Traditionally the relation between philosophy and religion has been one either of identity, as in the early Middle Ages, or of hostility, as in the Age of Reason. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this hostility focused on the question whether the claims of religion were true, and the task of the Christian philosopher was to show that the assertions of religious language were indeed true.

Within the last thirty years the situation has been transformed by the rise of the philosophical movement known as “logical empiricism.” In light of the vast and profound influence of this movement, the philosophical world can now be said to hurl a completely different challenge at those who make religious assertions. Religious language is no longer given the privilege of being classified as false; it is now classified as meaningless. The relation between philosophy and religion is no longer one of positive hostility; the former simply ignores the latter as “non-sense.”

At first religious thinkers were at a loss as to how to respond to such a challenge, except to deny it. Within the last ten years, however, a large number of scholars, particularly in Britain, have attempted to meet the challenge head-on. Much of the impetus for this response has come from the writings and influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which is known today as “ordinary language philosophy,” or “linguistic analysis.” The meeting of the challenge hurled by logical empiricism is fast becoming the focal point of much of contemporary philosophy and theology, as is shown by the many articles and books on the subject. For example, a large part of the religion section of the July 10, 1964, issue of Time magazine was devoted to this.

The challenge that logical empiricism presents to those who use religious language can be stated in a variety of ways. The following syllogistic statement of this challenge serves to distinguish the various responses quite clearly, and so it is especially appropriate for the purposes of this study.

1. All cognitively meaningful language is either definitional or empirical in nature;

2. no religious language is either definitional or empirical in nature;

3. no religious language is cognitively meaningful language.

Three things about this syllogism should be noted at the outset. First, this is the core of the challenge as it is presented by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1946). Although many logical empiricists, including Ayer himself, have offered helpful modifications of their original, somewhat dogmatic position, there has been no attempt to retract the essence of this argument as it applies to religious language.

Second, the term “cognitively meaningful language” is used to refer to those statements that admit to true and false judgments. Cognitive meaning is thus to be sharply distinguished from emotional or existential meaning, which is better termed “significance.” This is not to say that cognitively meaningful statements are void of emotional significance, but it is to say that the nature of each is quite distinct. The statement, “It is raining,” can have both cognitive meaning and emotional significance; but the fact that the former is susceptible to true and false judgments while the latter is not makes it clear that the two can and need to be differentiated.

Third, this syllogism is obviously valid. This eliminates the possibility of maintaining that the premises are true but that the conclusion is false.

Three main approaches have arisen in response to this challenge, aside from those that accept its conclusion and thereby dismiss religious language as nonsense. This latter view will not be discussed, since according to it nothing remains to be said.

Some thinkers, by training and vocation usually more philosophical than theological, respond to the foregoing argument by accepting the truth of both of the premises and of the conclusion as well. These thinkers differ, however, from those who go on to say that religious language is nonsensical. They maintain that even though religious language is not cognitively meaningful, it is very significant from an emotional, ethical, or existential point of view. That is to say, once we get straight about the true nature of religious language, the challenge of logical empiricism is no longer devastating to the use of such language.

Belief: A Matter Of Perspective

Two very prominent British philosophers have expressed this point of view, namely R. M. Hare and R. B. Braithwaite. Hare develops his view of religious belief as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable interpretation of one’s experience in his contribution to New Essays in Philosophical Theology (ed. by Antony Flew and Alasdair McIntyre, London: SCM Press, 1955, pp. 99–103). He suggests that religious beliefs are really principles of interpretation, or frames of reference, by means of which one interprets his experience. As such, religious beliefs are not subject to true and false judgments because they simply do not assert any’ state of affairs. Hare calls such beliefs “bliks” and likens them to the perspective of a paranoid who is convinced that all Oxford dons are out to do him in. Thus there is no factual disagreement between the two statements “God exists” and “God does not exist.” The real difference is one of perspective—like the difference between optimism and pessimism.

Suppose we believe that everything that happened, happened by pure chance. This would not of course be an assertion; for it is compatible with anything happening or not happening, and so, incidentally, is its contradictory. But if we had this belief, we would not be able to explain or predict or plan anything. Thus, although we should not be asserting anything different from those of a more normal belief, there would be a great difference between us; and this is the sort of difference that there is between those who really believe in God and those who really disbelieve in him [New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 101, 102].

It is clear that if religious beliefs are viewed as bliks, then the language in which these beliefs are expressed is neither empirical nor definitional in nature. Thus Hare accepts the argument of logical empiricism but endeavors to redefine the nature and function of religious beliefs and language.

R. B. Braithwaite also redefines the nature of religious language by likening it to the language of morals and commendations. When a person expresses a religious statement, he is not asserting a fact but indicating a commitment to, and commendation of, a certain attitude or source of action. In his own words:

A religious assertion, for me, is the assertion of an intention to carry out a certain behavior policy, subsumable under a sufficiently general principle to be a moral one, together with the implicit or explicit statement, but not the assertion of certain stories [An Empiricist View of the Nature of Religious Belief, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955, p. 32].

In other words, Braithwaite, like Hare, concurs with the argument of logical empiricism that religious language is not cognitively meaningful, but he does not think that this renders religious language ethically meaningless.

By way of criticism, at least three things can be said about this approach. First, it is simply not in harmony with the way religious language is used. Most religious people would object if you told them that their religious beliefs are neither true nor false. Second, it leaves unanswered the question as to how one chooses between right and wrong bliks, and/or ethical commitments. Third, there is a strong possibility that the teachings of Christ were meant as assertions about human experience that could be confirmed or disconfirmed. But more about this later.

Other thinkers are not prepared to accept the argument offered by logical empiricism. These, by training and vocation usually more theological than philosophical, respond to the challenge by accepting the truth of the minor premise (2), while rejecting the truth of the major premise (1). The main contention of those taking this approach is that cognitive meaning cannot be confined to the logical and empirical realms. Here it is maintained that religious truth, along with other forms of metaphysical truth, is a form of cognition that has a unique nature. Since such truth is embodied in religious language, religious language may be cognitively meaningful even though it is neither logical nor empirical in nature.

Revelation And Mystery

One of the best-known exponents of the point of view that rejects the first premise is Michael Foster (Mystery and Philosophy, London: SCM Press, 1957). Foster identifies revelation, and thus the religious language that expresses revelation, with mystery. He objects to the logical empiricists’ demand for clarity in our talk about experience. Thus he would conclude that revelation can be cognitively meaningful, that is, subject to the judgment “true,” without being reducible to either logical or empirical language. Foster says:

Revelation is of mystery, but mystery revealed is not eliminated, but remains mysterious. It remains an object of wonder, which is dispelled when mystery is eliminated. There is no method by which revelation can be commanded: “it is” (in the Bible) “not a thing to be procured from God by any technique.” That is to say, it is not subject to human mastery [“Contemporary British Philosophy and Christian Belief,” The Christian Scholar, Fall, 1960, p. 194].

Although the first sentence raises many other questions, there can be no question that Foster rejects the major premise of the logical empiricist argument.

Willem Zuurdeeg also refuses to accept the statement that all cognitively meaningful statements are either logical or empirical in nature (An Analytical Philosophy of Religion, Nashville: Abingdon, 1961). He maintains that religious truth, and thus religious language, is unique in that it is not limited to propositional assertions. Moreover, it cannot be analyzed or justified. Nevertheless, Zuurdeeg wants to maintain that such statements are still meaningful and true.

I must protest vehemently against the notion that language of Christian faith consists of propositions which can be analyzed by means of logic. If it does not make sense to a philosopher to attempt a logical analysis of persons, how much sense will it make to a theologian to try to do so with the Lord God? Exactly in the way that man is man-who-speaks, so God is God-who-speaks. Can we offer a logical analysis of the Creator of Heaven and Earth? Shall we discard the doctrine of the Trinity simply because the language in which it is expressed is logically inconsistent [“Implications of Analytical Philosophy for Theology,” The Journal of Bible and Religion, July, 1961, p. 209].

Despite the fact that the approach represented here by Foster and Zuurdeeg argues on the side of angels, there are several reasons for rejecting it as inadequate. First, it runs the risk of rendering religious language so distinct from all other language that it becomes irrelevant. Second, no extra-logical criteria are offered by means of which one can even decipher the content of religious statements, let alone distinguish between those that are meaningful and those that are not. Third, there is no contesting the fact that reality and experience cannot be completely re-presented in language, but this obvious fact should not be used to license sloppy talk. Fourth, as John Locke clearly saw, whether or not revelation is true is not the real problem; rather, the problem is which statements are to be taken as revelation. The best way to honor revelation and mystery is to apply rigid standards so as to be able to distinguish non-sense and falsehood from meaning and truth.

Relevance And Truth-Value

Another way of responding to the argument of logical empiricism is to accept the major premise (1), while rejecting the minor premise (2), and there are those thinkers who have taken up the responsibility of constructing such an approach. The main drive of this approach is to be found in the attempt to relate religious language to experience and thereby to establish it as cognitively meaningful. Thus, it might be called a form of Christian empiricism. The thesis of this approach is that religious language very often fulfills empirical functions and is, therefore, at those times cognitively meaningful. The main burden of such an approach is to specify the exact situations in which religious language can be said to be empirical.

One of the most interesting presentations of the cognitive status of religious language is to be found in the writings of John Hick of Princeton Theological Seminary (Faith and Knowledge, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957; “Theology and Verification,” Theology Today, April, 1960; and Philosophy of Religion, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963). Hick maintains that statements that make predictions about experiences taking place after death are open to verification (or at least confirmation). Such verification is termed “eschatological” by Hick, and firmly establishes the cognitive meaningfulness of this type of statement. Space will not permit a full analysis of Hick’s views at this juncture. It is sufficient to note that they are explained and presented by one who is fully aware of the challenge of logical empiricism and who endeavors to learn from its insights. Concerning the claim that there will be experiences after death, Hick says:

The logical peculiarity of the claim is that it is open to confirmation but not to refutation. There can be conclusive evidence for it if it be true, but there cannot be conclusive evidence against it if it be untrue. For if we survive bodily death we shall (presumably) know that we have survived it, but if we do not survive death we shall not know that we have not survived it. The verification situation is thus asymmetrical. However, the religious doctrine at least is open to verification and is accordingly meaningful. Its eschatological prediction assures its status as an assertion [Faith and Knowledge, p. 150].

Another recent explication of the empirical nature of religious language is found in John Hutchison’s Language and Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963). Hutchison maintains that since religion is to be understood primarily as a means of comprehensive life orientation, the language of religion is to be understood as the expression and description of various orientations to life. He contends that, like poetry, religious language is very often intended to communicate certain feelings, values, facts, and interpretations of human experience.

It should be clear that such theories or interpretations of life are subject to true and false judgments in the same sense that broad theories about the physical universe are—namely, in terms of confirmation and fruitlessness. In chapter five of his book, Hutchison uses the term “adequacy” to designate the standard by means of which life-orientational theories are to be evaluated. This adequacy implies, in addition to rational consistency and coherence, the standards of sufficient reason, simplicity, empiricism, and critical rigor (Language and Faith, pp. 129 ff.).

Other writers suggest that much of religious language functions as an empirical-theoretic model. A helpful development of religious language in terms of models can be found in the writings of Frederick Ferré (Language, Logic and God, New York: Harper & Row, 1961; and “Mapping the Logic of Models in Science and Theology,” The Christian Scholar, Spring, 1963). He outlines the functions of theological models in the following way:

Theological speech projects a model of immense responsive significance, drawn from “the facts,” as the key to its conceptual synthesis. This model, for theism, is made up of the “spiritual” characteristics of personality: will, purpose, wisdom, love, and the like. For Christianity, more specifically, the conceptual model consists in the creative, self-giving, personal love of Jesus Christ. In this model is found the only literal meaning which these terms, like “creative,” “personal,” and “love,” can have in the Christian vocabulary. All the concepts of the Christian are organized and synthesized in relation to this model. The efforts of systematic theology are bent to explicating the consistency and coherence of the synthesis built on this model of “God” as key concept. Christian preaching is devoted to pointing out the applicability of this conceptual synthesis to common experiences of life. And Christian apologetics struggles to show that the synthesis organized around this model is adequate to the unforced interpretation of all experience, including suffering and evil [Language, Logic and God, p. 164].

Ferré goes on to point out that since the language, thoughts, and actions that are based on a given conceptual model can be evaluated in terms of their coherence and adequacy in dealing with experience, it is possible to speak of one model as being more appropriate, or more fruitful, than others (ibid., p. 165). This sort of evaluation implies cognitive meaning, since although the criteria and results of such evaluation are difficult to determine, the models are, in theory, confirmable or disconfirmable.

The Disclosure-Commitment Concept

The one writer who perhaps has done more than any other to develop an explication of the complex elements involved in this experiential use of religious language is Ian T. Ramsey of Oriel College, Oxford (Religious Language, New York: Macmillan, 1957; and “Contemporary Empiricism,” The Christian Scholar, Fall, 1960). Ramsey develops the concept of “discernment” or “disclosure” to describe the nature of the situations that provide the experimental basis for religious language. He maintains that a religious disclosure gives rise to a “commitment” to what is disclosed, and that this disclosure-commitment situation in turn gives rise to what we have termed experiential-religious language. It is maintained that such disclosure-commitment situations are anchored in experience and in this sense can be said to be empirical.

One group of examples Ramsey uses to illustrate what he terms “discernment” or “disclosure” is composed of situations in which, because of a unique set of personal experiences, the significance is always greater than what can be expressed in terms of physical description alone. In a way he is saying that because of the facts of highly personal experience, seemingly ordinary, public situations are “seen,” or discerned, in a new light. In other words, one’s personal, mental experience often acts as a catalyst, or a category, which fills a situation with more significance than just a description of the objective facts would provide. Thus such situations are more than empirical in the narrow or sensory sense of that word, but are still empirical (experiential) in the broad sense.

Ramsey maintains that the experiential-religious language that arises out of religious experiences is both similar to and different from ordinary language. It is different in that it is not about objects, and thus follows a logic that is a bit “odd” at key points, e.g., in the use of the term “God.” Such talk is similar, however, to that type of ordinary language which pertains to personal experience. Thus Ramsey maintains that the term “God” is no more odd than the term “I” as employed in such personal talk as, for instance, the discussion of one’s motives.

So our conclusion is that for the religious man “God” is a key word, an irreducible posit, an ultimate of explanation expressive of the kind of commitment he professes. It is to be talked about in terms of the object-language over which it presides, but only when this object-language is qualified; in which case this qualified object-language becomes also currency for that odd discernment with which religious commitment, when it is not bigotry or fanaticism, will necessarily be associated.

Meanwhile, as a corollary, we can note that to understand religious language or theology we must first evoke the odd kind of situation to which I have given various parallels above. This is plainly a sine qua non for any religious apologetic.

At the same time we must train ourselves to have a nose for odd language, for “logical impropriety,” and it is possible to do this by concerning ourselves with other examples of odd language which may not in the first instance be religious [Religious Language, p. 47].

The main point that Ramsey makes, in good Wittgensteinian fashion, is that just the fact that talk which arises from personal, religious discernment is odd with respect to the language of physics, is no reason to conclude that it does not have an adequate logic that is similar to other forms of ordinary language. Thus this experiential-religious language can be cognitive to the extent that (1) it is anchored in experience and (2) it has an established use by means of which appropriate and inappropriate talk can be distinguished.

A ‘Qualified-Model’

In discussing the attempts to describe God, Ramsey develops the concept of a “qualified-model” to explain the logic of such phrases as “infinitely good” and “first cause.” In such phrases the terms “good” and “cause” are models in the sense that they are taken from experience, while the terms “infinite” and “first” are qualifiers that indicate the logical oddness of this particular use of the model terms. Thus to say that God is “infinitely good” is to say that he is similar to the moral quality of goodness we experience in everyday life, and that his goodness has a different quality than human goodness.

Now it would seem that this analysis suggests a way of dealing with religious language that conforms both to the way religious language is used and to the criteria of legitimate theoretic language. To talk of God as a “heavenly father” or “divine creator” is to speak analogically and hypothetically. That is, one is endeavoring to suggest a qualified similarity between a concrete aspect of past and present experience, and future experience. This qualified similarity must be taken as a tentative hypothesis, or conceptual model, which may be confirmed or disconfirmed on the basis of its fruitfulness in enabling a person (and perhaps a society) to appreciate, understand, and predict experience. (Ramsey suggests the concept of “empirical fit” as a criterion of confirmation in his new book, Models and Mystery [New York: Oxford, 1964].) Obviously, if such models tend to be disconfirmed, then they should be withdrawn, and vice versa. In any case, they have an experiental, albeit a theoretic, nature, and thus it can be said that they involve cognitive meaning.

This, then, is a sketch of the challenge and main responses concerning the meaning of religious language. Obviously, this writer is more impressed with the third, or empirical, response to the challenge because it preserves both the relevance and the truth-value of religious assertions. The other two responses are weak at these two points. All of the responses, however, are only in their beginning stages, and a great deal of work remains to be done. Further explorations may reveal more fruitful approaches.

The morning mail at 3, blvd Gambetta, Strasbourg, brought the latest issue of the new Lutheran theological journal Dialog. In an editorial entitled, “A Theology of Rediscovery,” Roy A. Harrisville of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, informed readers that the “boredom” of Lutheran orthodoxy was being replaced by a “new posture”—characterized by such views as that “there is a demonstrable parallel between Bultmann’s method and Luther’s concentration of the gospel in the single theme of justification” (Dialog, Summer, 1963, pp. 188–90).

This kind of reasoning was no surprise, for I had encountered similar utterances in earlier issues of this journal which consistently tries to lift American Lutheranism out of its “boring” biblical orthodoxy into the mainstream of “contemporary” theological thought (i.e., that contemporary theology which, with Harrisville, “admits to the discrepancies and the broken connections in Scripture”). What did surprise and amuse me was the assertion that “this concern for the contemporary manifested itself in a streaming to the universities of Europe … One by one, the so-called ‘Young Turks’ went to Basel, to Heidelberg, to Marburg, to Tubingen, to the universities of England and France.” The obvious implication was that merely to drink the heady wine of European theology was to be forever cured of reactionary views of plenary inspiration and Reformation orthodoxy. I found this implication especially bizarre because I was then engaged in writing a dissertation for the degree of Docteur de l’Université, mention Théologie Protestante, at Schweitzer’s alma mater, the historic University of Strasbourg. To suggest that European theological study and historic Protestant conservatism were incompatible seemed a serious misunderstanding of the nature of the European academic atmosphere. This “Young Turk” thus felt a strong desire to dethrone a stereotype by offering a closer look at the European doctoral experience.

Why Europe?

Doubtless theological “boredom” in the States has driven students to Europe. None except the intellectually lazy care for the seminary or graduate school where students must conform to their professors’ views. But where today on the American scene is such orthodoxy enforced? Not, I should say from personal experience, in the doctrinally orthodox seminaries, but rather in the very institutions claiming to offer “theologies of rediscovery.” While serving as a faculty member in a theological school of a large American university, I discovered to my dismay that able doctoral students in that school often spent long years attempting to complete their work, only to be eliminated from the program because their theological “attitudes” did not fit the prevalent modes of thinking or methodologies. Encouragement was ostensibly given to engage freely in “constructive theology,” but such “construction” was not really a “free” activity, because it implied that the great confessional documents of the historic Church, and even the Scriptures on which they are founded, stand always in need of reconstruction. I also noted that at this same university the theological school was often viewed with less than respect by the non-theological faculties, because it was evident that a doctorate in theology meant not so much a superior level of academic attainment as an achievement in learning how to manipulate currently accepted conceptual patterns and “in-group” terminology.

Faced with such an atmosphere, I took my Ph.D. in a non-theological field and looked to one of my own denominational seminaries as a more satisfactory possibility for the Th.D. However, the latter situation manifested the same kind of “inverse orthodoxy”: to display a non-conservative doctrinal position was to exemplify “academic freedom,” whereas to affirm biblical evangelicalism was to betray “poor scholarship.” After a summer program in which I received professorial criticism for a subsequently published paper asserting the historical as well as theological soundness of John’s Gospel, I determined that a Th.D. from such an institution would represent conformity to a viewpoint rather than scholarly achievement.

At this point, I recalled two or three European theological professors under whom I had studied during their visits to American seminaries; these men differed from their average American counterparts not so much in doctrine as in their attitude toward the nature of theological study. Whatever their personal religious position, they respected the views of the individual student. They demanded of him not conformity to their beliefs but sound scholarship in clarifying and defending his beliefs. This was in refreshing contrast to the approach taken by a professor of church history under whom 1 studied, who began the year by saying, “We are going to remold you here in seminary.…”My thoughts thus turned to Europe. “Boredom” with theological conformity did enter the picture; but it was the exact reverse of the straw-man boredom referred to by Harrisville. I was bored with a conformity imposed by so-called “theologies of rediscovery,” which say in essence: “Be as free in your theological thought as you wish—as long as you don’t try to embrace orthodoxy.” For me a theological doctorate had to represent scholarship and not sycophancy. This was my “Young Turkism.”

Professorial Tone At Strasbourg

My first insight into the character of a European doctoral program came when I applied for the program. There were no “fill-in-the-blanks” forms, no psychological aptitude tests. Application was by personal letter, accompanied by proof of degrees held and examples of already published works. The Faculté de Théologie Protestante wished to be satisfied on two counts only: first, that the candidate had an original and significant doctoral topic he wished to pursue; and second, that he was capable of pursuing it. Administrative safeguards of course exist: the foreign student must, by French law, evidence academic achievement equivalent to the old licence en Théologie Protestante—that is, he must have the theological competence of the French doctoral student who has completed all course work, written examinations, and the minor thesis for the so-called “state doctorate.” But the entire admissions procedure has the ring of scholarship, not the smell of administrative minutiae. Even the physical arrangements at the university uphold this impression: the secretariat of the faculty, where official inscription is made, is a dingy office in a building separate from the Palais Universitaire, where the attractive faculty offices are situated. How unlike the average American institution, in which the “administration” possesses the visible signs of power while faculty offices display clear evidence of subordinate status!

What were faculty members like? Were they cold, dogmatic rationalists—radical negative critics of Scripture and creeds—promoters of “theological rediscovery”? Doubtless, examples of these stereotypes can be found in European theological schools. However, I had no professor of this kind at Strasbourg. It was impossible to compartmentalize the faculty; no one was a “Bultmannian,” a “Barthian,” or a “Bonhoefferian.” In general, the tone was more Barthian than anything else; but the overriding impression conveyed by faculty members was that the search for theological truth can never be limited to the categories of a single modern school of thought.

The perspective was thoroughly academic and thoroughly historical. Flanking the entrance to the Library of the Faculty was a glass bookcase containing the publications of its members, which represented a wide gamut of approaches and judgments and testified to the principle that scholarship, not ideological conformity, should characterize the true graduate faculty in theology as in any other subject. The historical emphasis—natural in a faculty out of which the university itself arose during the Protestant Reformation—prevented the substitution of facile novelties for serious analyses of theological problems. The creeds of the Reformation and the work of the Orthodox fathers were listened to—not passed over in haste in an effort to reach the twentieth century as quickly as possible. Dean François Wendel, in a course on the Christology of the Reformation, spent more time in the seventeenth century (the “Age of Protestant Orthodoxy”) than in the sixteenth, even though Wendel is one of the greatest living Calvin scholars. Roger Mehl’s course in the Augsburg Confession frequently pointed out how Barth has to his detriment moved away from Reformation doctrine. I was often reminded of Paul Tillich’s famous remark that the European theologian, unlike the American, when faced with a theological problem asks first, “What has been thought on the question through church history?” Such an approach is a valuable corrective to the popular notion today that nineteen and a half centuries of Christian history have been but an inadequate prelude to the theological innovations of our generation.

The faculty members assuredly did not hold the verbal inspiration view of Scripture, and often it became evident that they confused this position with the Roman Catholic, Tridentine dictation-theory. But never was there the slightest attempt to ridicule plenary inspiration or to force conformity to another view. Indeed, I am firmly convinced that because scholarship and not presuppositionalism is the determinative factor in the theological atmosphere at Strasbourg, its faculty members would be hospitable to the orthodox view if it were consistently represented today by scholarship on the level of that of Theodor Zahn or B. B. Warfield. This is saying a great deal, for few American theological faculties would be psychologically capable of embracing biblical orthodoxy regardless of the force of its presentation, simply because conformity to the prevalent view, not scholarly objectivity, so often seems the overriding consideration.

A theological faculty usually sets the tone for its students. Have not many of us suffered from the indefinable student tensions in a seminary where the faculty, unsure of itself because of the unacademic nature of much of its work, overcompensates for inferiority feelings through heavy assignments and through preoccupation with the minutiae of course requirements and “hours” for graduation? At Strasbourg, the Protestant Theological Faculty, as the founding faculty of the university and as a faculty comparable to the others in scholarly productivity and academic standards, found no need to question its raison d’être. Therefore the students also could relax and study theology for its own sake—not for the sake of “proving” something by accumulating course hours. Indeed, since there the attainment of degrees is based upon written examinations, the production of a thesis, and oral defense of the thesis, one must think of actual mastery of the subject, not of mechanical acquisition of “grade points.” The program for the present licence (much like our S.T.M., but required of all candidates for ordination in the state Lutheran Church in the Alsace) is thus rigorous, but the students find themselves in such a “permissive” environment that they show few signs of student neurosis. Quite the contrary; I have seldom met a more irrepressible group in or out of theological circles. I remember well the evening we sang Negro spirituals in the single students’ subsidized residence, and the cartoon on the front cover of one issue of the student paper, showing a dancing figure with the caption: “Vive le Yé Yé théologique—David twistait devant l’Arche!”

Granted that many students, especially on the licence level, find it difficult to secure a firm theological orientation in such a non-regimented environment, nevertheless the truly open-minded faculty attitude, coupled with insistence upon a solidly grounded historical program of studies—including mastery of the original languages of Scripture—helps the students arrive at confessional solidity. Certainly no faculty prejudice creates the barrier to orthodoxy that is the most unfortunate aspect of American seminary life. It was evident how much a plenary inspirationist could accomplish on a faculty such as that at Strasbourg; and it is noteworthy that the Groupes Bibliques Universitaires (the French equivalent of IVCF) have a potentially open field among seminary students.

Because I was encouraged to work in complete independence, I became so engrossed in the subject of my thesis that a three-volume, 950-page work resulted. The necessity of consulting primary documents of the Reformation era led me to manuscript collections in five countries and to conversations with theological specialists such as Heinrich Bornkamm of Heidelberg. On completion, the thesis was presented and defended in a public examination before a traditional jury of three members of the Faculté: Dean Wendel as Président, accompanied by Pierre Burgelin, the Rousseau authority and urbane philosophy professor from Paris, and René Voeltzel, the author of works on seventeenth-century theology and on twentieth-century religious pedagogy. During this three hour French-language defense, two things became evident: though on many theological issues the jury and I disagreed, their concern was simply that I be able to defend the scholarship of my position: and though the four of us did not always see eye to eye, we thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue.

Thus from my European experience I carried home this ideal of true “dialogue,” which by no means necessitates the “theological rediscoveries” of Harrisville’s “Young Turks.” Mention of Strasbourg will always conjure before me the image of its medieval cathedral, rose-pink at dusk, where in the late sixteenth century Jakob Andreae preached acceptance of the Formula of Concord. That orthodox confession, it will be remembered, opens with the words: “We believe, teach, and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged.”

DEAR PASTOR:

I am writing this letter as a Christian faculty member at a state university—a man who needs your help. My request involves the university where I teach. It contains thousands of students, faculty people, and employees, some of whom are interested in finding a purpose in life. They admit to an inner yearning, a wistful search for meaning; they are concerned about the strife and injustice in society; they are looking for a solution to the individual problem of meaninglessness and the social problems of selfishness and hate.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, you and I have something to offer them. To us, Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life who satisfies that inner hunger; he is the Giver of Life who enables people to dwell together in love. Moreover, he needs them in his Church today.

The problem is how to reach the university campus with the message of Jesus Christ. Out of eighteen years’ experience as a senior faculty member at one of the nation’s largest state universities, I suggest some preliminary considerations that relate to the solution of that problem.

The Local Church. The campus world in general will not go to church to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The majority will not go to any church (except infrequently); if they do, there is no assurance that they will hear Christ presented clearly. If the majority of students and faculty are to be reached, they must be reached in some additional way.

The Campus Foundation. Perhaps your denomination could establish a “foundation” or student center on the fringe of the campus. If a house could be purchased or constructed for this purpose and if one or more full-time pastors could concentrate on serving campus people, perhaps more would respond. Possibly so. But the success of such ventures varies. Some foundations are well attended; others attract very few. More than one campus pastor wrings his hands at the lack of response by students and faculty. Although foundations and some campus churches are near at hand and some are packed for one service a week, most of the campus world still passes them by.

The Mission Field Concept. Another alternative is to consider the campus a “mission field,” not in the sense of “skid row” or “an economically underdeveloped area” but rather in the sense of any group of people outside the Body of Christ. Take Japan as an illustration. The Japanese will never come to your church to hear the message of Christ. Your church does not try to get them to “come and hear” the Gospel. Instead, you adopt the attitude of “go and tell” and so send missionaries to Japan. Your denomination trains them and lets them go. Perhaps your own congregation has sent such a man (let’s call him “Johnson”); you released him from teaching Sunday school classes or singing in the choir so that he could go to Japan.

Have you pastors of churches in college towns ever thought that precisely the same strategy might be successful in reaching the campus in your city? For example, suppose that you have a college professor (let’s call him “Perkins”) in your congregation. You might begin to pray that the Holy Spirit will open his eyes to the campus as his mission field. This is an important notion, because some non-Christian faculty members who are so biased against clergymen that they will never listen to you, might listen to Professor Perkins. Now for this to happen, Professor Perkins will have to cultivate friendships with his non-Christian colleagues; he will have to become familiar with their thought patterns and carry a prayer concern for them. Furthermore, he will have to know the Bible and be able to introduce these friends to the Christ of the Bible. Beneath all this he will need you to pray for him just as you pray for the Johnsons in Japan.

Do you have any college students in your congregation? If so, they could be the missionary arm of your church to the campus. The student body contains hundreds (perhaps thousands) of young people who refuse to listen seriously to clergymen but who might give heed to a Christian roommate or classmate. For this to happen, the Christian students in your flock will have to cultivate their friendships, gain their confidence, learn to communicate with them, and be skilled in the Word. These students need your prayers just as does Mr. Johnson.

Here are some suggestions for putting this mission concept into action:

First, recognize that the Holy Spirit calls some members of a local church to serve primarily as “pillars” in that church; he calls other members to serve primarily as missionaries to those who will not attend that church.

The “local pillar” type are those whom God calls to serve mainly as elders, deacons, trustees, Sunday school teachers, choir members, or officers in various groups, shouldering the duties and spending the time required to keep a local church functioning. On the other hand are the “missionary” type whom God wants detached (the Greek word for “set apart” in Acts 13:2 is a strong verb, aphorizo, which means “to sever”) from local church duties but not from local church fellowship in order to go to those who will not come to church. (See Isaiah 6:9 and Mark 16:15—scriptural portions that surely apply to the college-campus components of our social order.)

Second, ask the Lord what his design is for Professor Perkins and the college students in your congregation. If he wants them to be “local pillars,” then they must shoulder their duties in your church; if he wants them to be campus missionaries, you must “let them go” from church duties but not from church fellowship. Similarly, you can expect Professor Perkins and your missionary students to return home “on furlough” every Lord’s Day for worship. But the rest of the time you will have to “set apart” such people for witnessing duties on campus. This will take a great deal of their time as they cultivate friendships with colleagues, earn their respect, answer their questions about Christ and the Bible. But if you will release your campus missionaries from church duties, eventually your church attendance will begin to grow as the missionaries begin to bring their interested friends to church.

Third, pray for your campus representatives. In your private prayer life, you doubtless pray by name for Mr. Johnson (and other missionaries to Japan). Do likewise for Professor Perkins and the college students in your congregation. Does your church have a prayer meeting or “cottage” prayer groups? If so, urge the members to pray for Professor Perkins and your student missionaries.

Fourth, encourage these student missionaries to participate at least once a week in a prayer cell on the campus. Similarly Professor Perkins ought to participate in a faculty prayer cell on campus. You may have to plant this idea in his mind and pray that the Lord will plant the concern in his heart, but you can hardly expect the Holy Spirit to use Professor Perkins in reaching his colleagues unless he is carrying a prayer burden for them. This burden should manifest itself not only in his private prayers but also in a faculty prayer group. Urge him to interest a Christian colleague in starting such a cell.

Fifth, encourage each of your missionaries to find one non-Christian to participate in an Outreach Bible Study (ORBS for short)—a session designed for the non-Christian, introducing him to the answers to five basic questions:

1. What did Jesus say?

2. Why did he say it?

3. What did Jesus do?

4. Why did he do it?

5. Of what significance in our lives are the foregoing answers?

On every secular campus there should be at least one ORBS that is for faculty only. Likewise, there ought to be an ORBS in every dormitory and fraternity or sorority house. Suppose one of your collegians reports that there is a non-Christian in his dormitory interested in a weekly Bible study and the only time he will attend is Sunday evening. Will you excuse your collegian from evening service to lead this ORBS?

Sixth, urge your campus missionaries to join the campus chapter of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship or Campus Crusade for Christ. These organizations have effective systems for training campus missionaries in the science and art of leading their non-Christian friends to the Saviour. It is not easy to refute the attacks of an atheist, to answer complex questions of an agnostic, to awaken interest in the minds of an unconcerned person, to explain to a thinking inquirer precisely how he can come to know Christ personally. IVCF and Campus Crusade have devised methods for each of these situations and can train your students.

It is encouraging to realize that many students quickly catch the vision and spontaneously enter into a prayer group, an ORBS, and the IVCF or Campus Crusade chapter. But there is another group who come to church Sunday morning (sometimes early enough for Sunday school) and sit attentively in the pews, but who are not interested when they are invited to a prayer meeting somewhere on campus; when somebody suggests a Bible study on campus, they do not attend; as for IVCF or Campus Crusade meetings, they prefer to do something else; and as for carrying a prayer concern for dormmates, classmates, or teachers—they have no concern. The pastor and Sunday school teacher can play an important role by opening the eyes of such students (and faculty) to their mission field.

Seventh, tell your high school seniors about Inter-Varsity or Campus Crusade. Urge them to look up the chapter as soon as they arrive at college. Even before they go to the campus they can benefit from a week of the “College Prep Camp” that IVCF holds just before school begins. The task of a new freshman adjusting to the strange environment of a college is difficult; it is doubly so if he is a Christian arriving on a secular campus.

Eighth, Acts 14:27 indicates that when Barnabas and Paul returned on furlough to their home church, they “declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.” No doubt Mr. Johnson does likewise when he returns from Japan and visits your church. Such reports inspire your prayer warriors, giving them information with which to construct prayers of both praise and intercession. Why not do likewise with your campus missionaries? Ask Professor Perkins to report at prayer meeting on the faculty prayer group and the faculty ORBS. Ask some of your students to do likewise at your college Sunday school class or at a church service.

To sum up, Christians on campus desperately need the help of pastors and Sunday school teachers. We need you to pray and to urge students and faculty members to join the other missionaries on campus.

Very sincerely yours,

JOHN W. ALEXANDER

John W. Alexander is professor and chairman of the department of geography at the University of Wisconsin. He holds the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Illinois and the Ph.D. from Wisconsin, where he served as assistant dean of the College of Letters and Science before his appointment as department chairman.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

DEAR DAUGHTER,

Thanks for your long letter. It was good to get a “stream-of-consciousness” type of report—all the things that you would talk about if you were right here curled up on the foot of the bed. Your other letters were delightful and interesting, but I was wondering what was going on beneath the surface.

Please don’t feel that we are upset by all those questions about the basis of your faith. I am sending you several books on apologetics recommended by a professor who would know just what you need.

Daddy says he’s not dealing with apologetics right now and that he’s not in the student atmosphere. In his ministry he’s dealing with people who are facing matters of life and death, heartbreak and tragedy, practical problems of family living, and it’s quite different. They aren’t, for the most part, worrying about philosophies and theologies. They want something of practical use to them today, something to help them face and solve their problems, something that works. And that is what a practical, experiential Christianity does, as I know you have proved to your satisfaction.

Of course, in the environment in which you find yourself you are challenged to dig out the answers for the sake of those whom you meet and also to strengthen your own faith. It seems to me—am I not right?—that this is the first time all these questions about your faith have bothered you.

Do you remember how disgusted you used to get with your older brother when he would want to bat around such questions at the dinner table ad infinitum? He was always taking the opposite side of the question from us just to get our answers. Then he was fortified to meet discussions on the outside.

As you know, his faith tended to be strengthened in an antagonistic environment and to waver in the environment of a Christian college. You, however, have always been the opposite in temperament; in a truly feminine way, you tend to yield to the atmosphere you are in. This yielding to an atmosphere can be both good and bad. It’s good in that you are always able to gather the full value out of whatever situation you are in. You are able to concentrate on the good points and not worry about the bad. It is the quality of sensitivity that enables you to pick up the language, feelings, and ways of people of another culture and background. This quality will help you benefit to the full from your year in France.

But it’s bad in that you will need to guard against having your spiritual life weakened by the unbelief around you. However well it is dressed up in scholarly and attractive form, it is still unbelief—a basic disinclination to yield the will to Christ. Becoming a Christian is primarily a matter of the will. There is either an honest desire to find out how to get into a vital, personal relation with God or else just an idle desire to argue and toss around scholarly terms, thereby further consolidating one’s own refusal of Christ.

So by all means study all these questions to your own satisfaction. But don’t let anybody who just wants to show how smart he can sound throw you off balance spiritually. If a person is truly seeking, help him. Give him all the answers to the limit that you have them. But don’t ever for a moment think that, because you don’t have an answer at your fingertips, there is no answer!

Plenty of thinking Christians have agonized through all these questions before you ever were here and have come through with their faith intact. During the first years of my Bible teaching, I was in about the same frame of mind you seem to be in now. I felt I had to know, that I had to work out in my own mind all the “whys.” I felt I had no right to teach, that I could not stand before a class with any ring of conviction in my voice, if I hadn’t beaten my way through every last question that occurred to me—and plenty of them did!

Finally, though, I became thoroughly satisfied, and my interest in apologetics shifted to the practical aspects of Christianity—the way it works in everyday life, the way prayers are answered, the beautiful, the poetic, the soul-satisfying aspects.

In my teaching I try to speak the language of those not committed to Christ and to bring in apologetics when necessary. Yet it really isn’t argument that wins people to the Lord. It’s just presenting the Scriptures and trying to make them come alive in as many different ways as possible, and then trusting the Holy Spirit to do the real work, not yourself.

But I know what you are after; you want to work through all these questions for yourself. And you should honestly face them. Then you will be ready to be a fine Bible teacher someday. I have wondered occasionally why you hadn’t had to go through all this questioning before now. Just about everyone who is brought up in the Christian faith has to go through this shaking-down process sooner or later before his faith is absolutely his own and not just what he has gotten from his parents or from his environment.

So we’ll see that you get the books as soon as we can get them for you. And in the meantime, be sure that you do everything you can be doing to keep your spiritual life strong and bright in a spiritually chilling environment. You haven’t mentioned having any Christian fellowship at all in the few weeks you have been gone, or even attending any church services except one on ship and one in Tours.

You will have many Christian groups open to you when you get to Paris; with your knowledge of French you can no doubt have some spiritually thrilling experiences as you seek out these minority groups. It will give you the taste and flavor of what it is to be a Christian or a Protestant in an overwhelmingly pagan or Catholic society. Be sure to look up those Christians whose names we gave you.

I’m glad to hear you are keeping up your Bible reading. It’s fine to read the Bible in French, but it might be that you would get more of a blessing out of reading it in English. Anyway, be sure you are getting spiritual nourishment for the day, not just more practice in French.

Another thing about trying to argue with these bright students. Don’t forget that you’re not the kind who finds it easy to win an argument of any kind, any more than I am. Smart as you are, you don’t have that sharp, clipped, overwhelming manner of marshaling facts and arguments in a way that talks other people down.

Your brother Bob has more of that quality. He exults in argument and in his group in Heidelberg was able to take on all comers. Whether it was as intellectually dazzling a group as the one you find yourself in is a question, but still they had been exposed to the same ideas as your group. You are more likely to convince them by what you are and by what Christ means to you than by what you say in argument.

Well, send us another “stream-of-consciousness” letter when you feel like it. Of course, you’re not homesick. You’re a big girl now, all grown-up, or almost. Nothing can take away the wonderful years we have had with you. They are forever written into your conscious and sub-conscious mind. But I would feel that I had done a poor and selfish job if you couldn’t stand to be away from your parents at the age of twenty. I wouldn’t like to think of you over there in the midst of that fine opportunity, all torn up with homesickness.

Of course you know we pray for you constantly.

With love,

MOTHER

Margaret Johnston Hess is the wife of Dr. Bartlett L. Hess, pastor of the Ward Memorial Presbyterian Church, Detroit, Michigan. She is a graduate of Coe College. This letter was written to her daughter, a student at Sweetbriar College, who at that time was taking her junior year abroad by attending the Sorbonne in Paris.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

DEAR SON,

I have no easy answers to your hard questions. But your letter taking me into your confidence again, now that you are inside such illustrious ivy walls, set me up as I haven’t been since you left home. I’ll toss out some comments that I hope will help you when you’re being thrown a curve.

As to how far you should go with girls, God help you, and may God help me not to answer for you, nor to unload my own code on you. But here are some things that may not occur to you in the heat of battle.

Your bride is alive and waiting for you right now with high ideals for you. You might want to sit down sometime, when one of the disrupting candidates is not sitting so close beside you, and describe the kind of girl you want to marry. How would you recommend that she behave in the blistering interim instances you gave? Perhaps you could do worse than follow yourself the recommendations you have in mind for her. The fellow has a way of finding and falling for the kind of girl he deserves. Put your dates in this perspective. How far should you go? How far do you want her to go with someone else? How would you feel about your father and mother going that far with someone aside from each other? How far do you want your little sister to go? Is your contemplated behavior something you’d not mind confessing to her and to your own son someday? As a practical matter, remember that the girl the college freshman is currently raving about is probably not the one he’ll end up with.

Undoubtedly, the happiness of your future home will be created or cheated by your current conduct. Whatever habits you make will be hard to break. Your roommate should consider that sowing wild oats starts something hard to stop. It will take more than a big wedding to break up established pre-marital patterns of misbehavior. There are showers of statistics to prove that promiscuity prior to marriage tends to perpetuate itself after the ceremony.

The marriage vows are just as sacred before the partners meet and pronounce them. And obviously only the partner who comes chaste to the wedding can be trusted to be true. I notice that the Institute of Family Relations offers convincing statistics to sustain my own impression that pre-marital sexual experience is a severe handicap to a satisfactory physical adjustment rather than a help, as the scuttlebutt has it. The best insurance for a successfully thrilling marriage solely from the biological point of view is virginity.

Home is hell without mutual trust and security, and everything one does when single carries confidence or suspicion over into the union or disunion. The guilty party will worry over whether he’ll be found out; the other will be afraid the infidelity will recur. Secondly, any sign of dissension between mother and father, any festering grievances for which each blames the other, such as a child conceived before wedlock or the shock of an earlier or suspected unfaithfulness, no matter how carefully concealed sows uneasiness and may even bring panic among the children. Paul Tournier and other distinguished psychiatrists condemn parental dissension as chiefly responsible for children’s problems.

I think I would call Brad’s atheism more of an emotional block than an intellectual summit he assumes he has reached. I don’t mean to oversimplify every rejection of God as a boy’s projected rebellion against his parents, but I would bet Brad’s rapport with his folks and his friends has not been what it might have been. His antagonistic attitude toward life seems, as you describe it, almost a classical teen-ager’s “neurosis of defiance.” In any case, I am sure you agree that someone in such a negative emotional state cannot be very objective about ultimate authority. Often the dormitory bull session that’s “out to get” religion is dominated by boys who are fanatic unbelievers, who do not want to believe, and who have probably never even read the New Testament. The campus cynic does not normally come to his conclusions conscientiously. Often driven by destructive urges, he chronically questions everything except his own cute little pet questions.

Perhaps the same thing that’s eating Brad accounts, in part at least, for the anti-attitude of your biology professor and even the whole contemporary stance of scientism. To return to Tournier, in his last volume, he exposes the whole secular reaction of our time against religion as “adolescent” (A Whole Person in a Broken World, Harper & Row, 1964). Medieval man’s approach may have been childlike, but our descendants will not consider this age’s attitude as adult. It is more like a big brother’s scorn.

Tournier recognizes in the prevalent condescension toward the Church the same old teen-ager’s “neurosis of defiance.” He believes the objections to the Bible are more emotional than intellectual, that modern man has been led to his present-day position of non-religion more by a contradictory spirit toward his forefathers than by honest doubt or fair trial. Our day has not outgrown God; it has just repressed him. “To say no, consistently, where we said yes before is not to be free.” And while Western man suffers from this compulsion to offend and avert God, he unconsciously yearns for reunion with him like a lost son.

Science, as you know, John, has succumbed to a far more naïve god of its own. It is that strange god, chance, in whom modern scientists believe. “Chance,” writes Franck Abauzit, “explains nothing; it is merely the negation of the spirit, the opposite of reason, the destruction of all intelligibility.” “And yet it is,” as Tournier tells us, “the last word of every scientific explanation of the world. ‘The classical theory of science,’ writes Lecomte de Nouy, ‘simply replaces God with chance. It is nothing more than playing with words.’ Here again, the psychoanalysts will say, is the return of the repressed disguised as in a dream” (Tournier, p. 33).

I don’t know what you can do with this, John; but I do know that the feud between faith and scientific fact is folly “exactly like the quarrel between an adolescent and his parents, in which he scoffs at them by making assertions which are too categorical and they regard every contradiction on his part as an offense” (Tournier, p. 87). It’s high time to challenge science’s sacred trinity of “accident, struggle, and progress.” The doubts so dear to humanism need doubting now.

As for your religion course, an English professor, of all people, gave me a little paperback by Sören Kierkegaard the other day, entitled On Self Examination. I wouldn’t like you to take Kierkegaard’s word on everything, but he puts higher criticism in its place as man’s last and most insidious means of escaping God. The Bible is a mirror, he says, but instead of assisting us to see ourselves in it more clearly than ever, criticism tends to distract us. We exhaust our energy and interest, dating the mirror, measuring it, counting bubbles and cracks. We note the word’s distortion here, its duplication there. We interpret, relate, outline, and evaluate. We do everything to the Bible but look in it and shout, “Hallelujah, it is He!” We miss the crowd about the Cross and forget to cry in bitter shame, “It is I.”

I am sure you will gain much from your course. At least it will test your faith and teach you what problems others will raise that must be answered. But be comforted that John Bunyan, St. Francis, and St. Peter had no Dead Sea Scrolls to prove to them how long this faith could be preserved intact. St. Peter couldn’t even have read them; he wouldn’t have had time, because he was too busy having a religious experience and being true till death. It is not obscurantism to say that the time comes when the examination should stop and the experiment begin.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Perhaps the best way to appreciate the Christian position is to go back to Abraham and see how our first citizen got started. He was obviously a man of great wealth; perhaps he owned a huge plantation at the suburban edge of pagan Ur. No doubt his hearth was heavy with specialized figurine gods for every conceivable purpose. But something stirred him to restlessness. Not a nervous breakdown, I think. He could have felt like the little girl I saw in the cartoon the other day. She had just stopped jumping rope. “Why?” someone asked. “Suddenly,” she said, “it all seemed so futile.” Whatever the reason, Abraham wanted more from religion and from life, or someone wanted him to have more, than he’d been getting.

Gradually it dawned on him (or instantly light struck him—who knows?) that some new and vastly superior God seemed to be telling him to get out of Ur and go somewhere else. It was all so new, so difficult to translate, I suppose. His wife Sarah must have feared for his wits. But Abraham, anxious to do better and having nothing better to do, promised this voice that he would give it a try with everything he had. He went all out. And the answer came back, promising unbelievable blessing in return. What happened there was that God got through to a man and a bargain was reached that has made all the difference in the world ever since. Call it a contract if you wish; officially that little arrangement is what we mean when we say the old covenant or Old Testament.

The moral of this story is that Abraham made no mistake. The result surpassed his wildest dreams. And he was not the only one who knew it. History bears witness that Abraham was not talking to himself. The Promised Land appeared out of nowhere; a child came out of a barren womb that set off a chain reaction of descendants distinguished for this same belief. This agreement was carried on through this lineage down to David and ultimately up to Christ. It is hard to believe that all this good news was originally born from a mistaken impression or a madman’s mind.

Now it is your turn and mine to try it, if we wish. We Christians have never been able to talk anyone into belief. We are asked only to gamble on it, as Abraham did. It would not be faith if we had all the facts or if life manipulated us like puppets by letting us peek at all the answers at the back of the book. Grooms risk “I do” in marriage with much less reason for believing it will work. Right now, no doubt, you face some problem too big and painful for you to want—or even be able—to unburden it on me. Instead of handling it on your own, ask the God of Abraham for help. Keep asking until your prayer is so important that you’ll remember next week what you asked for tonight. Help will come, and you will know the solution later, if not now. The religious bull session is usually stale, sometimes stagnating. The real thing is a trial-and-error method—God speaking to you, saying yes or no, in the language of your daily activities and in the deeper knowledge your heart knows.

I think I shall not at this point try to tell you any more than I already have about who Christ is, lest I be guilty of understatement or presumption. For when the time comes, he will come and address you in person. The essential question is, Are you ready to follow him? That is all you have to agree to now. The day Jesus walked up the beach to where Peter and Andrew and James and John were fishing, I notice he asked for nothing more than that. He didn’t ask just then who they thought he was. That question would have been premature; it came later.

Remember, John, how we used to play that game together, “If I had one wish.” You always said you’d wish for as many wishes as you wanted, you rascal. If I had one wish tonight, it would be for you to follow Christ wherever he leads you. That’s my prayer. If you’ll dare to do that much, one step at a time, sometime, as an illustrious pilgrim once promised, you’ll come to know as an inexpressible secret who He really is.

Blessings on you, my son, always,

DAR:bn

YOUR DAD

David A. Redding is pastor of the First Church (United Presbyterian), East Cleveland, Ohio. He holds the degrees of A.B. (Wooster) and B.D. (Oberlin). His writing has appeared in “Life” magazine and “Reader’s Digest” and in the “Christian Herald” and “Presbyterian Life.”

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Each fall thousands of young people leave the warm Christian life of their home to enter a collegiate world in which Christianity is either ignored or ridiculed. For a few, the consequence of a four-year assault upon their beliefs is permanent alienation from the Church; others turn away but recover their faith later; still others stand firm and emerge with even stronger religious beliefs than they had before.

The degree to which the college environment is hostile to the student’s Christian faith varies greatly. In general, denominational schools are more likely to provide an experience that supports Christian beliefs than non-sectarian ones. But denominational affiliation may mean anything from a program permeated by religious concern to one in which the involvement of the supporting church is almost indiscernible. Indeed, in some church colleges the dedication to academic freedom is so strong that toleration is granted to anti-religious teachings that would be banned at some state-supported institutions.

The student in an institution in which secularism prevails will discover that in many courses, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, religion in any form is held in low regard. The general anti-religious tenor is set by the instructor, and few students dare challenge it. Since Christianity looms largest among the religions of Western civilization, it is likely to receive the most anti-religious barbs.

Some instructors show their disdain for religion by attacking it, others by pointedly ignoring it. When, in ostensibly cataloguing the significant forces of our era, a professor fails to mention religion, he clearly communicates his idea that religion is an ancient and inconsequential concern. The student who raises a question about the role of religion can expect a disbelieving shake of the head from an instructor who just can’t figure out how to cope with such naïveté.

Moreover, the social science and humanities courses often have a strong “debunking” flavor. Much material is presented as though the first twelve years of formal schooling were designed to protect the student from the ugly realities of life, and now at college the truth can be told. Thus a history professor may devote much time to downgrading heroes of the past, attempting to show that they had more than their share of weaknesses and that their noble deeds had base motivations.

The shock many students experience upon encountering this treatment of much they previously held sacred is magnified by the fact that any objective consideration of religion in their public school studies was impossible. The cautious public school teacher, in fact, is likely to avoid religion altogether. The devastating treatment given the idols of history by many college instructors is, likewise, an over-response to the glorification of such figures that too frequently is found in high school history courses.

Some young and callow instructors are still suffering from the trauma of their own collegiate debunking experience. They may derive emotional satisfaction from communicating to their students, in an exaggerated and often distorted way, the revelations they have recently experienced. The student should be warned that such instructors, who often suffer from feelings of insecurity, are unlikely to treat tolerantly those who dare challenge their iconoclastic message.

In sociology and anthropology, religion is likely to be viewed instrumentally. One set of beliefs is regarded as no better than another; the “correctness” of the beliefs is usually considered to be outside the purview of social science. What matters is how usefully a set of religious beliefs functions within a particular social context. Such a cold, detached view of a sacred realm can be very disturbing to a Christian student.

Missionaries are given rather savage treatment whenever notice is taken of them in anthropology courses. The image of the missionary presented seems to be a caricature of a mid-nineteenth-century type who may or may not have existed. He is portrayed as a possibly well-meaning bumbler who is ignorant of cultural differences, hopelessly naïve, and determined to wreck an idyllic native way of life by rudely imposing upon the people his own set of values. To anyone who really knows about the work of modern missionaries, this picture is nothing less than absurdly fraudulent.

The courage to challenge the sweeping allegations of the anti-religionists is greatly needed. Often a query about evidence would reveal the lack of convincing support for a charge directed at a religion or at religion in general. But too frequently the instructor’s dogmatic manner, combined with a general air of uncritical acceptance in the classroom, causes anti-religious calumnies to go unchallenged.

Partly as a consequence of the professorial assault on religion, the student subculture at many institutions offers the Christian young person little support for the retention of his faith. On many American campuses a student expressing a forthright commitment to his religion can expect to be looked upon as distinctly “square.” To speculate in a myopic way about man’s origins and destiny is “in”; but to indicate that one has found satisfying answers is definitely “out.” The Christian freshman who is concerned about social acceptance may well consider it expedient to put his religion aside for four years.

Many factors determine the response that the Christian student makes to this world he has not known before. Probably much of the rejection of religion that occurs in college stems not from logical thought but from personality needs. The undermining elements of the college situation may support the rebellious inclinations of one who has been seething under an autocratic parental regime, a regime in which religion, like everything else, is firmly imposed from above. To embrace agnosticism may thus signify a rejection of parents more than a rejection of religion.

The ostentatious collegiate anti-religionist is often simply a disturbed personality. Persons who feel a deep emotional discomfort may, like the experimental rat in the maze, keep striking out in different directions in an effort to gain relief. Some try successive conversions to different religions; others try to eliminate religion from their lives. The fervor with which anti-religionism is often adopted indicates a great void to be filled.

Another home situation conducive to the collegiate flight from faith is that of hot-house nurture of religion. The young person who has been shielded from all challenges and doubts of skeptics is unprepared for the critical world of the college. This shielding may be responsible for the exaggerated disillusionment some young people feel when first exposed to agnosticism. The student who has earlier encountered some of the critics of his religion and has been helped to weigh their arguments is much less likely to find the skepticism of professors a traumatic experience.

In an era and in a society in which free inquiry and freedom of conviction are highly regarded, it is inevitable that for some the experience of going to college will result in a major alteration of religious outlook. Christianity will undoubtedly lose from the defection of some of the disenchanted. Many young people, however, will respond to the challenges to their faith by developing a far greater depth and maturity of Christian commitment.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Text: And, behold, a woman … came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment.—Matthew 9:20.

The point on which the evangelists fasten our attention in this miracle is not the grace of the Lord Jesus, nor his power, nor the fact that this woman with the issue of blood was healed by a touch. The fact upon which the writers focus our thought is that the woman touched only the hem of his garment. “If I may touch but his clothes I shall be whole.” She came behind him in the midst of the throng, with her deep craving to be healed, and her sublime faith that Christ’s virtue would pass from him, even through the hem of his garment. She put out her trembling hands and touched, and the thrill of a new life pulsed in her blood.

Now what is the hem of Christ’s garment? Where is the hem of Christ’s garment today? The hem this woman touched was one of the four tassels of blue which hung from the fringe of his coat. That garment woven by his mother’s fingers has long ago moldered into dust. Never again can any sick one creep in behind Jesus and touch that tassel of blue, and send a vibrating thrill to his heart. But is there no hem for us to touch? Can this miracle never be repeated? Are we poorer because Christ has gone to the Father?

The living Lord still walks in our midst in his love and power. His voice no longer falls on the outer ear. We cannot see the print of the nails. The robe with its fringe no longer passes down our streets. But the hem of Christ’s garment can still be touched. For what was this hem, and what is this hem, but that through which his virtue passed out of him? All the world of things seen, all that is beautiful and uplifting and inspiring, all holy influences and wise thoughts and gracious words, are but the channels through which the virtue of Jesus passes to the healing of the issues of body and mind and spirit.

Let me then speak to you of some of the ways in which Christ’s virtue passes out of him. Let us think how we also may touch the hem of his garment, that we also may bring our secret and disabling sore, and, touching the hem, may touch Christ.

Think first of the hem of Christ’s garment in nature. Nature is the visible garment of God, wrought, as Goethe said, by God’s fingers in Time’s roaring loom. This world of rising and setting suns, of silent stars and breathing winds, of sea and shore, of moor and mountain, of meadow and mystic wood, is the garment of the living Lord. Its ribands are not only of blue but of yellow and purple and scarlet, of fleecy white and living green; and its tassels, that every child can touch, are wrought with silver and gold. The Greeks, who peopled every stream with a spirit, and every wood with a nymph, and every hilltop with a god, were feeling after the truth that the visible world is the garment of the invisible. The Hebrew poets declared the light to be God’s robe, the winds to be his whisper, the thunder to be his voice.

Who has not been healed by touching this hem of Christ’s garment? David tells us, in the thirty-sixth Psalm, that when he was sick at heart with men’s pride and deceit and ungodliness, he went out to the world of the open heaven and the everlasting hills, and the song of relief came to his lips, “Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep.” Then his psalm rises higher, and breaks forth in the melody of a healed spirit. Wordsworth, as we know, often wandered lonely on the mountain-side, that he might walk with God in his temple. Shelley, rebellious spirit though he was, declared that the overarching boughs of a green glade were a cathedral, and taught him reverence. Samuel Cox narrates that when he was a youth, earning his bread among rough dock-laborers whose profanity fell with coarsening din upon his ears, he kept a flower upon his desk that he might be chastened and purified by coming into touch with God.

A great part of our earth is bare moor, waste wilderness, barren hillside, inaccessible mountain. God has made it so and kept it so. It is but the hem of his garment which wearied and broken men may touch. To walk abroad in some of these vast solitudes, to mark the bloom on the heather and the enchanting tints of the wild rose, and to hear the song of the lark, is to find a tonic for body and mind, and to realize that strength and calm are revisiting the soul. You said that nature healed you. It was not nature, it was God; and you were touching his garment’s hem.

Think, secondly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in art. By art I include all that is pure and lovely and noble in literature, in architecture, in music, in sculpture and painting, and in all the works of men done under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. There are few who have not felt nature to be the garment of God. But there are undiscerning eyes to which, as to Wordsworth’s dullard—

A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.

There are some who never see a lovely hillside without thinking of it as a place to parcel out in profitable allotments. These are the soldiers who cast lots for Christ’s garment at the foot of the Cross. These are becoming fewer every day. Yet there are still many who do not realize that art is also the hem of Christ’s garment. You have gone to a noble music, weary, chafed, losing heart almost with yourself, and as you listened to some impassioned melody a great peace possessed you. Have you not in some dull and listless hour taken up a master in literature and read some story of love and grace, and of strenuous deed, or mused again over some poem which was full of light and truth, to find that your dullness had passed away? The depths within were broken up, tears came to your eyes, prayer was upon your lips, and you passed into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

How many have touched Christ through some great painting? I remember standing before Raphael’s “Madonna and Child,” which is the peculiar glory of the Dresden gallery. A company of tourists, careless in thought and light in speech, entered the room. As the solemn power of that great picture was felt, silence sealed every lip. The mingled majesty and simplicity of the Holy Child and the meek submission and saintly purity of the Virgin breathed forth an atmosphere of faith. One of the company, a young girl whose light laugh and jesting words had been ringing through the corridor, looked up to the picture with wonder and delight. Then a soft haze filled her eyes and she reverently bowed herself. It was not an act of devotion or of adoration of the picture. Her New England blood would not have allowed her to kneel. But she had touched the hem of the garment, and there flashed upon her the shallowness, and pettiness, and selfishness of the life which she was tempted to lead. In the instant, things low and mean and idle were smitten within her, and she was healed of her plague.

Art may be sordid in motive and base in purpose. It may become the garment of a leprosy, spotting not merely the flesh but the spirit. But art may be, and should be, the hem of Christ’s robe, through which, at the touch of need and reverence and faith, Christ’s virtue flows.

Think, thirdly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in the word. This is the tassel of blue which most have touched. If thousands have found Christ’s healing pass into them through nature and through art, tens of thousands have found still better healing through the inspired Scriptures of God. The Word of God is the closest garment of his thought. It is significant that Christ is called the Word, simply because God in Christ passed out to reveal himself, and to work his miracles, in and by a word. This Bible is something more than a book. A personality indwells in its pages. The roughest and rudest spirit will not lightly abuse a single page of it. One of our modern writers tells us of a man purposing a crime in which he will glut the revenge of his embittered spirit. As he sits in his room evolving his plans, his eyes fall upon a Bible. It seems a living thing. He shrinks back from it, but as he touches it his murderous hate is purged. He had simply brushed against the hem of the garment.

It was my duty some time ago to accompany to the place of burial the mourners of one of our beloved dead. As we stood round the open grave our eyes were held by a neighboring tombstone, on whose base there was cut the inscription—

He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

There are some occasions in life for which Shakespeare is not enough. A few yards away there stood a simpler gravestone, with the words, “Because I live, ye shall live also,” and those whose hearts were heavy found instant healing.

So in all times of need we can touch this hem. When we are tempted, we can, like Jesus, find a word through which our will shall be reinforced. When we need light and guidance, there is always some counsel that will show the path of truth and honor. When we require comfort, there are on every page the words of the only secure consolation the world knows. When we have lost hope and heart, and have tried many physicians, and are nothing better but rather grown worse, we have to turn and apply to our souls some great word out of this book to find ourselves healed—“Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee,” or “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him,” or “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”

The healing of his seamless dress,

Is by our beds of pain;

We touch him in life’s throng and press,

And we are whole again.

Think, fourthly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in the ministries of the Church. By the Church I mean the congregations of believing men and women, “the solemn troops and sweet societies,” bound together in the bonds of a common faith and love. By its ministries I mean the offices of psalm and prayer, the exposition of the Word, the power and helpfulness of its fellowship, the outgoing of sympathy and of inspiration in its service of God and of man. If there be anything earthly and visible which the most unspiritual man can see to be the garment of Christ, it is these gracious ministries of the Church. Sometimes they may seem dull to weariness. Too often they yield no blessing. The pool of healing is not always stirred. The bush is not always burning with hallowed fire. But surely no one ever took part in these ministries, and came with a need or a trouble, who did not receive strength and light and healing.

I marvel at the neglect of the public worship of God. I marvel at it the more in these busy and hustling and over-driven days, when men and women need so supremely a place of quiet, a time of meditation, an hour of recollection. I marvel that young men and women, in the years when the things that are beautiful are attractive to them, do not hunger after the beauty of holiness; and I marvel still more that the older men and women who are walking in those trying levels of middle life and are bearing the heat and burden of the day do not come eagerly to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. There are issues often shameful, sometimes secret, sometimes exhausting, which Christ heals through the ministries of the Church.

Here is a man who has come into God’s house bewildered about his duty, and as he prays he sees the way before him as in a vision. Here is a woman afflicted with fear about her life, or burdened by her deep anxiety for those dear to her. As she sits she catches the contagion of faith, and peace like a dove descends upon her. Here are young men and women tempted by this alluring world, feeling the rush within them of their hot young blood. They find themselves chastened, and their whole nature roused to choose the straight and narrow way. Even little children as they have sung their hymn have realized that they were touching Jesus.

Think, fifthly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in the sacrament of the Supper. Nothing else brings us so near Christ, and through nothing else does his virtue pass so immediately as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Before the Church itself was organized, before a line of the New Testament was written, before even the Old Testament had become the book of light and leading to Christian men, the Lord’s Supper was the rite of constant use. It is this ordinance, so universal wherever Christian men are met, with its white cloth and bread and wine, which all men feel to be “the sight/Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,/With a hem that I could recognize.” This is the hem that all men recognize. At times a too great reverence has been paid to it. In the north of Scotland, the fine Celtic awe and reverence for sacred things has invested it with such sanctity that poor sin-sick men and women have not always dared to approach it for their healing. The Romish church has also felt its sacredness so keenly that they have called this hem of the garment by the very name of the Lord, and have forgotten that its bread and wine are only symbols and not the very flesh and blood of Jesus.

The Lord’s Supper is only the Supper, and its elements are only signs; but they are elements and signs through which there passes to repentant men the healing of the issues of their lives. What is the virtue which passes from Christ in this sacrament? It is the virtue of his death on the Cross. Had there been no Cross there might have been a supper of fellowship, but not a feast of healing. “Ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come,” and in showing it you touch the hem of his garment and are healed.

What do we bring, as penitents, to the Lord’s Supper? We bring the memory and conscience of our slip and fall, our broken vows, our unfulfilled resolves, our too feeble struggle with sin, our distaste for goodness and for God. “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat.” These words are read in a silence which reveals that many find them searching and scaring. But they are the words of most gracious invitation. “Let a man examine himself”—of his envy and pride, and passion, and ill will to his neighbor, and dishonesty, sickness of soul and its issue of shame in his life—and “so let him eat, and eating, be healed.”

What sore and shameful issue is draining you of strength and peace and hope? How many, like this woman, are the subjects of chronic sin? Chronic weakness against temptation, chronic habits of sloth, chronic distrust and doubt, chronic prayerlessness; how these, and similar sins, drain our lives of gladness! How many have ceased to expect or to hope to be holy, and have become content with a life of a mean level of morality? All of us may be healed by touching this hem of his garment in an appealing faith.

But no healing, be it remembered, comes from nature or art, or the word, or the ministries of the Church, or even from this sacrament, in themselves. Do not, I beseech you, play the idolator with any of them. They may be only dead and bare signs. It is the Lord who healeth us. It is his power, his grace, his Cross; and these are but the hem of his garment through which his healing flows. When we come, in faith on him, to touch any one of them, virtue will pass out of him.—Chapter 23, “The Hem of Christ’s Garment,” from The Cross in Christian Experience, by William M. Clow (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908). Used by permission.

Plans have been unveiled for a ten-day meeting, conceived as a potential landmark in Christian history, which will bring together 1,200 influential churchmen from around the world to discuss evangelism. The meeting will be known as the World Congress on Evangelism. It will be held October 26 through November 4, 1966, in West Berlin.

“Our prayer,” says evangelist Billy Graham, honorary chairman of the event, “is that through the medium of the World Congress on Evangelism the Church today will receive renewed power and a sense of urgency such as was characteristic of the early Church after Pentecost.”

The congress will be sponsored by the magazine CHRISTIANITY TODAY as a tenth-anniversary project. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will serve as chairman.

The congress will have seven aims, all related to evangelism.

Theme of the meeting will be, “So Send I You,” taken from Jesus’ words to his disciples in John 20:21: “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” The words are also found in the high priestly prayer of John’s Gospel, a section of which has come to much prominence in ecumenical discussions: “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world” (John 17:18).

West Berlin’s Kongresshalle, which has been reserved for the event, has a main auditorium seating 1,264 persons, plus three smaller halls wired for simultaneous translations. Congress proceedings will be conducted in English, German, French, and Spanish, and possibly a fifth language.

Plans are predicated on the participation of more than 700 delegates, 300 guests, and 100 observers.

Attendance will be by invitation only. Participants will be (1) leading evangelists from many countries; (2) denominational leaders whose administrative responsibilities concern the Church’s involvement in evangelistic activity; and (3) teachers and scholars whose areas of specialization relate significantly to evangelistic concerns.

Graham declares his hope “that the congress will speak to the whole Church with clarity and authority on evangelism and the mission of the Church. Many of the recent statements coming from church conferences have been vague and confusing on the subject of evangelism.”

Some sixty church leaders, representing many countries, have been asked to serve on a sponsoring committee for the congress.

The event will begin with a night of prayer. The congress program will include addresses on the biblical basis of evangelism, special papers, panel discussions, group discussions, and reports on the progress of evangelism throughout the world and the urgency of the task in the coming years.

“The overriding concern of the congress,” says Henry, “will be the absolute necessity of fulfilling Christ’s command that his disciples go into all the world and preach the Gospel.” He outlines the formal, seven-fold purpose of the meeting as follows:

(1) To define biblical evangelism; (2) to expound the relevance of Christ’s Gospel to the modern world; (3) to stress the urgency of evangelistic proclamation throughout the world in this generation; (4) to discover new methods of relating biblical evangelism to our times; (5) to study the obstacles to biblical evangelism and to propose the means of overcoming them; (6) to discover the types of evangelistic endeavor currently employed in various lands; and (7) to summon the Church to recognize the priority of its evangelistic task.

Henry adds: “We hope that one by-product of the congress will be an advance within many churches from a type of modern evangelism that relies on the minister for evangelistic messages, to an evangelistic church membership.”

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, general director of the National Association of Evangelicals, will serve as chairman of a seven-member executive committee for the congress. Dr. W. Stanley Mooneyham, special assistant to Graham and moderator of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, will be coordinating director. Other members of the executive committee, along with Henry, Taylor, and Mooneyham, are Robert C. Van Kampen, a business executive of Wheaton, Illinois; George M. Wilson, of Minneapolis, executive vice-president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Dr. Robert P. Evans of Paris, European director of Greater Europe Mission: and the Rev. Walter Smyth of Atlanta, vice-president in charge of crusade planning for BGEA.

The program committee for the congress consists of Evans; Henry; the Rev. Gilbert Kirby of London, general secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship; I. Ben Wati of New Delhi, executive secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India; Anglican Bishop A. W. Goodwin-Hudson, rector of St. Paul’s Church (Portman Square) in London; Dr. Rene Pache, director of Emmaus Bible Institute in Vennes-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland; and the Rev. James Dickson, a Presbyterian missionary in Taipei, Taiwan.

Legal Tests

Is the Supreme Court bent on a complete realignment of the American church-state relationship?

Some observers who fear such intent drew a sigh of relief following the court’s refusal to hear a plea aimed at striking the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. The denial came November 23 in a brief statement whose effect was to leave standing the pledge as it has been known since 1954, when Congress approved addition of the words that officially acknowledge God. Parents from New York had complained that having to repeat the phrase violated their religious precepts, in that they neither acknowledged a deity per se nor encouraged their children to do so.

Connecticut’s 85-year-old law against birth control, meanwhile, was back before the Supreme Court. This time the court agreed to hear a case involving constitutionality of the statute that forbids sale or use of drugs and contraceptives in birth control and bars physicians and other medical advisers from prescribing their use. The court had declined to rule on the law in 1961 on the ground that no one had been arrested for violating it. A new test case was initiated following the arrest of two officials of the New Haven Planned Parenthood League.

In Annapolis, Maryland, a circuit court began hearing testimony in a case testing the constitutionality of state aid to church-related colleges. Both sides agree that it will eventually end up in the U. S. Supreme Court.

Maintaining The Succession

“Another Bishop dead! I verily believe they die to vex me,” complained Viscount Melbourne, British Prime Minister of more than a century ago. His sense of outrage would have been greater today when England has many more bishops and the Prime Minister still has to fill the vacant sees. That the Prime Minister himself need not be a member of the Church of England (Mr. Harold Wilson is not) is evidently of no importance.

Early in 1962 the Church Assembly set up a commission “to examine the whole method of Crown Appointments to Ecclesiastical Offices and to make recommendations”—the ninth such commission in less than a century. After thirty-four months and fifteen meetings, this body has recommended in its newly published report that the present system of the selection of diocesan bishops by the Prime Minister should continue, with some minor reforms.

One reform would regularize the premier’s present informal consultations with the Archbishop of Canterbury and others concerned. The commission suggested also that an archbishop or bishop who refused to confirm and consecrate a duly elected bishop should no longer incur the penalties of Praemunire: taking him out of the Crown’s protection and involving the forfeiture of his lands and goods. Though the Church Times comments that the findings will conjure up “gloomy thoughts of mountainous labours producing ridiculous mice,” the report will, if implemented, remove the constant danger that for disobedience to the civil arm the Archbishop of Canterbury could be consigned to the Tower of London.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Whither The State Church?

A report by the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Anhalt in East Germany shows that while there was a decrease in church life during the last ten years, those remaining loyal to their church increased their religious activities and giving.

Providing comparative figures for various aspects of church life in 1954 and 1963, the report disclosed:

Church attendance dropping from 700,000 to 350,000; membership from 423,000 to 260,000; baptisms from 5,700 to 2,400; church weddings from 2,100 to 860; and children attending catechism classes from 23.000 to 11,000.

The report as relayed by Religious News Service emphasized, however, that loyal church members increased their attendance at Holy Communion services and their giving to the church. In one district, contributions were said to have increased from 45,000 East German marks to 108,000.

Observers say the decrease in participation at church rites was largely due to atheistic pressure exerted by the East German Communists and the resulting hesitation of large groups of believers to identify themselves very openly with the church.

Several church leaders in East and West Germany have welcomed rather than regretted the development, which leads away from the so-called Volkskirche (People’s Church), i.e., an established, national, semistate institution (which the Evangelical Church in Germany has been for centuries) into which children are automatically born as the result of the religious affiliation held by their parents.

RNS says this form of the church is now going through a severe crisis and possibly heading for ultimate dissolution because most nominal church members who used to hold church membership only, or at least primarily, because of traditional, social, and prestige considerations tend to sever affiliation without great scruples now that it involves afflictions and material disadvantages in an atheistic state.

The Congo Toll

Seven Protestant missionaries are known to have been slain by Congolese rebels during the last week of November. That brought the toll for the year to ten. Thirty-two other Protestant missionary personnel—men, women, and children—were missing as of the middle of December.

The British Foreign Office confirmed the deaths of three missionaries in addition to those reported immediately following American-Belgian rescue operations at Stanleyville and Paulis (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 18, 1964). The three were Cyril Taylor, about 45, of New Zealand; James Rodger, 40, a Presbyterian from Dundee, Scotland; and Miss Muriel Harman, about 60, of Victoria, British Columbia. All served under Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

WEC reported that the Aubrey Brown family, previously unaccounted for, is safe and well. The Unevangelized Fields Mission said that Mr. and Mrs. George Kerrigan, who had also been reported missing, were free and unharmed.

In neighboring Sudan, a Presbyterian station in the capital of Khartoum was burned by a rioting mob, and two American missionaries were injured. It was not immediately learned if the mission had been singled out, or merely caught in crossfire.

The Manalistas

The Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ) has been described as the “most aggressive and closely-knit of the Philippine minorities.” Now marking its fiftieth year since it was founded by Felix Manalo, Methodist-turned-Adventist minister, the sect claims about a million adherents scattered over the Philippine archipelago. Immense baroque churches are rising up in the countryside. Moreover, the Iglesia has already distinguished itself as a potent force in Philippine politics

Iglesia adherents, often called Manalistas, are said to represent a bloc of 500,000 qualified voters whose views have been proving crucial in national elections. Manilista-supported candidates have been faring better than those backed by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Iglesia sect rests upon the passage in Revelation 7 (verses 1–3) that tells of “another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God.” The sect believes that founder Manalo is this angel or messenger of God who bears heavenly tidings in that part of the world. Also cited is a portion in Isaiah that tells of a “ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country.” The “east,” the Manalistas claim, refers to the Philippines, and they point further to Isaiah: “Wherefore, glorify ye the Lord in the east, even the name of the Lord God of Israel, in the isles of the sea.”

Evangelicals in the Philippines have always felt that the Roman Catholic Church is the dominant religion in the country. But with the rise of the Manalistas in politics, evangelicals now view them with great concern as a more serious threat to the true Christian cause. Since the Iglesia is a purely indigenous sect founded by a Filipino, it has all the tastes and colors of nationalism. And the nationalistic spirit is now strong in the Philippines.

Founder Manalo died in 1963. He was succeeded by his son, Erano Manalo, who has already shown himself a capable leader. Erano has waged a sustained bombardment of rallies and radio broadcasts against the Roman Catholic Church.

Last spring newspapers in the Philippines carried announcements of the formation of a new Catholic political party. The publicized reason for its establishment was to neutralize the influence of the Iglesia. Thus a third force shapes up for next November’s elections. And although this third force may not openly bear the name of “Catholic Party,” there is speculation that virtually all its key figures will turn out to be Roman Catholic lay leaders. Such speculation is causing alarm and anxiety among evangelicals.

EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS

Australian Milestone

Two veteran Lutheran evangelists became the first full-blooded Australian aboriginals admitted to the ministry of any church, according to Lutheran World Federation News Service. Conrad Raberaba and Peter Bulla, members of tribes that carry on a primitive existence in the barren hills and deserts of central Australia, were ordained at an outdoor service at Hermannsburg in November.

Raberaba, 47, has been an aide to the missionary pastor of a Lutheran church at Hermannsburg, and will now be assistant pastor. He was reared in the Christian faith by his mother, although she went away to live with a non-Christian after his father’s early death. His faith has been tested by the loss of five of his six children.

Bulla has been assigned to continue preaching among his own people, the Pitjinjaras. A gray-haired evangelist of long experience, he was the instrument by whom forty-six tribesmen were brought to the Christian faith a few months ago.

The ordination service was attended by more than 600, most of them being Christian aboriginals. Officiating, by appointment of the president general of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, was the president of the church’s Victoria district, Dr. V. G. Roennfeldt.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

A dutch newspaper headlined the close of the most recent session of the Vatican Council this way: “Pope Closes Session of Saddened Council.” It was a Roman Catholic paper, and its headline called forth a dozen questions. The phrase “saddened council” evoked vivid memories of the surprising final week of the session, a week of severe crisis. A veritable shock wave was felt when the news came out that the schema on freedom of religion was to be postponed until a following session. A petition to get the schema approved at this session was signed by a great number of council fathers. But the effort failed when the Pope himself decided to put the schema to a vote only after the council was called into its fourth session.

That this schema on religious freedom had become a point of intense controversy was well known. The American desire for a forthright proclamation clashed sharply with the views of the Italian and Spanish bishops. Many bishops felt that this matter more than any other called for a clear and decisive statement; they wanted the outside world to sense no hesitation at Rome on this particular issue. These bishops rightly supposed that the world was not anxious about what the council might say about Mariology but was most eager to bear what the Roman church was going to say about freedom of religion. This was why the postponement of a decision on this schema was received with such bitter disappointment. For these bishops the papal decision was simply inexplicable.

In the second place, there were the last-minute papal changes in the schema on ecumenicity, changes that markedly narrowed the schema’s ecumenical outreach. Besides this there was also a papal addition, a nota explicativa, which high authority heavy-handedly forced on the schema on the collegial office of bishops. The “note” was clearly meant to give the papal authority a heavier accent than it had in the schema. This was the sort of activity that led to the Roman Catholic newspaper’s characterization of the council as a saddened one.

At the final sitting, it appeared as though everything that had occurred in that week had been forgiven and forgotten. But this was mere window-dressing. Clearly, the council was confronting a crisis. And many felt it deeply, though no one was prepared to speculate on the outcome. Many interpreted the final week as evidence that the Pope had for the first time intervened in the situation in a way that demonstrated his basic sympathies with the conservative wing of the church. The question was asked whether Michael Serafian was right after all when before the recent session he said in his book The Pilgrim, Pope Paul VI, that the Pope, following a serious personal crisis, had chosen to bring the church back to its former traditional course.

In any case, we can no longer blame the curia for conservative feet-dragging, for it has now become clear that the Pope himself is directly and decisively involved in the situation. This is a further cause for regret and disillusionment among many Catholics. I do not mean that they are shorn of respect for the papal office or that they are prepared to display any disobedience to the Pope. But they are asking questions.

The papal additions to the schema are as serious as the reluctance to take action on religious freedom. If these additions were to be voted on separately, they would be badly defeated. But they cannot be voted on separately. The vote must be called on the entire schema, and this will be approved. Obviously, this is a forced vote. It leaves many bishops restless and disgruntled. Many are asking why the Pope forced this situation on them.

Why was this last moment chosen to force on the council a statement it had shown no desire to make during its long weeks of labor? Is this strategy not in conflict with the very meaning and purpose of the council? Was the idea of the council not to let the voice of the church be heard through the ecumenical episcopate? And is the action not in conflict with the assured guidance of the Spirit possessed by the councils as well as by the Pope? Conciliarism is dead in the sense that Rome long ago abandoned the notion that the councils stand above the Pope. But Rome has held that the college of bishops has a genuine authority “along with the Pope.” Does this authority allow for such heavy-handed interventions from above which allow no room for decision-making by the council? Very likely, the disillusionment of many delegates is related to the fear that this council may actually lose all real significance because of papal interventions. That is, they fear that the Second Vatican Council will not result in any real complement to balance the one-sidedness of the First Vatican of almost a hundred years ago.

A period of crisis may well have been introduced by the papal intervention. During the present intermission we will be hearing a great deal of discussion about the real motives of Pope Paul. Already suggestions have been made that Paul had begun to be concerned about the progressive tendencies within the council long before, but only now had come to grips with them. No one should underestimate the difficulties the Pope has in keeping the church calm and united in these days. One needed only to observe the intense differences in outlook manifest at the council to appreciate the task Paul has in keeping all the tendencies united within the church. Has the Pope indeed come out for one side and against the other? Is this why he has insisted that the schema on the church has changed nothing in the traditional doctrine of the church even though at the inception of his pontificate he expressed the hope that the Spirit would lead the council to a clearer insight into the essence of the church?

To analyze this phase of the council is extremely difficult. But the intense disappointment obvious among many Catholics is not hard to understand at all. The great question that still must be answered is: Does real harmony exist between the Pope and the council? Or are there now tensions and disagreements of such magnitude that they can be relieved only by pressure from above? In my judgment this is a decisive question for the council, so decisive that it will determine the council’s future significance for the Roman church.

Finally, it has been said frequently that Rome has become so ecumenical that the question now is how the Protestant churches are to respond. In all likelihood, in view of the recent session, this question will be muffled for the time being. Indeed, Catholic awareness of Protestant reaction is one of the reasons for the extreme disappointment that Catholics feel in the recent council session. The way things have gone has brought about a new situation in the council. Those who refused in the past to make predictions for the council are now thankful that they were hesitant. But now too, even in view of what has taken place recently, we shall do well to withhold prognosis. The council is not yet over.

For what will 1964 be most remembered? Some North American churchmen would say it is too early to assess the long-range impact of such events as Khrushchev’s ouster, the Congo massacre, the passage of the U. S. civil rights bill, and the emergence of Communist China as a nuclear power. But other church leaders in the United States and Canada declare that the historic proportions of at least some of the big developments are quite clear. They note that many of the events seem to have profound moral implications.

Dr. Lester Harnish, president of the American Baptist Convention, says that from the standpoint of the conscience of the Christian Church “the blowup in the Congo will stand out in the perspective of history.” He regards it particularly noteworthy after so many years of missionary endeavor in the Congo. Harnish notes that the “savagery differs from its counterpart in Mississippi in quantity but not in naked bestiality. The Bible belt of America and the heart of Africa are still basically unchanged by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which still produces a new man through the miracle of the new birth. We have a long road ahead as the Church of the living God.”

Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke, president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, asserts that the events surrounding the U. S. elections of 1964 “may warp our national and international behavior for a generation.” “Internationally,” he adds, “one may take his choice between the explosion of a nuclear device in China, the coup which remanded a Soviet prime minister to the rear ranks, and the monumental struggles in Africa for its soul. On strict humanitarian grounds, the breakthrough in the new knowledge of certain viruses may be longest remembered. Or, would we choose the passage of the civil rights bill?”

Evangelist Billy Graham asserts that “1964 will be remembered as a year of riots, revolt, and revolution throughout the world. It will also be remembered for the accelerated pace within the Church away from orthodox Christianity. I have been appalled at some of the statements from Christian leaders having to do with faith and morality. Some of them seem sub-Christian and even pagan.”

In the opinion of Presiding Bishop John E. Hines of the Episcopal Church, “the events of 1964 which will leave a determinative mark historically include the passage of civil rights legislation by the U. S. Congress and the continuing search of the Second Vatican Council for aggiornamento. Both activities or achievements bear the mark of compromise. This is the ‘pound of flesh’ extracted by practical politics in power deliberations. But it is clear that the concerned majority of citizens of this country are determined that social justice shall transcend partisan politics, and that due process for the guarantee of individual rights shall be available to ‘even the least of these—brethren.’ It is also clear that when a vast communion such as the Roman Catholic Church can—in open debate—move towards an internationalizing of outlook, plus the extending of an invitation to non-Romans to ‘talk it over’ on local levels, the ecumenical picture begins to possess substance undreamed of a decade ago.”

Dr. Ernest M. Howse, moderator of the United Church of Canada, suggests that “discoveries in the fields of automation and cybernation made in 1964 but as yet unpublicized may be as momentous for the future as printing was five centuries ago. Of recorded events, perhaps the explosion of China’s nuclear bomb may have the most vivid, immediate, and momentous consequences. Perhaps this may be the final factor in turning all the nations of the world to seek through the only world organization available the means to an enduring peace for all mankind.”

Archbishop Iakovos, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America, states that the year “will be best memorialized for two momentous religious events: the encounter between the churches of the East and West, personified by Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul, and the meeting of the American West and the European West when our American cardinals met with the Pope to vote on the passage of the historic schema on religious liberty. From the first meeting, a meeting of two pilgrims in the Holy Land, the world felt both relief from the discord of the divided past and hope for a unified Christian future. The second meeting in which the American West may be said to have lost to the European West at least for the moment the progressivism and liberalism which our American brethren revealed, provided the world with a most encouraging excitement and gives the promise of that religious liberty which may at long last become a reality to the glory of God.”

Dr. Stephen J. England, president of the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), agrees. He says that the most significant development of 1964 lies in the “complex of events included in the openness of Roman Christianity to change and dialogue.” This complex, he adds, includes the Pope’s trip to the Holy Land and his meeting there with Patriarch Athenagoras and the invitations extended to non-Catholic observers by the Second Vatican Council. “These things will be profoundly influential in the ongoing life of the total Church.”

According to the Rev. Gordon Van Oostenburg, president of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, “1964 will be remembered as the year in which our government passed the civil rights legislation. This event seen in the context of the rising social strife in Africa and the worldwide prominence given to Martin Luther King in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize causes our government’s action to emerge as the most significant event of the year.”

Dr. Samuel Young, chairman of the general superintendents’ board of the Church of the Nazarene, observes that “the changes of 1964 confront the Church with the fact that political and social revolution must have an adequate religious base to avoid self-destruction.” The classic example, he declares, is Africa, “where freedom has been granted only to move toward dictatorship in cases where there has not been adequate ground in democracy and freedom.”

Says Dr. Nathan Bailey, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, “Nationally, 1964 has seen the United States make a bold and decisive commitment to a philosophy of socialism in government which will lead ultimately to totalitarianism and the appearance of anti-Christ. Of greater eternal significance, however, is the widespread and open acceptance of the doctrine of universalism on the part of many Protestant churches. As the Church abandons the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the gospel message, it is destroying the validity of its own existence and is thereby literally committing suicide.”

Dr. Theodore Carcich, vice-president of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference for its North American division, sounds a note of thanks: “Besides bringing us another year closer to the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, 1964 is remembered most for the providence of God which spared our world from a nuclear holocaust, thus permitting the Church to press toward a triumphant completion of the gospel commission.”

Protestant Panorama

Southern Baptist missionaries in Indonesia voted to work toward establishment of a “Christian Evangelistic Study Center.”

Episcopal Church Executive Council restated the denomination’s opposition to legalized gambling and commissioned preparation of a new position paper to reflect its opposition “in modern day terms.”

Portuguese Presbyterians, faced with a shortage of ministers, are placing new emphasis on training laymen to serve churches and Sunday schools. A new course for lay workers in night classes is planned.

Miscellany

A rally in Monrovia, Liberia, marked the tenth anniversary of gospel broadcasting to Africa by the Rev. Howard O. Jones, associate evangelist on the Billy Graham team. Jones plans soon to expand his ministry to include a half-hour weekly gospel broadcast to Negroes in the United States.

The Free Gospel Church of Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, is protesting proposed condemnation of its property and subsequent transfer to a Roman Catholic parish by the Allegheny County Redevelopment Authority.

Leaders of the Prague Christian Peace Conference denounced plans for the NATO multilateral nuclear force.

A New York state court ordered a temporary injunction against the showing of a comedy film, “John Goldfarb, Please Go Home.” The suit was brought by Notre Dame University, which claims that the film and the book in which it is based downgrade the school’s image. The film was to have opened in New York on Christmas day.

A manufacturer in Clifton, New Jersey, reported in December that he had sold some 7,000 banners reading “One Nation Under God.” The flying of the banners over public buildings has been spearheaded by the Knights of Columbus. One of the pennants was placed under the American flag which flies over the City Hall in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.

A 25-year-old photographer in Gennazzano, Italy, was accused of stealing $160,000 worth of church art from a Roman Catholic monastery where he had been raised as an orphan.

The Parent Royal Commission on Quebec Education issued a report urging elimination of religious examinations from Quebec public schools. It also asked an end to the “regular and obligatory participation of students in numerous religious exercises.”

Three men were arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, following the explosion of a gas-filled balloon outside the Negro First Baptist Church. The noise caused near panic among Sunday morning worshippers.

Personalia

Dr. Herbert Gezork will retire next August 31 after serving fifteen years as president of Andover Newton Theological School.

The Rt. Rev. Roland Koh was appointed Anglican Bishop of Jesselton, Sabah (formerly North Borneo). He is Chinese and a convert from Buddhism.

Dr. Nils A. Dahl, Norwegian New Testament scholar, was appointed a professor at Yale Divinity School.

They Say

“Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, in accepting the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

IOWA, HER AFFECTIONS,

LIKE THE RIVERS OF HER BORDERS,

FLOW TO AN INSEPARABLE UNION

This inscription is found on a Civil War monument that stands besides Iowa’s Capitol building overlooking Des Moines, site of last month’s two-day meeting of the policymaking General Board of the National Council of Churches. Footprints in the snow around the monument were few, suggesting that the twenty-degree weather had not encouraged sightseeing expeditions among board members. If any read the inscription, a wistful sigh might well have been the response. For though the NCC wholeheartedly seeks church unity, the affections of many both inside and outside the churches (low not toward the council. Indeed, one board member spoke of the “rising tide” of criticism of the NCC, and the chief concern of this board meeting was confrontation of that criticism in an effort to repair the NCC image, which has suffered badly in many quarters. In centering its attention on public relations the meeting was reminiscent of that of just five years ago in Detroit, when the council struggled in the aftermath of the Cleveland study conference which had urged U.S. recognition of Red China.

At a Des Moines Kiwanis luncheon on the eve of the board meeting, NCC President Reuben H. Mueller, senior bishop of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, denounced as “absolutely unfounded” accusations that the council has Communist leanings. Next day at the President’s Luncheon of the General Board he excoriated some of NCC’s critics as “men and organizations whose religion is pugnacious and narrow, and whose patriotism is measured by the dollars that gullible people send them to fatten their bank accounts.” “This kind,” he continued, “not only makes the National Council of Churches its favorite whipping boy, but practices Hitler’s theory of the big lie: If you tell it often enough and loud enough the common people will begin to believe it! This is how Nazi Germany was born. And this is how religious Fascism is at work in the United States today. Everywhere I go in this country I find people saying: ‘These accusations must be so, for no one representing the council gives answer to those criticisms and charges.’ ” Bishop Mueller added that he was “not nearly concerned so much with the professional religious baiter” as with the “good, sincere people who have been led to become critical of the social application of the Gospel through definite efforts of the churches.”

The council’s general secretary, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, in his report to the board also spoke at length about current attacks on the NCC, which he saw basically directed toward “the present religious establishment as represented in the mainline Protestant and Orthodox communions which comprise the council. It is the ecumenical orientation of these communions, with all that ecumenicity carries with it, that the attackers seek to destroy.” He pointed to “increasing evidence” of a profound “polarization … between clergy and laity.” He also reported that contributions to the NCC from donors (individuals, corporations, and foundations) are “falling short of a reasonable anticipation of 10 per cent of income from this source.”

Dr. Samuel D. Proctor, an American Baptist Negro minister and former associate director of the Peace Corps, was approved as the new general director of public interpretation. The General Public Interpretation Committee voiced its conviction that the “time has come for greater efforts at defending the council, as strategically as possible, against false charges.” This stimulated a lengthy floor discussion on how best to implement this. One result may be production of a compendium of past political pronouncements for the purpose of studying the theological bases given in conjunction with them, though one speaker confessed the wide theological “discrepancy” among the member denominations.

Such critics of the NCC as Billy James Hargis and Gerald L. K. Smith were mentioned, but highly respected Eugene Smith, executive secretary for the U. S. Conference of the World Council of Churches, rose to assert that there is much criticism of the NCC from “fair people,” many of whom “believe our concept of mission is imperialism.” He spoke of “church renewal” as a point of contact with such persons. Dr. Edward Grant, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), followed him to warn that it “is easy to overstate the case for the NCC” and be “cut down” in the process. He also spoke of “ill-advised” criticisms of the churches by members of the NCC staff. But University of Oregon President Arthur Flemming, an NCC vice-president and former Eisenhower cabinet member, countered with a defense of the right of staff members to become involved in the issues of the day.

Dr. Grant had earlier conveyed to the board the gist of a 1964 resolution of his church’s General Assembly, which criticized the NCC Commission on Religion and Race for some of its activities and asked that it “work more closely” with local churchmen and church councils.

Extensive debate accompanied approval of comprehensive guidelines for a broad anti-poverty strategy for church groups from the denominational to congregational level. The proposals laid stress upon helping those in need improve their own living standards. Church groups were called on, among other things, to: seek a more adequate federal housing bill in 1965; support preventive social, psychiatric, health, and rehabilitation services; work for increases both in state unemployment compensation and in minimum-wage-law rates; and organize more church-related credit unions.

Upon conclusion of the reading of the proposed “action objectives.” Henry M. Bulloch, editor of church school publications for the Methodist Publishing House, urged that the paper be sent back to committee for complete reworking inasmuch as it reflected a philosophy for which the NCC “is under fire,” namely, that “we think in terms of big government—the church does not do the job itself but gets someone else to do it.” A move for recommittal was later defeated, but not before the board amended its approval of the “action objectives” by asking the Division of Christian Life and Work to edit them to reflect contributions from industrial and labor leaders by means of consultations. In proposing the amendment. Dr. Dow Kirkpatrick, pastor of the First Methodist Church of Evanston, Illinois, said that referral back to committee would mean reconsideration “by folk with the same bias as reflected in the report—turn first to government.” With some three-fifths of the 250-member board present in Des Moines, the vote for amendment was about as close as it could get—53 to 52.

In other action, the board approved continuation of overseas distribution of U. S. government surplus commodities by the NCC’s central department of Church World Service. Use of government food resources by the churches, said the board, “does not jeopardize the historic position of the American churches concerning separation of Church and State, when accompanied by appropriate safeguards.” The past decade Church World Service has shipped foodstuffs weighing two and a half billion pounds valued at $250 million.

The board heard detailed plans for a previously announced long-range mission of relief and education in Mississippi—called the Delta Ministry. Also, a companion program in the north was announced for the first time and approved: “Metropolitan Chicago as a focal point of world mission.” It will seek support from churches the world over through the World Council of Churches. The basic purpose is “to assist the churches in metropolitan Chicago to contribute to the development of an open society in which civil rights and the resources to utilize them are extended to all persons in the metropolis and to further explorations in the ministry of the laity in the metropolitan setting.”

Who’S Doing What?

A series of regional meetings is the next step planned by a coterie of churchmen who are spearheading an ecumenical drive for equal-opportunity programs in the United States.

Most of the initiative for the drive comes from the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race. Formal sponsorship is shared with representatives of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Synagogue Council of America.

Churchmen associated with the effort are largely those who led the religious lobby in behalf of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their first meeting since passage of the bill took place in November at a conference center in Warrenton. Virginia.

According to the Rev. Bruce Hanson of the NCC commission, the main purpose of the four-day closed-door session was to receive a government briefing on ways to implement the civil rights law, the federal anti-poverty program, and other public-assistance measures. A secondary purpose, said Hanson, was to discuss the proposed regional meetings.

Several government officials addressed the Warrenton meeting, including Le Roy Collins, director of the Community Relations Service created by the Civil Rights Act, and Burke Marshall, assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Hanson says the federal government has a problem of coordinating its plethora of programs, particularly in letting the public know who’s doing what.

Anna Hedgeman, an official of the NCC commission, was quoted as saying that the churchmen at Warrenton were remarkably enthusiastic. “The meeting gave them a new appreciation of government people. They were very much impressed.”

Pulpit Exchange

Churches of the six communions participating in the Consultation on Church Union will take part in a pulpit exchange on Sunday, January 17, the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Announcement of the observance, which was proposed at the consultation’s meeting last April, was made by Episcopal Bishop Robert F. Gibson, Jr., chairman of the consultation.

Local congregations of the Methodist, Protestant Episcopal. United Presbyterian, and Evangelical United Brethren churches, the United Church of Christ, and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) will take part.

Arrangements for the exchanges will be made locally, but denominational leaders are encouraging the project as a means of stimulating discussion and helping participating communions to become better acquainted.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18–25, is promoted internationally by the World Council of Churches and sponsored in the United States by the National Council of Churches. It coincides with the Roman Catholic Chair of Unity Octave.

Gibson said the January 17 date for the pulpit exchange was chosen because “people of many communions throughout the world will be thinking earnestly about the unity of the Church this week.”

The Consultation on Church Union will hold its fourth session in Lexington, Kentucky, April 5–8.

Togetherness At The Altar

A Roman Catholic priest and a Dutch Reformed pastor officiated at a mixed marriage in the chapel of the Catholic University of Nijmegen, Holland. Protestant and Catholic guests joined in singing nuptial hymns.

The couple exchanging vows were Herman Hebinck, 21, a Roman Catholic medical student at the university, and Elleke Tenhoopen, a 20-year-old Protestant, enrolled in a social science course.

Father H. Vanwaesberghe, S. J., who is taking a graduate course at the university, conducted the wedding ritual and blessed the rings. Reformed Pastor N. Hefting delivered a sermon during the ceremony.