Upwards of 5,000 delegates and visitors to the American Baptist Convention gathered June 12–17 appropriately enough at a bend in the river—this time the beautiful Ohio, where Cincinnati’s famed Garden provided a mammoth roof for the 51st chapter in the life of what formerly was known as the Northern Baptist Convention. Uppermost in the messengers’ minds was the search of a permanent home for administrative offices. They were committed to a move, but as Abraham they knew not whither they went, for none could be certain where the convention dialectic would take them.

A “Commission on Headquarters” had for seven months conducted an “intensive study” resulting in the recommendation that American Baptist headquarters be located in New York City’s Interchurch Center, to be completed in 1960. The commission’s vote was divided, New York gaining eight votes, with three going to a Chicago Midway site offered through lease by the University of Chicago, and a single ballot being drawn by a Valley Forge property of the convention’s Board of Education and Publication.

Hope was held out that this matter would be entirely cleared away on Friday the 13th. An isolated superstitious soul may have sought vindication in the fact that the issue remained the almost constant preoccupation of the delegates until the following Monday, second to last night of the convention. Proponents of the various sites served up a variety of pitches which put to shame the Cincinnati Redleg mound staff.

Able commission chairman Ellis J. Holt confessed he had prayed he would not lose his temper in the heat of debate. Delegates observed that his prayers were barely answered as subsequent applause indicated impending defeat of the commission’s recommendation of the 20-million-dollar New York building. Having voted for the requirement of a 55 per cent majority, the convention rejected by almost two to one the ecumenical center-just shortly after, as it turned out, an address strongly advocating ecumenicity by Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, American Baptist pastor and current president of the National Council of Churches.

Then the Chicago and Valley Forge protagonists settled into a war of words which produced some amazingly even encounters. A motion to choose a site—undesignated—in the Chicago area received a majority vote (1149 to 1084) but fell short of the required 55 per cent.

Girded by a nightlong strategy session, the Chicago party managed to block the following day’s Valley Forge bid by an even narrower margin—1235 for and 1228 against. Then it was the turn of the University of Chicago site to be blocked, its majority of 1236 to 1183 being inadequate.

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Back to Valley Forge. A delegate requests there be no applause for speeches, that more spiritual means of determination be applied. His request receives light applause. It is late Monday afternoon. Chicago supporters finally throw support to Valley Forge in the interest of convention harmony and spiritual unity. Valley Forge is victor by a 69 per cent majority—1477 to 655. But a motion to make it unanimous does not pass unanimously. And the Rev. Dr. Everett P. Quinton, 47, collapses after speaking for Valley Forge, dying without learning the result of the balloting.

Various reasons were projected for the turn of the voting. New York’s Interchurch Building was said to have been rejected on the following counts: a grassroots revolt against being steered in any one direction, desire for a building belonging only to the convention as a symbol of unity, and a wariness of proximity to ecumenical leadership.

Strong sentiment for a move to the Midwest was tempered by reservations as to identification with the University of Chicago. But any other site in the area would probably entail considerable delay. And if nothing else, the Baptists were eager to settle the matter. Besides, Valley Forge moving and labor costs were said to be much lower than those of Chicago. Some felt the more expensive move would curtail the missionary program.

But many felt the issue had been magnified out of all proportion to its importance. Chairman Holt had early classified the issue as involving “not a great decision” but one incidental to the greater tasks of missions and evangelism. Convention president, Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, whose gentle manner and quiet sense of humor acted to soothe the troubled convention, supposed he would regret so much of this convention having been devoted to one issue, but he added that he would be “grateful for the fine spirit” in which the matter was conducted.

A source of exasperation, as well as humor, was the suburban location of the great coliseum, a 45-minute bus ride from the hotels. This fact coupled with the long debates deprived delegates of rest periods. It was more than Baptist flesh and blood could stand. Members had been speaking of getting to the “more important issues.” But by the time they did, the majority of the delegates had departed the scene. This year’s energies had been absorbed by the choice of a headquarters.

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Thus, significance of passed resolutions was lessened. The roaring voice votes had subsided to comparative whispers. Cincinnati’s ex-mayor and noted churchman, Charles P. Taft, had seen it happen in many conventions. Calling for the churches to give careful consideration to significant political issues, he remarked upon the familiar practice of delegates “pushing through resolutions on the last day with a whoop and a holler when half the people have gone home.”

But American Baptists had faced an unfortunate set of circumstances. A move was made to shorten future conventions.

Resolutions were adopted favoring the halting of nuclear bomb testing, ending of universal military training, and the abolition of capital punishment.

Under personal exhortation of President Cranford and Southern Baptist Convention President Brooks Hays, the convention passed a resolution requesting establishment of a “Peace Commission,” thus taking action similar to that of Southern Baptists last month toward “mobilization for peace.”

Some predicted for Dr. Cranford re-election—American Baptists are traditionally reluctant to re-elect presidents—because of his proximity to Mr. Hays in Washington and their mutual interest in the “peace plan.” However, the convention approved the nomination of a Westerner, Mrs. Maurice B. Hodge of Portland, Oregon. Nomination is tantamount to election; thus Mrs. Hodge, a housewife, became the American Baptists’ fourth woman president. She is a past president of the Oregon Baptist State Convention.

Delegates heard Ohio’s Governor C. William O’Neill pay tribute to the Baptist youth organization as the center of all his religious and social activities throughout his youth. Every Sunday he traveled with a gospel team about his county. He voiced his chief fear in regard to public life—not as concerning the evil done by evil men, but the good which is left undone by good men.

Observers took note of certain statements and attitudes in the course of convention activities which seemed to indicate a defensive posture, seen generally in connection with the overarching shadow of the Southern Baptists, who greatly out number their northern brethren (about 9 million to 1.6 million). But more impressive is the Southern Baptist rate of growth. Glancing at a Saturday newspaper in Cincinnati, nominally northern territory, one could see advertised 16 Southern Baptist Churches as against 18 American. Dr. Porter Routh, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, assured American Baptists that Southern Baptists are embarked on no “church stealing escapade.”

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Dr. William H. Rhoades of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, felt compelled to note “the claims of some that ours is a dying denomination.” Dr. Edward Pruden warned against blaming slow progress of growth on denominational machinery. The Rev. Reuben Nelson, general secretary of the American Baptist Convention, talked of how “we sometimes get blue because we are not growing as fast as we’d like.”

Efforts were often made to preserve denominational significance through comparison with Southern Baptists in areas other than growth. Dr. Dahlberg spoke of some segments of the Southern Convention “so exclusive and isolationist that they seem almost like a Baptist Roman Catholicism.” Cranford and Nelson both spoke of distinctive American Baptist contributions in the fields of ecumenism and race relations.

On the other hand, Mr. Taft paid tribute to “the great responsible church bodies like Southern Baptists and the Presbyterian, U. S., who have stood to their colors under community threats.” He then went on to speak of the northern church bodies who have “failed miserably in the new threat to community peace … in our great cities, where the impact of urban renewal and the interstate highway program … is stirring the worst race feeling we have yet seen outside the South.… Relocation of minority groups … in slums or in the way of … public improvements, is taxing our ability to hold our towns together.” Signs of brightness for American Baptists are seen in a renewed concern for the often abandoned Sunday evening and midweek services, increased giving by members in time of recession, numerous loans being made for starting of new churches, and the sturdy gospel preaching and strong missionary emphasis heard in Cincinnati. Dr. Cranford sees the convention poised on the edge of a “great evangelistic advance.”

And next year the Baptists may go to Des Moines with the comforting thought that their search for a headquarters site is safely behind them.

F. F.

Ministers’ Pay

An average of $4,432 is earned annually by Protestant ministers questioned in a nation-wide National Council of Churches survey.

Ministers in the Southwest reported the highest salaries, Averaging $4,911 a year. Those in New England represented the lowest figure, $4,018.

Other averages: North Atlantic, $4,654; North Central, $4,603; Rocky Mountains, $4,549; Pacific, $4,480; South Atlantic, $4,449; South Central, $4,383.

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The survey was part of an examination of the role of the church as employer, money raiser and investor, conducted by Dr. F. Ernest Johnson, head of the study group of the NCC’s Department of Church and Economic Life, and Dr. J. Emory Ackerman, minister in the United Lutheran Church. The study will be published in the fall by Harper’s as the concluding work in a series of 10 books on ethical issues in current economic life.

The survey was limited to ministers in the following denominations: American Baptist Convention, Church of the Brethren, Congregational Christian, Disciples of Christ, Protestant Episcopal, Evangelical and Reformed, Methodist, and United Lutheran.

Professional expenses were pictured as taking a big bite out of clergymen’s income. Annual allowances for housing and auto travel reported in the survey averaged $1,468, but more than a third of the ministers said they received no travel allowance. Among those who receive a travel allowance, the average figure was $472 a year.

Two-thirds of the ministers queried said they were in debt. One-fourth of those indebted said the amount was increasing; one-fourth said it was dropping.

Seminary To Close

Declining enrollment and withdrawal of church financial support prompted Lincoln University’s board of directors to close their theological seminary as of June, 1959.

The Council on Theological Education of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. had decided that the Pennsylvania seminary would be unable to gain accreditation and so stopped subsidies.

The sponsoring university hopes to use the seminary’s “human and material resources” for “a future religious program.”

Seminary Dean Andrew E. Murray said small enrollments are plaguing all Negro theological institutions.

Friendship Fleet

Out in the bush, planes are an invaluable asset. Few realize this more than the 800 personnel of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc., who find their way to the most remote parts of the globe in producing literature for the uncivilized.

Because a million-dollar-a-year budget must stretch from posts in North and South America to Southeast Asia, little money remains to purchase aircraft, however valuable. Thus Wycliffe, which trains its people at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in affiliation with the University of Oklahoma, is obliged to appeal to civic pride. By now, a pattern has been established for the purchase of planes in which Christians in a particular city will organize to gain enough funds for an aircraft.

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Wycliffe has also established a pattern in cooperating with foreign governments who want to promote literacy. Wycliffe language specialists have already been welcomed in such countries as Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Australian New Guinea, and Viet Nam.

The linguistic experts do the countries great service, even from a secular standpoint, in reducing to writing indigenous languages, and producing dictionaries, grammars, and primers. They usually operate under contracts, which always provide for the distribution of Scripture portions to new literates.

Planes used in Wycliffe language work normally are given to respective governments, which in turn provide them for exclusive use in language work. Twenty such planes, known collectively as the Friendship Fleet, now are operating under such arrangements. The latest, “Spirit of Seattle,” was presented to President Carlos P. Garcia of the Philippines during his visit to Washington. At a ceremony at Washington National Airport, Mrs. Garcia christened the plane with a bottle containing water from Manila Bay and a Seattle river.

The aircraft destined to penetrate the deepest jungles of the Philippines is known as a Helioplane. Made by the Helio Aircraft Corporation of Norwood, Massachusetts, the Helioplane is specially suited for such operation in that it can take off and land in comparatively short distances.

Sixth Suit

A new case was filed in New York’s Federal Court challenging legality of Fordham University’s purchase from New York City of two blocks in Lincoln Square at marked-down prices.

The new action is the sixth suit started by opponents of the redevelopment program in order to halt the entire 13-block $205,000,000 slum clearing project.

Last month the United States Supreme Court declined to review and thereby affirmed a recent decision of the New York Court of Appeals which declared that the city did not violate the constitutional guarantee of Church-State separation in reselling land to the Roman Catholic school.

The appeals court had ruled that Fordham was not getting a subsidy of public property in buying the area at less than acquisition cost to the city because the university did not pay for the actual property but for its “reuse value.”

The Mark Of The Hawk

Eighty minutes of color film produced for release in commercial theaters, “The Mark of the Hawk” (Missions Visualized), represents an effort by the premerger Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to create public interest in Christian missions.

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Action is graphic (transitions sometimes choppy), the plot moving, though somewhat disjointed, and the photography is first-rate. As to message, the film is aptly named. While it has no sympathy for the mark of the Beast, it shows the “marks of the Lord Jesus” obscure; and more than the Church’s emblem of evangelism, it bears the emblem of social reformers urging political independence and racial equality.

The passion for social justice, of course, is biblical. It is refreshing to find a religious film that does not restrict the significance of Christianity to private devotion, that rebukes white man’s materialism and arrogance in the Orient, that refuses to yield the interest in racial and political equality to the communists, and that asserts love and justice rather than violence as the weapons of triumphant warfare.

Yet the film allows secular movements of the day (political democracy) to define one-sidedly content of Christian social action, and hence it seems at times to nurture quasi-revolutionary patterns of social change. The notion is conveyed that the Church fails to support freedom whenever it does not promote these programs. Only marginally does the film introduce the notion of equality before God; and the relevance of redemption is even more obscure. The Christian apostles faced the inequalities of the Roman Empire in a quite different orientation. They kept the death and resurrection of Christ at the center of their message; and the idea of Christian influence did not take precedence over supernatural regeneration. Nor did they appeal to Christianity’s provision of schools and hospitals for pragmatic leverage (benefits also available from Shell Oil Company and the Point Four program). In this whole film there is not a prayer, not a Bible, not a hymn; the one song would do for a night club (in fact, the featured players include at least one night club performer). Here and there, perhaps, one finds a strand of old time religion foundering on flats of modernity; for example, missionaries are said to have “given us the Word of God that we may be free from the jungle swamps of fear and sin”; “the greatest gift one man can give another is Christ”; “Jesus Christ in his sacrifice has shown us the way and we must learn to follow in that way before we can call ourselves truly free.” One carries away a feeling that he has been lifted into the life and fellowship of the worldly party at the opening of the film more intimately than into the life and fellowship of a mission.

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C.F.H.H.

Student Revival?

Chinese students in American universities are showing a deeper interest in the Christian religion, according to Calvin Chao, who carried on a campus ministry in Nationalist China before the communist revolution. Chao reports some 600 conversions the past year on campuses in Canada and the United States, with gains at the graduate student level.

“Chinese students seldom argue any longer about the existence of God,” Chao notes. “They want to know about the significance of Christ and the Bible.” Thus they are moving beyond the naturalistic tendencies of Confucianism, and of the Dewey philosophy that for a generation dominated the Chinese intellectuals who enrolled at Columbia University and later returned to their homeland proclaiming science and democracy as twin saviours. In the face of the communist conquest, Chao notes, they are also raising the social question.

Chao, reported to be on the Red China “blacklist,” says 3,000 Chinese students are now pursuing studies here, and 3,000 former students are now living in the States. Many are young intellectuals who turned to Europe and America for graduate study in the sciences. New York City, which has 50,000 Chinese, boasts the largest cultural Chinatown outside China itself, with 1,500 educated Chinese in the Columbia University area, while San Francisco has the largest commercial Chinatown outside China.

Dollar Difficulty

Commissioners to the 84th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada were told that the body is seriously short of money.

Financial needs are so great that missionaries might have to be recalled, according to Dr. G. Deane Johnston, chairman of the board of missions.

Spending by all church boards has been cut drastically. Salary increases for board secretaries and seminary professors, approved last year, have been withheld.

James Dutton, chairman of the board of administration, told the Toronto meeting that more modern fund-raising techniques were needed.

Europe

Italian Alternatives

The results of the Italian general elections of May 25 are seen as clear indications that the strongest communist party in the West still is a menace. On the other hand, Vatican-supported Christian democrats came out an even stronger majority party. Both parties, neither of which really support a free church in a free state, scored small gains over 1953 elections at the expense of small factions.

In a broad breakdown, the results show 53 per cent of the vote for democratic parties, 37 per cent for communists and fellow-travelers, and 10 per cent for reactionary parties.

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Policies of the two major forces suggest that the success of one is due to the strength of the other. Many who voted for Christian democrats probably did so not because they supported Vatican principles but because they feared atheistic Communism. On the other hand, anticlerical attitudes probably provided the dominating motivation for some communist votes.

Thousands of Italians are straddling the Christian-communist fence. They think nothing of attending mass in the morning and a Red rally in the evening.

The question in the minds of Protestants now centers on what course Christian democrats will follow. How much consideration will be given principles advanced by minor democratic parties which support true separation of Church and State to guarantee freedom of religion?

A spokesman of the Federal Council of Protestant Churches in Italy warns that a government formed with Christian democrats alone can mean difficult days ahead for non-Catholics.

One of the council’s committees has called for “full and loyal implementation of the constitution, especially with regard to freedom of religion, which is still threatened by the ambiguous keeping in force of restrictive laws imposed by the Fascist regime.”

R.T.

Christian ‘Crime’

One of the “crimes” for which former Premier Imre Nagy of Hungary was executed was his plan to restore the Christian democratic and other “notorious bourgeois fascist parties,” Budapest radio reported.

It said the groups included the Hungarian Christian, the Christian Front, the Catholic People’s, and the Christian People’s parties.

Nagy, 62, was born of a peasant family of strict Calvinist faith. Although a convinced communist who had fought in Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution, he apparently raised no objections when his daughter wedded a Protestant minister.

Bochum Action 1958

Today’s religious attitudes in Germany are in sharp contrast with those of a few years ago when it was generally said that the time for evangelism had passed. The word was that only personal work could have success, public efforts were considered “unbiblical.” Some Christian groups even suggested that there was no more reason to believe in a special effect from evangelism, much less could a revival be expected.

In the summer of 1958, it is evident that there has been an “about face.” Those in influential positions with the Lutheran and Free churches are reconsidering evangelism. One of the first indications came six years ago with the establishment of the Elias Schrenk Institute to promote biblical evangelism.

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The latest major evidence of evangelistic interest was a series of meetings sponsored by the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Westfalia, May 28—June 8. The meetings were referred to as “Bochum Action 1958.” Their objective was to rouse evangelical influence and to interest the unchurched. The approach was to deal in individual problems as a means of getting to the big question: “What will you do with Jesus?” Among the themes discussed were “Love, but How?” and “Pain, Sickness and Death.”

Without a doubt, the 1955 visit of Billy Graham did much to spur evangelistic thinking. Although it is unusual in Germany and always has an unpleasant smack to call people to a public decision for Christ, Graham’s meetings provided an exception. Throughout Germany, reports of lasting decision made at the Graham meetings continue to spread.

In Berlin, a giant evangelistic campaign is being planned for 1960. German evangelicals are hoping that Graham will agree to be on hand.

W.B.

Middle East

Delicate Balance

For years Christians and Moslems have had equally strong influence upon the government of Lebanon. The presidency invariably fell upon a Maronite while the premiership was held by a Moslem.

Amidst continued strife prompted by rebels, indications were piling up that the delicate balance could not be preserved much longer. As Lebanese Christians have emigrated to the United States, Moslems have been building up a population majority. This trend may lead Moslems to bid for the presidency.

By the middle of June, both Moslems and Christians, including the Maronite patriarch, Paul Boutros Meouchi, were urging the resignation of President Camille Chamoun. Moslems said they wanted a fundamental change.

Archaeological Find

A Wheaton College archaeologist speculates that Elisha of old may have stood in a building uncovered in current Holy Land excavations.

Professor Joseph P. Free’s expedition found the building, believed to date back to the biblical Dothan of about 1000 to 700 B.C. The archaeologists are digging in an area 60 miles north of Jerusalem.

Accommodations

The Vatican seems lately to be bent on accommodating individuals from every last walk of life. Evidence:

—Pope Pius XII received five American rock-’n-roll singers in a special audience. He was quoted as telling “The Platters” that because popular singers had such a tremendous following they had a responsibility to set an example, especially for youth.

—A new medal of St. Bernardine of Siena, patron saint of publicity agents, was unveiled at a special program in San Francisco sponsored by a Catholic newsmen’s group. The Pope made St. Bernardine the official patron saint of the public relations profession last year.

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