Taste and distaste in religious art

The Sound Of Muzak

In a way it is too bad that more Christians don’t read Esquire magazine. I find air trips or waiting periods in barber shops good opportunities for picking up a little outside reading—or maybe I should call it “off-side” reading. Across the years Esquire has changed considerably. However much it may jar you with some of the cartoons and a few far-out articles, I know of no place to turn for better reading on movies and books. Dwight Macdonald handles the movies, and that delightful writer Malcolm Muggeridge (former Punch editor, I think) writes about books.

In the August issue Muggeridge gives over his whole article to a review of Evelyn Waugh. You ought to read it. He is wise and witty and he is very satisfying; but specifically you ought to read it because of a wonderful comment he makes on Waugh’s conversion to the Roman Catholic Church and on how the general loosening in the joints of the Roman Catholic Church since the time of John XXIII has given great distress to many Roman Catholics, especially to new converts like Waugh. Maybe the Roman Catholic Church will be like the “one hoss shay” (this, of course, originally referred to strict Calvinism): when one thing fell apart, it all fell apart.

It was Macdonald, however, who did for me what I needed to have done. He put his finger on The Sound of Music when I couldn’t do it myself. As you may recall, the whole picture is a delight from start to finish; and yet it made me uneasy about something. Who can fault Julie Andrews or cute children or beautiful scenery or gay music? And yet there it was again. The plot is built around “poor old Dad” and the wonderful little woman who can make everything come out right (to the sound of music, yet). Just to cap it all, those nuns outsmart the Nazis.

Once again, hurrah, women are too much for men. That has become a tried and true plot for our day, but it is strictly soap opera. Sic semper tyrannis.

EUTYCHUS II

Shocked And Humbled

I wish to thank CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Mr. Gordon Kelly for some of the most beautiful art it has been my privilege to behold (Sept. 2 issue). I turned from one to another, “tasting” each as I studied them. Then to the last of these treasures, and I was shocked! I was humbled, and even as I look at it now I have an indescribable feeling of longing.

J. JACKSON

Charleston, W. Va.

I do not know whether to weep, to rage, to feel sad or to be mad.…

I do not know who the museum director in New Jersey is that praises them, but I am quite certain that, let’s say, all museum people in Washington will agree with me that these works are completely below the level of acceptable art. They have nothing to do with Rembrandt—any comparison in that direction is only emphasizing that this Mr. Kelly, even if he is a real Christian, is not an artist that can be talked about seriously as an artist. If this is Christian art it would mean only that we Christians have no art, probably not even the mentality or will to have art at all.…

H. R. ROOKMAAKER

Professor of the History of Art

Free University

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

To my mind the reproductions of Gordon Kelly’s paintings were worth the price of the magazine and then some. You have done the Christian public a service in introducing the works of this man in this very effective way.

HUDSON T. ARMERDING

President

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

To me Kelly’s paintings are artistic, but they are not true to facts! To me these pictures, however good they may be, are like “hearsay” evidence in court. They are of no real value to Christianity, which is based on truth.…

WILLIAM HENRY BELT

Wakiman, Ohio

Thank you for the four paintings by Gordon Kelly, and for an excellent magazine.

THOMAS M. HUNTER

Coosada Baptist Church

Coosada, Ala.

“Whom do you say that I am?” A northern European.

GRETA J. LINDBERG

Ann Arbor, Mich.

I have framed two of them, and they are now hanging in my home where they can be a source of inspiration and beauty to myself and my friends.…

MIRIAM BURTSCHE

DeBary, Fla.

No wonder that, in an increasingly thoughtful age, many believe that “God is dead”! The concept of an anthropomorphic God is indeed dead. But this represents no recent demise. God-in-man’s-image-and-likeness never existed in the first place!…

ALLEN R. ROBERTSON

Captain, USAF

St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. and Mrs. Donald A. Hilsee and I … ask that you remove our names from your magazine mailing list.…

We were truly shocked when we saw … the “unholy” pictures in it—the product of man’s imagination—following in the footsteps of the Greek and Roman churches of adding such ugly imaginations to the pure Gospel of God.…

E. V. H. DEVLIN

Philadelphia, Pa.

Will you please inform me whether I can buy copies of the paintings by Gordon Kelly … and if so at what price.

Mrs. J. M. BAKER

Asheville, N. C.

• Reprints are available from:

Mr. Gordon Kelly

1443 North Meridian Street

Indianapolis, Indiana 46202 Cost: $1 for a folder of four or $1 each for framable copies.—ED.

The reproduction of these pictures is splendid and the article along with the news item should produce significant results.…

RICHARD WOLFF

Wheaton, Ill.

Praying For The Berlin Congress

We are continuing to pray that the Holy Spirit will make the World Congress on Evangelism God’s great event for our times. We pray this not only for the world and for the churches but also for our own church, and I pray God that this renewal may begin with me.

CONRAD M. THOMPSON

American Lutheran Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

We will be praying twice daily and I into late hours each night.

H. P. DUNLOP

Long Beach, Calif.

Our house will pray for you and the congress at each meal, and I will fast rather than take Friday dinner.

ROSS OWENS

Paramount, Calif.

$500 Mark

I send $6 for our family of six and prefer Boston environs for proposed institute.

MARTIN J. WYNGAARDEN

Emeritus, Calvin Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

• With this one, gifts for the proposed Institute of Advanced Christian Studies—mostly individual dollar contributions—reach the $500 mark. If each of the 250,000 readers of this magazine were to respond, the project could be swiftly launched.—ED.

The Penny Or The Cake

Although I am commenting upon a previously published letter (Sept. 16 issue) and not upon a feature article, I nonetheless feel constrained to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the manner in which both Dr. Kantzer and Dr. Young defend the doctrine of biblical inerrancy (even though the defense is actually a reconstruction of the procedure set down by the inimitable professor of didactic and polemic theology, B. B. Warfield).

Warfield clearly perceived that a Christian has no more right to construct a doctrine of biblical authority out of deference to the (presumed) inductive difficulties in the Bible, than he has to construct a doctrine of salvation out of deference to the (actual) difficulties which arise whenever one tries to discover the hidden logic in such events as (a) the Son of God’s assumption of human nature or (b) the Son of God’s offering up of this human nature as a vicarious atonement for sin.

This means that whether we happen to like it or not, we are closed up to the teaching of the Bible for our information about all doctrines in the Christian faith, and this includes the doctrine of the Bible’s view of itself. We are free to reject the doctrine of the Bible’s view of itself, of course, but if we do so we are demolishing the procedure by which we determine the substance of any Christian doctrine. If we pick and choose what we prefer to believe, rather than what is biblically taught, we merely exhibit once again the logical (and existential) fallacy of trying to have our cake and our penny, too.

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL

Prof. of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

Nyack Flack

We must take strong exception to your implication (“Rebel Spirit Jolts Church Colleges,” Sept. 2 issue) that Nyack’s faculty is “avant-garde” in the sense of being in revolt against traditional thought and behavior. The suggestion that we tend to the far-left extremity of the “rebel spirit” spectrum is both inaccurate and unjustified.

Nyack Missionary College must confront its share of the unsettledness and frustration that characterizes much of today’s campus population; moreover, we trust that our students will continue to engage in an honest and responsible quest for meaningful and purposeful living. Our desire as a faculty is to assist the student to relate this spirit of inquiry to the eternal absolutes of Scripture, the established tradition of evangelical Christianity, and the particular emphasis and ministry of The Christian and Missionary Alliance.

While today’s Christian student, as your article observes, may “require a type of faculty that provides more than spirituality and piety,” he certainly cannot afford to attend a Christian college whose faculty fails to demonstrate these indispensable qualities. To these essentials, we who teach at Nyack are pledged to give living testimony.

Nyack Missionary College

Nyack, N. Y.

Berlin Congress Hymn

The editor of the East German paper Die Kirche asked the question: “Is a new church hymn at all possible?” and then answered it himself as follows: “According to human estimation this question must be answered with a No. The possibility of the new hymn is directly connected with the question of faith.… When faith becomes weak, there is no ground on which a valid new hymn can grow.… The time for a new hymn can come only when we can again doubt less and believe more”.…

How pleased I am that CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been able to provide an affirmative “answer” to that editor’s question by publishing this wonderful World Congress hymn so full of faith and vision (July 8 issue).

GUSTAV G. TOBLER

Editor

Zeichen der Zeit

Mountain View, Calif.

Why Universalism?

I have been a missionary of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, in Chile, for forty years, and have had close contact with universalism, as a couple of the churches placed under my care had been split by universalism a couple of years prior to my arrival on one field. I made a careful investigation as to the causes that led to that division and found that it was chiefly caused by the extreme preaching on the so-called theory of “everlasting conscious torment of all the lost for all the endless ages of eternity, or as long as God exists.” Such extreme preaching had driven some of the best and outstanding members to the other extreme concerning the destiny of the lost, or “universalism.” I have found that usually the real truth is to be found between two extreme positions. I have combated universalism all my life in its various forms, such as restorationism, second probationism, remedial punishment, purgatorial purification, and other false theories. But I am convinced that as long as the churches preach the above extreme idea, they will force others to the other extreme of universalism.

As a rule I have found that the churches are holding an unbiblical attitude regarding the final destiny of the lost. The Bible teaches in many places various degrees of punishment according to the responsibility and guilt of the individual.…

CHARLES B. LEFEURE

Chicago, Ill.

No Wonder They Stay Away

After sixty-some-odd years of reading the Bible and observing the results of the leaven of Christianity in the world about me, I am absolutely convinced that, even if it were a myth, Christianity still would be the greatest thing that ever came into this world which “God so loved” (John 3:16). It definitely is not a myth.…

Many theologians seem determined to make the Divine Word as difficult as possible for the laymen to understand. Some appear to tell their readers, or listeners, “Now, let’s pretend that you have never heard before what I am about to tell you.” Others speak or write in a manner that says, “I’ll mow you down with my erudition! I’ll bury you under a plethora of multisyllabled words!!!” If these guys are teaching young men to be pastors, or rather, have taught, it is no wonder that laymen and the unsaved stay away from church by the thousands, every Sunday.

THEODORE ASHLOCK

Liberal, Kan.

A Free Religious Press

Thank you for your thorough and detailed coverage of the Conference on Church and Society under the auspices of the World Council of Churches which met recently in Geneva (“Geneva: Brainstorming for Secular Revolution,” Aug. 19 issue). I also want to thank you for the fine editorial analysis of the conference. In this you have again demonstrated the value of a free and independent religious periodical.

As for the increasing number of extreme partisan political pronouncements made by many modern churchmen and theologians today, as well as the partisan political directives issued by their various church organizations, these may well be evaluated in the light of the RSV translation of Jeremiah 10:21, “For the shepherds are stupid, and do not inquire of the Lord; therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.”

HENRY BAST

Bethany Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

A Good Word

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a terrific magazine. It is most thought-provoking. Most of the ministers in our town read and enjoy it very much. I advertise it every chance that I get. May your circulation increase.

RALPH L. BRAMBLE

President

Warrensburg Association Of Churches

Warrensburg, N. Y.

The religious press faces unparalleled opportunities in a technological era

When Martin Luther evicted the Devil by casting an ink stand at the sinister invader, he established a remarkable precedent for religious journalism,” comments Carl F. H. Henry in Successful Church Publicity. How does the Protestant press fare in its battle against Satan in 1966? What has been happening in the decade since CHRISTIANITY TODAY entered the arena?

While there are many denominational publications, the number of independent Protestant magazines of wide influence is comparatively small. Among them are several journals of opinion.

In this category, CHRISTIANITY TODAY dominates the evangelical field and is a major force in the entire Christian world. Dale Francis, a Roman Catholic editor who regularly reads over one hundred Protestant magazines, comments: “CHRISTIANITY TODAY comes closer than any other general Protestant publication to representing the grassroots Protestant viewpoints.” The place of leadership this magazine has achieved is striking because it has been in existence for only ten years.

His, the magazine of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, is a lively monthly that discusses controversial issues with candor and courage. For seven successive years it has won the Evangelical Press Association award as Youth Magazine of the Year. It does an excellent job of using artwork and text to catch the attention of students on the go. Many continue to read His after graduation, and thus its public extends well beyond the college years.

Eternity is characterized by its venturesome design and approach. Somewhat less specialized intellectually than CHRISTIANITY TODAY, it also appeals to a thoughtful evangelical readership.

Decision, the organ of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is a phenomenon of circulation growth. Cutting across denominational lines, in hundreds of thousands of homes it has opened windows upon an evangelical world heretofore unknown to many who formerly read only the denominational press. With its wide readership and its popular presentation of evangelism and Christian living, Decision is a strong voice that will grow in intensity in the decade ahead.

The Christian Century has long been the voice of Protestant liberalism. According to Dr. Robert Root, who teaches religious Journalism at Syracuse University, a significant change in the magazine during the decade has been the sharp revision of its view of Roman Catholicism. “Ten years ago,” says Root, “the Christian Century had a negative point of view. This has changed to one of positive ecumenical friendliness toward Roman Catholicism.” Although its circulation is small, the Century continues to be on often-quoted thought leader. However, I believe it is less imaginative than in the past and seems to be grasping for issues.

Christianity and Crisis, though small in circulation, is influential beyond its size in reflecting a neo-orthodox and socially liberal point of view.

The Protestant press includes many other fine publications, scores of poor ones, and a wasteland of mediocrity. Let us now survey some specific aspects of these publications as seen over the past decade.

Appearance

Ten years ago religious magazines were criticized for amateurishness of design resulting in drab grayness. Reading one’s denominational organ was viewed by many as an act of penance. In The Religious Press in America, Martin E. Marty suggests that a liturgy of a new order might ask: “And do you solemnly promise that you will faithfully and regularly read our church’s official paper?”—to which the response would be, “I do so solemnly promise, with the help of Almighty God.…”

But the decade has witnessed marked progress in the attractiveness of the Protestant press. There is more color. Paper, typography, printing, photography, and other technical aspects are strikingly improved. More offset printing has increased the use of pictures and encouraged better layout and artwork. Readability has been augmented by greater brevity, more white-space, and more subheads and other typographical devices.

An elder statesman of Christian journalism, Benjamin P. Browne, characterizes this progress over the past ten years as, “simply amazing … a new day.” But a periodical designer, Edmund C. Arnold, says: “The improvement in appearance has been only the inevitable outcome of the change of time. I don’t think that there has been enough, good enough, and studied enough change.… Spending money on talent to make sure copy is read is insurance, not extravagance.”

Employment of professional journalists and in-service technical training of staff personnel has increased. Marjorie Moore Armstrong, a former editor, whose husband is a senior editor of Reader’s Digest, comments: “Denominational weeklies and monthlies are being manned by younger, better trained men and women, chosen primarily for their aptitude for handling the written word and the published truth, rather than ‘superannuated preachers’ whom the denomination felt they could trust with the house organ or mouthpiece of the denomination.”

But the growing hospitality of Protestant magazines toward trained journalists is not without its negative side. Many feel it is dangerous for journalists who do not have theological training to be in positions where they judge the work of those who do.

Writing Quality

Motive, World Vision, Leader, United Evangelical Action, Home Missions, Latin America Evangelist, the Baptist Message of Louisiana, and hundreds of other religious publications now look better, are more widely circulated, have more technically competent staffers, and use sophisticated machinery. But is the writing in Protestant periodicals any better?

Writers, both staff and free-lance, are better paid and have more opportunities for improving their skills than ten years ago. There has been a decline in printed sermons and an increase in timely articles prepared specifically for the reader. And today the reader, more often than in 1956, is visualized not so much as the man in the pulpit but as the man in the pew. However, almost none of the writing is yet addressed to the uncommitted nominal Christian—the man in the easy chair.

Roland E. Wolseley, professor of journalism and chairman of the magazine department at Syracuse University, feels that the Protestant press has made less progress in writing than in other aspects of its work.

News Reporting

How has the Protestant press handled the news? The decade has been news-filled: Viet Nam, the racial revolution, Castro, the Berlin wall, space exploration, new nations, presidential elections, the Vatican Council, the Congo, the Consultation on Church Union, the New English Bible, the “new morality,” the death-of-God theologians. The news has begged for interpretation in the light of Christian principles.

Though the Protestant press has not yet learned the key importance of timeliness, it handles the news much better today than in 1956. Many critics say the coverage is still too parochial. Yet Christian editors are criticized as much for “meddling in secular issues” as damned for “preoccupation with denominational affairs.”

Having limited space in which to carry out its specifically assigned tasks, the Christian press must assume that its readers have access to the mass news-media. However, it has a responsibility to inform its readers about the issues behind news.

News editors are doing a better job of going out after the news than they did ten years ago. But far too little responsibility is felt toward the reader’s right to know. There is still too much rewriting of press releases with no effort to dig for facts. Significant meetings and conventions are often neglected. The Presbyterian Journal and CHRISTIANITY TODAY are often the only Protestant magazines covering the General Board meetings of the National Council of Churches.

This leads us to the whole matter of content. No one can say whether the content of Christian journalism is improving without some such qualification as, “from my particular point of view.…” For a theologically liberal, sociologically oriented Northeasterner, a conservative Oklahoma magazine filled with articles on salvation, alcoholism, anxiety, divorce, and other person-centered subjects would be irrelevant. On the other hand, the reader of the Oklahoma magazine may feel that it meets his needs exactly.

Since 1960, when the pace of significant religious events accelerated, the editorial pages of Protestant magazines have been increasingly filled with healthful debate, objective self-criticism, and intense question-asking. This is a good trend unless followed to the extreme of all problems and no solutions. A periodical that stands for nothing may condition its readers to fall for anything.

The contents of a particular magazine must be judged within the context of its sponsors’ purpose. No denomination or special-interest group is so swamped with money that it can afford to siphon some away from missions and other important programs to subsidize criticism of its basic beliefs. This does not mean that there is no room for divergent opinion on current issues within the declared policy of the group. Nor does it mean that there can be no persuasive editorial leadership.

In reporting more of the thought and action of other religious bodies, the Protestant press has contributed to increased understanding. Consider, for example, the growing dialogue between Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Vatican Council was extensively discussed by Protestants, and Catholics now cover major Protestant meetings.

The Protestant press is giving more attention to expanding its editorial outreach. There is less general discussion of “safe” moral issues and more specific encounter with “dangerous” issues that have yet to be decided. There is also more pro-and-con discussion of social action, government encroachment on the private sector, and controversial theological views.

The death-of-God movement, catapulted into national prominence by the secular press, has helped editors see the need for more theological substance in what they give their readers. The secular press may even have dealt with some of the major theological struggles more effectively than the religious press. Perhaps editors are realizing their neglect in giving adequate attention to the Christian ideology.

A decade ago the Protestant press was almost monastic. Content seemed largely introspective. Dr. John J. Hurt, a former newsman who now edits the Christian Index, says: “Ten years ago most of the general circulation magazines appealed primarily to ministers although 90 per cent of the subscribers were laymen.” But now more of the content is slanted toward laymen. There is still much of the “house organ” in the Protestant press, but less than there was in 1956.

Editorial Freedom

House organs tend to have little freedom, but what is the status of “freedom of the press” in Protestantism today? The management of nondenominational magazines, such as Christian Herald, Christian Life,CHRISTIANITY TODAY,Eternity, Christianity and Crisis, and the Christian Century has always had less potential pressure than the management of the denominational press. For example, a statement in Christianity and Crisis could make forty readers in Chicago boiling mad. They could retaliate only by canceling their subscriptions. But if a denominational organ should offend the same forty readers, and if one of them should be a key man in the power structure …! This possibility always haunts the denominational editors.

The executive secretary of the Associated Church Press, Alfred P. Klausler, compared the freedom of Protestant editors with that of their secular colleagues. Addressing a group of religious editors, he said: “You are freer because you have less binding commercial ties which might force you to compromise.”

A distinction must be drawn between the positions of independent and denominational editors. Speaking from the point of view of the denominational editor, Edwin H. Maynard of the Methodist Story said: “Editors are not independent entrepreneurs. I was not necessarily hired because of my viewpoints. The magazine is not in existence as my personal platform.”

Early in 1966 I studied significant factors in the circulation of denominational magazines. This study showed that the primary factor affecting circulation is the relationship of the periodical with a denomination. If this relationship is crucial, then the organ cannot speak out with an objective (much less a critical) voice. It is at this point that independent magazines serve a vital function.

In taking an overview of the Protestant press, one would think that its diversity is a distinct advantage. However, this is deceptive. Actually the average reader sees only a few publications. Thus the Protestant press is indeed an “invisible” press. Potential consumers have tunnel vision limiting their knowledge of periodicals other than those of their own denomination.

Protestant readers would benefit if they were all served as well as Southern Presbyterians. Presbyterian Survey is the official organ. It has a large circulation and presents the total denominational program. The Presbyterian Outlook, an independent, represents a liberal point of view. The right wing is represented by another independent, the Presbyterian Journal. With magazines speaking from three points of view, it is certain that all issues will be carefully scrutinized.

Texas Baptists, in order to divorce their state newspaper from the denominational hierarchy, long ago set up an independent board of directors for the Baptist Standard. When he feels it necessary, Editor E. S. James does not hestitate to take state denominational officials to task. The result is a religious paper of significant power.

Mechanical Improvements

Electronic data-processing has affected costs and circulation during the past decade. Decision’s phenomenal circulation increase (0 to 3,500,000 in five years) would have been impossible without computers. It cost Presbyterian Life, with its very large circulation, $120,000 to change its subscription system to meet ZIP Code requirements. The new electronic data-processing system will cost $100,000 a year more to operate than the old way. But there was no other, and definitely no less expensive, way to meet the Post Office standards. Members of the Southern Baptist Press Association have utilized their denomination’s computers. (In this decade, their twenty-nine publications were linked and also connected with other information sources by a teletype network.) This, then, has been a decade of mechanical progress for the Protestant press.

Circulation

What has happened to circulation since 1956? In its first year (1956) CHRISTIANITY TODAY had 40,000 paid subscribers. Ten years later its paid subscriptions are over 152,000. Marked growth has been reported by scores of publications. On the other hand, many magazines have declined in circulation. Some of this loss may be good—if it reflects vitality. Popularity is fine if it means vital interest resulting in greater influence for good. But it can be bad, if it means a loss of bite in dealing with issues.

Accurate figures for total circulation of the Protestant press are not available. Although circulation has generally gone up since 1956, it probably has not kept pace with the population increase.

The years 1956–1966 have witnessed new magazines resulting from mergers. The union of the Congregational Christian and the Evangelical and Reformed churches led to the United Church Herald. Four Lutheran branches now publish the Lutheran, and the Unitarian Universalists have their Register-Leader. Together represents Methodism’s effort to have one great popular voice. Entirely new magazines, such as CHRISTIANITY TODAY,Decision, Renewal, Church Administration, Spirit, and the Christian Athlete have appeared.

The decade has seen an extension of the Protestant press abroad. Mission boards sponsor publications in the developing nations. Scholarships for national Christians to study journalism are increasing. Evangelical Literature Overseas, a joint effort of many evangelical mission boards, is stepping up its flow of literature abroad every year. Organizations like the David C. Cook Foundation, Lit-Lit, the American Bible Society, Wycliffe Bible Translators, and Laubach Literacy, Inc., are encouraging widespread use of easily read Christian literature in the developing nations.

Progress since 1956 must be measured by the purposes for which Protestant magazines exist. These cannot be measured by the purposes of Time, the Saturday Evening Post, or The New York Times. Yet comparisons in appearance are inevitable. The man who puts down his Atlantic to pick up the Christian Century will desert both if the articles fail to interest him.

The Future

In summary, I should say there has indeed been progress in the Protestant press in the past decade. It has kept abreast of the overall “progress” of our culture, but certainly not far ahead. The pace of progress must quicken, if the Protestant press is to be a significant voice. Here are five suggestions.

First. The various independent and denominational publications should find a more satisfactory way of wedding journalistic expertise with theological depth. Men with a sound theological background should be taught how to write. Summer writers’ workshops and conferences can help. Since journalism is a more limited field than theology, editors and potential editors with a theological education should be sent to journalism schools. More programs like the master’s degree sequence in religious journalism at Syracuse University could be established.

Second. There should be a consolidation of some periodicals. Bigness has many economies—and rising costs plague most Protestant publishers. As Marty says in The Religious Press in America, “There are too many saying too little of consequence to too few.”

Third. Denominational leaders should provide their constituency with opportunities to hear divergent opinions from an independent voice within the denomination. There is often as much difference within denominations as there is between them. If the denominational press is to communicate truth, there must be a provision for free expression of opinion, and readers must have material for making up their minds.

Fourth. The publications should establish a clearinghouse for religious news, a service that would be ecumenical and international. The problems of information storage, retrieval, and distribution are so great, the opportunities of the press so large, and the communication crisis so extensive that the Protestant press cannot expect to accelerate its progress without access to the latest techniques of gathering and disseminating news and other data to the whole Christian world. The clearinghouse should not only provide information to religious publications but also channel religious news to the “outside.”

Fifth. There should be a grand experiment in the form of a general magazine representing the Christian point of view—a magazine out on the newsstands aimed at mainstream America. Practical difficulties may make such a high-level project difficult. But if Christian leadership of top stature could enlist adequate financial resources and secure the aid of someone like Henry Luce (born of missionary parents) to plan the strategy, the result could be the twentieth century’s biggest boost to the communication of the Christian Gospel.

Yes, says a communications expert, but most clergymen are utterly untrained in cooperating with the press

The American press—daily and weekly—fails to report religious news adequately, and among the reasons is that few newspapers and magazines try to do a good job.

A recent issue of Time presented only two articles on religion—one about Billy Graham in London, the other about the experimental ministry in the Delta country of Mississippi. The two items totaled four columns. The sports department followed with seventeen columns. Where the reader’s heart is, there will be the coverage. Sports also got the front cover and the featured article in this weekly issue.

Would anyone be so brash as to say that the single item on religion in America was adequate that week for the fifty states?

Coverage is not only incomplete; it is often faulty, and seriously so. Although much coverage is ably handled, considering all the circumstances, press errors naturally cause frustration and some fear of sensationalism among religious workers.

The recent “death of God” controversy, for example, was stirred up by the press, not the theologians, according to Dr. Gabriel Vahanian. “It was the press which catapulted everybody—theologians, preachers, church members, and the man-in-the-street alike—into a controversy about the death of God. It was not mine or anybody else’s book. No book, but the press did it …,” said Dr. Vahanian in the Religious Journalism Newsletter (Spring, 1966).

Most press shortcomings, however, grow out of limitations under which journalists operate, and some of them are only partly controllable.

Mechanical or physical conditions, too scantily recognized by the reading public, create difficulties that mold press handling of the news. First, there simply is not enough space in which to print all the news. Advertising with first claim may take 70 per cent or more of total newspaper space; standing features, such as comics and regular columns, take additional space. Perhaps the entire news hole left for the day’s news is only 10 per cent of total space.

Certain editors—known as “gatekeepers” in communication theory—decide what can go in and what cannot. Having sat in this unenviable chair, I know the headaches of deciding whether to condense, omit entirely, or run only the first paragraph or so. What does one do when he has ten times as much news as can be used? This may suggest why your religious piece is killed, synopsized, or slashed, seldom printed in full.

Time is another limiting factor. Copy has to be in the newspaper office in time to be processed. All the columns must be filled, presses must turn, and plane, truck, and bus schedules must be met.

Out of such pressures grow some of the most serious newspaper faults. The press is a victim of the constant and intensifying American rush to which it contributes. Spirited competition between local newspapers was once partly to blame, but this is less a factor today as the number of competing newspapers decreases. The competition of radio, television, and the weekly newsmagazines is mainly financial, not journalistic like that of other local newspapers. Special or “extra” editions and scoops play a very small role today. They were part of the fascination and romance of earlier newspapering, long since minimized.

The second group of influences, the economic ones, are a part of doing business in a competitive system. (This system also provides advantages, of course; but these are not within the scope of this article.)

The whipping boy of many critics is the advertiser, who is given more blame than he deserves. The truth is that he has little direct influence on editorial policy. He does not need it, because he and the newspaperman belong to the same general “establishment.” They think, talk, and write very much alike, and they believe mostly in the same economic, political, and social concepts.

Practitioners in both areas—advertising and news distribution—have about the same social status, seek the same social level, and have the same level of consumption. Advertisers provide up to 70 per cent—sometimes more—of the revenue of the press, but their influence on news content is negligible. They do not dictate newspaper policy, and seldom try.

Far more dangerous is the encroachment of advertising upon news space. I have never known a journalist who did not resent all forces that compel him to throw away newsworthy items.

A new economic factor some editors have learned to fear is the increasing problem of automation, introduced to cut labor costs and speed up production. It may accomplish these purposes, but in some ways it is a nuisance. Type set under automated impulses is often badly garbled, and these errors may remain through early editions. Religious news stories suffer here like any other kind of news.

News blackouts may be caused by strikes within newspaper plants by either editorial or production staffs. Some strikes have lasted weeks, months, or longer, and a few newspapers have closed their doors because of circumstances growing out of strikes, most recently the New York Herald-Tribune. Production costs rise over the years. Most such costs are passed on to the advertisers, for readers fight price increases by refusing to buy. So management cuts further corners, including amount of news offered, and religious news as well as all other types suffers.

Among the competitors of the press are radio and television, which have absorbed great chunks of revenue that might have helped create a better press. Press proprietors sometimes find that the only way to overcome this competition is to buy out competitors or start rival stations. Radio and TV stations have made extra newspaper editions useless, for they can always get news first to the consumers. But generally the churches will find more complete coverage in the daily press than over radio or TV.

Monied interests find the press an attractive investment. Frequently they enter the business in a completely cold-blooded manner with a willingness to scrap or sell, if the investment should prove unprofitable. “I’ll let nature take its course,” one of the country’s biggest press-owners said of a morning paper that was barely showing a profit.

This meant that if it did not show a regular and fair profit on investment, he would fold it. Thus went Collier’s Magazine, Woman’s Home Companion, the American Magazine, and many others in recent decades. The pressure upon journalists to be financially successful affects every division of the newspaper and periodical business. They cut many corners to save time and expense, because the sole choice often is between corner-cutting or getting out of business.

When we turn to social forces that affect the handling of religious news, we discover that the level of public education is a serious handicap. Today the average “man in the street” is said to have had 2.7 years of high school education. To reach him, journalists ought to write on the level of the high school sophomore, whose top reading ability ends with Reader’s Digest and Time.

In the newspaper, religious news has to compete for attention with other news, the comics, and the more dramatic sports. This kind of competition can be the death of the religious piece unless the reader is motivated toward religious thought. And the critic who deplores press handling of religious news should not forget that both magazine and newspaper must compete for the spare time of readers not only with radio and TV but also with Americans’ love affair with the automobile and outdoor activity.

Another force, and a dangerous one, is the publicity handout, which finds its way into many newspapers. There it uses space that could be devoted to religious news. It usually presents only one point of view, and that is not necessarily in the public interest. Most groups, even small ones, have publicity directors.

Publicists are found in almost all walks of life, including the highest echelons of government. They have one thing in common; they seek to create favorable public images for the groups they represent. Sometimes this is through releases offered to the press, and sometimes through facts they try to withhold.

Without doubt some disservice to the public occurs in accepting handouts from business, but it is not so great as press critics believe. Every journalist knows the handouts from the press secretaries of scores of clubs that bedog his days. But the big threat comes from governmental offices, particularly in Washington, where some of the most rugged fighting is waged by reporters to get the news behind the handout. It can be done, but persistence, shrewdness, and often inside friends are needed to break the barrier of classification behind which almost anything can be hidden from the public.

Sensationalism, though waning, is still present and likely to affect religious news reporting. Reporters still look for an interesting angle, and this may be the last point church or speaker wants played up. Sensationalism may distort the meaning or blow up some minor detail beyond its significance.

Important also is press predilection to get a story rather than to get the story. The first implies satisfaction with partial coverage and the latter with a balanced presentation. These traits extend to coverage of religious news, of course. It takes both time and persistence to get the story.

Some thoroughly competent religion reporters are found working for the two great press services, AP and UPI, and for several of the top newspapers. But usually the reporter on the religion beat has been moved in from another spot and is untrained. He is not well acquainted with theological vocabulary; he does not know about the origins of denominations, the differences in their beliefs, the proper way to handle their creeds and titles. Nor does he know where to get this information.

Some human factors also contribute to distortion of religious news. Among them are the biases of editors and reporters on political, religious, or social matters. Each sees facts through the screen of his own point of view, which is different for each observer. Frequently this has led to more complete coverage of news from Catholic sources than from Protestant sources. Readers as well as some religious reporters agree on this.

Low salaries in the newspaper profession have turned potentially good workers into other channels. Some who have entered it have lacked vision and high standards of workmanship. And some who did not have early religious training in their homes couldn’t care less what happened to the handling of religious news.

It is unfortunate, too, that most clergymen are utterly untrained in ordinary ways of cooperating with the press. They are ignorant of newspaper deadlines, of the perennial inadequacy of space for news of any kind, of who handles news in a newspaper office, and of how it is processed.

The clergyman could increase the news space devoted to the activities of his church if he knew a few rudimentary facts. His problems could mostly be solved if he would make use of a trained layman within his own congregation, or would interest some nearby school of journalism in offering a concentrated training program for himself and his colleagues. Or he might profit by going back to school—this time for training in journalistic techniques of communication. There is little question that churches could get more newspaper space if they presented properly written news items for consideration. Getting to know the religious reporter or editor for advice and acquaintanceship would enhance these possibilities.

Some influences, however, do promise better handling of religious news. The level of education and of journalistic training among newsmen is steadily rising. Also important is the rising level of education among newspaper readers. Where the “average man in the street” ten years ago had about 1.6 years of high school education, he now, as mentioned previously, has about 2.7.

Also, daily newspapers have been introducing religious pages, and most metropolitan papers now have full-time writers. But only a few trained men have been hired on a full-time basis by smaller papers. Capable men have not been available, although a few schools of journalism have adequate training in this area of public affairs, among them the School of Journalism at Syracuse University.

Some inadequate reporting of local religious events has partly been offset by editorials, some feature articles, and an occasional piece by syndicated columnists. Fortunately, too, newspapers are growing more thoughtful, publishing more interpretive pieces and giving more attention to introducing background into important stories. It is likely that some of the newsworker’s present haste will decrease as automation increases and as radio and TV continue to beat the press in being first to present the news, however inadequately.

The religious worker, however, should understand that much of his success in getting his news into print will rest upon his own efforts, and he should do something about it. A little training goes a long way.

Perhaps as many as 1,600 daily newspapers are doing an inadequate job of reporting religious news. While it is difficult to increase the “news hole,” condensation and omission of valueless news of other kinds will ease this pressure. Present slipshod reporting and minimal coverage of religion disgrace the daily press of this country.

Journalism is moving from external to “depth” coverage of religion, says a top religion reporter, but churches do not always appreciate it

Sören Kierkegaard once wrote in his journal that the press was demoralizing because it went along with superficial popular opinion, no matter how wrong, and was afraid to stand alone, even to be right. He added: “The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word ‘journalist’.… If I were a father and had a daughter who was seduced, I should not despair over her; I would hope for her salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist, and continued to be one for five years, I would give him up.”

Those of us who work at reporting religious affairs for the press hope that whatever basis there was for this nineteenth-century appraisal has now altered somewhat. Certainly not all church spokesmen today have such a chilly regard for the news industry. They have taken a new look at it, and it is taking a closer look at them. Some changes have been made on both sides.

Back in the early part of this century, Stanley Walker, city editor of the New York Herald-Tribune, warned his fledgling newsmen to be wary of quoting clergymen: “They are the most touchy set of quibblers who ever plagued a well-intentioned editor. Some will even find fault with a stenographic report attested by a dozen albino notaries swearing on a Gutenberg Bible.”

But the no-trespassing signs are coming down. The press and other mass communications media—magazines, paperbacks, motion pictures, radio, and that latest non-stop household expounder, television—are prowling the field of faith. This recent development is still gaining in scope and depth and has a considerable distance yet to go to attain its potential. Nevertheless, it is a revolutionary expansion in the religious circulatory system that neither the mass media nor the Church can afford to neglect.

This is simply not a private world any longer, and its thinking is neither based, possessed, not produced in private. Knowledge has become an interdependent enterprise. It is too big for one method, one discipline, or one mind to manage.

If the Church is to get its message across in this globally influenced, commonly shared environment, that message must be poured into the common channels of information. These channels carry a mixed stream, to be sure, much of it trivial and tawdry; but some of it pushes out the boundaries of thought for humanity-at-large. This swift, mechanized flow of images and ideas is the system by which the masses of people today seek to keep up with their complex and fast-changing world. It is the variegated current in which attitudes take shape. It is the stream of impressions bursting on the young, swaying the wondering crowd, shocking the old.

For good or ill, the mass media are the font at which many minds are provisioned. If the case for Christianity is not there in the stream of facts, theories, and appeals, then it is not in the place where countless people, uncertainly, form their ideas.

This is no novel concern. Church leaders have repeatedly asserted the urgency of getting religious insights pumped into the popular press and broadcasting channels. But the importance of the effort is magnified as the influence of mass communications becomes ever more pervasive and immense, modifying customs, changing tastes and interests, influencing opinions, shaping the tone and patterns of culture. This great influence is truly a critical matter for the Church. And it is even more critical for the people, for those who are adrift in the undifferentiated flood of claims, data, and conclusions, of headlines, pictures, and electronic discourse and display, looking for some basic answers to cling to.

But can religion gain entry into this clamorous domain? Yes, it can; and increasingly it does. Many misgivings and obstacles remain to be overcome, both in church and in communications quarters. But the process is firmly under way.

Since World War II, and particularly in the last ten years, the daily press, news services, magazine publishers, and broadcasters have progressively stepped up their attention to religion. Newspapers and wire services, with which I am most familiar, have broadened their coverage of religion tremendously and have also moved toward a greater depth of reporting.

Before this, religion generally was bypassed or dealt with only skimpily and superficially. Nearly all editors approached it guardedly, reluctant to carry anything about serious doctrinal concepts or problems lest they bring on a wave of complaints. The view was that religion was an intimate, private matter, too sensitive to touch, and avoided by the prudent.

What few stories there were appeared in a back section, usually on the weekend “church page,” and were limited to announcements of clerical appointments, church suppers, ground-breaking ceremonies, sermon topics, and the like. Handling religion was considered drudgery, and the task usually went to either the most inexperienced or the most decrepit man on the staff. Broadcasters largely followed a similar pattern, shying away from any substantial treatment of religion.

But a reorientation has occurred in the nation’s news rooms. Religion has assumed a growing place in the press and on the air, taking on prominence in the regular news columns, in the front part of the paper, in mass-circulation periodicals, in newscasts and television documentaries. Editors of most large papers and many small ones have put top reporters in the field, and the role of religion reporter has become a sought-after one in the profession.

“Religious news has more prestige among editors of American newspapers at this moment than at any previous time in the history of the American press,” says Willmar Thorkelson, religion editor of the Minneapolis Star and past president of the Religious Newswriters Association. This association, formed to advance the standards of religion coverage in the secular press and made up of about one hundred reporters across the country regularly assigned to that job, itself offers evidence of the growing maturity in the field. There were only about a dozen in the group when it started in 1949. At present about 500 of the nation’s 1,800 dailies, both major wire services, both leading newsmagazines, and all three television networks have religion specialists, editors, or reporters assigned to exploring and disseminating the story of religion. Some papers have two or more men at it full-time.

What brought on the change? In part it was the initiative and diligence of the early religion reporters. They showed that the job could be done with balance and perception and without outraging ecclesiastical sensibilities or inflaming boycotts of the paper.

Moreover, the stories drew avid readership. People—and not just church people—were interested. Admittedly, that consideration weighs on the editorial scales. But it is not the only criterion. News is not just what the customers want to read but also what they need to read so that they can better comprehend the human scene. At any rate, religious news struck a lively chord among the listeners.

Beyond that, perhaps a more basic cause of the shift in approach was the disturbing world situation—the troubled aftermath of war, the frightening possibilities of nuclear power, the ideological strains of cold war, the giant of technology enveloping civilization, new military upheavals, racial storm. These things stirred some sober rethinking in many quarters, including the news industry, whose business it is to mirror the world’s realities as candidly and searchingly as it can. And something was missing in the clangorous rush of news.

The public was getting the full panorama of externals—the scientific feats; the politics, diplomatic maneuvers, and economics; the courts, crimes, and conflicts—but there was little exposition of the motivation, the ideals and aspirations behind the surface events. Pushing into this area, seeking to provide more reporting in depth, the news industry trained its spotlight on religion.

It has steadily intensified its scrutiny there. News executives are increasingly aware of the powerful impulses and values nurtured in the religious realm and of religion’s bearing on the course of humanity.

The late Pope John and his Vatican Council, with all the transformations the council let loose, further spurred the advance of religious news coverage, as have the extensive unifying realignments among Christians, the intellectual ferment in theology, and the lively trends in methods, understanding, and spheres of action.

Into the field moved the newsmen and networks, taking in religious conventions, examining the techniques of religion, recounting its decisions and positions, tracing its objectives, explaining its content and conflicts, describing its leaders, bringing out its policies and practices. The swing is toward more thorough, discerning coverage, and this will continue. At the Associated Press, we regularly get calls from meetings of managing editors for fuller religious coverage.

But the performance still falls short. Despite the progress made, we still have a long way to go in covering religion in a way that benefits its significance, its influence, and its relation to nearly every other aspect of life.

Too often coverage remains slight and shallow, consisting mainly of personnel changes, statistics, and speech abstracts. The space accorded religion is still small, compared with that given to entertainment and sports. And in some city rooms, it seems to rate about equally with the daily horoscope and racing results. Habit dies hard, and the old chariness about religion still lingers among some editors, who prefer to ignore it or to confine it to a few trivial and innocuous puffs.

There is another hurdle to cross also. Strangely, the growth of press interest in religion is not always appreciated in the church sector. A British pastor, the Rev. Sinclair Snow, complains: “The religious beliefs of the people of this country are in complete chaos. And since the popular press has discovered that articles on religion pay, the chaos has become much worse.”

Such broadside sniping is familiar to the religion reporter, who often has heard convention speakers castigate the press for letting the home folks know what action has been taken. Editors also are sometimes baffled and discouraged at the niggling criticism directed at frank, factual treatment of religious controversy. Of course, if a story is in error, churchmen ought to squawk; but petty carping is more a deterrent than a help in improving the effort.

Among some clergymen, there seems to be a kind of occupational distrust of newsmen, a tendency to evade questions, to give reporters the cold shoulder and the “no comment” runaround, as if conveying church concerns to the population at large was too petty to bother with.

The Roman Catholic magazine America observed that “at a time when religion has become, in the judgment of editors of the secular press, a topic as newsworthy as science, labor, or city planning, reporters’ attempts to gather news of the church are frequently rebuffed.… Church officials regard the secular press with deep misgivings if not outright hostility.”

This seems to me to be definitely a passing attitude, however, both in Roman Catholicism and in other churches, though traces of it still hang on. Having to work under the prying intrusions and inquiries of the press is a new situation for church officials. They are understandably hesitant and cautious, just as editors used to be protectively timid about covering religion.

The church, says historian Christopher Dawson, is “a sleeping giant—or perhaps rather it is a giant that has not yet learned to speak.” It has been so long preoccupied in talking to itself on a “closed circuit,” he says, that it doesn’t know how to talk intelligibly in the wider arena of the world.

The conduct on both sides may sometimes still be awkward, unsure, blundering. But both are working at doing it better.

Clergymen and denominational officials have become increasingly conscious of the importance of getting religion into the mass outlets. Most of them are thoroughly cooperative and helpful, even a little too helpful for comfort at times.

Nearly all the larger, mainline denominations—and a few smaller ones—have set up special information staffs, or public relations offices, to relay material about the churches to the communications media. About 1,000 church “P. R.” specialists now work at this task, hold conferences about how to do it, and provide handbooks for guidance of local church offices and parishes on ways of getting material in print or on the air.

The daily mail now brings bundles of information on religious affairs to the desks of religion reporters. Some of it is used; most of it is not. Institutional publicity releases tend to concentrate on internal organizational business, but this is ordinarily not what edifies or interests the general reader. So these releases go on the spike. Promotional chaff is of no use to reporters. Their role is not to boost or “sell” religion but to reflect its substantive aspects fairly and objectively. And that, incidentally, may further the cause in the best way—on its own merits.

All this is not to say that the church public relations operations are not helpful, for they are. They save reporters a lot of leg work and alert them to many matters they otherwise might miss. They help particularly in supplying church reports, texts, survey findings, and similar research data, which may be the basis for newsworthy stories.

In this connection, I’ve noticed that the evangelical wing of Christianity pays scant heed to the mass media. Most of the smaller evangelical denominations rarely volunteer potential news material. Few have any special arrangements or designated personnel for routing such material to the press. Reporters have to look for it, hunt for quotable sources, and generally tug material loose, sometimes with difficulty. Except for a few individuals and instances, mum’s the mood—as far as outside media go.

Of course, the reporter has the job of keeping the full range of religion in perspective, from all its legitimate viewpoints, and of digging out the information to do that, whether it is volunteered or not. He does not want institutional personnel to take over that function, or even to try.

But churches can contribute to the task by exerting some effort to make their resources readily accessible to communications media. This is not to say that smooth Madison Avenue tactics will get religion into the papers. Responsible newsmen spurn artificial or manufactured “news.” And strong-arm pressures (of the type that frequently come from fringe groups devoted chiefly to a monotonous assault on other churches) will win no special consideration.

At the same time, a church that doesn’t keep its informational lines open to the news media would seem to be muffling its own works amid the bulk of religious developments and the vigorous, expert vying for a hearing.

In another respect, however, the evangelical churches have a characteristic that should make them a particularily fertile ground for news production. That is their intense concern for doctrine.

As I see it, the newsiest aspect of religion is its inner core of convictions, the reasoning behind them and their implications for men—in short, “what makes Christianity tick,” as Lutheran leader Franklin Clark Fry once put it. This is what pricks the interest of the listless bystanders and people at large, and what gives religion real weight in the modern surge of information. Evangelicals should concentrate on these fundamentals.

Doubtlessly, there are some cautious churchmen who want nothing to do with the world of mass communications, considering it too crass, blatant, and conglomerated for religion to be a part of it. They feel that it does not use pious language, that it is raw and rough, shot through with the horrors and passions of the world, its murders, misery, dirt, greed, and duplicity. And this is so. It is not a “nice” region for religion to occupy.

Someone once said newspapers were like the tree in the Garden of Eden—a source of knowledge of good and evil. And this is the way they have to be, if they are to tell the truth. Thus the organs of information blare with the miscellany, with the folly as well as the streaks of wisdom, with the shoddiness and also the nobility.

Putting religion into that jumbled arena will not give it any secure niche but instead will subject it to the cross fire of other visions and other claims, to the harsh tests of questions, criticism, analysis, and opposition. The territory is a challenging one, where many propositions bid for allegiance.

Some Christians may hold back, disdaining any part of this cluttered outpouring of information. But like it or not, avoid it or not, it is where people today keep posted on life. And religion has a stake in it.

Under the general title “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” Educational Communication Association (P. O. Box 114, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) next month will release a filmed series of thirteen half-hour panel discussions for public-service television presentation and for use by church and college discussion groups. Participants in the panel on “The Crisis in Communication” are Mr. Louis Casseis, religion editor of United Press International, an Episcopal layman and author of numerous books; Dr. George L. Bird, professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Syracuse University, and for almost thirty years head of the Graduate Division; and Dr. David Mason, associate director of Laubach Literacy, Inc., and a Baptist minister who holds a master’s degree in journalism. Moderator is Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

What worries three experts:

Bird: Man isn’t communicating with God. Cassels: People are buried by too many words.

Mason: Half the world is outside the audience.

Under the general title “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” Educational Communication Association (P. O. Box 114, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) next month will release a filmed series of thirteen half-hour panel discussions for public-service television presentation and for use by church and college discussion groups. Participants in the panel on “The Crisis in Communication” are Mr. Louis Cassels, religion editor of United Press International, an Episcopal layman and author of numerous books; Dr. George L. Bird, professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Syracuse University, and for almost thirty years head of the Graduate Division; and Dr. David Mason, associate director of Laubach Literacy, Inc., and a Baptist minister who holds a master’s degree in journalism. Moderator is Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Dr. Henry: We live in the third great crisis, the third great revolution in human history. First, the rise of an agricultural society, then of an industrial society, and now the age of automation and communication—the age of atomic science and electronics, the age of space science, of supersonic airplanes, of Telstar and of moonshots. On our own planet, press, radio, and television keep us abreast of events around the world while often we remain ignorant of our immediate neighbors’ needs. Gentlemen, what reason is there for speaking of a crisis in communication?

Mr. Cassels: I think people are deluged with so many communications from so many voices clamoring for their attention that they are rapidly losing the ability to hear or respond to any of them.

Dr. Bird: I would take a slightly different point of view, Mr. Cassels. I would say that the trouble started much farther back when men ceased to communicate directly and frequently and constantly with God.

Dr. Mason: Well, I guess I have a third point of view, and that’s the problem of balance. When we talk about Telstar and all this deluge of information, we are talking about the literate world. But half the adults of the world are illiterate and can’t read the newspapers and can’t afford television. And we are getting to a point where we’ll soon know more about the surface of the moon than we do about these people and their problems, and they about us.

Dr. Henry: Let’s probe Mr. Cassels’ thesis first. He works at the heart of a worldwide wire service—really one of the most intricate communications networks in the world. And it is interesting to hear him say that human hearts are being hardened by the mass communication of words and by advertising and propaganda techniques.

Mr. Cassels: Well, if you could see as I do the sheer volume of information that is being communicated, or in the technical sense being transmitted for communication, each day—for example, United Press International must move close to a million words a day of news from one part of the world to another! You can imagine what a tiny fraction of this amount one person can read or absorb. A great selectivity must go on by editors of newspapers and by producers of television news programs. But even with all their selectivity, consider the amount of information that is hurled at the ultimate consumer by newspapers, by television, by radio, by magazines, by books. I read the other day that over 1,500 religious books alone are published each year! Well, the most assiduous reader, the most devout clergyman, probably reads five, ten, at the most. But here are all these others.

Dr. Henry: Are you saying that the sheer quantity of words in a sense dilutes the emotional capacity of the masses to respond?

Mr. Cassels: I think that people (I sense this, and some of the philanthropic agencies tell me their experience shows it) have had their emotions wrung so many times by so many stories, so many disasters, so many tragedies, so many heartbreaks—they have been told about so many problems, so many things that seem to threaten the future of mankind—that they are beginning in self-defense to pull into their shell, shrug, and say, “I can’t do anything about it” or “I’m going to tune this thing out.”

Dr. Mason: You might say they have developed calluses on their souls. It takes something awfully dramatic to reach them.

Dr. Bird: That is only part of the story. You are getting at an effect; you’re not getting to the cause behind this. The cause is that man is not communicating with his God as he used to do. I think not only that this applies to pastors and others in the clergy but that the clergy are not getting their message through to the people in their churches—because they are not getting it direct from God and because the church members themselves don’t get it. They are not communicating with each other. They don’t love their fellow men as they are commanded to do, and this means they are not communicating the message of God to others.

Dr. Henry: You are suggesting, then, that there is more to the crisis than quantity—that it is qualitative, as well?

Dr. Bird: Yes. You would scarcely believe it, but nowadays it is possible for a person such as myself to spend a quarter of a century on a college campus and never hear the real message of Jesus Christ. This happened to me at Syracuse University.

Dr. Henry: When did you first hear of Christ?

Dr. Bird: I first heard of the reason for believing in the deity of Christ just two years ago. I attended a meeting of the Inter-Varsity group on the Syracuse University campus at which a local minister, Donald A. Miller, was speaking. He was so convincing that before he got two-thirds of the way through I had to say to myself, “George, if you are going to consider yourself an honest man from now on, you’ve simply got to believe it.” So I believed it.

Dr. Henry: This is a highly interesting phenomenon, that a man who has spent a lifetime in communication and journalism should so late in life for the first time encounter the claim of Christ in a supposedly Christian society.

Mr. Cassels: I might say it also contradicts Dr. Bird’s own thesis. I mean, he seems to be saying that human beings are no longer responsive. Obviously even university professors are responsive when they hear the good news presented by someone who believes it.

Dr. Bird: Yes, I was in the right place at the right time. This minister had the right words and he was the right person.

Dr. Henry: Isn’t Dr. Bird suggesting that there is a culture crisis, a crisis of culture, that is also involved here? Is it a fact that mass communications today are shaping a new materialistic culture—that in a sense the mass media (like the politicians, let’s say) are conveying the thesis that it is impossible to have a good or a great society unless we have some things that the great civilizations of the past managed to get on without, particularly materialistic things?

Dr. Bird: Well, this is obvious. And it comes not only through the news dispatches that Mr. Cassels handles so ably but in large part, I think, through advertising. Advertisers create wants, desires, which we eventually come to believe are necessities. And so we want a second car, and a bigger house, and a bigger lot. We seek social status. We seek the approval of our neighbors, our associates, our friends. This is good to a point; but when we put this above the approval of God himself, it is not good.

Mr. Cassels: No, of course it is not. I may sound like a strange representative of the mass media, but I think we all carry our load of guilt complexes and one that bothers me in particular is the feeling that we have contributed to the corruption of the innocent in our society. And by this I don’t really mean sex and violence on television leading children astray. I don’t even mean pornography in magazines or in paperback books. These problems quite aside, I think that the very abundance of mass communications in our day has tended to replace the simple dignity, the home truth, that used to be part of the mental armamentarium of, say, a farmer or a mountain family. In my youth I knew a great many people who were terribly dignified and wise human beings. They knew what the King James Bible said. They knew things they had learned from their forefathers. Today they know what they saw on “Gunsmoke” or what they read in the comic strips.

Dr. Bird: I agree with this. You and I are fairly close together on this point. In communication theory we would call this “noise,” and this noise gets in the way of man’s communication with God. As long as he is harassed, tense, nervous, striving, he can’t communicate with God. And this has to be decreased.

Dr. Mason: I couldn’t agree more, Dr. Bird, as far as our own lives are concerned. I know I’m subject to this noise and have the frustration of this piling-up of communication on communication, and then communication from the past in the form of books and libraries. But what about the people in the world who don’t have access to this? We’ve been talking about communication in our society, or perhaps Eastern Europe. And yet I get back again to these billion people, the silent billion, the people who cannot read and who do not have access to all of this. This is a problem that I think is the basis of much of the unrest that we have in the world. The revolution that we had, and that France had, is now getting down to these underdeveloped countries, to the have-nots. They see the things we advertise. They want them but don’t have them. They see the difference between their lives and others’ lives, and this creates tensions and brings wars and revolution. And yet our technique of reaching these people is antiquated.

Mr. Cassels: What technique do you use, Dr. Mason.

Dr. Mason: Actually the only technique by which you can reach about half the people of the world is to go to them and sit down and talk with them, if you know their language.

Mr. Cassels: Each one teach one?

Dr. Mason: Well, we—Laubach Literacy—advocate teaching the people how to read, and then giving them simple literature that will help them develop basic skills and introduce, for the missionary, the Christian Gospel. And as the person learns this essential tool of reading, he is at the same time learning something useful. For example, Nehru said in India that if half of the farmers could read the instructions on seed packages there would be no problem of famine. Take the basic problems of the world: population explosion, hunger, Communism, superstition. These defy solution without some means of communicating with the people.

Mr. Cassels: Can you communicate with them verbally, or are you suggesting that electronic media like radio and television might work?

Dr. Mason: Well, I’ll throw the question back to you. If a man’s average income is $50 a year, he can’t have a radio or TV. About the only way you can reach him is to talk with him, or teach him how to read and give him a tool for economic development so that he can come into the world as we know it.

Dr. Bird: Dr. Mason, have you ever thought what might happen if Jesus Christ came to earth again and attempted to communicate to these illiterate millions—which add up to a billion or more? Or what might happen if he came here to Washington or any of the other great metropolitan centers of the country? Can you imagine, Mr. Cassels, how he would be received by the press if he came to Lafayette Square. What would happen? All these TV people with their cameras, the photographers with their flash bulbs, the reporters, the radio folks with microphones. And can you imagine what they would say to him? “Give us another smile.… Hold your head up.… Why don’t you get a haircut?… Where’d you get that crazy garb?”

Mr. Cassels: You are assuming that Jesus would come wearing long hair and crazy garb, when in point of fact Jesus came to the people of his own day very much as a man of his time.

Dr. Mason: Well, he had problems with crowds in his own time. He had to go out in a boat to get away from the pressures. And today I think he would use TV for us. But again, he could not get around to all the world. The type of people that lived in his day are passé. We don’t even think about it. As we talk here, we want to forget that half the adults of the world don’t know what we’re talking about. They are not concerned about East-West tensions. They don’t know anything beyond their own country. And if we are going to be concerned for these people, either for their own welfare or for what ideas we want to communicate to them, we have got to set up the lines of communication. I was with people last summer—a tribe in which no person in the whole tribe could read. They were so eager that men walked five days to come to the meeting to hear about what could be done for them. They want this. Jomo Kenyatta, the president of Kenya, when we talked with him last summer, said, “An illiterate is a half man.” And they are; they’re half men living half lives. In our culture we are about to drown in information; we have a problem of selection. But all they have to talk about is the last rain a week ago or what their wives happened to pick up in the way of gossip at the water hole.

Dr. Henry: And yet it is interesting that just last week I had a letter from an outstanding journalist in Hong Kong who is author of several volumes on Asia and developments there. He stressed that in the years ahead the Western churches will reach the East evangelistically for Christ not by the patterns of the past generation—that is, by planting churches or hospitals or schools in the traditional way—but rather by using the techniques of radio, television, and literature. And he said that in Japan millions of dollars are being invested on the assumption that mini-TV sets will be as popular in the next decade as these little transistor radios are in our time.

Dr. Mason: This may be true. However, people thirty years ago were saying the same thing about the communication of the Gospel in this country. And we still really reach people, in my opinion, by the Church. This other can supply a background. Just as in advertising, however, you can create the desire, but the people still have to go and confront the salesman. Japan is the most literate country in the world. It is 8 per cent more literate than we are in this country, and that’s one thing. But again we get back to this boiling cauldron of people who see just enough of the modern life and everything that we know to want it. Yet they can’t bridge the gap without a start in education, and education starts with reading. Now, if we can reach them by TV or radio, this is wonderful. But somehow it seems to me a little more difficult to put a radio or a TV set in a hut than it would be to give them a pamphlet telling them that when they plant potatoes plant the big ones and eat the little ones instead of eating the big ones and planting the little ones, and therefore get into the area of economic development.

Dr. Henry: Jesus had a way of getting through simply to the people, and isn’t Dr. Bird’s question still a good one in terms of the modern mass-media culture? I’d like to hear you speak to this, because he suggests that the newspaper men in a sense properly have an interpretative role that nonetheless may work adversely sometimes in the communication of the essential religious and moral claim in our time.

Dr. Bird: I think that Christ would have to be provided with police protection.

Dr. Henry: “Give us another sentence from the Sermon on the Mount?”

Dr. Bird: That’s right. Or, “Will you say that again?”

Mr. Cassels: I very much doubt this. I think it is obviously a moot question. We smuggle into any discussion like this all sorts of presuppositions about what Jesus would look like and how he would conduct himself in our time. We only know what he did in his day, and we also know that he is our eternal contemporary.

Dr. Henry: But he would work with the media and through the media rather than on the edge of the media.

Mr. Cassels: Speaking with all the detachment of a newspaper man and not necessarily in this case as a professing Christian, Jesus was a superb communicator. He was one of the best communicators in history, and I have a feeling that he was a good enough communicator to be able to cope with all these things you are talking about. How he would cope with them is a rather academic question.

Dr. Mason: He was not only a good communicator in the interpersonal sense but in the sense of drama—the going into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple, the focusing of popular attention on what he was doing. I think that as a great master of this he would somehow find ways to circumvent the problems in reaching the literate world today.

Dr. Henry: Gentlemen, we have explored the problems. Now, how can the Word of God be effectively communicated to modern man?

Mr. Cassels: I have some thoughts on that because I wrestle with this problem daily. I think the first requirement is that we quit underestimating his capacity to hear it. I am weary to death of some of the so-called new theologians, the self-styled “Christian radicals,” who are always making sweeping pronouncements about what modern man will and will not believe, and what the Church must do. This is their favorite word. We must do this! And what we must do usually turns out to be not reinterpreting or restating the Gospel but jettisoning some aspect of it which they have difficulty in believing. I think the first thing, then, is to accept the fact that modern man is fully as capable of hearing the Word of God when it is proclaimed as was man in any other generation. I don’t think he differs at all in this respect. I was impressed, Dr. Henry, at what Karl Barth said the day we had lunch with him here in Washington. He said he had discovered that when he used the simple words and phrases and figures of speech and stories of the Bible, his contemporaries, including his most intellectual contemporaries, seemed to understand better than when he used the very modern concepts of theology.

Dr. Henry: The Christian has an advantage when he speaks with conviction and with the power of the revealed Word of his biblical heritage, hasn’t he?

Mr. Cassels: Conviction is the second thing I was going to say. I think that the real crisis in religious communication today is perhaps a crisis of faith rather than a crisis of communication. I think there are, unfortunately, a great many people professionally involved in religion—such as theologians and pastors—who are in the situation that our Lord mentioned of “the blind leading the blind.” I mean, they have largely lost their own faith. I don’t think you can ever communicate anything to anyone else until you deeply believe it yourself.

Dr. Bird: I think you have said that very well. That is what I was trying to say a little bit earlier. And I did not mean to paint an entirely black picture. Much is being done on many of the college campuses. There are such groups as Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade that are enlisting and holding the attention and faith of college students. They do make converts. Some of these groups are holding prayer meetings together in various rooms, seminar rooms. There are also faculty groups that do this. And many of the denominations have representatives on campus to contact their own denominational members. My suggestion is that in the 2,000 cities or thereabouts that have colleges and universities, the local church make a deliberate effort to send what might be called a missionary onto the campus. Not just one church but twenty or thirty or forty. I think they all ought to be represented. And another area in which I think they could make a genuine contribution would be to send missionaries into the inner city. These people who are moving in from various areas of the country or from outside our borders—they not only lose their ties with friends and all such but also lose their ties with the Church.

Mr. Cassels: Yes, but there you really open up another important problem. I don’t think that you are going to communicate the Gospel to the inner city or to the college campus, probably not to anyone today, simply by talking at them. I think that the Church has got to earn anew the right to be heard; and it has to do it the way Jesus did it, by deeds, by actual deeds of compassion and mercy.

Dr. Mason: Right. Let me interrupt you here. This I think is one great contrast with this silent world. They feel the need and they are responding to it. They do not have callous souls, and that’s why I feel that if we can respond the opportunity is tremendous, because they do not have this immunity.

Mr. Cassels: To use one example, Dr. Bird, I don’t see how a segregated church can say anything about Christ to the inner city or to the silent world that Dr. Mason has talked about.

Dr. Bird: I agree with that. I think the churches should send people into the areas where these unchurched ones are to live among them, live more or less the same life, and understand their problems. I think I would make one other suggestion: many of these young folks who have interests in this area could go on to the campuses where there are schools of journalism and study religious journalism—learn how to communicate to these people. Many of them have degrees from Bible schools, and once they learn the communication techniques they would be doubly invaluable in the field.

Mr. Cassels: Is a young Christian communicating the Gospel if he joins the Peace Corps or if he goes down to Mississippi to work in a voter-registration drive? If he does this, is he communicating the Gospel to our day?

Dr. Mason: I think he is communicating it to our day. Largely, in this country and abroad, you have a cultural barrier to leap, and I think there is a challenge for young people to do this. As I said in my book on Reaching the Silent Billion, there are five Christian ends that can be served by going to these people, the underprivileged people primarily. It expresses compassion by giving them what they need more than anything else. It gives an opportunity to open the pages of the Bible; without that they can’t really—well, they’re in a pre-Reformation situation. It provides a rapport that gives a real climate for conversion in a personal relationship. It gives lay Christians something that they can get involved in. And in many areas it provides an entree that even medical missions do not have today. I think this drive that is the appeal of the Peace Corps or of going into Mississippi or of similar things is something young people have. They want a cause to give themselves to.

Dr. Henry: Gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our time, and I want to thank you for coming and sharing your busy lives with us and with our viewers. We can be thankful, I think, that more and more Christians are probing the possibilities of the communications age with a sense of duty and of new opportunity. It’s interesting that for some months some aerospace scientists, out of an evangelical concern, have been meeting with some missions executives and anthropologists just to discuss how the “systems approach” that has been so effective in the Apollo moonshot and in space science generally, and how modern communications and computer techniques, can be used to set ahead the Christian task of evangelizing the earth in our own generation. The Church’s biggest management problem in our day is the evangelization of the earth, and whatever can be done to focus the interest of the churches and the oncoming generation of Christians on the opportunities before us will be helpful. We have faced various facets of this problem—the problem of non-communication to the world of illiteracy; and the problem of overcommunication to a generation whose emotions are frayed and worn thin; and the problem of undercommunication of the Gospel. Thank you very much.

Space-age Christian pioneers who look through a planet-wide lens are pondering how evangelism can be computerized—how the latest techniques of scientific management can best serve the Christian task force. Science executives with years of experience in the aerospace industry have spent long evenings with missionary leaders discussing what the Apollo Program—which aims to put men on the moon—implies for spreading the Good News down here.

These scientists champion the systems approach: Study the total environment, construct mathematical models, propose and test possible solutions, then apply logistics to special needs. Their desire is not to displace God’s Spirit by human automation but to use tools that God has put at our disposal—tools generally neglected by Christianity.

Hundreds of evangelistic and missionary agencies with differing, sometimes overlapping, interests could pool, classify, and analyze their data to discover:

• What are the total evangelical resources in the modern world, and how are they deployed?

• What discernible factors contribute to the growth of Christianity?

• What events must take place, and what approaches should be used, to evangelize our planet in this generation?

• Which of the various communications systems best serve the missionary task, and at what cost?

To succeed, evangelicals must strip away any vestige of suspicion about technology or intelligence employed in God’s service. And they must break out of the century-long rut of isolationism to overcome their present dearth of cooperative planning.

A new central agency would coordinate and serve, not govern. Its embryo already exists. DATA, a Christian organization that exchanges information between missionaries and technical experts, is framing questions for use in swift fact-gathering to prepare a worldwide scientific model for evangelism. World Vision and Fuller Theological Seminary have joined in a similar project, inspired in part by the PERT system that Robert McNamara’s brain trust uses to design machines of military destruction and scientific exploration.

Christians are swept up in the third great revolution of human history. The first was the transition from nomadic hunting to settled agricultural economies. The second was the industrialization of the West, a stage still spreading to other parts of the globe. In this third, breathless epoch of atom and automation, of computer control and space-racing, Christian evangelism faces new and complex demands. To many, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no more significance today than do the ideas of those primitive “scientists” accepted by the intellectual establishment during the years of the Saviour’s ministry on earth.

Today’s materialistic technocracy often programs out spiritual data. But it also offers worldwide information networks for presenting our Lord to a needy audience of billions. These methods of mass proclamation are providentially available at the very time the population is, in the tired metaphor, exploding. The World Congress on Evangelism, which opens in Berlin October 26, will be alert to these possibilities.

The World Congress marks this magazine’s tenth anniversary. So, in a more modest way, does this issue on communications. It opens with a panel discussion among four communicators, then surveys the Protestant press and religious coverage in secular media. Some of America’s top religious newsmen give candid assessments of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The editorials present our sense of the newsworthiness of the World Congress on Evangelism and discuss an important contribution to more meaningful religious TV programs. The book section honors the decade’s ten best volumes in the field of Christian communication. And the news section analyzes major events that shaped the past decade and will shape the decades to come.

In these ten years since CHRISTIANITY TODAY entered the crowded market of religious periodicals, the once pristine spaces surrounding this planet seem to have become similarly crowded, with man-made asteroids. The humming of the electronic brains and roar of the rockets that put these satellites up there provide appropriate accompaniment to some hesitant introspection about where this particular journal fits in. And the hundreds of thousands of people who read it.

Recently our imperturbable publisher, Wilbur D. Benedict, drafted a renewal letter to our “about-to-expire” readers (to quote an imprecise bit of circulation jargon). The electric typewriter somehow went haywire with the summer heat, and one subscriber was urged to renew “i advace o his eiration date.” Not to be caught off guard, Carl B. Anderson of Oklahoma City retaliated: “Happy to assisti you in the ost iortant work o urthering your inistry o advancing the Gospel.… Also willing assisti you buy new typewriter.” And our resourceful circulation manager, Roland Kuniholm, acknowledged the correspondence: “Thank ou for yore renooel. Glad mecanical mis-coo didn’t dul yur sens of oomor or interest in or magzine. Cordailly.…”

For the weightier side of the problem of communication, turn the pages of what we hope will be a stimulating issue. At this threshold of our eleventh year we decided to throw our full energies into presenting an evangelical perspective on the communication crisis. We add our word of thanks, too, to colleagues in religious journalism who took time out to post the anniversary comments found in the letters section xe?r!zglm.

This is being written before the World Congress on Evangelism with the realization that most readers will see it when the congress is already under way or has ended. It seems good, anyway, to set down some thoughts on evangelism, though what I think now may well be changed and will certainly be enriched by the experiences of Berlin.

Evangelism is a word and concept growing out of the Evangel—the message, the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is telling others about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ; but more precisely, it is proclaiming the mighty act of God in the redemption worked out on the Cross. Moreover, the messenger must pray earnestly that the message and the messenger may be used of the Holy Spirit to bring conviction of sin and a glad reception of the gift of salvation.

From that point on, one who has responded will begin to grow in grace and in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ. It may be presumed that the person who has received this salvation and who is growing in sanctity will begin to see the needs of others, will have compassion for the poor and hungry, and will begin to express in social relationships the new life that is now his. Fundamentally important in evangelism, however (it cannot be too greatly emphasized), is the initial confrontation and challenge where, under the impact of the Gospel and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, there comes regeneration, new birth, the new creation in Christ, a new life-principle, a new relationship by which, from that time on, a man walks with the Lord in the power of His might.

For greater understanding of evangelism, we must pause to look at the Atonement. There are many views of this; the number varies depending on how one defines or describes them. Among others, there are the moral-influence, example, classic, Grotian, and Anselmic views. We can take guidance here from John Baillie’s suggestion that in theological discussion we should avoid the word “only” and use “at least.” One should not say, for instance, that the example view of the Atonement is the “only” view. The Cross is “at least” an example—and much, much more.

This principle of interpretation is relevant even for the Anselmic view; we must recognize that, however completely we may think we have covered the subject of Christ’s suffering and death, we can still say only that it is “at least” this. And how much more! Who really believes that the most careful theologian has plumbed the profundities of Gethsemane and the cry of dereliction on the Cross?

At the same time, one must be careful that his view of the Atonement is inclusive enough. Any worthy view must include “at least” satisfaction and substitution. Christ vicariously does for us what we can in no way do for ourselves; and what is done must satisfy God-ward such realities as holiness and righteousness and love (all of them infinitely so), and satisfy man-ward the need for the assurance of forgiveness and canceled guilt. We must think of the Atonement as a transaction first. A thing is done, a work is accomplished. Atonement can be nothing less than this.

In evangelism we begin with this finished work. The Cross releases a holy God to forgive. This finished work must be proclaimed and explained and then offered as a gift. Then comes another transaction: Man accepts, and he stands justified. His relationship to God is changed. He is declared righteous; he is rightened. Now man is released to love God and love man; he is ready to grow in holiness, and he is empowered to serve his fellow man in every social relationship and structure.

Today much is being said, especially in the older, well-established churches, of evangelism by some other approach than the word of the Gospel. Some years ago there was what was called fellowship evangelism. The approach was to bring people into some fellowship group of the church—a dinner, or a men’s club, or a bowling team. In the Christian fellowship, it was said, an outsider might experience the presence and reality of Christ and come to “know” him in the life of the body. Perhaps this happened, but I doubt it. Sacraments always require the spoken word; physical signs of the life of Christ need somewhere, somehow, a word of proclamation and a response in confession. Flesh and blood did not lead to Peter’s confession, Jesus said. The challenge of the Gospel requires the answer of the man.

A variation of fellowship evangelism today is our great effort (and a worthy and self-giving one it usually is) to “evangelize” through identity with and service to the poor and the outcasts, especially the racial outcasts. Christian compassion necessarily leads us to want to help, and help in our complex day often requires complex structures of help. This is all well and good, but not good enough.

“What mean these testimonies?” we must ask. Somewhere, somehow, the word must be spoken. When it is, the multitudes may well turn away, as they did in Jesus’ day, disappointed at the requirement to participate in Christ instead of endlessly feeding on the bread that perishes. Do men want the Gospel or just the fruits of the Gospel? Shall we offer them the fruits and not the roots? It was St. Theresa, was it not, who said so well, “The soul of the care of the poor is the care of the poor soul.”

A number of bills before the Eighty-ninth Congress drew particular interest and comments from churchmen. As Congress adjourned last month, here is how some of these matters stood:

• SCHOOL PRAYER. No legislation was passed, though three measures were introduced in the Senate. An attempt by Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen to initiate a constitutional amendment permitting voluntary participation by students in prayer failed by nine votes to get the necessary two-thirds majority. A “sense of Congress” resolution favoring voluntary school prayer was proposed by Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana. This, and an attempt by Vance Hartke of that state to attach similar measures to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, were defeated.

• WAR ON POVERTY. Despite pressures from the Inter-Religious Committee Against Poverty, the National Council of Churches, and other religious groups, Congress refused to increase the Office of Economic Opportunity’s appropriation for the current fiscal year. OEO was given only the $1.75 billion requested in the President’s budget—at least $250 million less than the NCC had advocated. The bill contained more restrictions on the administration of funds than last year’s act, but proposed restrictions on church-state cooperation were defeated.

Spike, Leading Educator, Slain

Dr. Robert W. Spike, 42, died October 17 in the most sensational murder of a prominent U. S. clergyman within memory.

World Council of Churches’ leader Eugene Carson Blake said in a eulogy that Spike “was one of the most important men in the life of American churches today.” Spike had just begun direction of the new professional doctorate program at the University of Chicago Divinity School this fall. He was formerly the first director of the National Council of Churches’ race commission, home mission secretary of the United Church of Christ, and minister of New York City’s avant-garde Judson Memorial Church.

The clergyman’s body—clad only in a raincoat, and with the skull crushed with tremendous force by a blunt instrument—was found in Ohio State University’s new United Christian Center, which he had helped dedicate the day before. Despite some bizarre evidence, police seemed baffled and had made no arrests by late last month.

• CHURCH TAXES. Two bills that would make businesses operated by churches or other non-profit organizations subject to taxes were held up in the finance committee of the House.

• AID TO EDUCATION. Congress voted a two-year extension of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, with an appropriation of $6 billion. Americans United for Separation of Church and State had opposed this extension because of the use of public funds by parochial schools. The appropriation for the first year is $600 million more than the President requested.

• JUDICIAL REVIEW. A bill entitled “An Act to Enforce the First Amendment” has passed the Senate and awaits committee action in the House. The bill would enable citizens to bring to court test cases on the constitutionality of federal legislation that provides aid to church-related institutions.

• ‘TRUTH’ BILLS. Congress passed a “truth-in-packaging” bill that requires clear and standard labeling of contents and quantities of packaged foods and other consumer goods, but the standardized size requirements sought by the administration were softened to a voluntary regulation plan. A “truth-in-lending” bill to standardize publicity on interest rates remained in committee with no action by either house.

• UNION MEMBERSHIP. The House passed a bill to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows states to outlaw union closed shops, but the bill was killed in a Senate filibuster. Persons whose religious convictions prohibit union membership had fought the bill.

• HOME RULE. Bills to provide self-government in the District of Columbia have passed both houses but are so different that they were tied up in the joint conference committee. The Council of Churches of Greater Washington and many churchmen are backing “Home Rule.”

• CIVIL RIGHTS. A 1966 civil rights bill passed the House but was killed by Senate filibuster. Opposition centered not on jury reform or personal protection clauses, but on a controversial plan for federal open-housing regulation which had major church backing.

Miscellany

The National Sunday School Association has called a board meeting December 8 to discuss plans for a major Sunday school congress. This month’s Eternity, discussing a similar idea from its sister publication, the Sunday School Times, wonders “who will participate” and says that if the purpose is “to preserve the Sunday school, let’s forget it; but if its purpose is improved Christian education in a revolutionary society, we’re all for it.”

The Internal Revenue Service announced Billy James Hargis’s anti-Communist Christian Crusade is no longer tax-exempt because of lobbying and intervening for candidates in political campaigns. Hargis called the move a violation of his First Amendment rights.

Upland (California) College, an accredited Brethren in Christ school that went out of business last year, auctioned off all its real and personal property and its “valuable corporate charter.”

President Johnson won this year’s “Family of Man” award, but because of his unprecedented Asian tour last month, Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz served as stand-in at the fund-raising dinner of New York City’s Protestant Council. Outside, a small group of Clergy Concerned About Viet Nam picketed. A few churchmen along Johnson’s Asian route also issued complaints.

The United Nations’ General Assembly strengthened previous years’ resolutions condemning religious and racial intolerance in member nations.

At a lively quadrennial conference of Korean Methodists, 111 ballots for a new bishop were taken without reaching the needed two-thirds majority. They’ll try again next March.

Both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in Salisbury, capital of Southern Rhodesia, refused to hold special services this week marking the first anniversary of the white minority’s declaration of independence from Britain.

The Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape Province in South Africa voted to rejoin the World Presbyterian Alliance, which it quit, along with the World Council of Churches, in 1961. One apparent reason is to defend the church’s support of racial segregation.

Following Up

Dimitri Tsafendas (Sept. 16 issue, page 44), assassin of South Africa’s Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, was ruled insane and committed to prison indefinitely without trial.

A Chicago panel of psychiatrists ruled Richard Speck, accused of murdering eight student nurses (August 19 issue, page 49), mentally fit to stand trial.

A San Francisco coroner’s jury ruled the police shooting of Matthew Johnson, which touched off race rioting (previous issue, pages 53, 54), was “excusable homicide.”

The Rev. Ian Paisley, anti-Roman Catholic preacher in Northern Ireland (Aug. 19 issue, page 50), was released October 18 after spending three months in prison because he wouldn’t vow to keep the peace.

“The Singing Nun” is now just singing. Sister Luc-Gabrielle, 31—who hit the hit parade in 1963 (Jan. 3, 1964, issue, page 32) and won more fame in a current movie—did not take final vows and recently left her Belgian convent. Instead of becoming a foreign missionary, she will continue her singing career under her former name, Jeanine Deckers, and remain a lay member of the Dominicans.

Personalia

Hans Schwaighofer, director of Germany’s famous Oberammergau Passion Play, next scheduled for 1970, quit because townspeople opposed substitution of a 1750 script to eliminate anti-Semitic overtones.

Professor Josef Souček this fall succeeded Professor Josef Hromodka as dean of the Reformed-oriented Comenius Theological Faculty in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The school has twelve lecturers and fifty students. Hromodka, who once taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, is now active in Prague’s Christian Peace Conference, which has offices in the same building as the seminary.

The Hungarian Baptist Seminary in Budapest began its sixty-first school year with fourteen students.

Francis B. Sayre, Jr., outspoken dean of Washington Cathedral (Episcopal), was hospitalized in Bangkok, Thailand, with tuberculosis, during an Asian tour.

Ray Lentsch, an American evangelist in “Operation Mobilization,” was sentenced to forty days in jail and a $100 fine for distributing tracts on the Greek island of Rhodes. The Greek constitution forbids “any form of proselytizing against the [Orthodox] State Church.”

Earnest A. Smith, president of Rust College in Mississippi, which was enmeshed in the state’s anti-poverty controversy (see previous issue, pages 59, 60), will become director of the Methodist religion and race department next week.

The Rev. Thomas J. Holmes, fired as pastor of Tattnall Square Baptist Church, Macon, Georgia, because he urged seating of Negroes at worship, was named public-relations chief at Mercer University next door. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the Wake Forest Baptist Church voted to accept as a member Julius Imosun, former executive of the Ghana Baptist Convention.

A Chicago jury quickly found Vernon Lyons, independent Baptist pastor, guilty of littering for passing out Scripture portions in a park. Lyons will appeal the decision.

Gaylord M. Couchman, leader in United Presbyterian affairs, resigned as president of the University of Dubuque, Iowa, effective next June, because “the institution must be served with an even greater total effectiveness than I find it possible to contribute.…”

Thomas B. McDormand will retire as president of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and College at the end of 1967.

Deaths

HEWLETT JOHNSON, 92, for thirty-two years the Communist-loving “Red Dean” of England’s Canterbury Cathedral, who caused red faces because people confused him with the Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of Anglicanism; tolerated by fellow churchmen despite strange, sometimes silly social views; in Canterbury, after a severe fall.

R. J. G. MCKNIGHT, 88, for thirty-seven years a professor and president of Reformed Presbyterian Seminary, Pittsburgh.

RAIMER MAGER, 60, anti-Hitler Christian union leader in Saxony, later lay president of his Lutheran synod in what became East Germany; in Dresden, of a heart attack.

ROBERT W. SPIKE, 42, in the most sensational murder of a noted U. S. clergyman within memory (see page 57).

The Episcopal House of Bishops attempted to head off heresy proceedings against Resigned Bishop James A. Pike last month by adopting, 103 to 36, a statement denouncing Pike’s conduct and doctrinal statements. The attempt failed, for though Pike’s accusers seemed satisfied, the statement was so abhorrent to Pike that he moved to put trial machinery in motion “to clear my name.”

This drama—which upstaged other business at the bishops’ annual meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia—featured two antagonists and a venerable peacemaker.

Pike’s adversary was the bishop of South Florida, Henry I. Louttit, a small man whose bearing reminds one of a strutting bantam rooster, and who styles himself “a born fighter.” Louttit claimed the signatures of 27 other bishops supporting charges against Pike (only three are required).

Believing Louttit’s action would “bring harm to the Church if it resulted in a heresy trial,” Presiding Bishop John E. Hines appointed an ad hoc committee on the case. Its chairman was Angus Dun, retired bishop of Washington, D.C. Dun, who ordained Pike to the priesthood in 1946 and has remained a close personal friend, is warmly regarded by almost all the bishops. To insure that committee action would have maximum effectiveness, Louttit and two other Pike opponents were put on the group. But Pike was not allowed to appear before the committee.

The committee’s 1200-word statement, which was adopted by the house, rejected Pike’s “irresponsible” utterances, and said “his writing and speaking on profound realities with which Christian faith and worship are concerned are too often marred by caricatures of precious symbols and at the worst, by cheap vulgarizations of great expressions of faith.”

The statement singled out Pike’s “disparaging way” of speaking about the Trinity—“Yet he knows well that a triune apprehension of the mystery of God’s being and action is woven into the whole fabric of the creeds and prayers and hymnody of our Episcopal Church, as it is into the vows of loyalty taken by our clergy at their ordination. It is explicit in our membership in the World Council of Churches and in our consultations on church union with other major churches …”

The statement said a heresy trial would not solve the Pike problem and would be detrimental to the Church, giving it a “repressive image.”

Belittling the Pike furor, the statement concluded, “we do not think his often obscure and contradictory utterances warrant the time and the work and the wounds of a trial. The Church has more important things to get on with.”

When the statement came to the floor, debate was tightly restricted. It was to be limited to one hour, Pike and Louttit were to have only ten minutes each, and theological debate was ruled out of order. Pike, speaking to one of five moderating amendments attempts, strongly objected to the ban on theological discussion.

Through a barrage of amendment bids and motions to postpone, the “no” votes prevailed with the rumbling inevitability of a steam-roller. Only one amendment, eliminating “totally” before “irresponsible,” was passed.

The motives for hurrying the document to approval were varied. Many bishops hoped such action would avoid the deeper involvement of a trial which might split the church into theological factions. (Several younger bishops asked why Pike was subjected to such censure when other bishops hold the same views but are not as much in the public eye.) Some sympathized with Pike but feared a trial would be more calamitous than the statement. Others were impatient with the amount of time the Pike case had diverted from other church matters in the past few years.

Near the end of the hour debate, the conscience of the House apparently was troubled by the brusque treatment of Pike, and it voted to extend the debate for one hour after cocktails and supper. Vermont’s Bishop Harvey Butterfield complained, “I have found in this whole business no spirit of Christ.”

During the debate, Pike shifted about restlessly in his chair. When he spoke he maintained precise control of his voice and diction, but one could detect a slight vibration of the papers he held.

Pike charged that “this House is not interested in theology, but only public relations.” When he raised a theological point he was ruled out of order.

Pike’s demand for a full investigation of the “rumors, reports, and allegations” against him obviates any presentment of charges against him, and initiates the same process as in a heresy trial. Next, three to seven bishops will decide if charges constitute a canonical offense if proven. Hines said he would act quickly to name this group. If the charges are found canonical, an inquiry board of five presbyters and five laymen must decide if there are sufficient grounds to put Pike on trial. The matter would then go before the court for bishop trials, which is now depleted in membership and cannot be filled until next year’s triennial convention.

Pike has threatened to go as far as a civil court to make sure all stages of the investigation or trial be open to the public. Pike considers the press his ally. During the conference, the press-room was his frequent retreat. The threat of adverse publicity for the church is a chief weapon Pike commands in his effort to be cleared. He said he will bring theologians from all over the world to testify in his defense. “If there has to be a trial … it would be another Scopes trial,” he said.

Pike’S Replacement

James A. Pike’s successor as bishop of California lived up to moderates’ expectations when he visited Grace Cathedral for staff conferences. C. Kilmer Myers, who is scheduled to assume his new duties January 1, was asked in a press conference if he believed in the virgin birth and the Holy Trinity.

“Of course I do,” Myers snapped. Pike had expressed disbelief in the traditional concept of both doctrines.

Myers said of his controversial predecessor, “My friend Bishop Pike is seeking, as many bishops are, to find our way. I don’t think there is anything extraordinary about any bishop attempting to find his way.” He called heresy charges against Pike “unfortunate” and the theological issues involved “extremely confused.” In fact, Myers said, “the accuser is as confused as the accused.”

Myers said the church must concentrate on “an expression of Christian faith in an urbanized society.… I totally disagree with the thesis that the church should not be involved in civil affairs. There is a growing group of laymen who are resisting moving into what should be the mission of the church.”

He characterized his general stance as follows: “I am as liberal as the most liberal Roman Catholic you can find.”

JEROME F. POLITZER

Lutheran Olive Branches

The American Lutheran Church’s biennial convention in late October made less peace with pacifists than with other Christians.

By voice vote, the Minneapolis meeting defeated a resolution recognizing that “Christians may be as much troubled in conscience regarding participation in a particular war as they may be by participation in war in general” and asking the government to change its policies accordingly. The 1,000 delegates (half clergy, half laity) then approved a long, major statement on “War, Peace, and Freedom” that had been under study for six years.

Local Lutheran collegians who wanted a pacifist statement added to the document were denied permission to demonstrate with placards inside the meeting place, Central Lutheran Church. ALC President Fredrik A. Schiotz, 65, who earlier had been elected to four more years in office, decided to permit a prayer demonstration outside the church, although he said he didn’t like prayer for publicity purposes. But the demonstration was restrained, with about two dozen students standing silently in a line with their heads bowed. A resolution called U.S. aims in Viet Nam “sound,” but delegates admitted “an uneasy feeling that our nation’s actions at times belie our stated aims.”

Similar calm spirit was shown in discussing ALC relations with Reformed churches, the National Council of Churches, and the three other Lutheran bodies the ALC will join when the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A. is organized next week in Cleveland. (The groups are the Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the small Slavic-background Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.)

After four years of talk, a panel of theologians from various Lutheran and Reformed denominations urged discussions toward “intercommunion and the fuller recognition of one another’s ministry.” The ALC approved the idea and will work with other Lutherans toward this goal. The talks are backed by the U. S. wing of the Lutheran World Federation (of which Schiotz is president) and the World Presbyterian Alliance.

Getting closer to home, the ALC authorized its inter-church committee to look into an official declaration of altar and pulpit fellowship with other Lutheran Council members, with the “fervent hope” that favorable action could come at the ALC’s next meeting (Omaha, 1968).

The fellowship proposal highlighted Schiotz’s report at the opening session. He said it would permit pastors to exchange pulpits and members to receive the Lord’s Supper at services of local congregations within Lutheran bodies that have formally expressed doctrinal agreement on preaching of the Gospel and administration of the sacraments. Officially, ALC communion is closed to non-members, Lutheran or otherwise. In practice, local churches have increasingly opened communion to members of the Lutheran Church in America. The other major body, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, keeps communion tightly closed.

Missouri Synod’s C. Thomas Spitz, Jr., who will be general secretary of the new Lutheran Council, said the new agency would seek “achievement of theological consensus in a systematic and continuing way” and “a maximum of cooperation and a minimum of duplication or competition in financing and work.” Altar and pulpit fellowship isn’t on the council agenda yet, but Spitz predicted it “will come.… Those of us who believe in the Holy Spirit have to believe that it is inevitable so long as men of God speak to each other as those who belong to God and not to themselves.”

Spitz said the council will provide “undeniable benefits” in presenting a common Lutheran front in ecumenical talks with other Christians. “But we dare not permit our joy and optimism over the very existence of the council either to camouflage our continued separation from each other and others, or to dull our impatience because of that separation.”

The Lutheran Council groups have set up a Commission on Worship to prepare liturgical materials for common use by all Lutherans, and the ALC called for an inter-Lutheran hymnal within a decade.

The ALC, one of the major holdouts from joining the National Council of Churches, invited NCC General Secretary R. H. Edwin Espy to tell delegates about the council’s activities and policies. The delegates authorized a two-year study on whether ALC should join the NCC, and Espy pointed out that forty-six representatives of the ALC already sit on NCC member boards.

Espy deplored church tendencies to put secular issues “outside the realm of God” and defended the NCC’s statements on social issues. “What we say does not claim to represent the member churches, and certainly not the 41 million members of the NCC churches; but equally clearly, it does represent the delegates of the churches elected to represent them in the NCC General Assembly and its General Board.”

In other action, former bookstore manager Arnold Mickelson, 44, was elected to a six-year term as secretary, thus becoming the first lay officer of the ALC.

The convention urged its evangelism commission to push proclamation in the inner city and to support racial integration in local communities with the application of Christ’s love through all ALC members.

The delegates rejected compulsory Social Security coverage for clergymen but learned that three-fourths of them are enrolled anyway. A $24 million budget for 1967 was passed, along with plans for a year-long drive to raise at least $20 million for the seventeen ALC colleges and seminaries.

JOHN NOVOTNEY

Catholic Catechism Cataclysm

“It cannot be told how many good and holy things grew out of the Reformation for the whole of Christianity, even in its very own aspects. The Roman Catholic Church cannot do without it.” These Protestant-sounding words carry the unflinching authority of Cardinal Alfrink and the bishops of the Dutch Roman Catholic Church.

A new adult catechism, published in the Netherlands last month, also calls Martin Luther “a man with prophetic word-power and deep religious feelings who started a movement which could not be kept within the general church.”

Interest in the 604-page book was so great that publishers increased their printing orders twice before the first copy had been bound. Pre-publication sales ran over 200,000 copies among the estimated four million Catholics in the nation of 12 million.¹The October 15 issue of a slick Dutch women’s magazine says one-third of the population has broken completely with Christianity. Church figures in its major poll are significantly below 1960 government tallies.

The “Hail Mary” has disappeared, and for the first time a catechism does not provide ready-made answers for prefabricated questions. The book tries to explain the meaning of the Gospel in non-theological words and hasn’t confined faith to formulas. It is a pastoral document, directed more to the heart than to the head.

Roman Catholics generally are in for some surprises. So is Pope Paul. When Cardinal Alfrink gave the pope a copy, his reported reply was, “I am sorry that I cannot read it.” He soon will be able to—translations are on the way in Italian, English, and four other languages.

The catechism has some counsel for the pope, who hasn’t yet decided what to tell his people about family planning. Its advice: “One does not let his family increase without responsibility toward the family itself and the world as a whole.” The faithful are advised to seek information from physicians, not priests. The catechism says that Vatican II didn’t say anything about the means of birth control and that a “clear evolution” exists on the question.

On the Inquisition, the book asks, “How is it possible that a Christian community [note—not the Church] could act against people who believed differently, in the way the Roman Empire had acted against the Christians?”

The distinction between mortal and venial sins is clearly on the way out: “One cannot say exactly whether a sin is serious or not.”

Perhaps the most remarkable section is on the elements of the Holy Supper. Earlier Dutch rumblings apparently stimulated Paul’s 1965 encyclical reaffirming transubstantiation. (On August 18, the Dutch bishops tried to quiet fears with a letter reaffirming their fidelity to the faith.)

The catechism warns that the bread “is neither to be seen as a piece of Christ, nor as purely symbolic.” “Transubstantiation” may become “transublimation” under this new definition: “The presence of Christ is connected with the bread. Thus the bread is a symbol in which He is present among us. The ordinary bread has become for us the Bread of Eternal Life—Christ.”

Evangelicals will like the frequent quotation of the Bible and the beautiful statements about the resurrection, faith, forgiveness, grace, and the miracles of Christ. But the existential “new theology” of the French school has put its stamp on the work. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are considered, not as historical fact, but as “symbolic stories that describe the whole of human history.”

The book is certainly Roman Catholic, even though certain typical views are almost explained away with a shrug. Dutch Protestants were especially irked by its teaching on mixed marriages: “It is irreconcilable with the Gospel for children to be reared outside the Catholic community.” The Protestant paper De Rotterdammer responded: “It seems we are still spiritually handicapped.”

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN