender, could show the way to a combined faculty and student approach to mutual problems.

Moreover, the college (unlike most Christian schools—though there are some interesting exceptions to this) would have a way to use its own program as part of a concerted attempt at evangelical outreach. The students of the college could participate directly in the many dialogues of the whole campus and perhaps gain the opportunity to present Christ and the views of Christianity. And they would have ready-made programs to which to invite interested students.

AN UNREASONABLE FAT SIMILE

The cherubic thinker reclined in ease,

Double-chinned doctrine, quite obese—

No longer could, nor really would

Kneel on his dimpled, liturgical knees.

He summoned God to his corpulent side,

Said God was asleep or preoccupied—

Thus the catechism of jumboism

With its ultimatum: God has died!

The chubby green giant’s great offense

Was concept divorced from experience;

No exercise caused his demise—

A theology wanting viable sense.

WILLIAM J. SCHMIDT

At the same time, the college would be able to nourish and challenge its students and the security of their beliefs during the crucial period when they awaken to the life of the mind. By promoting gradual freedom from a carefully controlled and apologetically oriented counseling program, it would be set up to meet this need, which so often goes unmet.

Finally, and most important, the student in the college would meet his challenges during his undergraduate years instead of later, when he would have to face them without guidance and perhaps without fuel for reply. He would, as he is interested and able, participate in the raging, never-ending dialogue between faith and intellectualism. And he would come to see that for many people these questions are not entirely answerable but also that they do not need to be answered for everyone. Those students who could not maintain their association with the college on grounds of faith and intellect are likely the ones who could not maintain their Christian zeal when buffeted by the world, whenever that buffeting came.

The college, however, would provide a working situation in which to hammer out the practical, less philosophical aspects of Christianity’s answers to today’s problems in education. It could lead the student to more basic thought along these lines in his graduate career at an Institute of Advanced Christian Studies or elsewhere, or it could provide a good beginning for those who might decide to transfer and continue their work in a Christian university.

Students are asking: What invests me with value as an individual? What absolutes limit my freedom?

Prince Hamlet, returning to the Danish court at Elsinore Castle with his student life fresh in mind, found a situation so ugly, so darkly threatening to his selfhood, that he was plunged into a protracted melancholy. The discussion that follows suggests how Hamlet’s protest against what he found at the court is paralleled by the present student generation’s protest against what it increasingly finds on the campus and in society at large.

Shortly after he has discovered the mess at court, Prince Hamlet makes a grim lament:

I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that the goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The Paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust [II. ii. 304 ff.]?

This gloomy tirade brings to mind the dour Preacher of Ecclesiastes; but that witness’s fatalism and ennui seem the end products of a self-indulgent life rather than the pessimism of a disgruntled student. More to the point, Hamlet’s words might be those of a precocious undergraduate in the mid-twentieth century who has left home for the university only to find there such widespread denial of the value judgments he has taken for granted, such violations of the trusts he has held most sacred, and an image of man so contrary to his own estimates of his inner self, that he is desolated. He finds that his spontaneity and mirth have left him, never to be reclaimed in anything like the old fullness.

Last year a conference sponsored by the Danforth Foundation brought together college teachers from all over the country. They were addressed by such informed educators as Wayne C. Booth, dean of the college at the University of Chicago, and Robert Rankin, associate director of the sponsoring foundation. The lecturers seemed to agree upon a basic point: The present student revolt is at root a spirited and intransigent reaction against dehumanization, against the “phoniness” of an educational system in which students are methodically treated as something less than what they know themselves to be.

This dehumanization can be traced to sources other than administrative regimentation, of course. No less blameworthy is the image of man projected in various academic disciplines. From my own experience and from the experience of students I have counseled at the university, I have learned that the first confidence to be questioned on the university campus is the idea that the world is the sort of a place a man can feel at home in.

There is something tragic in this. Reinhold Niebuhr has said that faith is a disposition of the heart akin to the child’s trust in his universe. Central to man’s well-being is the preservation of his sense of belonging. He is no moon-child, no accident or abortion of the world-process. In his fullness as a human being, he is confirmed by his world.

In the university setting, however, this conviction of significance is often systematically undercut. The student is asked to unlearn what he is in a position to know better than any of his teachers—that he matters, infinitely so. The undercutting occurs as a many-sided attack upon the student’s conception of what it is to be human, and a portrayal of the universe as at best indifferent to man’s concerns with life, intelligence, and value. Young men and women are led to think that their elemental trusts have been unfounded. Not surprisingly, they feel betrayed.

We need no Freudian exposé of Hamlet’s Oedipal feelings to alert us to what was perhaps most disheartening to him. The prince loved his mother deeply and apparently had never had reason to doubt her regard for him. There was unquestioned trust. That she should, so suspiciously, and in violation of the canons of simple decency, lay aside proper mourning for Hamlet’s father and hurry into a marriage with the prince’s uncle, was a gaping breach in the very groundwork of the universe. Hamlet’s world had betrayed him. His speech quoted previously shows the profound shock he has suffered. Although he has not relinquished his native ideas about man as angelic, even divine in faculties, his capacity to feel these as truth, and so to act upon them, has been all but destroyed. The empowering union of head and heart has been ruptured. And what the mind holds as unfelt notion cannot long survive. The plain implication of his mother’s and uncle’s behavior is that man cannot be what he has thought him to be.

Not surprisingly, Prince Hamlet’s discovery of violated trust resulted in a diseased view of the whole cosmos. Yet, in all his melancholy, there was a conviction of destiny. “The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right!” (I. v. 189, 190). Hamlet knows that he can do something to set right the specific evil that has made the whole time seem disjointed.

Such a sense of obligation to repudiate identifiable wrongs seems to lie at the bottom of student unrest. There is—understandably, since students are long on energy and short on experience—much flailing about, much generalizing to the outermost perimeters of responsibility, much sound and fury, as with Hamlet; but if one looks, he can always locate the special wrong somewhere in the foreground of concern.

At the University of Illinois an attempt was made recently to learn what issues are most pressing for students, what ones they would like to hear renowned speakers discuss in the forthcoming Centennial Symposium sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The students consulted raised two questions with startling vehemence: (1) What invests me with value as an individual? (2) What absolutes, what givens, impose the limits upon my freedom? In their desire to answer these questions, today’s students are no different from those of other days. They assume an unalienable right to inquire after meaningfulness and to cultivate freedom within the evident limits upon knowledge and action.

Now if it is true that the student revolt is, at root, a protest against dehumanization inspired by moral indignation, we have reason to expect that wrongs of long standing will be righted, or at least that one age with its peculiar moral compromises and inconsistencies will close and a new age with its new versions of the old problems begin. Although the cleaning up at court, in which Hamlet lost his life, did not usher in a millennium, it did inaugurate the auspicious rule of Fortinbras. This new king, who took the throne after a successful expedition against a foreign enemy, presumably had learned something from his predecessor about sin and its consequences for the stability of the throne.

It may not be presumptuous to suggest that an age is ending now. The age of anxiety, alias the age of analysis, alias the age of self-consciousness, is long past its meridian. Its end seems latent in a central incoherence, an instability that pairs a diseased self-consciousness with a methodological denial of the self. The incoherence is not beyond the notice of the student generation.

Discussion of the “end of the world” is natural in times when long-held assumptions are brought into question. Such talk was widespread in the seventeenth century in Europe, when authoritarianism, long an unquestioned modus vivendi, was being doubted and replaced by democratic parliamentarianism, empiricism, and egalitarianism in taste. The seventeenth century saw the questioning and abandoning of the basic hypotheses of authoritarian culture; the twentieth sees a questioning of the confused image of the private self that is at the center of the modern synthesis. It was, to be sure, our “age” that in a sense began in the seventeenth century, with the institutionalizing of the sundry rights of the private man, whether political, scientific, religious, or aesthetic. Thus dawned the age of self-consciousness.

The case of Prince Hamlet is very relevant here. He was the reflective man par excellence. Indeed, Coleridge saw Hamlet’s reflectiveness as his tragic flaw, for his diseased self-consciousness made it impossible for him to act. Shocked by the violation of trusts into an anguished immobility, he temporized and complained. Perhaps we should see him as the archetypal man of the age then beginning, and now closing.

Yet, as we shall see, Hamlet could be self-conscious without the inconsistency that plagues modern man. The moribund self-consciousness of today concerns a self that, by those various strategists of reduction and neglect mentioned earlier, has been depreciated to a cipher. There is no conundrum here, merely a stark inconsistency. At one moment, the self is the be-all and end-all of existence, which art bares and science serves. At the next, it is no more than a vacancy at the center of the private world, the emptiness left when the soul-wraith has been exorcised by the teacher-priests of the day.

L. L. Whyte has pointed out that “conscious” in the sense of “inwardly aware” was first used in 1620; the noun “consciousness” first appeared in 1678, and the noun “self-consciousness” in 1690. Language is the dress of thought, and the history of coinages is a useful index to the history of thought. We would expect the seventeenth-century ferment with its earnest advocacy of individualism to produce such terms. But now, three centuries later, we are witnessing the decay of that emphasis.

In the brilliant anthology, The Modern Tradition, Richard Ellman and Charles Feidelson, Jr., devote one of their nine sections to self-consciousness. They have good reason: no term is more basic to an understanding of the peculiar genius of the modern artist. It covers a wide range of experimentation in choice of subject and in technique. But it also serves to remind us of a thousand separate ills of the twentieth-century artist. He advertises his solitariness, his estrangement, his incommunicable despair.

If, as T. S. Eliot suggested in The Hollow Men (1925), the world will end not with a bang but with a whimper, we must now be hearing that end. The typical note of contemporary literature is roundly melancholy. This became fully evident to me during three semesters of reading the critical essays students submitted after doing independent research on living poets and storywriters. Batch after batch of papers testified to a bleak consensus. Although the research ranged widely—from Katherine Anne Porter to Saul Bellow, from Robert Lowell to Lawrence Ferlinghetti—and although the students were encouraged to present nothing but the artist’s own vision, the essays converged on a single note: discomposure. The harmonies were provided by the notes of ennui, nostalgia, frustration, and violent indignation. And the students found man portrayed as helpless, hapless, and addled—a grisly, dejected cast-off of the universe. All but paralyzed, he sits on the ash-heap, unable to pray, but feverishly, agonizingly self-conscious.

So self-consciousness decays into an uninterrupted awareness of hurt and homelessness. What about this homelessness? Might it be related to an empiricism that has assimilated man to nature as object but will not, or cannot, assimilate him to nature as subject? Who needs to be reminded that the last three centuries, identifiable as the era of self-consciousness, have also and not irrelevantly been the career of science and technology? Man has become ever more self-conscious as he has become ever more the manipulator of a mechanical caricature of nature, anything but the environment of sacraments and presences that man in another day felt it to be.

The inconsistency here is apparent enough to anyone who will look. In a little-known essay that served as an introduction to D. E. Harding’s The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, C. S. Lewis calls attention to the absurd quandary of a science that by its methodological underpinnings excludes the role of the observer and then, well along in its explorations, discovers there is no way at all to get the observer back into the universe. This quandary is compounded by the fact that the whole process has actually been made to serve a self ever more pridefully and insistently honored by man the technologist. It should be plain that ends and means cannot forever endure such an estrangement.

I think students are well able to glimpse the lie at the heart of our self-conscious age. We denude and desecrate nature, we manipulate other men, all in the interest of a self we idolize. But it is a self that our system of hypotheses will not even let us admit exists. Our culture has at the same time deified and denied the self.

Clearly the time is out of joint. The Christian Gospel has always borne witness to the fact that the self is neither a cipher nor a proper center for the life. Of infinite worth, it is nothing apart from the God who treasures and loves it. That these assurances, which must ring so brightly in the hearts of men, could be so totally perverted in the process of the years is disturbing evidence that student revolt, or any species of human reaction and repair, is inadequate. Prince Hamlet cleansed the court, but the cleansing was enormously, tragically expensive of life. We must ask that Providence shape the rough-hewn ends of the present revolt to His own perfect design.

This is not to slight the importance of human effort. Edmund Burke observed that for evil to triumph, it is necessary only that good men do nothing. Student unrest is a condition that, if left unregarded by spirit-filled men of high resolve, will certainly be exploited by those radical elements that form a narrow fringe on the university campus.

This should not be allowed to happen. The situation is nothing less than a call to the planting of a new image of the whole man at the heart of the university community. To such a task the everlasting Gospel is uniquely relevant.