Religion and the 1958 World’s Fair

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Clothed in architecture of the next generation, the Brussels World’s Fair opens this week to display man’s greatest accomplishments. Within the 500 acres of “hanging roofs and walls” in Heysel Park is represented the utmost in human achievement. Theme of the first full-scale international exhibition of the nuclear era: “A declaration of faith in mankind’s ability to mold the atomic age to the ultimate advantage of all nations and peoples.”

Scientific advance sets the pattern of the fair, as symbolized by the already-famed Atomium which rises the equivalent of 30 stories above the ultra-modern roadway. For 25,000,000 fairgoers this model iron crystal magnified 150 billion times will likely be the feature they most remember, even if they are not whisked to the top-sphere restaurant by Europe’s fastest elevator or escalated between the displays of peaceful uses of atomic energy in the other spheres.

Situated in the shadow of this theme structure which speaks of technological mastery is an unimposing little building, pale blue trimmed in yellow, which represents world Protestantism. The Protestant Pavilion, in clean lines of brass, aluminum and glass, represents monumental determination, cooperation and foresight. Of the more than 200 buildings in the Brussels Fair, perhaps none represents such painstaking effort on the part of a comparative few.

All around, nations and organizations have tried to outdo each other. Superlatives will be in order during the next six months of the fair’s duration. The pace may well have been set by Baron Moens de Fernig, Belgium’s appointed commissioner general of the exhibition:

“Today, in countless areas of thought and action, human genius and creative vigor are responding to human needs. Everywhere, one finds evidence of man’s bounteous labor. How to examine this evidence anew—and to restore confidence in man’s capacity to create and prosper? The Belgian government, under the high patronage of His Majesty King Baudouin, has organized the most comprehensive moral and material stocktaking of man’s achievements ever undertaken.”

What are bounds for such keen international competition? There are hardly more bounds than those which the budgets of the individual countries themselves establish. But it is this limitation which works hard against the United States, which has only $15,000,000 to build and maintain “the largest circular building in the world with interior columns.” Across the street, the Soviet exhibit represents an outlay of some $50,000,000.

Amidst the man-made embellishments, nature will nevertheless have its place. Heysel Park’s ancient woodlands lend an appropriate backdrop to magnificent botanical garden displays, featuring more than two million individual plants.

Nor is the creativeness of man in arts omitted. The exhibit of original masterpieces of all ages and nations, on loan from galleries and collectors throughout the world, will comprise-what is described as the most comprehensive exhibit of the fine arts ever assembled under one roof. The world’s finest orchestras, opera, choral and theatrical groups will perform. There will be film festivals and ballets.

The first impression might be that this environment is no place for the Protestant Pavilion, which likely will be built and operated for less than a quarter of a million dollars, particularly in view of Catholic efforts. According to the World Council of Churches, this is the first international exhibition in which the Holy See has been represented in two distinct exhibits, both larger and more costly than the Protestant building, one representing the Church and the other the Vatican State.

This Sunday the Protestant Pavilion will be dedicated with services in four languages. The dedication will be the climax of many months of perseverance on the part of a tiny Protestant minority in Belgium (less than 100,000 in a population of about 8,500,000). The World Council is backing a drive to raise funds for the pavilion, but few outside of Belgium share the zeal of the Protestants there for their World’s Fair project.

Yet the Belgians, despite the lack of adequate support from fellow Protestants in other countries, have come up with an exhibit which as a physical plant not only compares favorably with others, but which has already won praise from architects. The chief architect of the fair has called the Protestant Pavilion one of the purest pieces of design in the entire exhibition. Credit for the design goes to M. Calame-Rosset, a Swiss who has been living in Belgium for most of his life.

In front of the building stands a 60-foot pylon topped with three crosses. The pavilion itself covers some 3,000 square feet and features a circular chapel (54 by 75 feet) and a rectangular exhibition hall (51 feet in diameter and 30 feet high). The chapel is furnished with a light oak communion table and a plain brass cross. A huge mosaic figure of Christ, made of natural hard stone by Swiss artist Peter Siebold, will hang free from the center wall and will be flanked by a second mosaic representing the people of the world.

Visitors may attend daily services in several languages. In the exhibition hall are displays of literature, inter-church aid, religious art, liturgy, evangelism and social work. Lectures and conferences will be held throughout the duration of the fair, after which the Belgians hope to move the building for use as a permanent church center.

An observer at this point could well ask: What is the message to be found at the Protestant Pavilion? What is the purpose of the exhibit and what is there to be communicated to the fairgoers? The theme of the Protestant exhibit is the new humanity, as seen in the light of Jesus Christ. This theme sets the hope of mankind in a context of supernatural grace, in contrast with the general theme of whole exhibition, with its accent on man’s ability. The optimistic notion that atomic power will be used automatically to the advantage of all nations and peoples is thus avoided. Yet there is no explicit contrast of the contemporary reliance on science with God’s not by might, not by power, but by my spirit. Nonetheless, Protestants seem not to be passive toward the general theme of the fair. Brussels offers an opportunity for a challenge, for a witness that goes beyond design and expense and display, for a chance to say that supreme confidence in the works of unredeemed man is not of God! Only as Protestantism articulates the modern man’s hope in Christ the Redeemer, will it reflect to fairgoers touring Europe the true spirit of the Reformation.

For whatever the pavilion is, much can be attributed to the inspiring leadership of the Rev. Peter Fagel, pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Brussels. Largely because of Fagel’s vision, the one-fifth acre Protestant site was secured—and this largely on faith! The Federation of Protestant Churches of Belgium then appealed to Protestants elsewhere for help.

The project still is in dire financial straits. The World Council up until April 1 had only been able to collect half of its $100,000 responsibility. Among the donors have been the National Lutheran Council, $5,000; the Protestant Episcopal Church, $5,000; and the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the American Baptist Convention, $1,000 each. Fund-raising gimmicks have included a dance on the University of Maryland campus. Donors’ names will be listed on a Protestant Witness Roll to be delivered to the pavilion.

Protestants in other countries have helped in unusual ways. A church in Holland is lending an organ, while a Dutch firm supplied chairs. Five-color plexiglass windows have been imported from Switzerland. The aluminum walls were made in England, the floor tiles come from Italy and wall decorations from Germany.

The Christian witness at the 1958 World’s Fair will not be confined to the Protestant Pavilion. The Belgian Congo displays include portrayals of Protestant activities, as do the exhibits of Germany, Switzerland, Finland and Austria. The United Bible Societies have an exhibit all their own in a huge display board representing an open Bible as the focal point. The board will flash Bible verses in a pattern of electric lights in several languages. The Belgian Gospel Mission, a member of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, has been readying thousands of pieces of literature for distribution to fairgoers.

Hands-Off Policy

At Shannon Airport in Dublin, ground hostesses for an Irish airline refused on moral grounds to handle a consignment of an American servicemen’s magazine intended for distribution to American troops en route to Germany.

The magazine carried four pictures of an American actress which the young women hostesses considered to be in bad taste.

New Post

With this issue, Peter deVisser ends a term of service as acting managing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Mr. deVisser has held the temporary editorial post since July, 1957. Prior to that he had been general manager of the Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, for many years.

He leaves Washington and returns to Grand Rapids to become director of publications at the Zondervan Publishing House. He will continue as CHRISTIANITY TODAY news correspondent in Grand Rapids.

Emphasis On Preaching

An English clergyman says that Anglican churches in Great Britain are again emphasizing preaching.

In a Minnesota address, the Rev. George B. Duncan said that there was a time when the sacraments were given the exalted place. But now, he said, that trend has been reversed and there is a much greater emphasis on the preaching of the Word of God.

Mr. Duncan, rector of an Anglican church in London, said the response to Bible preaching has been shown in his church where he has held two services each Sunday night “to get all the people in.”

He reported that the Keswick convention, devoted to Bible teaching, attracts more than 7,000 persons in Britain each July. He is a trustee of the convention and has been making a world tour in its behalf.

Addressing several hundred ministers and students in St. Paul, Duncan said “our job is to present to people what God has to say to men, rather than what we think about God.”

Worthy Of A Probe?

American Protestants would welcome an investigation into Colombian persecution as suggested by the Jesuits’ America, says Dr. Stewart W. Herman, executive director of the Lutheran World Federation’s committee on Latin America.

A recent editorial in the national Catholic weekly proposed that a team of social scientists be appointed to make such an inquiry, possibly financed by a large foundation.

Dr. Herman said this could serve both “to establish the facts in the case and bring about better working relations” between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Columbia. “There is no doubt that Protestant elements would welcome this sort of impartial investigation being suggested … (it) would provide greater spiritual and educational benefits.”

People: Words And Events

Appointments: As Chief of Naval Chaplains, Rear Admiral George A. Rosso, Catholic, effective in June; as director of the Department of Evangelism in the United Lutheran Church in America, the Rev. J. Bruce Weaver; as superintendent of Central Methodist Mission in Sydney, Australia, Dr. Alan Walker; as general secretary of the International Society of Christian Endeavor, Harold E. Westerhoff.

Deaths: The Rev. William C. Tapper, 53, executive secretary of the Baptist General Conference in America, in Chicago; Judge John J. Parker, 72, senior judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and chairman of the general sponsoring committee for next fall’s Billy Graham Crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina, in Washington.

Crusade: Six days of evangelistic meetings held by evangelist Oral Roberts on Long Island with overflow crowds.

Index: Of a major portion of the Dead Sea scrolls, printed in New York by an IBM electronic computer. Some 30,000 words from the scrolls were transferred to punch cards and arranged systematically.

Grant: To Taylor University, $8,000 from the Atomic Energy Commission to establish radioisotope training program.

Buildings: A new headquarters for the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society and the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society, at Wheaton, Illinois, to be erected this year; ground already broken for a new headquarters for Church of the Brethren in Elgin, Illinois, to cost $1,500,000, ready for occupancy in a year.

Denial: Of accreditation by North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools to Christian High School of Holland, Michigan, reportedly because no shop or cooking courses are offered.

Abstinence: Observed by 21 Negro congregations in Washington with day-long church services as a boycott of department stores which have not opened sales jobs to Negroes.

God On A Stamp

Vatican art provides the religious motif for a new three-cent postage stamp.

The new American stamp, which commemorates the International Geophysical Year, will be issued in Chicago May 31. “The Creation of Man,” a masterpiece fresco by Michelangelo, is incorporated into its design. The Michelangelo fresco appears on the ceiling panel in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

Expert philatelists say this is the first time God has actually been portrayed on a postage stamp.

This week, the Old North Church (Episcopal) of Boston becomes the first church ever to be pictured on an official cancellation for United States mail. A cancellation that will incorporate a view of the church and its famous belfry will be used on all first-day covers for the 25-cent stamp picturing Paul Revere, to be issued in Boston Friday, April 18.

Merger Advances

The Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity hopes to woo more churches into its merger plan as the result of a new agreement which would bar pastors from lodge membership.

The commission announced at a meeting in Chicago last month that it would recommend a provision in the constitution of four merging Lutheran churches that would require ministers to stay out of secret societies.

Commissioners also ironed out a thorny problem of seminary supervision and set a target date for submitting a merger constitution and by-laws to the United Lutheran Church in America and the Augustana, Finnish Evangelical Lutheran and American Evangelical Lutheran churches.

Governing documents for the merged body will be submitted to the 1960 conventions of constituent churches. The merged church would have nearly three million members in six thousand congregations and would be the largest Lutheran body in the United States.

Personal Inquiries

CHRISTIANITY TODAY inquired into the current projects of some noted religious personalities. Here is a report on their latest doings:

Professor Karl Barth, 72, is striving to finish his Dogmatics. His travels and lectures are at a minimum. Barth’s home is in Basel, Switzerland.

Professor Emil Brunner, recovered from a stroke, is readying the third volume of his work on Christian doctrine (this one on the Church). Brunner lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

Warner E. Sallman, Christian artist, is completing a mural for the Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. The mural, 8 feet high and 12 feet wide, depicts a scene from Mark 2:1–12, with more than 70 people represented.

The Bay Crusade

More than 3,000 cottage prayer groups are meeting regularly in behalf of evangelist Billy Graham’s San Francisco Bay Cities Crusade opening April 27.

Some 5,000 counsellors are in training, the most ever recruited for a Graham campaign. Cooperating churches number 1200.

Six of the evangelist’s Saturday night rallies at the Cow Palace will be televised nationally over the American Broadcasting Company network.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is reported planning Spanish translations of the weekly radio program, “Hour of Decision.”

The Rev. Rogilio Archilla, Spanish interpreter for Graham in the evangelist’s recent Latin American meetings, said he had accepted a tentative request to translate and deliver the “Hour of Decision” sermons to a potential audience of 150,000,000 in Latin America, Spain, the Philippines and other Spanish-speaking areas of the world.

Mr. Graham has agreed to come to New York in September for a week-long evangelistic campaign among the city’s Spanish-speaking population, “if we in New York can get together for it,” Archilla said. He added that the Fraternity of Spanish-speaking Protestant Ministers of New York City has decided to go ahead with preparatory work for such a campaign. Archilla is pastor of the Spanish congregation of DeWitt Church in the lower East Side of Manhattan. He is a native of Puerto Rico who came to New York in 1929.

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