Take Another Look At S.K.

The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard, by Edward John Carnell (Eerdmans, 1965, 174 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Vernon C. Grounds, president, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

The mere mention of Sören Kierkegaard stimulates the adrenalin output of many evangelicals. Usually they have no firsthand knowledge of his works; at best they have read only certain seemingly heretical passages from some of his pseudonymous books, ignoring the place such passages occupy in his total writing and therefore in his self-imposed task as a Christian witness. Evangelical critics of Kierkegaard rarely engage in that objective, protracted study that would qualify them to issue authoritative pronouncements on this profound, complex, many-faceted, and pathological genius. Instead, misunderstanding an apologist of prodigous originality and disdaining to tolerate so unconventional a disciple within the pale of orthodoxy, they consign him to the limbo of neoliberalism. After all, even a sympathetic scholar like Herbert C. Wolf, associate professor of religion at Wittenberg University, recently characterized Kierkegaard as an iconoclast, a misogynist, and a neurotic with a passion for martyrdom. Ah, yes! But Wolf also characterized him as a fool for Jesus Christ, a man who for the sake of God dared to run the risk of scandalized misunderstanding—by the very people who share his basic commitment.

At long last, however, an evangelical has arisen whose objective, protracted study of Denmark’s greatest son entitles him to make authoritative pronouncements. And Edward John Carnell, well-known for his probing scholarship, does not consign Kierkegaard to the limbo of neo-liberalism. He embraces him—rightly!—as a fellow believer and quotes approvingly Denzil G. M. Patrick’s verdict on Kierkegaard, “He was an evangelist rather than a theologian. There can be no question about his own adherence to the orthodox Christian faith of the oecumenical creeds” (p. 39). Indeed, Carnell remarks that “students of psychology, as well as students of theology and philosophy of religion, continue to pore over Kierkegaard’s works with something approaching a sense of reverence” (pp. 14, 15); and precisely that spirit stamps Carnell’s perceptive handling of these demanding works—works, he points out, that, maieutically, force the reader to struggle (p. 112).

In his highly successful simplification of a thinker famous for his frustrating complexity, Carnell adheres to a commendable methodology: “We are trying to tell what Kierkegaard said, rather than to give our own opinions” (p. 156). And what did Kierkegaard say? He said that man, a synthesis of time and eternity, is saddled inescapably with the task of becoming himself; but he can become himself only as he becomes an individual; and he can become an authentic individual only by becoming a Christian (p. 34). This, essentially, is Carnell’s simplification of the bewildering mazes of the Kierkegaardian corpus—and it is penetratingly correct. What is the nature of the eternal? Or, to use more common terminology, what is the nature of God? God is love. How do we know this? We know it through Jesus Christ, who, as the unconditional God subjecting himself to the limitations of time and space, revealed the nature of the eternal. As Carnell puts it, “Christ disclosed the essence of God by his consistent love” (p. 119). Thus Kierkegaard—and Carnell expounding Kierkegaard—holds that “love is the true point of identity between time and eternity.” “This is why,” Carnell says, continuing his exposition, “we are justified in saying that Kierkegaard’s thesis, ‘Truth is subjectivity,’ is another way of describing the substance of love. The self is not existentially at its best apart from love, for God is love” (p. 160). Furthermore, Carnell insists as he exegetes Kierkegaard, “love and true existence are the same thing, for love is the law of life” (p. 168). Thus if a man is to achieve authentic individuality, he must take the incarnate God as his model. “The ideal task is to be like Jesus Christ: to mediate eternity (self-giving love) through passionate, moment-by-moment decisions in time” (p. 134). Or, to quote Kierkegaard, “God is love, therefore we can resemble God only in loving.… When you love your neighbor, then you resemble God” (p. 118). In short, to respond in faithful obedience to God’s love disclosed in Jesus Christ is to achieve genuine individuality: “A living person cannot pass from potentiality to actuality until the specific conditions of selfhood—love’s attributes—are mediated in the instant by passionate decision” (p. 95). This likewise means that faith issues in love, the works of love: “The dialectical mediation of eternity in time may be a way of the cross, but it is also a way of virtue. Virtue is formed of acts of self-giving love, and such love is only expressed when the inner man is developed by conscientious choices of what is right” (p. 110). Is grace, then, eliminated? Quite the reverse! Grace, Kierkegaard says, is postulated: “When we existentially realize that we fall short of the duties of love, we are able to reject self-sufficiency so radically that it becomes natural to rest in God, morning, noon, and night, every day of the week. Since the duties of love are directly connected with eternity, divine grace is relevant to all stages of life’s way” (p. 167).

Here, then, is the heart of Kierkegaard’s dialectic. It turns out to be a dialectic of love rooted in the New Testament, a dialectic which argues that no man is authentically man unless he is a man in Christ, living ethically, inwardly, passionately, believingly, thankfully, and lovingly. But here, simultaneously, Carnell suspects, is the nub of a common difficulty in understanding Kierkegaard. To be an authentic individual, mediating the love of eternity in space-time existence, is to be like Jesus Christ. Who, though, is really like him? “Judged by spiritual and existential criteria, every living Christian is at best only partly a real individual.… Jesus Christ is the only complete individual. Viewed from eternity, of course, all who repent of their sins, and who strive to love as they should, are complete individuals. But under the conditions of sin and time, no one but Jesus Christ is a complete individual; for He alone, of all the men who walked this pilgrim path, met the absolute terms of the law of love at every moment in his life” (pp. 158, 159).

With amplest justification, therefore, Carnell concludes: “Kierkegaard developed the meaning of Christian love with a profundity, thoroughness, and biblical accuracy which, it is no exaggeration to say, surpassed all previous efforts” (p. 166).

Though love is certainly Kierkegaard’s Archimedean point, Carnell’s competent study includes much more that is important for a proper interpretation of this iconoclastic apologist. In fact, everything essential is dealt with—Kierkegaard’s attack on reason, his disparagement of traditional evidences, his criticism of Hegelianism, his views on paradox and faith, his denunciation of complacent orthodoxy, his extreme notions about women, marriage, and celibacy. All of this is here ably and quite adequately treated.

The great value of Carnell’s book, however, is that it corrects the view of Kierkegaard that has prevailed too long and too widely among evangelicals. To be sure, criticism is required, and Carnell engages in sharp criticism whenever necessary. Yet as one reads this study, one feels as though he is watching the restoration of a portrait that has been so painted over that it is finally only an ugly caricature. Carnell skillfully peels off the distorting layers of misinterpretation until one sees Kierkegaard as he really was—a passionate disciple of Jesus Christ, clinging in faith to the wonder of divine love.

VERNON C. GROUNDS

Out Of The Seventeenth Century

Reformed Dogmatics, edited and translated by John W. Beardslee, III (Oxford, 1965, 471 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The “Library of Protestant Thought” presents collections of writings that reflect the history of the Christian faith in its Protestant expression. This particular volume contains writings of three seventeenth-century Reformed theologians. The first is Johannes Wollebius, chosen because his works represent the best brief summary of Reformed dogmatics in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. The second theologian is Gisbertus Voetius, chosen because his theology of the second quarter of the century reflects the attempt of a scholastic Reformed theology to achieve ethical relevance; and the third is Francis Turrentin, chosen because his Institutio Theologicae Elencticae, belonging to the third quarter of the seventeenth century, presents the Scholastic Reformed theology of the seventeenth century as systematized and clarified after the appearance of Descartes, and after the rise and fall of Arminianism at the Synod of Dort (1618).

The theological method of seventeenth-century theology differed little from that of Scholasticism as informed by the Aristotle of the late Middle Ages. For this reason, and for the reason that Turrentin’s work in particular, republished in 1847, played a role in the theological thought of American Presbyterianism and was the background of the Princeton theology of Charles Hodge, the study of this volume is of value for any adherent of the Reformed faith who desires to see how this faith developed.

Turrentin’s Locus IV, which deals with predestination, is here published in English for the first time. Beardslee justifies the selection of this detailed treatment of predestination by asserting that while this doctrine is not lacking in Roman Catholicism, it is “not only an historic peculiarity of Protestantism, but also a special problem for Reformed theology.” And he adds, “Among the questions that agitated Reformed theologians during the period between the rise of Arminianism and the Helvetic Consensus Formula—the inspiration of Scripture, the imputation of sin and guilt, justification by the active righteousness of Christ—none was more troublesome than that of predestination, nor has any continued to hold a greater interest in later centuries.”

In a significant introductory essay, Beardslee shows how Calvin’s original understanding of predestination within the framework of the soteriological developed into an expression of God’s all-encompassing doctrine of decrees; thus he shows how what was an expression of grace became in time a logical principle, a formal idea, in terms of which all of God’s works were to be seen.

I should like to say a word for the publishers. They are to be commended for making such material as this readily available, with the kind of introductions that tempt the reader to study the developments that shaped Protestant faith.

JAMES DAANE

Reflections

Minister’s Shop-Talk, by James W. Kennedy (Harper and Row, 1965, 211 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by John H. Piet, professor of English Bible and missions, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

“We often judge the value of a book by our faith in the reviewer, who is ‘almighty’ and can ‘make’ or ‘break’ a new book.… I will always believe a reviewer of one of my earliest books killed it as a successful confirmation manual by thoroughly misunderstanding one chapter …” (p. 149). This formidable statement of Kennedy’s rises to challenge any reviewer. The claim is all the more awesome in that Kennedy himself is deeply committed to his calling as a minister and regards a clergyman as the one in whom there are signs of “God let loose in the world.”

He has served with distinction in several significant parishes. In this book, he shares insights that have come to him over many years, addressing himself particularly to clergymen. After confessing that insights from both Henry Drummond and the Oxford Group Movement enriched his life, he explains how through maturing he transcended what each of these had to offer.

The book covers twelve areas: the clergyman’s world, church, parish, life, words, works, ways, prayer life, reading, calling, playing, and future. The author appends six pages of prayers that appeared in a syndicated series in daily newspapers.

Since the content of this book is personal and hence subjective, one’s criteria for evaluation are limited. The author writes dearly, informatively, and with candor. Older ministers will find their experiences reflected in these pages. Younger ones may find encouragement and direction. Kennedy is convinced of the value of the ministry. This in itself is heartening at a time when so many have prepared palls to drape across parsonages. Here is an older man fresh each day to God and the world, and ready to place an experienced hand on another minister’s shoulder to testify what life in God through the Church can teach if one is obedient, pliable, and responsive.

There are several places where Kennedy could improve his material. On page 125, for instance, he wonders whether he should comment on clerical vagaries, mentions two, then says, “But I won’t …,” forgetting he already has. He quotes a text or two out of context. And he makes life difficult for professors of biblical languages in a paragraph on the availability of modern translations. “With such excellent translations at hand,” he says, “I find it less and less necessary to consult my Greek New Testament. This may seem a pity to many, for the minister has always been fluent—at least so people have imagined—in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and at home in the classics” (p. 152). This may limit the sale of Kennedy’s book in theological schools, although even here the ban may be removed because of the author’s clear conviction that “the primary task of the minister is to communicate relevantly the Christian meaning of existence” (p. 7). This Kennedy himself does.

JOHN H. PIET

Jonah And You

Adventures of a Deserter, by Jan Overduin (Eerdmans, 1965, 153 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Paul C. Zylstra, pastor, San Diego Christian Reformed Church, San Diego, California.

This psychological study of the Book of Jonah by an outstanding Dutch pulpiteer is like a long sermon that never runs dry. The pastor has squeezed the last drop of the oil of application from the adventures. The style may remind the reader of Donald Grey Barnhouse (bushels of examples for each point) or of Klaas Schilder (out on a limb risking the charge of speculation).

Scoundrel Jonah gets thrown hard for a loss. His human realism warns people who like to pat underdogs that they usually have sharp teeth. The book radiates honesty and openness, and authentic Christian experience (“You are Jonah”). It is a rock thrown through the windows of our soul, hitting the undeniable sins and stupidities of church and individual, then showing how God’s grace and patience and power are greater than our pride and self-conceit and faithlessness. Unless we’re incorrigible! Then we get a one-way ticket into the fish’s belly.

Theologically conservative Overduin (the fish’s swallowing Jonah is reliable history) keeps us in the biblical atmosphere and tells where and how one gets stamina to meet the great moral dilemmas he finds even in the small things. He makes it clear, too, that faith and unbelief are conditioned not so much by rational arguments as by the disposition of the heart toward God.

Some may feel that the psychological aspects of the Christian faith are overdone by Overduin. What seems an imprecise statement here and there may be due to the translation from the Dutch. But the book is rich with imaginative insights, scintillating word-pictures, and exegesis of scattered Scriptures (although you will not always agree).

Each of the book’s five chapters of preach-able topics underscores God’s missionary concern for all people and his use of nobodies—even a personality like Jonah—to satisfy that concern and produce faith and conversion. Christ, Jonah’s antitype, is highly exalted at the close.

The entire book admirably demonstrates what it means to be concrete in the pulpit, and to preach from the heart. The result is a thoroughgoing work that penetrates the world beneath Jonah’s surface. On the dark recesses of the heart, Adventures of a Deserter plays a light that clearly illuminates the rebellion.

PAUL C. ZYLSTRA

Boring From Within

Your Church—Their Target, a symposium compiled by Kenneth W. Ingwalson (Better Books, 1966, 288 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell, executive editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This book will irritate most of the people who read it. The organizations and individuals singled out as examples of those who are determined to make of the Church a socio-political organization will label the writers “right-wing extremists” (a favorite term to discredit any who stand for the values of a past generation). And the constant hammering on the theme that something radical is taking place in the Church that is turning it toward being a secular rather than a spiritual organization will anger some and frighten others.

The book has the weakness of being a compilation of writings by thirteen persons; there is a lack of a desirable continuity and some repetition. It also has the advantage of giving the divergent reactions and viewpoints of persons representing a number of the major denominations.

Several chapters are particularly revealing, among them T. Robert Ingram’s “Socialism in the Sanctuary” and Herbert Philbrick’s essay on the use of some folk music and folk singers for subversive purposes (“It is well known that music can be used to charm snakes. Not so well known: music can be used by snakes to charm people”). G. Aiken Taylor’s chapter on “Power Blocs, Power Politics and the National Council of Churches” is worth the price of the book.

By and large, the positions of the writers are well documented. This reviewer thinks that in a few instances unwarranted deductions may have been made from isolated quotations. And in the depths of their convictions and enthusiasm some of the writers have overstated their case. At times the language is more extreme than is justified.

But here within one cover there is incontrovertible proof that within the Church there are those who regard its nature, mission, and message as being more secular than spiritual, and who not only are working for a gigantic ecclesiastical organization with its accompanying power for individuals at the top but also do not hesitate to join forces with the secular government to accomplish its social and socialistic aims.

The compiler of this book, publisher of Human Events, says in his foreword: “To each of these writers every Christian who reads this book owes a debt of gratitude. For each in his own way has highlighted the problems at hand in a constructive and responsible manner. They have not been paid to write their chapters. Each has expressed his convictions in the hope that his contribution would aid in the salvation of the Protestant ethic. These men may not always agree with each other in details. Neither will you agree with all they say. But the problem and challenge for laymen and clergymen has been made crystal clear.”

In chapter 12 there are copious quotations from books and articles by the Rev. Charles Ferguson, a minister, lawyer, and prolific writer before and during World War I. His call for a secularized church coincides with this movement today, and his insistence that man rather than God is sovereign is today bearing fruit in the Church. No one can read this book without realizing that working within the Church there are forces that, if successful, would change the entire structure and emphasis of Protestantism.

The greatest weakness of the book is its failure to present adequately a spiritual alternative to the secularistic pressures. It is as if a physician were to diagnose a disease without suggesting a cure.

L. NELSON BELL

How Do We Know?

A Christian Perspective of Knowing, by Earl E. Barrett (Beacon Hill, 1965, 224 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, chairman of the Division of Doctrine and the Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

One must admire the courage of anyone who attempts to write a volume on epistemology in these times. The venture is all the more admirable when attempted from the evangelical point of view, since the author then has few contemporary models. Professor Barrett, of Olivet Nazarene College, surveys the field of knowledge-theory in terms of seven recognizable types of epistemology: authoritarianism, rationalism, empiricism, religious empiricism, intuitionism, mysticism, and Christian mysticism.

The author is without doubt aware that in dealing with the first type, authoritarianism, he faces an initial handicap in his choice of a title. In chapter 2, which investigates the claim of biblical authority upon the human person, he sees clearly that the question is twofold: What (or who) is the source of authority?, and, In what terms is the “word of authority” communicated to man? In brief, he notes that authority derives from truth, and truth from the God of truth. To the second question, he replies (correctly, we believe) that the authoritative Word involves the communication of propositional and valid information about God, God’s purposes, God’s demands upon man, and God’s ultimate recapitulation of all things in Christ. If some object to the demand of faith, our author will reply that faith is by no means confined in its sphere to religious concerns.

The six chapters dealing with the other forms of knowing-theory present each of these forms as embodying a partial insight. Rationalism insists upon the element of formal structuring of truth; its strength lies in the dignity it lends to the exercise of the human mind. Its weakness lies in its exaggerated claim to universality, and its tendency to absolutize its findings.

Empiricism seeks to do justice to man’s capacities as a curious and questing being. Its immanent peril is that of supposing that its most obvious form (i.e., sensory experience) is sufficiently inclusive to cope with the whole of human existence. Religious empiricism, admiring the empirical method but specializing in the processing of religious data, seeks for certainty in terms of man’s personal relationship to God; our author confirms the truth-values of Christianity in those terms. Professor Barrett is impressed by the vigor of the moral argument as a hypothesis capable of verification, in essential part at least, in terms of the experience-types systematized in Wesleyan theology.

The chapters dealing with intuitionism and mysticism overlap. The author is partial to ethical intuitionism as a source of certainty and sees the central quality of intuitive knowing to be non-inference. His treatment of mysticism’s claim to be a means to the communication of truth centers in the belief that immediate experience is likely to be more reliable than inference. In his specialized discussion of Christian mysticism, he uses the category of “mediated-immediacy” and seems, on the one hand, to credit Hegel with too much and, on the other hand, to have overlooked for the moment the role of the “one mediator between God and men.”

Some will, because of their own denominational tradition, agree heartily with his idea that the crises of conversion and of the believer’s being imbued with the Holy Spirit conform in general to the norms of mysticism. Others will, on theological or traditional grounds, take exception.

In the Conclusion (chapter 9), our author seeks to combine into one picture the sketches he has drawn. His aim is to synthesize the entire range of human experience that the several approaches use. His summation (p. 215) seems to relate what he terms “coherence” to this synthesis.

This reviewer could wish that Dr. Barrett had given, earlier in the work, his definition of the coherence-theory of truth. His use of the term here is not easy to square with the definition of “coherence” as given, for example, by Brand Blanshard.

The positive merits of this volume are many. It brings within one work a considerable range of research. It is thoroughly loyal to the principles of the historic Christian faith, specifically, to a high view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Some may feel that he leans more heavily upon Kant, especially upon the Second Critique, than is warranted. Perhaps this is balanced by his recurring references to major Christian personages, notably the Reformers. The reader sensitive to accuracy will hope that a second edition will correct minor typographical defects.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Book Briefs

The Mind of Christ: A Personal Pilgrimage of Discovery with the Disciples, by Harold A. Bosley (Abingdon, 1966, 143 pp., $2.75). A colorful preacher and exciting writer gives a not overly orthodox description of the mind of Christ.

The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary, Volume III: The Didache and Barnabas, by Robert A. Kraft (Nelson, 1965,188 pp., $5). A modern translation and commentary of important source material.

A Theology of Evangelism, by C. E. Autrey (Broadman, 1966, 119 pp., $2.75). A consideration of the theological basis of evangelism by an author who recognizes that Christian social action and gospel proclamation are not wholly identical.

The Gift of Healing: A Personal Story of Spiritual Therapy, by Ambrose A. Worrall with Olga N. Worrall (Harper and Row, 1965, 220 pp., $3.95). The pilgrimage of two people with extra-sensory perception engaged in a ministry of healing in and out of the Church. No adequate theological foundation is laid. The book is full of material on seances, poltergeists, psychic phenomena, disembodiment, contact with the spirits of the dead, and many cases of physical healing. According to one electronic scientist, a force radiates from the hands of these spiritual healers and has registered on X-ray film attached by adhesive tape to their palms. The book closes with a copy of a letter sent to hundreds of people who asked for healing help: “We seek only to give them confidence in the Divine Power that … is capable of restoring health, and improving conditions relative to peace and prosperity.… This power is able to operate at a distance … but we can and will join with all who desire in five minutes of spiritual communion with the Divine Presence, from 9 P.M. to 9:05 P.M. every night on Eastern Standard Time (or Daylight Saving Time when in effect).” All one needs to do is tune in.

Concilium, Volume IX: Spirituality in Church and World, edited by Christian Duquoc, O. P. (Paulist Press, 1965, 166 pp., $4.50). Essays on Christian involvement in the modern world. Can a Christian be both spiritual and world-involved?

Is the Bible True?, by Allen Bowman (Revell, 1965, 189 pp., $3.95). Solutions—sometimes too simple—to biblical problems.

A Manual for Biblical Preaching, by Lloyd Merle Perry (Baker, 1965, 218 pp., $4.95). A book on preaching that may drive the would-be preacher to a juniper tree. Five pages are devoted to the “philosophy of biblical preaching,” almost sixty pages to “discovering biblical preaching material,” fifty to special sermons, and three to “planning a biblical preaching program.” About thirty-five pages deal with organizing seven types of sermons; here the material would lose little if it were shuffled. A tremendous piece of work that lacks principle and bogs down in detail.

Paperbacks

Varieties of Unbelief, by Martin E. Marty (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 222 pp., $1.25). A description and discussion of the types and varied forms of unbelief. First published in 1964.

The Reformation of Our Worship, by Stephen F. Winward (John Knox, 1965, 126 pp., $1.75). An English Baptist author draws freely on the history of the Church in a discussion of many facets of Christian worship.

United States Government Diet Book, by the United States Department of Agriculture (Pocket Books, 1965, 63 pp., $1). Government aid to gluttons.

Preaching on Pentecost and Christian Unity, edited by Alton M. Motter (Fortress, 1965, 248 pp., $2.45). Many sermons on Pentecost by such men as M. E. Marty, C. Northcott, D. H. C. Read, R. W. Sockman, K. R. Bridston, and M. Barth.

The Protestant Pulpit, by Andrew W. Blackwood (Abingdon, 1965, 318 pp., $1.95). First published in 1947. Valuable.

Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation, by Roland H. Bainton (Abingdon, 1966, 299 pp., $2.25). First published in 1960.

Reprints

Science in History, by J. D. Bernal (Hawthorn, 1965, 1,039 pp., $12.95). A book that shows what science over the centuries has done to history. First published in 1954.

THERE IS AN OLD SAVING:

Twixt optimist and pessimist

The difference is droll;

The optimist sees the doughnut,

The pessimist sees the hole.

There is a vast difference of opinion among those who look at the world situation today. Some have an abounding optimism that the progress of man will lead to an eventual utopia on this earth. Others see only death and destruction, chaos and disintegration. To them the situation seems hopeless.

Christians should avoid both pitfalls. Their frame of reference, their confidence, their hope all center in a Person and his sovereignty and ultimate triumph. No matter how dark the world’s outlook and how great the seeming disintegration of the social order, there is the assurance in the heart of the Christian that God is still sovereign and that his holy purposes will be accomplished.

The Christian has the right to look at the world and be utterly pessimistic as to its prospects for bringing in a man-made golden age. At the same time, the Christian should be the most optimistic person in all the world because of his own orientation and destiny and the certainty of Christ’s ultimate victory.

The present chaotic world order has been clearly foretold by our Lord and others in the Scriptures. Jesus made some startling predictions before his death. Some were fulfilled in the days and years immediately following, and others have yet to be fulfilled. But many people read our Lord’s words and either distort their meaning or lay down a detailed blueprint of specific events that can at best be no more than the product of fertile imaginations.

In our Lord’s predictions of things to come, he was intentionally both vague and specific.

Having described conditions that will prevail before his return, he says: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14, RSV).

There may be speculation about whether this has been fulfilled, or about the degree to which the Gospel’s “testimony” or “witness” will yet have to be preached. But there can be no question about our Lord’s clear statement, “The end will come”—a “time” or “day” also predicted by both the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles.

At the beginning of this twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, the disciples asked Jesus to tell them the time of the prophesied destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the sign of the Lord’s return and of the close of the age. We know of the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. We know also of the “wars and rumors of wars,” which were never more obvious than they are today. And we know that in the closing days of the age, when “wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold” (Matt. 24:12).

No one can dogmatically affirm that these are the “last days,” but they could be. Astounding wickedness is being multiplied in the world. The Bible-centered standards of morality are being discarded in favor of relativistic ethics, the notion that what is right in a particular situation is determined, not by any divine authority, but rather by the nature of the situation itself. Sexual permissiveness or promiscuity is wrong only if the relationship is not “meaningful,” or if one of the partners “gets hurt.” Into every area of life new standards of morality have been injected that are based, not on the laws of God, but on the sinful desires of men. Wickedness is being multiplied in the earth, because men are rejecting God and his Christ.

Then our Lord gave this promise: “But he who endures to the end will be saved” (v. 13). This “enduring” takes place in the face of abounding wickedness. It is, as Isaiah says, setting one’s face like a flint against the siren calls of evil. It involves complete willingness to rest in and wait on the Lord.

This endurance of which Christ speaks stems from a childlike (not childish) faith in the integrity of God and the promises of his Word. It rests on an unswerving assurance that what he has promised be will fulfill. It is certainty in the heart that beyond the horizon there is a glorious eternity with the One who is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Later, in this same discourse, Jesus told his disciples of coming tribulation such as the world had never experienced, and added that but for the shortening of those days “no human being would be saved.” Then he gave the promise, “But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (v. 22b).

Until a few years ago I was unable to find any reason for believing that there could ever come a time when Christians in America would be persecuted for their faith. This has now changed. I personally know men who are being persecuted and ostracized by fellow Christians. An increasing number of ministers are discriminated against because they stand uncompromisingly for the historic Christian faith.

The detractors of that faith and the critics of the Holy Scriptures are now legion, and their boldness in their new denials and secularistic adventures knows no bounds.

The doctrine of the return of our Lord is vigorously opposed. The fact that some have brought discredit on this truth through their own arbitrariness or obsessions in no way invalidates the fact that Christ will return to terminate history as we know it.

Belief in the Second Coming (i.e., the “blessed hope”) has been the comfort and joy of countless believers. From the days of the early Church until now this hope has existed. Paul thought the Lord was soon coming again. We believe he may even be at the door. Although no man knows the day or the hour of the Second Coming, Jesus has sketched for us the conditions that will exist in the world prior to his return. This sketch we all should heed.

The pessimist looks at the world and feels the situation is hopeless. But the optimist looks about him and then looks up with the assurance in his heart that God is still sovereign and that he has a plan that is being inexorably worked out. What is that plan? That the Gospel shall be preached in all the world as a witness—and “then the end will come.”

World missions are a part of God’s plan. Evangelism directed to the individual and to the masses is a part of the divine commission to go into all the world and proclaim Jesus Christ as man’s only hope, now and for all eternity.

With such a God, such a Saviour, such a Gospel, and such a hope, Christians must be incurable optimists. And the words of our Lord continue to speak to them: “Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

A Challenge to the Sacred Cow

A Little Learning

As somebody so well said, “One man’s partridge is another man’s grouse.”

Things were going pretty well on the car radio until that announcer told me in that tone of voice announcers have—just the right touch of condescension and the sound of “look-at-me-how-youthful-I-am”—that that very night YOUTH were going to tell what was wrong with parents. It would he “refreshing,” he said, to hear these young people speak, because they would be so “straightforward and honest and candid.” I suppose they were also clear-eyed and ruddy.

I have no objection to youth, but I can’t stand YOUTH. The whole cult reminds me of some little ditty we used to have in a book of nursery rhymes, “Who can tell what baby thinks?” I don’t think the viewpoint of youth on any subject is worth any more than the viewpoint of anybody else, no matter how candid and clear-eyed it may be. Usually they simply don’t know what they are talking about.

It is sort of like the Christmas story. The whole thing is built around the “baby” Jesus. Who can fault a baby? The safest cover for a magazine is either a baby or a dog or a beautiful woman. But now where are we? We don’t know any more than we did before.

What really irritates me is that youth are probably learning the wrong sort of thing in what sentimental adults think is a learning process, namely, training in self-expression. They are learning that they can say almost anything just because they are young, not because what they have to say is worth saying.

In every generation people have been worried because young people have been going bad. As a matter of fact, history teaches us that young people did go bad in culture after culture, as a result of which all kinds of civilizations went to the wall. Maybe we have reached the stage in our own civilization where the question is not whether youth can talk but whether they have ever really learned anything.

Just for an old authority, take Dorothy Dix: “At twenty a girl’s only appeal is to the eye. She has not lived long enough to know enough to have anything to say that is worth listening to.”

EUTYCHUS II

No Conflict

After reading “Does the Bible Conflict with Modern Science?” (Jan. 21 issue), I thought you might be interested in a letter I received from Dr. Wernher von Braun, U. S. Army Missile Command.…

Keep up the good work of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, a publication which is of utmost value in these hectic days of apostasy.

E. O. DAVIS

Beasley, Tex.

• The material from Dr. von Braun has appeared in print, and includes this statement: “Two stimuli are necessary to make man endeavor to conform with the accepted ethical standards. One is the belief in a Last Judgment, where every one of us has to account for what we did with God’s precious gift of life on this earth. The other is the belief in the immortality of the soul which thus can cherish the award or suffer the penalty decreed in the Last Judgment. The belief in God and in immortality thus gives us the moral strength and ethical guidance we need for virtually every action in our daily lives.”—ED.

Less than an hour ago, I came upon the January 21 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in which the relation of science and religion is discussed by eminent men. I could not take the magazine from the library—nor did I more than scan the first page—but I know that it is a very important article (for me).…

I enclose thirty cents for a copy of the issue.…

ELLEN COPE

West Chester, Pa.

I am very happy to see that you are hitting scientism, the sacred cow which the run-of-the-mill theologians of the Church do not seem to dare to touch today. I am convinced that until we can again affirm faith in God the Creator and challenge naturalistic evolution, we cannot preach the Gospel either.…

HENRY BAST

Bethany Reformed Church

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Correction

The reference you make in your February 4 issue to the National Association of Evangelicals’ interest in the Christian servicemen’s centers for Viet Nam is not technically correct.

NAE has no plans to establish such centers through the CSF or otherwise. We are receiving funds to be used in the establishment of centers in Viet Nam, but these will be transferred to some other group more directly involved in the operation of centers.

FLOYD ROBERTSON

General Secretary

Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship

Washington, D. C.

Aches And Paynes

It seems CHRISTIANITY TODAY is having trouble with pains. The January 21 (News) story on the recent Evangelical Theological Society convention lists Houghton College President Stephen W. Paine (Wheaton ’30) as the new president. It is Dr. J. Barton Payne, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, who was elected to head the society. Dr. Payne served as vice-president during the past year, and Dr. Paine succeeds him in that capacity.

LOIS M. OTTAWAY

Manager, News Service

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

• We painfully acknowledge that we made an error.—ED.

Roman Rabbi?

In Addison Leitch’s insipid eulogy of Eugene Carson Blake (Current Religious Thought, Jan. 21 issue), he still failed to answer one question that has often puzzled me. Is Blake a converted Christian called to be a minister of the traditional Reformed faith—or is he really a Roman rabbi wearing a Presbyterian robe?

ROBERT DAVIS

First Presbyterian Church of Miami

Miami, Fla.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake has had many critics, and it was a very welcome change to read something for him instead of against him.

GERTRUDE TAGUE

Olympia, Wash.

Dr. Leitch writes as if Dr. Blake’s willingness to fellowship with Bishop Pike is inconsequential.… While there seems to be no doubt as to Dr. Blake’s ability to lead the church, the question should be asked, “Where … would he lead the church?” Whatever his natural qualifications, he must be judged by the answer to this question.

GORDON HOLDCROFT

Santa Barbara, Calif.

It is not amiss to remind Leitch that “Gene’s” advocacy of abolishment of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his loud amen to the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the Constitutional right to say prayers in public schools, is no legend but hard cold fact.…

WILBUR D. THOMAS

Washington, D. C.

Fourth-Class Beatles

Some of us feel that the States should pay through its nose for the privilege of Americanizing British culture. One method we have devised for this is to perfect the American pop-culture and sell it back to the States. This regains a small part of the millions of pounds we’ve spent this century on lining the pockets of Hollywood film and record stars. Indeed, some of us have been asking long before Eutychus (Jan. 7 issue) what kind of times these are that our balance of trade can be ruined by the importing of such junk from America.

Now one British group has perfected the

American idiom, so much so that the whole of Britain has profited. We’ve shown our gratitude to the artists for this eminent display of one-upmanship by giving them the O.B.E. This is, indeed, an order of knighthood; but the Beatles only made the Fourth Class (one from the bottom), so, alas, they have not been knighted. There’s no Sir Ringo … yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GEOFF THOMAS

Alfred Place Baptist

Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales

Coping With The Retarded

Congratulations on the article “Counseling: How to Cope with Mental Retardation,” by Carl J. Rote (Jan. 21 issue).

The author’s thinking is very much in line with what I have learned in ministering to both physically and mentally handicapped.

ROGER ARNETT

Minister to the Handicapped

The Methodist Church

Ann Arbor District

Belleville, Mich.

The article … is appreciated. I am a minister and father of a little mongoloid girl who is now eleven.…

Nancy is a great imitator; for example, she is just as apt to call me “Preacher Brown” as she is “Daddy.” Why not, since that’s what many in my congregation call me?

My wife and I can both testify that with love and proper care and treatment, a child like Nancy can be overwhelmingly accepted and bring rich blessings to the parents and family.…

J. S. BROWN

Lovejoy Baptist Church

Lovejoy, Ga.

The retarded child is not God’s handiwork but the work of his archenemy.…

Even this, the heartbreak of a mentally retarded child, he redeems, and somehow [in a way] that we cannot understand here and now with our finite minds, he makes even this work toward ultimate good.

FLORENCE B. FARNHAM

Winnetka, Ill.

God And No-God

It is enormously encouraging that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is not only putting emphasis on the Church’s mission to create new men in Christ but also formulating a strategy to make such emphasis worldwide. I have read the New York Times report of the Berlin Congress with great interest.…

1. Our position will be brought up to date and relevant to the man in the street. The secularist has rejected the authority of God. But what is he going to put in its place?… He has got to find some inner, order-treating authority or else, in order to overcome chaos, submit to totalitarianism—a dirty word in any age and particularly so in these days of unlimited freedom.… The truth is that evangelism, while restoring men eternally to God, is also essential for running this world here and now—a concern of vital interest to materialistic man.

2. The battle line between God and no-God provides us with the most effective ecumenical action. It draws a horizontal line that cuts right through the perpendicular divisions—Catholic and Protestant, left and right, conservative and liberal—that separate man from man. It unites the men of God in all groups against the atheism in all groups.

Atheism has become very apparent in Protestant circles. But if Father Pedro Arrupe, the new Jesuit General, is right in his observation, it has been felt in the Catholic Church too. In his Vatican Council speech Father Arrupe spoke of atheism as “insidiously influencing the minds of believers (including religious and priests) with its hidden poison and producing its natural fruits in the Church, naturalism, distrust, rebellion.”

An ecumenical action that restores men to God and lights atheism wherever it is found is far more logical and relevant for the world than building a huge socio-political church, which seems implicit in the Blake-Pike proposals.

R. N. USHER-WILSON

New York, N.Y.

Recognizers Recognized

Congratulations on the addition to your staff of my good friend John Lawing. Some of us “recognized his genius” long ago, but alas we have not been recognized. His biting satirical wit expressed in clever cartoons has been enjoyed by us since college days.…

You are to be commended on the excellent presentation of matters of religious concern which has made CHRISTIANITY TODAY one of the leading journals of its kind in the world.

JOHN S. BANKS

Highland Heights Presbyterian

Little Rock, Ark.

Keeping One’S Head

In a day when the world is losing its head (and especially the theologians), it is good to have a Christian magazine that is not (losing its head).…

Many of us are behind you all the way.

RALPH S. FINDLEY

Grace Methodist

Warren, Pa.

Forty Years Late

Re “Is Protestant Christianity Being Sabotaged from Within?,” by Ilion T. Jones (Jan. 7 issue): While I am glad for Dr. Jones’s alarm at the condition of Protestant seminaries, his alarm is forty years late in coming. The old modernism merely parroted the romantic rationalism of its day in superficial religious terms, as does the “new theology” proclaim existentialism.…

ROSS D. LYON

Kenmuir Baptist Church

Port Credit, Ont.

The article … is alone worth the price of our subscription, plus that of the gift subscriptions we made!…

MRS. NED ADAMS

Medford, Ore.

I think the fault lies not only in the professors in the seminaries but in the churches themselves. You can’t feed people on politics and social living and expect them to grow in faith in God. People need the Bible, God’s Word, not the whims and ideas of men.

GEORGE BROWNING

Hurricane, W. Va.

A Pacifist Defending Pacifism

To have a fighting man defend killing (“Is the United States Right in Bombing North Viet Nam?,” Jan. 7 issue) is like having an adulterer defend adultery or a covetous man defend covetousness. The only Person who can give the right answer is Jesus Christ himself. He gave it, in John 18:36! Let us listen to him!

WILLIAM G. LOWE

Berlin Bible Church

Narrowsburg, N. Y.

I have seen no political or moral argument that justifies our war intervention in Viet Nam. It seems to me that our position there has been dictated by stupidity, politics, fear, and outright egotism.…

CHARLES E. COMFORT

First Baptist

Homer, N. Y.

The Vanishing Criminal

Kudos on “Man Cannot Escape!” (Editorials, Jan. 21 issue). There are many besides those of us studying human behavior who look with chagrin upon the gradual psychologizing of our society. In a very real sense we no longer have a “criminal.” Some acts of crime (witness the assassination of Kennedy) are of such a nature that the criminal must be mad. The case is a priori. No evidence to the contrary could convince many persons of sanity in such criminality.…

DAVID A. FRASER

Cambridge, Mass.

The Baha’I Cult

Several years ago a German doctor who had gone to Ethiopia to practice his profession found it necessary to visit a dentist. As he was sitting in the chair with his mouth open, the dentist, an Iranian Jew who had become a Baha’i and had gone to Ethiopia as a missionary of his faith, said to his patient, “Did you know that Jesus. Christ has returned?” The doctor, who had given up the Roman Catholic faith in which he was reared and had become an agnostic, on hearing this strange question thought the dentist must be a mental case. But as the dentist continued to talk to him, keeping him two hours after the appointment was over, the doctor became interested, and finally became a Baha’i!

It is not only in Ethiopia that Baha’is are carrying on an active propaganda. Since my retirement as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church in Iran I have had the privilege of speaking in numerous churches in various parts of the United States, and in a number of places I have been informed that Baha’is are attempting to pull people away from their churches and draw them into the Baha’i World Faith, as they call their movement. Since Baha’ism arose in Iran a century ago and I had many contacts with Baha’is during the forty-three years I served in that land, I have often been asked to explain to Christians what this faith is.

The basic Baha’i doctrine is that God has made himself known to man again and again through “Manifestations,” each of which is more complete than that which preceded it. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, as well as Zoroaster, Buddha, and Krishna, are held to be divine “Manifestations.” But the latest and most perfect of the “Manifestations” is said to be Baha’u’llah, an Iranian who died in Syria in 1892. This name, or title, means “The Splendor of God,” and from it the term “Baha’i” is derived. Baha’is believe that all the Manifestations are One, and so they say that Baha’u’llah is really Christ, who has returned as he promised to do.

This “World Faith” is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, which is the national religion of Iran. But as it has moved westward to Europe and America, it has more and more sloughed off its Eastern garb and adorned itself with garments more attractive to Westerners. The “Principles” which have been adopted, and about which Baha’is speak so persuasively, are world peace, equality of men and women, harmony of science and religion, investigation of truth, freedom from all prejudice, a universal language, and so on.

Many Christians would favor some or all of these teachings. But no Christian can accept the basic theology of Baha’ism without denying the Christian faith. For to accept Baha’u’llah as God’s most perfect “Manifestation” and the hope of the world for the next 1,000 years is to deny the sufficiency and finality of Jesus Christ the Only Son of God.

Unfortunately, much of the attractive literature produced and distributed by the Baha’i Headquarters in Wilmette, Illinois, fails to give an accurate account of the history and teachings of the Babi-Baha’i Movement. Should any readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY wish to gain a more correct and complete knowledge of Baha’ism, I suggest that they study carefully the book which Baha’u’llah himself considered the most important of his many writings, The Most Holy Book, recently translated by Dr. E. E. Elder and published as a scholarly work by the Royal Asiatic Society of London. This book is sold by Luzac and Company in London and by Orientalia, Inc. (11 East 12th St., New York); price $3.00. Also, a booklet entitled “Bahaism” by Bishop Richards of St. Davids, Wales, and published by the SPCK in London is now available. Bishop Richards is an authority on the Baha’i movement and in this excellent booklet discusses it from the Christian point of view.…

WILLIAM MCELWEE MILLER

Philadelphia, Pa.

Editorial Breaks Through

Your editorial, “Will 1966 Signal a Breakthrough?” (Jan. 7 issue), went straight to my inmost spirit. I copied excerpts from the final paragraph for our church bulletin.…

My husband is seventy-seven and I am seventy-one, but we are still going on in his service in the church we have built and will dedicate, the Lord willing, on March 6, five years since we came here.…

SARAH SMITH REED

Decatur, Ill.

Still A Methodist

Your paper is challenging and is serving a very necessary spot for this troubled hour in history. It hasn’t made a Calvinist out of me, but I like to read it anyway. Just a line or two from a Methodist retired minister with fifty-one active years to his credit.

WARREN W. WIANT

Columbus, Ohio

Great Encouragement

I am sure the majority of sincere Christians believe in the inspiration of the Bible and the deity of Jesus Christ, and it is a great encouragement to me to find a magazine that is widely read throughout the Christian world [and] that devotes itself to the affirmation of the “faith once delivered”.…

IVAN WILLIAMS

Newhall Church of Christ

Newhall, Calif.

In no area of religious teaching is the Church lagging more than in adult education. Universities, colleges, and high schools are developing programs for adult study in all kinds of subjects, and their classes are in many cases overflowing; but in this important field the Church is far behind. If the need for better-trained Sunday school teachers is to be met and if the laity are to be biblically and doctrinally literate, there will have to be a great upsurge of adult Christian education. So long as the Church’s teaching ministry continues to be occupied almost wholly with youth, its outreach will be hampered.

But an upsurge of adult education can never be accomplished within an hour on Sunday. Weekday time must also be used. There is no other option. Here are samples of what is being done by some churches that have accepted the responsibility of weekday adult Christian education. Programs like these are certainly within the reach of thousands of other churches, provided that they are really burdened for the teaching of adults. And unless many churches are so burdened, Protestantism in American faces a growing spiritual debility.

For nearly a quarter of a century, the historic Park Street (Congregational) Church of Boston has conducted the Boston Evening School of the Bible. The school, meeting on Tuesday nights for two terms of ten weeks each, annually enrolls hundreds of adults and over the years has had more than 6,000 students. Its aim is an informed laity. Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, minister of the church, who with Dr. Howard Ferrin, now chancellor of Barrington College, began the school, reports that most of the Park Street members who are now vitally interested in studying the Bible have attended the evening school.

This program of weekday adult Christian education exists primarily for persons who are employed during the day and who wish to build up their knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures. There are three classes of fifty-five minutes at each session of the school and also a chapel service. The basis of instruction is two-fold: first, the curriculum must be Bible-centered, with the primary emphasis on the content of the Bible; second, the curriculum must exhibit uniformity and also diversity in order to maintain both continuity and interest. Courses are given in Old Testament survey, New Testament survey, Bible doctrine, and principles of Christian education. There are also electives. At a closing rally each year three types of certificates are given: the evening school certificate for successful completion of each course, the Sunday school teacher’s certificate for two years of class work, and the Bible student’s certificate for three years of work.

Although the school reaches far beyond the parent church (students in the current registration of approximately two hundred represent ninety-three churches), its administration is under Park Street Church, whose assistant minister, the Rev. Paul E. Toms, serves as dean. There is also an advisory board composed of interested Christian leaders who help direct the school, which is supported by enrollment fees.

So successful is the Boston Evening School of the Bible that it will be expanded to include an enlarged curriculum, afternoon classes, branches in suburban areas, and special sections for college and university students.

An adult weekday Christian education program closely linked to the Sunday school program is that of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. This large inner-city church, founded in 1778, had a peak Sunday school enrollment of 1,589 in 1925. For thirty-seven years the enrollment declined, until four years ago it was less than 600. Then the minister and session began to restructure the whole educational program. A key factor in the new program of this downtown church was the concerted effort to reach couples with young children. Special training courses were introduced and required for all Sunday school teachers. In three years the long decline in the Sunday school was reversed, and this when there were fewer people within walking distance of the church than ever before. Today the Sunday school numbers over 800.

Out of this revival of the Sunday school has come renewed interest in the study of the Scriptures throughout the congregation, leading to the organization of an Adult School of Christian Education, meeting on a week night. The schedule includes a cafeteria dinner, a brief chapel time, and two fifty-minute class periods. Generally, four courses are presented twice each evening. Subjects of these have included Bible book studies, biblical theology, archaeology and the Bible, the major cults, missions, the Bible and modern theological trends, the Bible and our present crises, and the Bible and marriage. Each year more than 400 adults have attended these courses.

In his evaluation, the minister, Dr. Robert Lamont, points out that this educational renewal has come about without a professionally trained director of Christian education. Laymen are providing dedicated leadership. Important results include small Bible-study groups meeting in homes in almost every major part of Pittsburgh. Of these informal, lay-led groups, Dr. Lamont says, “Their influence and outreach is beyond description. I suppose there are more copies of Bible commentaries and modern translations of the Scriptures being used by our people than in any other church of similar size.” In recent years, some forty young people from the church and Sunday school have gone into full-time Christian service. Many lives have been changed, teen-agers have been grounded in the great centralities of the Scripture in preparation for college, family life has been strengthened, and the 2,200-member congregation has been spiritually quickened.

That a church does not have to be large in order to venture into weekday adult Christian education is shown by the Hyde Park (Long Island) Baptist Church. In this suburban church of 260 members, the program centers in home Bible-study groups, sponsored by the church and its minister. At present twelve such groups meet weekly from September to June (and some continue during the summer). The groups are small and are under lay leadership. All but two meet in homes, most in the evenings but some, attended by women, in the mornings or afternoons. Groups are Bible-centered and continue for as long as two hours. The method is that of discussion, with the leader staying in the background. Leaders are chosen by the pastor on the basis of depth of Christian commitment and consistent Christian living as well as knowledge of the Scriptures. The pattern is to study Bible books and major Bible themes. Always the aim is to apply biblical truth to personal, business and professional, and community life.

The pastor, the Rev. Bruce Jackson, reports a raising of the level of Christian discipleship and understanding of the Scriptures in his church. When there is a call for some special service in the congregation or community, he finds that it is usually members of the home Bible-study groups who volunteer.

The small-group home-study approach is a simple and practical way of developing a more biblically informed and more deeply committed laity. Reports are that it is being used throughout the country (see “New Neighborhood Project: Bible Study,” by James A. Adair, Eternity, July, 1964). While it has drawbacks, such as the possibility of unproductive discussion and unsound interpretations of Scripture, adequate pastoral supervision and careful choice of leaders can guard against these. All in all, home Bible-study groups, through their very informality and spontaneity, are an important development. And they have a significant parallel. As George N. Patterson, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S correspondent in Hong Kong, reported (“Christianity Behind the Bamboo Curtain.” July 16, 1965), many believers in Red China are meeting in their homes, where their Christian life is centered around group Bible study.

For over twenty-seven years the First Presbyterian Church of Schenectady, New York, has had an effective program for teaching adults. Known simply as “Doctrine Classes,” it began with eight couples, mostly elders and their wives, meeting for two hours twice monthly with assignments under the instruction of the pastor, Dr. Herbert Mekeel. Ten years later there were more than 100 couples divided into two groups. Later, short-term classes were developed in many subjects, among them books or themes of the Bible, insights into Bible teaching from the viewpoint of scientists who are committed Christians (because of the proximity of the General Electric Company, the church membership includes a considerable number of scientists and engineers), personal evangelism, missions, music as related to worship, home relationships, cults, and archaeology. In all courses the constant emphasis is on what the Bible says. Attendance at the various classes ranges from seven (in Greek) to 175. Through the years outstanding teachers have come to give regular instruction. There have also been special classes for Sunday school teachers.

Especially significant are the results of adult Christian education in this church with a current membership of about 575. Many who have been in the doctrine classes have become pastors, missionaries, and other full-time Christian workers. The total number who have gone into full-time Christian work from the First Church of Schenectady stands at about 100. The program has also led to a noteworthy rise in missionary giving. Daughter churches have sprung up, one of them now larger than the mother church. Lay preachers have been developed and have supplied churches without ministers or filled in as substitutes. Other outgrowths include a program of weekly visits to the county jail, the county home, and the Utica Mental Hospital and city hospitals, and participation in the work of the International Friends.

One of the most promising agencies for adult weekday Bible study is Growth By Groups. Operating under the control of local churches but sponsored by a central organization that supplies study materials, this movement is the result of ten years’ research and experimentation to find a way to train laymen in discipleship and personal witness within the framework of the local church program. The first group began five years ago at the Memorial Baptist Church of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. With the number of groups doubling every year, Growth by Groups is now represented in 500 churches across America. It is undenominational and thus far has found its largest response in mainline denominations, notably Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian.

Those who want to go further in their Christian growth and experience are given the tools to dig into Scripture at home, and they meet in weekly fellowship groups to share their results. Groups are kept small—four to eight each—and the leadership rotates each week among the group members. Techniques of group dynamics, inductive Bible study, conversational prayer, and leadership training are woven into the program to make the groups self-sustaining.

To belong to a group, a person must commit himself to a life of spiritual discipline for a minimum of ten weeks by (1) maintaining a devotional period each day in which his life can be renewed through prayer and study of the Scripture, (2) seeking the help of other Christians of like mind in the fellowship of a small action group in which mutual encouragement can be found, (3) seeking the renewal of the church by making his group the seed-plot for other groups within his church and other churches in the community, and (4) finding creative ways to express the Christian faith in personal and corporate witness in the world outside the church.

Group members are obligated to help one another keep the covenant. For those who wish to continue after ten weeks (about 70 per cent do) there is a long-range program of advanced study. By the time the year is out, group members have mastered basic techniques for studying every kind of literature in the Bible completely on their own. And what is more important, the Word of God has in many cases come alive for members of the groups.

To forestall problems of group study, the program includes such features as regular group inventory quizzes, retreats, church control of the group, and suggestions on how the minister may derive the most benefit for his church out of this kind of adult study.

Pastors of churches active in Growth by Groups have spoken highly of the results of the program. According to the Rev. Walter Gilliland of the First Methodist Church of Corry, Pennsylvania, “Growth by Groups has been a blessing to our church. It is an excellent method for the establishment and continuation of small groups within the church for the purpose of studying the Word of God and encouraging Christian growth through a sharing process.”

Says the Rev. Franklyn Vial, minister of the Memorial Baptist Church of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, “A whole new generation of leadership is available in our church as a result of our adult study groups.”

The Rev. Dirk Nelson, director of Christian education at the Manoa Presbyterian Church in Manoa, Pennsylvania, explains his experience with Growth by Groups this way: “Our small groups have done more to create an interest in and concern for growth and commitment … and a context for real person-to-person fellowship around the Scripture than anything I have tried.…”

Dr. Roy J. Fish, director of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, experimented with Growth by Groups while a pastor in Fairborn, Ohio. He had this to say: “I observed an unusual growth in the lives of those who carried through with the program. Our young people especially found the creative study of the Scripture exciting.…”

Growth by Groups is so structured as to be available only through the local church. Thus each member of a group feels an integral part of the larger fellowship of his church, and the larger fellowship of the church is helped to recognize the need for a weekday program of adult Christian education. (The headquarters of the movement is Christian Outreach, Box 115, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania 19006.)

An example of a good-sized central-city church in the process of developing a highly structured house-church program is the First Presbyterian Church of Rockford, Illinois. Taking as a pattern “the church in the house” of early Christianity, Dr. James B. Adamson and his assistant, Rev. Robert C. Linthicum, in cooperation with the church’s session, explored how their church could more effectively proclaim Christ today by developing an informed and involved laity.

This year twenty future “lay ministers” are participating in a House-Church Training Institute. In preparation for their ministry, they are undergoing two years of special discipleship. The program consists of six courses, each meeting for eight sessions. Two courses are on the Old Testament and two on the New Testament, and they are followed by a course in contemporary society and a course in group sensitivity and awareness. There are weekly assignments and examinations in each course.

There is also an Outreach Committee, a group of lay people who are assuming the responsibility of evangelism and thus indirectly asserting the primacy of lay evangelism. Eventually this committee will begin actual training of lay evangelists in the house-churches and will coordinate the house-church program of verbal witnessing.

In addition, there is the Church and Society Committee, which expresses the belief that Christ witnessed to God’s love by his acts of compassion as well as by his atoning death. This committee is developing the portion of the program by which the house-churches will witness to their faith in the social problems of the city.

When the program is fully operative in 1967, groups of twenty to twenty-five members of the church will be meeting every two weeks in each ward of the city. At each house-church meeting, trained lay ministers will lead the people in intensive inductive Bible study which will then be related to the people’s responsibility to witness. At least half of each meeting will be devoted to planning and mobilizing the house-church either for evangelism or for social action for the next two weeks. Mr. Linthicum, reporting on the project, stresses that the whole purpose is to develop an instructed laity through whom the Gospel can be effectively presented to the city of Rockford.

These programs of weekday adult education are by no means unique, for a good many other churches are carrying on similar projects. Yet the programs described are representative of what can be done. Despite their differences, they have certain things in common. They all represent the initiative of the local church. (Even Growth by Groups, though related to a central organization, depends on local initiative.) They reflect ministerial leadership committed to the proclamation of the Gospel and the teaching of the Bible; hearing the Word expounded in the pulpit creates a desire for more knowledge of the Word. Opportunities for lay leadership and lay expression are encouraged. All the programs are bibliocentric. Changed lives and ultimate dedication to full-time Christian vocations result from these programs, which have as their purpose training the people in the Word of God.

Programs like these developed by ministers and congregations should not be taken to imply dissatisfaction with the educational leadership of the denominations. Rather, the inference seems valid that when a church is really imbued with zeal for teaching its people the Bible, it may go on to develop a weekday program suited to its own needs. On the other hand, local pioneering of this kind is all too rare. Thus denominational programs and leadership have their place. But they cannot succeed without ministers and church boards whose hearts burn with a vision of adult Christian education. Programs and curricula, however well thought out and expertly developed, must be accompanied by committed, Spirit-led leadership in the local church. Always there must be the honest awareness that, as Milton so poignantly said in Lycidas, “the hungry sheep look up and are not fed,” and that among the hungry sheep are multitudes of adults who want to know the Scriptures and who will study them if only they are shown how.

Protestants face a critical dropout problem. An appallingly high number of young people stop going to church and Sunday school, and their interest in spiritual matters declines drastically.

This raises some disturbing questions. What causes youth to lose interest in spiritual things? Is it lack of home training? Then why are there dropouts from Christian homes? Are church programs that lack youth appeal to blame? Then why do some churches with many activities for their younger members still lose them? At what age does the retreat from church and Sunday school, and from such basic Christian disciplines as Bible reading and prayer, begin? Are dropouts permanently lost to Christianity and the church? Is this problem faced only by evangelicals, or are churches of other theological persuasion also confronted with it?

Such queries stem from more than curiosity. They reflect a concern for the total outreach of Christianity and a burden to meet the needs of youth in the critical adolescent years. For a church or Sunday school to broaden its base and increase its outreach, it has to do more than attract new people; it must also retain those it already has. If it loses some while gaining others, at best it is at a standstill.

The first question is, then: What causes youth to drop out of Sunday school and church? Of several possible answers, possibly the chief one is that Christian training and encouragement in the home are inadequate. Everyone knows that parental example plays a tremendous role in determining the character of young people. Yet too few parents seem to take this seriously enough. Easy-going adjustment to the common, everyday evasions and the prevalent lack of self-restraint vitiate the God-given role of fathers and mothers in the spiritual nurture of youth.

A recent survey of 600 Sunday school dropouts in Topeka, Kansas, revealed that only a handful came from homes where one or both parents attended Sunday school (“How to Build a Better Sunday School,” by Harold Garner, Moody Press, 1965). On the other hand, 90 per cent of those young people who remained in school, progressing through the various departments, had parents who were active church members. The Sunday schools seem unable to hold children if home support is lacking.

As for evangelical churches, a study of their dropouts made in 1962 by the National Sunday School Association revealed that 70 per cent of 331 teen-age quitters were from families where at least one parent was not a Christian (Link, Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., 1963). And one minister with many years of pastoral experience commented in this survey that high school youth from merely nominal Christian homes are as likely to leave church as those from non-Christian homes.

However, church activity and Christian dedication are not enough. Parents must also show understanding and love for their adolescent children and deep personal interest in them. If a Christian parent shows by his actions that he is not really interested in his teen-age son or daughter, if he constantly nags at him and argues with him, that parent’s example of zealous church activity may do little to keep his child in church. Moreover, forcing teen-agers to attend numerous church services every week against their will sometimes causes them to rebel against attending any. Indeed, parental hypocrisy was the second main reason for quitting church given by young people in the NSSA survey.

Are there some dropouts from homes where parents are active, dedicated Christians and where there is real understanding and communication between parents and adolescents? There are indeed. For other factors beside the home contribute to the churches’ loss of teen-agers. Surely one of these is the failure of the church program to interest youth and to relate the Bible to their needs.

“I got bored with the Sunday school class. It did not speak to my needs,” said an Indiana high school graduate who comes from a Christian home. A Mississippi dropout remarked: “I don’t feel free in class to say what I really think.” “Until I was in junior high school, I loved Sunday school,” a nineteen-year-old boy stated, “but from then on it was just so much repetition.” Lois, a sixteen-year-old, said, “For the last two years I’ve had such dull teachers. The lesson was lectured in a monotonous voice.” A California boy commented that churches “do not deal with nor face the real problems of living.” Many high school young people also complain that their teachers are unprepared.

One hundred Lutheran youths, forty-one of whom were dropouts, gave reasons like these confirming the other surveys: “It was uninteresting”; “class was boring”; “I didn’t learn anything”; “it was the same old thing”; “we were never challenged to think” (Interaction, May, 1965). In other words, the teacher makes or breaks a class. It is his clear duty to be prepared and to make the lessons interesting by encouraging lively discussions, by relating the Bible to life, and by avoiding needless repetition. An eighteen-year-old mused, “I suppose it would take a keen teacher to satisfy a bunch of high school kids.” How right he is!

As for church services, the dropouts questioned by the NSSA complained, surprisingly enough, that they were too informal. (The churches represented were evangelical.) And, as would be expected, they also said that pastors were not preaching on subjects that appeal to young people.

In discussing youth meetings, the church-deserters said the meetings were unplanned and disorderly (a judgment revealing the adolescent need for a structure of authority), dealt with uninteresting subjects, had poor adult leadership, lacked variety, and were deficient in serious Bible study. Here again, irrelevance shows up as the cause of fading interest. Not surprisingly, there is at this point a parallel with a major cause of public school dropouts. As a statement from the head of the Maryland State Department of Education puts it, “Young people who drop out of high school see little relationship between the activities of school and the lives they now lead or expect to live.”

Secularizing influences in colleges and universities may also contribute to the problem. The presence of other family members in Sunday school and church encourages youth attendance. More than half of the forty-one Lutheran dropouts—but only 5 per cent of those still in Sunday school—reported that no other members of their families attended Sunday school. When a young person goes away to college, he is no longer under encouraging family influences. And the busy college schedule may tend to crowd out Sunday school and church attendance.

Moreover, campus opinion on this matter may be unfavorable; many college students seem to feel that church attendance is beneath them and that they can get along very well without it. Such attitudes are nourished by professors who downgrade Christianity, or fellow students who ridicule those who stand up for Christian convictions, or textbooks in which supernatural religion is questioned. Christian young people in college (and in high school too) may also be swayed by the prevalent materialism (“Get all you can while the getting’s good”), or by humanistic self-sufficiency (“We don’t need God; we’re doing O.K. without him”), or even by immorality and fatalism (“Eat, drink, and live as you please, because you may die sooner than you think”).

With such philosophies constantly put before the minds of young people, a gradual dulling of the spiritual senses is likely, even among Christian youths. For those already spiritually weak, the results may be disastrous.

Still another factor in the problem of teen-age dropouts is the nature of adolescence itself. Surveys reveal that the most common age for young people to quit church is sixteen. Adolescents are trying out their independence. Their desire for being on their own, for making their own decisions, brings about an overt rejection of authority, although inwardly they may still crave it. “Young people,” one writer has explained, “are trying to determine their own set of values apart from the family group. Sometimes they consider the church just an extension of the family control. So in their bid for complete freedom they often feel they must break with the church too.”

The second major question in this matter of spiritual dropouts is: Do dropouts return to church? Seeking an answer to this, I surveyed 253 young adults of five denominations in the greater Chicago area. One out of five reported he had dropped out of church at one time. The average period for staying out was five years, though the time ranged from less than a year to fourteen years. Thus it may be concluded that some dropouts do return.

Why did these return? Twelve of the thirty-nine who answered this question said they returned because they “got saved,” or “became a Christian,” or “got right with the Lord.” Seven reported an awareness of a spiritual need or a renewed interest in church. Six young married couples cited interest in providing spiritual training for their children. Four returned because of the influence of a fiancé or spouse. The conclusion is obvious but important: There is a correlation between church attendance and a personal relation to God through Christ. Evangelism is thus one of the most important answers to church dropouts.

Do the more liberal as well as the evangelical churches face the dropout problem? According to the NSSA survey, one out of six teen-agers in evangelical churches quits. But J. Edgar Hoover has reportedly stated that seven out of eight teen-agers in America leave the churches, including evangelical, liberal, Catholic, and Jewish congregations. This suggests that liberal churches may have an even larger share of dropouts than evangelical churches.

Helen Spaulding, in Youth Look at the Church (Bureau of Research and Survey, Department of Youth Work, National Council of Churches), states that nearly half of 1,311 youth and young adults interviewed dropped out. She gives the following reasons for dropouts: Church was boring and unchallenging; young adults had marriage and family responsibilities; the youth or young adult organizations were geared to single persons; the dropouts’ spouses were not interested in church; the hours of employment interfered with church activities; student activities vied for time and interest; the young people became too adult for the youth group; the youth in church were not friendly. Familiar reasons, all of them, and similar to those voiced by respondents to the NSSA survey!

The final question we must ask is: How can dropouts be prevented? I believe that we desperately need to do these things:

First, we must rethink our ministry to families. Without the influence of Christian parents, much of our effort to retain potential dropouts may fail. For too long many churches have neglected one of their most vital responsibilities—that of ministering to families, of helping parents fulfill their responsibility of providing Christian education in the home. Other churches might well follow the example of a Chicago church that is conducting after-church Sunday night forums on the problems of parents with teen-age children.

Again, our educational ministry to youth in the dangerous dropout years must be upgraded. Sunday school teachers and youth workers are needed who are spiritually dedicated, interested in youth, and willing to spend time with them. We must have adults who can teach the Bible enthusiastically and creatively and who can relate it to the problems of today’s adolescents. Bible study sessions must be brain-ticklers, not sedatives. Sunday school teachers must challenge high school youth to interact with the truth. The day when young people would respond to a merely entertaining youth program is over; they are asking for programs with intellectual depth and sparkle.

Young people yearn for opportunities to serve and to feel themselves a part of the church. Any dropout prevention campaign must encourage their active participation in such things as church discussions, choirs, athletic teams, and community service projects.

Finally, we must develop a more aggressive ministry to college youth. We should mail them the weekly church bulletin, write to them, urge those at home to pray for them. They should be encouraged to become active in a church near their college and in a Christian fellowship group on campus—Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, or their denominational student ministry. We should fortify their faith by providing them with good Christian literature on apologetics, Bible doctrines, Christian living and service, and witnessing. And churches in college communities should maintain an active Christian witness to college students, welcome them to all services and activities, and show them hospitality in the homes of the members.

The waning interest of many young people in spiritual matters can be reversed. But to do so will take a far greater measure of careful planning and self-sacrificial service than the churches have yet put forth.

TREE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW

Dropping your spent leaves

On the grass

Nor brooding over things

That pass;

Brushing the sky’s

Illimitable height,

Sun-crowned by day,

Starlit by night,

You stand—God’s witness

Of grace, given

Firm ground whereon to grow

Toward heaven.

O towering Tree!

Whose roots run deep

To reach life’s spring,

Whose branches sweep

Up to light’s very source.…

So I

Stand tall too

With thoughts lifted high

Gazing where boughs

Of a great tree

Frame windows

Of eternity.

M. WHITCOMB HESS

Seventy per cent of America’s people now live in the great urban centers, and pastors who are to minister in these areas where alienated and hopeless humanity is concentrated must not only understand the needs of these multitudes but also identify with their longings, their fears, and their anger. They must learn to go to the people where they are and the way they are. The city pastor who frequents only the places of unimpeachable respectability can hardly expect the needy masses to throng to his church on Sunday morning. The battle is out there. The man of God, though not of this world, must surely be in it.

The crushing anguish so present in our world is usually not apparent in a Sunday-morning or a Wednesday-evening congregation. Human distress ferments in the squalor of decaying tenement houses and at the back table of a gin mill on State Street, and boils in the core of a frenzied mob seeking vengeance on oppressors. As Nietzsche has written, “Great problems are in the street.” So men and women of God must bring to the streets the message of deliverance for the victims of sin. And they must do so with holy indignation against the social, economic, and political abuses of the day.

But the slum-dweller and the impoverished member of a minority group are not alone in their urgent need of the grace of God. There are minorities of another sort that are almost untouchable. The avant-garde intellectuals and artists live in a world so far from the average seminarian’s, and speak a language so foreign to his cars, that he may be unable to find any common ground on which to meet them. Yet there is hunger there; there is a sense of lostness, and an endless, fruitless search for identity and meaning. And at the end of every quest there is the inevitable fact of death. Camus writes of the artists’ and intellectuals’ rebellion against God: “The rejection of death, the desire for immortality and for clarity are the mainsprings of these extravagances.” Our task is to reach them with Christ’s message: “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”; “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” The simple and efficacious Gospel must be translated into terms that clarify God’s purposes in human affairs and answer the philosophy of the absurd with a redemptive message of hope, purpose, and meaning.

There is still another group whose needs must be considered. They are the faceless ones of our great middle class. They live neither in the realm of the spirit nor in the realm of the mind. Their lives are conformed to the expectations of those who determine their social and economic destiny. Their rule of life is, “The right face in the right place.” They are skillful role-players.

They affect cultural tastes they secretly detest; they entertain guests and maintain friendships they abhor. They drink because it is expected. Church affiliation and attendance is as much a social accouterment as is their membership in the country club and in the downtown knife-and-fork fraternities.

We overlook them as an object of need because they are in church on Sunday morning, they are clean and relatively well mannered, and they are not on the relief rolls. The “golden mean” governs their religious life just as it does their public life: “Don’t rock the boat.” “Take it easy.” “Don’t overdo it.” “Sure, religion has its place, but business is business.”

Many in this “lonely crowd,” as David Riesman calls them, find relief from stifling middle-class conformity in a social life of sophisticated debauchery that would be the envy of a patron of the eighteenth-century French salons. Here at our doors are pagans who must be reached with the conviction of their lostness.

The seminary student must learn by his own involvement in human affairs. His textbook may describe the problems of the quarter of a million Americans who live in prisons and reformatories, but he will never understand until he has been able to live close to these people and to feel some part of what they feel. He may read widely about racial problems and the horrors of the slums; but until he can feel the hopeless misery of the victims of prejudice and poverty and become a part of their life, he is unprepared to minister to them.

We need an extensive internship that will send these young men and women out to the prisons, the psychiatric hospitals, the university campuses, the plush resorts, and the coffeehouses; to the middle-class suburbs and to the urban and rural slums. With these raw experiences, let them come back to the classroom for reorientation and for further help in fitting these pieces of real life into a scriptural image of the ministry, so that they will be prepared for their high calling.

But in our enthusiasm let us not be misled into substituting skills and training for the quality of the man and the validity of his message. For we will not save one soul, much less the world, by the power of rhetoric or the conclusions of the social sciences. The seminary must also offer a solid, unshakable biblical and theological base for godly action on behalf of the suffering, frightened masses in our world. Otherwise all reform efforts are but houses built on sand. The man of God must be mature in his faith, rooted and grounded in the Word. He must be a man of prayer and devotion. He must be filled with an evangelistic zeal and a burden for the lost. His mission is to lead individual men to a personal experience with God through Christ, and then into the fullness of the Spirit-filled life.

This is only the beginning, however. Transformed men must transform the institutions of men. E. Stanley Jones has said, “A religion that does not start with the individual, does not start!” And then he warns, “A religion that stops with the individual, stops.”

There is a subtle temptation for us to work to relieve human suffering for the sole purpose of improving our proselytizing advantage. I am sure Jesus would never countenance one who refused to give the cup of cold water not spiked with an evangelistic message. Yet I wonder whether the Good Samaritan ever got that poor fellow saved. The Spirit-filled Christian has compassion for the total man; he is concerned for a man’s total relationship with God—body, mind, and spirit.

To those who have been unduly influenced by a morbid, deterministic dispensationalism and have no faith in God’s power in the world today, I urge a reading of more history along with the Bible. I remind them that, although our day is one of moral and spiritual decadence, eighteenth-century Europe was even worse. But a knight with a burning heart rode through English history and by the grace of God changed the moral and spiritual ethos of the British Empire. He won souls to Christ by the thousands, and the power of his influence joined that of others to vanquish human slavery, inspire child labor laws, reform the prison system, found labor unions and credit unions, and build schools, orphanages, and homes for widows. Fifty years after John Wesley’s death, his mighty influence was still felt for good in the British Parliament and his evangelistic fervor had swept two continents.

After a venerable history dating from the founding A of Harvard College in 1636, the church-related colleges of America are being required once again to reassess their purposes. Rarely have any of these colleges gone down to financial disaster. But many have surrendered their distinctively Christian mission in order to maintain a viable internal economy. The spiritual dimension has been either eroded or completely denied in many prestigious schools that were founded on the clear conviction that the Christian heritage must be transmitted along with the arts and sciences. This defection has had two main causes: the failure of the supporting churches to recognize their urgent obligation to support a distinctively Christian program in higher education, and the infiltration of secularistic approaches to the academic disciplines.

Today the population drift to cities, the explosion in scientific information, and the dramatic extension of technology into all of life are accompanied by a burgeoning demand for a college education. And the demands of personal security and the national economy, as well as the demands of the nation’s military security, bring pressures upon our young people to gain more and more education.

Yet with our phenomenal gains in higher education, the average American college student achieves a measure of intellectual maturity in complete isolation from the spiritual values that have been the basic dynamic for our free society. Any conscious attention to the Christian heritage more often takes the form of ridicule than of intelligent evaluation. It should sober us to think that Soviet universities require the same kind of ridicule of religion as part of their curricula. And judging by the behavior on some widely known American campuses, we are also failing in citizenship education. Civil disobedience as an almost compulsive pattern of protest suggests that many college men and women are ignorant of, or even hostile to, our own constitutional and democratic processes. Many years of secularism in higher education have brought us to the place in our national life where we are powerless to transform the great society into the good society at the personal level. With the notable exception of the Christian colleges, the spiritual understanding necessary to the good society is either ignored or denied on the campuses.

The responsibility of the Church of Jesus Christ is to confront the whole secular order with biblical, timeless truth. To do this, it must train its youth within a broader framework than that offered on a secular campus which inhibits free expression of the Christian faith. It is particularly in the church-related colleges that have not defected to secularization that lively discussions can take place between biblical theology and the academic disciplines. When the critics of Christian higher education—most of whom are neither teachers nor administrators—deplore the defects of Christian colleges, they should be sure they have a valid alternative to this necessary debate among Christian scholars.

What is needed for the fullest interdisciplinary dialogue is the total witness of a Christian university in which a faculty of dedicated scholars would represent the full spectrum of academic fields. Out of the best Christian thinking in such a university there would emerge a new direction for evangelical intellectuals. Here also believing scholars would be trained at the doctoral level to staff church-related colleges or to reinforce the remnant of courageous Christian teachers who on almost every campus are still a challenge to the seeking student. A university of this kind would work against mediocrity and lead Christian education and the Church to a new day by sending out a stream of committed Christian scholars and leaders.

For the present, however, the church-related colleges face both hazards and opportunities that are unprecedented. The population of the nation’s colleges now totals more than 5.3 million, with an estimated 7.3 million by the fall of 1970. The present enrollment is an increase of 10.8 per cent over 1963–64. With sixty per cent of the middle and upper-income groups anticipating college matriculation and with the new loan and scholarship provisions extending the opportunity to nearly every intellectually competent citizen, the colleges are operating in a rising market.

Yet church-related colleges cannot project their development programs on an unbroken, rising curve. For sixty years, two-year colleges have been expanding in enrollment and influence. They are now to receive a dramatic push from the federal government. The vision of “the great society” includes a community college within commuting distance of every American citizen. This will mean that many evangelical pastors will encourage their college-age young people not to leave the community and the local church. Moreover, the cost of a two-year education in a community college will be attractive to parents. As a result of the community-college explosion, church-related colleges may have to develop convincing recruitment programs if they are to fill their dormitories.

The national average cost for each student is now $1,560 in public senior colleges and $2,370 in private colleges. But a rise of 20 per cent is expected in the next five years, and a rise of 50 per cent in the next decade. As the federal and state governments increase their subsidies to public higher education, the private colleges may find themselves unable to meet mounting costs by continuing to increase fees. Unless church constituencies can be convinced that higher education within a distinctive framework of Christian philosophy is necessary and is a worthy objective for serious stewardship, church-related colleges may well be confronted with a difficult plateau existence, followed by declining-influence and enrollments.

No group in America’s history has shown a more persistent will to live than the evangelical colleges. In spite of the requiems that have been prepared for them, they continue to grow in strength and in number. The strong response to the Danforth Foundation’s study of church-related colleges and the statement of the “faith-affirming colleges” that emerged from the subsequent discussions are evidence of their convictions and their vitality (see Sept. 10, 1965, issue, page 25).

Most church-related colleges are continually re-evaluating the philosophy upon which their communities of learning are based. Clearer understanding of their purposes is providing criteria for curricular structure, faculty recruitment, student admissions, and methods of instruction.

Vital to this re-evaluation is not only the revelational truth of God in Jesus Christ but also a biblical anthropology. Secular education is defective from the Christian standpoint because it lacks a theology and because it is based on a view of man and his goals that is not above the biological level. But for Christian education, man is still “a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor.” The Christian educator is not narrower in his view of man and reality than his secular counterpart. On the contrary, he is open to the whole cosmic panorama of truth. Contemporary secularized intellectualism has not only brought us to a denial of God and the erosion of the values from which our freedoms came; it has also led man as a complex of sensate appetites into an existence devoid of transcendent meaning. Uniquely in higher education the evangelical colleges affirm the sovereignty of God, the infinite worth of the person, and the liberating and redemptive grace manifest in Jesus Christ.

In the biblical view, man cannot achieve his destiny in rebellion against God or in flight from him. Only in God’s presence does he truly find himself. And he fulfills himself only as he is reconciled to God through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is not this the axis of all meaning for man and his world? As such, it is the central focus of concern in Christian higher education. And it is precisely because contemporary man needs to be confronted with the full spectrum of truth—both noumenal and phenomenal, natural and supernatural—that men will continue to strive for an intellectual witness through a Christian college.

Concerned Christian educators should be fully aware of efforts on the large independent and state campuses to recognize religion as an aspect of human behavior so universal in history and in contemporary society that it cannot be ignored. A case for a department of religion was made at Princeton University as far back as 1935. The faculty committee responsible for the proposal separated the curricular and academic approaches from the extra-curricular practice of religion. This pattern has been spreading across the educational scene in the past decade. Presumably the academic approaches to religion will be historical, comparative, sociological, and psychological. The practice of the Christian faith will be continued through campus chaplains, student interest groups, and church ministries near the campuses.

The church-related colleges welcome the opportunity to train undergraduate religion majors for university departments of religion. But there are few places where these students can pursue a doctoral program apart from an atmosphere wholly intolerant of the revelational postulates of the evangelical faith. In spite of this, however, evangelical educators must face the strategic challenge to prepare students for this vocational opportunity on secular campuses. They must also face the more subtle implications for the biblical faith of this acceptance by secular higher education of responsibility for reducing religious illiteracy.

The proliferation of Christian colleges and the problem of finding funds for capital facilities, compounded by the burgeoning of instructional and general costs, also call for strategic evaluation. In some instances, evangelical interdenominational colleges established in the same regions as evangelical denominational colleges compete for financial support from the same sources. Without coordination, the pattern becomes uneconomical. The evangelical cause cannot indefinitely afford the luxury of duplication and competition. To offset it, administrators and trustees could enter into cooperative ventures. Colleges could by mutual agreement divide their fields of major emphasis. They could share distinguished guest professors. They could form a group for cooperative fund-raising. They could share cultural and lecture programs, foreign seminars, and faculty interdisciplinary exchange, and articulate their common biblical philosophy convincingly.

The church-related colleges are pioneering in how to live in the new world technology has given us. Extension and continuation educational programs are being enriched by genuine spiritual dimensions. The devaluation of persons in the sprawling “megalopolis,” the erosion of authentic community, and the disappearance of transcendent meanings for life are of primary concern for evangelical Christian colleges. The burden falls on those who can communicate the Gospel in a way that will interest and reach the educated man.

The Christian colleges in this urgent time know that they must train men and women who will have the commitment, the courage, and the intellectual competence to meet the secular challenge head on. The colleges cannot do this as tradition-bound prima donnas. But their potential is unlimited if they can find new ways to add strength to strength in cooperative adventures. Such a turn of events will attract scholars of stature, students of first-rate potential, and support of the necessary size. And what is this but another way of saying that if we “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all these things shall be added”?

The question whether the Christian college can survive under the stringent pressures of the decades ahead is deeply troubling to many friends of these colleges and to leaders in the Church. But some are asking an even more ominous question: whether the Christian colleges should survive, or whether the educational function of the Church could be better achieved within the public institution. This second question is being asked, not belligerently by those opposed to Christian colleges, but quietly and thoughtfully by some dedicated supporters of the Church and its educational program.

Before dealing with the first question, which is the main subject of this essay, testimony must be given on the second. While the educational objectives of the Church can and must penetrate into the secular and public institutions of higher education, there is nevertheless a supreme need for church-related institutions, in which the Christian religion may be taught and evangelical truth presented without inhibition or limitation. Here all truth can be integrated with the religious conviction of the Church. In such colleges, the Gospel can be presented and the relation of the biblical revelation to the whole of life can be taught. The faculty can be Christian in both conviction and profession. Young people can be encouraged to find their intellectual and spiritual maturity in Christ. And, finally, in the Christian college the Church can give its supreme testimony that its convictions are an integral part of the expanding knowledge of the universe. The Christian college and the church-related college must survive for the sake of youth, for the sake of the Church, and for the sake of society.

Not only Christian colleges but also the other independent colleges, with the exception of those that are very highly endowed, are today being threatened by external developments over which they have no control. These are, briefly, the galloping inflation of costs, the rise of the community college, the gigantic intervention of the federal government into higher education, and the paucity of qualified faculty.

Some of these factors are more critical for the Christian colleges than for the others, and the last—the paucity of qualified faculty—is one. An essential element of a Christian college is the religious dedication of faculty members, who must also be fully qualified academically. Not that the professor of physics, for example, should intersperse his lectures with theological homilies or that street evangelism must be his avocation; but he should have a profound faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. If he has this, he need not preach in class or in the streets. His faith will shine through his teaching and convey itself to the students. It is difficult to see how a college can be effectively Christian without a faculty composed of such persons.

However, personal Christian commitment is not enough. Added to this should be high intellectual attainment, evidenced by the earned doctorate and by continuing scholarship. Naturally, professors who have both intellectual attainment and Christian dedication are far fewer than those who have only one or the other. But it is striking and significant that professors having both these qualities are sought after by the great secular universities and employed at salaries far exceeding those that can be paid in the Christian colleges. The secular universities seek them out, because scholars with Christian commitment are often outstanding in teaching and in scholarship and research, and, further, because these universities desire the influence of such men within the philosophical hodge-podge of which their faculties are necessarily constituted. Recruiting such men is made easier for the universities by the conviction of some of these scholars that their evangelical testimony is more needed in the secular institutions than in the Christian colleges.

The result is that the scholar who is both dedicated to Christ and academically superior is often not available to the smaller colleges. And the Christian colleges are then caught between the upper and nether millstones. They are tempted to use dedicated Christians who are deficient in academic attainment or first-rate scholars who are non-evangelical or sometimes non-Christian. They often compromise by accepting both. The result is a blunting of the Christian witness of the colleges and a deterioration in teaching effectiveness.

In a decade or so, every sizable community will have a tax-supported college. Contrary to present claims, these will be four-year colleges. Those now functioning are already paying better salaries than the Christian colleges. These community colleges will have finer buildings and facilities, probably better faculties, and lower tuition, or none at all. Paradoxically, they may, despite their secular character, be indirectly responsible for a strengthening of Christian faith among many of their students, who, since they will continue to live at home, will not be uprooted from their churches.

The Christian college will soon be confronted with this competition not only in its own locale but also in the towns from which its resident students might come. Unless it is markedly superior in both its academic and its religious program, it may lose out.

Faculty salaries will play a much larger part in this situation than they have in the past, or than the colleges are willing to admit. The average faculty salary in the Christian and church-related colleges is about half that of the salaries in the greatest secular universities. There may have been a time when fully qualified and dedicated Christian professors preferred to serve in the smaller college. This was a time, however, when there existed a buyer’s market in college teaching, when the salary difference between the small college and the great university was not so large, when relatively more fully qualified teachers were available for both types of institutions, and when evangelical professors were less sensitive to the call of Christian mission in the universities than many now are. Whatever the reason, the day is past when an appreciable number of committed Christian instructors who were also first-class scholars could afford to choose the small college at half-salary. These men now have families to educate. While salary rates are not everything, they cannot longer be disregarded in the search for the kind of faculty essential to the Christian college. Unless the financial element is honestly faced, there is no way out of the problem.

Now, it is at this point of financial crisis that the professing Christian colleges, along with most of the other independent colleges, are making a monumental error. They are clinging to the old tradition that they can survive by begging help from the public, the churches, the alumni, or the government to finance their budget deficits. Moreover, they are making the equally grave mistake of disregarding the tremendous resources that are wasted in their traditional curricula, organizations, and calendars. There is more financial relief available to most colleges in restructuring their curricula and organization than in begging for help. Because they are not using all their resources and are maintaining conventional programs, the Christian colleges are moving toward such enormous annual operating deficits that the giving of churches, alumni, friends, and even the government will be inadequate. That is to say, the possibility that giving from all sources will be adequate to future operating deficits is most remote.

The givers will not make up these deficits because the idea is abroad—and it is absolutely correct—that in this new day the colleges can and should be self-supporting in their operations. Alumni, public, foundations, and ultimately denominational boards will reserve their giving for capital purposes, or for measures that mean academic, spiritual, or physical improvement. Rat-hole giving to make up deficits is on its way out. Even the government with its extensive grants makes no pretense of supporting operating deficits. Indeed, its contributions are very largely for buildings, the maintenance of which only adds to operating deficits. And when the tax-supported community colleges number in the thousands and tens of thousands, the political pressures of Congress and of most politicians will be more and more toward help for these public institutions. Any support now offered to the professing Christian college may be declared illegal, just as it would be for the churches of which these colleges are the educational extensions. Furthermore, for a college committed to a Christian testimony, it is quite as wrong to use the forced tax-support of non-Christians for proclamation of the Gospel as it would be for a church to do so.

There is a brighter side of the situation. The Christian and the small independent colleges can survive, even against the great odds that are coming up. But they cannot do so by constantly increasing their annual operating deficits, by spending their money for the maintenance of outmoded traditions, by sustaining curricula that are proliferated beyond all reason in futile imitation of the large universities, by employing at half-salaries twice as many teachers as are needed, by pursuing development programs which will bankrupt them with added maintenance costs, by borrowing amounts that in many colleges already exceed the total negotiable assets, and by continuing to engage in deficit spending, deficit thinking, and overbuilding.

The restructuring of a college for operational self-support and for academic superiority is very difficult. Yet it can be done, if administrators are willing to bring expense down to income, limit curricula to fundamentals, reduce the size of the faculty and administration and pay adequate salaries for fully qualified people, measurably improve the deteriorating quality of teaching and academic standards, relieve the supporting public of the burden of perennial deficits and thus release them to greater capital giving, work for the greatest possible use of the buildings, and construct needed new buildings only when they have the funds to do so. Studies in Higher Education, a non-profit enterprise dedicated to the survival of the Christian and the independent college, is presently engaged in showing trustees and administrators of such colleges how these things may be done.

Impartial educational statesmen have from time to time predicted that the Christian college will die, either by becoming a tax-supported community college without a Christian testimony, or by being replaced by the community college. But this need not happen!

All is not well with the educational ministry of the Protestant Church. In this secularized age with its explosion of knowledge as well as of population and its vastly enlarged opportunities for witness, the Church’s educational agencies are, all things considered, doing little more than holding their own. And in the battle for the mind in a day of pervasive unbelief, Protestant education is not just in danger of defeat; in many quarters it is now losing the battle. Even among youth and adults under the Church’s tutelage, commitment to supernatural Christianity with its authoritative Bible and its moral absolutes is giving way to the espousal of a relativistic ethics and a diluted theology that are essentially sub-Christian.

Christian education is primarily the responsibility of the congregation. Plans may be formulated at denominational headquarters, but the local church must carry them out. Although the practice of Christian education has ebbed and flowed during two thousand years of church history, the instinct of Christians to teach and learn has always persisted in one way or another, even during the dark ages. The strength of this instinct is evident today. New Sunday school materials, research projects, growing numbers of courses in colleges and seminaries, the emergence within recent decades of the new vocation of director of Christian education—all these bear witness to concern. Yet this concern must reach the people so as to involve them more extensively in the noble task of Christian education.

Despite all the efforts being made, much more must be done. The educational work of the Church needs not only renewal but also restructuring. Old patterns will no longer do. Just as the catechumenate in the early centuries and the schools of Reformation times gave way to other forms of Christian education, so in our day change and development must come if the Church is to be true to its Lord’s commission.

For one thing, the Sunday school is sick. In a time when the proportion of youth to the rest of the population is mounting and public and private schools are bursting at the seams, the slackening in Protestant Sunday school enrollment that began in 1960 persists. (Although the Yearbook of American Churches shows an increase of more than 800,000 between 1962 and 1963, this is chiefly the result of the inclusion of a few groups—one of which listed more than 600,000 Sunday school pupils—that were not included the year before. And if the large gains of the Mormons are deducted, hardly any increase remains.)

For almost a hundred years in America, the Sunday school has been the lifeline of the Church. To it the Church looks for new members and for an informed laity. But any minister with the temerity to give his congregation the simplest Bible test will probably be as shocked as the pastor in Southern California who tried this a few years ago (see “Biblical Literacy Test,” by Thomas Roy Pendell, The Christian Century, Oct. 21, 1959). Seminary professors know that it is futile to expect their entering students who have been under the instruction of the Church all their lives to have anything approaching an ordered knowledge of the main content of Scripture. In a book giving the results of a survey of a midwestern county, two sociologists bluntly say: “Ministers who use biblical imagery in their sermons and who refer to biblical stories in their presentations are undoubtedly failing to communicate with the majority of the members in their congregations who have no context in which to place such references. The Sunday schools seem to have been quite ineffective in communicating cognitive material to the students” (Religion in American Culture, by W. Widick Schroeder and Victor Obenhaus, New York, 1964). To be sure, factual knowledge is only part of what religious teaching should convey. Yet factual knowledge of the Bible is indispensable for Christian living. As the prophet Amos said to Israel, there is a famine in the land, a famine of hearing the Word of God.

There are, however, other results of church education than merely intellectual ones. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart,” said the psalmist, “that I might not sin against thee.” Christianity is more than moralism; it is a new, redeemed life in Christ. Yet the Bible is at the heart of morality; and when people no longer take the Bible seriously, morality sags. The prevalence of classroom cheating, sexual immorality, shady tax practices, and other cutting of ethical corners does not speak well for the effectiveness of the Church’s teaching. Our Lord’s criterion, “By their fruits you shall know them,” still stands.

What lies behind this comparative ineffectiveness? Three things come to mind—first, an inadequacy of time; second, a shift in content; third, a loss in basic purpose.

Education may be broadly defined as the changing of human beings through experience. And the experience that effects the change is of two main kinds—formal and informal. Formal education includes what goes on in class (or in church) on weekdays or on Sunday. Informal education is constantly coming to young and old through radio and television, the press, travel, and a thousand and one other influences.

As leisure time increases, the effect of these informal educational influences becomes stronger. In comparison, the time allotted Christian education in churches following the usual Sunday school pattern is obviously inadequate and clamors for action. The weekly lesson period, only a fraction of the time a child in day school gives to one subject like algebra or science, is simply no match for the formal and informal secular experiences crowding in upon his consciousness.

In former generations the Protestant home was itself a center of Christian education and thus reinforced what the Church was doing. But that day has long since passed. Even with new curricula and skilled teaching, the time for the most important of all instruction falls far short of what is needed. And with due allowance for other church-directed youth activities, the proportion of church education to secular education is still very small.

A second reason for ineffectiveness in the Church’s educational ministry is a change of emphasis. Along with the praiseworthy endeavor to bring new materials and better teaching techniques into the program, there has been in some quarters a dilution of biblical and doctrinal content. Such a shift in emphasis reflects changed attitudes toward Scripture and its authority. When the Bible is no longer received as the infallible Word of God, the compelling motive to teach it is inevitably undermined. Protestantism owes its very existence under God to the written Word. Not only so, but it was the insistence of the Reformers that every Christian be able to read and know the Bible that led to the beginnings of public education.

All knowledge and all of life can be drawn upon to illustrate Scripture, but never to the neglect of first imparting what it records and teaches. The book that has been the very mother of education demands the best kind of presentation. While there is surely a place within the Church’s educational program for such studies as church history, denominational polity, social application of the Gospel, and instruction in worship, these must be taught from a Bible-centered point of view. And as the Church moves forward, as it must, and finds ways to increase the time spent in educating its people, the Bible must remain central. In its education as in its theology, the Church needs to hold fast the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura.

Thirdly, if there is to be renewal of the Church’s teaching ministry, Christian education must ask itself whether it is really obeying the Great Commission. Although the newer translations differ from the Authorized Version in rendering the verb in Matthew 28:19 “make disciples of” rather than “teach,” a “disciple” is a learner, and the verb used in the text of Matthew carries the clear meaning of “teach.” This is reinforced by the second part of the Commission (verse 20), which uses the regular verb for “teach” (didaskō) and specifies the content of Christian teaching as “all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” And this charge to teach what Jesus taught ties the Church’s educational ministry inescapably to Scripture. It must never be forgotten that, as J. L. Leuba points out, “in teaching Scripture, Jesus was actually speaking of himself, for Scripture bears witness of him (John 5:39, 45–47)” (A Companion to the Bible, ed. by J. J. Von Allmen, New York, 1958). How then can the Church fail to ground its teaching in the book to which Jesus appealed (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10; John 10:35), and which (Luke 24:27) he taught?

Now, although Scripture with its witness to Christ is the central subject of Christian education, the word “obey” in the Great Commission must never be forgotten in the zeal to teach the Book. The command to obey distinguishes the educational ministry of the Church from academic teaching. While the latter may, and often should, be objective, Christian education always drives for commitment. The truth it expounds is truth to be done. To obey Christ involves more than essential day-by-day obedience; it also involves the initial life-changing response to the command to believe on him with which he so definitely confronted men. Thus Christian education cannot be divorced from the constant presentation of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord of the individual life.

When the Church is carrying out its Lord’s command to “make disciples” (surely another way of stating the obligation to evangelize), preaching and teaching go hand in hand. Christian education will be culpably short-sighted if it ever loses the expectation of the pupil’s persona] encounter with Jesus Christ.

There is, of course, much else in Scripture about teaching. But the principle is plain. Nothing in educational philosophy or methodology must ever divert the Church from the central emphasis of its teaching as set forth by Christ.

But the educational ministry of the Church also needs restructuring—and that in a radical way. Not that the Sunday school should be scrapped. With all its faults it still lies close to the heart of the Church’s educational ministry and is indispensable. But as the liberal arts college, while at the center of the university, cannot fulfill all the functions of the university, so the Sunday school cannot fulfill the whole of the Church’s teaching ministry.

“But why,” someone may ask, “must the educational ministry of the Church be radically restructured?” A basic reason lies in a fundamental change in American society. No longer is the Protestant ethos dominant in our culture. In what Professor Robert T. Handy of Union Seminary (New York) calls “the radical pluralism” of today, Protestantism is but one among many religious forces, even though numerically it is still in the majority. (While causes of this decline are complex, religious liberalism within the denominations has doubtless helped bring it about.) Thus the Church can no longer count upon the prevailing climate of opinion to support the teaching given in the Sunday school and in its other educational agencies.

Of the many suggestions for restructuring Christian education, these hold great promise: closer cooperation of Christian education with general education; adult Christian education; various released-time or free-time plans; home-centered Christian education; the teaching function of the pulpit; the parish school or the Christian day school.

Consider first the objective teaching of the Bible and religion in the public schools, the door for which was opened by Mr. Justice Clark’s majority decision in Abington v. Schempp (cf. “A Strategy for Christian Education,” editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 7, 1965). Let it only be said here that, while it is not within the province of the Church to ask for such teaching in public schools, concerned church members who are taxpayers and parents of school children may and should try to persuade school boards to initiate it.

More directly related to the Church is dual enrollment, or shared time. This plan for educational cooperation of church and state has been given added stature by the Education Act of 1965. (Though some have questioned the constitutionality of dual enrollment, it seems likely that it will not be declared unconstitutional.) Under this plan, church and public school share the weekday educational time of the child. Certain subjects, such as those of a religious nature and others that are called by some educators “value subjects” (history, literature, and the like), would be taught in religious schools. Possibilities—and difficulties—abound. Think, for instance, of the possibility of weekday use of some of the many fine educational plants attached to Protestant churches that stand idle for the greater part of the week—surely a sad waste of facilities. While the Catholic Church with its parochial schools is best equipped to participate in dual enrollment, Protestants should certainly be willing to try the experiment also. The plan, though it presents complex problems, has great virtues, not the least being its confirmation of the right of parent and church to share the child’s educational time.

A problem of particular concern to evangelicals is the theological character of the teaching under dual enrollment. Though this is an ecumenical age, there are many Protestants for whom the instruction of their children under liberal or neo-orthodox theological auspices would be unacceptable. This leads to the suggestion that in communities practicing dual enrollment there be two Protestant educational centers—one sponsored by churches committed to a more liberal theology and the other by those committed to a conservative evangelical theology. Such an honest acknowledgment of basic differences would doubtless be preferable to compromising conviction or to teaching from a bland, invertebrate theology that would offend no one.

A more familiar extension into the school day of religious teaching is the released-time program, as successfully practiced in New York City since 1924 and in many other places throughout the country. In the Zorach case (1952), the Supreme Court held released time to be constitutional. It offers an important addition to the Church’s instruction of its youth; yet most Protestants seem disinclined to make use of it.

Different from released time are the various free-time plans of religious education. Among them is the three-hour Saturday morning church school taught by paid teachers. Such programs are encouraging signs of the experimentation from which advance comes.

Notice must also be taken of the Christian day school. This growing movement has both its parochial and its parent-controlled aspects. Some churches are using their educational facilities for day schools, which have historic roots in groups like the Missouri Synod Lutherans, Christian Reformed, and Mennonites, and are increasing among Episcopalians, Baptists, and others. While there is a tendency to deplore the growth of the Christian day school movement as a threat to the public schools, this kind of school is a valid option for concerned Christian parents, although it will probably remain a minority solution to the problem of Christian education.

One of the Church’s weaknesses is in adult education. Many Protestant churches ask little of candidates for membership beyond a brief declaration or reaffirmation of faith or a letter of dismissal from another church. That so often little in the way of adequate instruction is provided for adults entering its fellowship is unfortunate. The midweek service with its combination of prayer and teaching of the Word was once a means toward an instructed laity. But it has now dwindled. The Southern Baptists have their Sunday evening Training Unions, which do much for denominational solidarity; yet the amount of systematic instruction in these meetings is rather small. To be sure, there have been various interchurch endeavors to promote adult Christian education. Among them is the United Christian Adult Movement, begun in 1936 under the International Council of Religious Education, the Federal Council of Churches, and various missionary and women’s agencies. But the work of this movement, tending as it has toward such things as family counseling, though important, can hardly be called structured Christian education.

If the biblical and doctrinal illiteracy of the laity is ever to be remedied, the Church must move forward in adult Christian education. Here is a field that cries out for initiative on the part of pastors and boards, sessions, and vestries. Institutes for the study of the Bible and doctrine, groups of adults meeting in homes, weekday reading and study programs, cell groups that give time to fellowship in the Word—these are among the many possibilities (see “How to Make Adult Training Work,” p. 18). We cannot wait for youth to be taught how to “give a reason for the hope that is in [them].” If for no other reason than that there can never be good Sunday school teaching without teachers who know the Bible, we must begin now to educate adults.

As with children, not least among ways adults learn is by doing. That such lay organizations as Christian Business Men’s Committees, The Gideons, Yokefellows, Faith at Work, and The Christian Teachers Fellowship flourish shows that there is an empty place in Protestantism. These are not primarily study groups. But they engage in active Christian witness and in so doing develop in their members a real measure of biblical knowledge.

No church program of Christian education is complete if it omits the home. Few changes in our society have had more far-reaching consequences than the change in the American home. Now almost a phenomenon is the home that maintains family Bible reading and worship. Yet the family, not the school or the church, is the single most effective educational agency. Parents need the help of the Church in fulfilling their responsibility for the Christian training of their children at home. It is strange that many a parent who openly deplores the cessation of devotional observances in the public schools cannot be bothered to say grace at his table or to think about family worship. Few ministers can assume that the children of the congregation are getting any religious training at home. Yet many parents would be willing to give their children some Christian teaching if they could be shown how to do it. Home study guides, such as courses in biblical content and Christian doctrine, are needed. Perhaps the methods of programmed learning could be adapted for this purpose. In a day when the average American family has its television set going six hours a day, there must be time for prayer and reading and study of the Bible under the leadership of one or both parents.

There are other ways of renewing the educational ministry of the Church. The pulpit itself is a prime agency of Christian education, if—and the qualification is all important—the pastor knows how to expound the Word of God. Nothing must ever be allowed to crowd teaching out of the pulpit—neither life-situation preaching, nor inspirational sermons, nor evangelism itself. The pastor skilled in exposition will find none of these incompatible with opening up the Word.

The renewal and restructuring of the Church’s educational ministry stands among the foremost Protestant priorities. If some say that primacy belongs to evangelism alone, the reply must be that the evangelistic motive is implicit in Christian education and that without it Christian education is powerless to achieve lasting results. For if education has to do with the changing of human beings by experience, let it not be forgotten that the Church has committed to it in the Gospel the one message that can regenerate human beings.

To reform the Church’s role in education will make heavy demands on personal devotion and will call for sacrificial expenditure of time and money. But it must be done if Protestantism is to bear an obedient witness for Christ in this secular and materialistic society. In an essay called “Portrait of the American Mind,” Professor Henry Steele Commager says that Americans have boundless confidence in the new generation and are willing to make “almost any sacrifice for it except those required by self-restraint.” God forbid that Christians, once they are aroused to the urgent necessity for doing something about the Church’s inadequate teaching ministry, should be unwilling to make every sacrifice for this cause.

WORD AND LOOK

So much can hang upon one word—

A sword to pierce, a jewel to glow,

A stone to shatter, or a balm

To soothe a throbbing woe.

And just as much upon a look—

A sneering lip, a sparkling eye,

A blank bare-wall face, or a smile

That beams a heart’s warm cry.

Great power in little words and looks

Each other’s worlds to warm or chill.

So One Divine Word made our world;

One Look will make all still.

DOROTHY R. WEBB