Eutychus and His Kin: September 15, 1958

CARTOON OF THE MONTH

Some Sunday Schools have given up the time-honored custom of having platform recitations on Rally Day, no doubt because the teachers could not bear to hear the same old doggerel once more. The acrostic below is from the new collection I have edited, Rally Day Revived. The cartoon above is one of the many charming illustrations which your own children may color during the program.

RALLY DAY ACROSTIC

Remember, your neighbors

expect it of you:

To send us to church

is the least you can do.

Although we are little

and somewhat naive,

We know every Sunday

you sleep when we leave.

Long live our dear church school,

for teacher is nice;

Her stories are sticky

with pious advice.

Let’s get to our sandpile,

our crayons and cake;

When this thing is over

we’re off for the lake.

Yet, messing and glueing

and learning by doing,

We share the great insight

that makes us all one:

To quote our director,

“Religion is fun!”

AN ENGLISHMAN’S SALUTE

CHRISTIANITY TODAY (May 12 issue) brought me the news that Nyles Huffmann of the Air Mail from God Mission had been killed in an air crash in Mexico. I knew something of Huffmann and his work and a few years ago I visited his mission station and made a study of his methods and the results that he had achieved. I came away with the feeling that I had been in touch with a man of the Livingstone build.

While still a schoolboy Huffmann made up his mind to be a missionary in Mexico. The war crashed in upon his plans and for some years he was in the air force. He was a typical G.I., tough, determined, fearless and dogmatic.

On demobilization the first thing he did was to make a kind of reconnaissance flight over some of the less known parts of Mexico. That done he went back to college, completed his studies, was ordained as a Baptist minister, and made it clear to the girl he wanted to marry that he was going to a risky, pioneer job, and if she didn’t like the prospect they would not go on with the marriage. A few weeks later they were on their way together to Mexico. It was all rather breathless and unusual. But that’s the kind of man Huffmann was. He knew what he wanted and he hated to waste time.

That was in 1948. Into the 10 years between his start and the final crash … he crowded as much as most men achieve in a normal lifetime. He didn’t bother to join up with a missionary society. He just told a few friends what he was going to do, asked them to pray for him and to send him from time to time just what financial help they could.

Some 50 miles or so south of Mexico city they found a hill with a sufficiently flat top to serve as a rough kind of runway for the plane. In a little hamlet they acquired a bit of land where, with their own hands, they built their home. Their living room was nothing more than a mosquito-screened veranda, while their bedroom was also the office, the walls of which were plastered with large-scale maps of Mexico. It was all rather bare and spartan and was clearly a place for work, not for taking one’s ease.

Huffmann had his own ideas of missionary strategy. He was convinced, for example, that the traditional methods of making the Gospel known were too leisurely, and that unless some speedier way was found the end would come long before the task was complete. He was also convinced that the printed Word should be put right in the forefront of the attack. He accordingly bought a second hand two-seater airplane, secured some thousands of copies of the Gospels from the World Gospels Crusade in Los Angeles, as well as a gift of Bibles from the Gideons in Chicago, all of them in the local vernacular.

The practice that he worked out was to load up the plane with copies of the Gospels, squeeze in with his Mexican mechanic, and take off. In an hour or so they would be over some of the less known parts of Mexico, straining their eyes to spot a village or a hamlet that had an open space suitable for dropping the booklets. Having found one he would fly as low and slow as he dared, and at the right moment he would give the word to the mechanic to open a tiny aperture in the base of the plane and drop out a thin stream of Gospels. The villagers would, of course, come rushing out to see what was happening and pick up this “airmail from God.” Some would even climb into the trees or on to the roofs of huts to recover copies that might be stuck. In 10 years, Huffmann had distributed—so it is said—something like two million copies of the Gospels.

But that was only the first wave of his attack. He followed it up by sending a couple of Mexican evangelists to the village a few months later. Their task was to contact those who had secured copies of the Gospels, find out if they had read and understood them, answer questions, and expound and press home the Christian message.

A month or so later there would be a third and final stage when a man would arrive in the village for a prolonged stay. His task was not to preach the Gospel or distribute the Scriptures, but to sit down with individuals and prepare them for leadership and responsibility in the little Christian group that was beginning to emerge in the village. All this was carefully recorded. Huffmann had his card index showing what progress had been made in this village and that hamlet and who were the likeliest leaders in each instance.

Today in scores of remote Mexican villages there are little groups of Christian people meeting regularly for worship and for the study of the booklets dropped by Nyles Huffmann, the man who found a new way of getting the Gospel to the people.

Ballard Glebe

Studland, Dorset, England

CASE OF IDENTITY

C. B. Underwood is committing a solecism in writing of “Nonconformists” outside England (Eutychus, July 21 issue). Presumably he means “non-Anglicans,” but in England Roman Catholics are “Nonconformists” to the Established Church no less than Methodists and Baptists. In Scotland, where the Established Church is Presbyterian, it is the Episcopalian who is a Nonconformist! Mr. Underwood is really betraying his theological and ecclesiastical prejudices in his use of a word which in the U.S.A. has had no meaning since colonial days.

C. P. M. Sharpe may also be interested to know that throughout Ireland, Protestant North and Roman Catholic South, “chapel” means a place of worship of the Roman Catholic church. Somehow, I doubt whether he would use the term “chapel people” to describe his brethren of the Roman obedience. Again an obsolete term is being used, a survival of English, Victorian, insular snobbery, and unworthy of use in an international religious magazine.

Scarva Rectory

Portadown, Co. Armagh, No. Ireland

THE NEW BIRTH

Your editorial “Evangelism and the New Birth” (July 7 issue) was a masterpiece which thrilled my soul! Such writing is much in need among us Lutherans and, no doubt, among others too.

Hauge Luther Inner Mission Federation

Minneapolis, Minn.

I understand that one cannot be a Christian unless the new birth or union with Christ has taken place—I also understand that this union is actually accomplished in immersion (commonly called baptism) as Romans 6 so clearly delineates. This event can be remembered and pointed to as the moment when one became a member of the Church of Christ Jesus. Your statement that the “great majority of Christians” would find it difficult to “determine either the time or place when they passed from death to life” punches holes in the foundation of Christianity.… I fear that your teaching and that of Billy Graham on the subject of the new birth—leaving out … immersion … is leaving thousands suffocating in ignorance and confusion.

Sunset Beach Church of Christ

Haleiwa, Hawaii

FACT AND IMPRESSION

Your searching review of the American Baptist Convention (July 7 issue) observed that we rejected by two to one a movement into the Interchurch Building in New York. The correspondent notes that this was shortly after “an address strongly advocating ecumenicity by Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, American Baptist pastor and current president of the National Council of Churches.” This is factual, but it might leave the impression that Dr. Dahlberg tried to influence the Convention toward the New York location. This would be incorrect; a year before, Dr. Dahlberg had spoken in behalf of a Midwest location and not for the Interchurch Building. He advocated a closer tie with other Baptist bodies as well as an interest in cooperation with different denominations.

Ex. Sec.

Nebrasba Baptist State Conv.

Omaha, Neb.

CHURCH AND STATE

In regard to “Religion and the Presidency” (June 23 issue) …, Pope Leo XIII declares, “The state must not only have care for religion, but must recognize the true religion.… It would be erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be as in America, dissevered and divorced.…”

“Again, it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion: that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and supported.…” John A. Ryan and Francis J. Boland Catholic Principles of Politics, Macmillan, New York, 1947, pp. 315, 300.

Can … any American citizen reconcile the above quoted “Catholic” doctrine with the qualifications of a “loyal American president” who “shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution” wherein “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office” and which also specifically states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?” Certainly not!

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Perhaps the most significant thing about the failure of Mr. Spivak to play the “gentleman” in his case is that it proves the existence of the very forces which Mr. Spivak seemed most anxious to deny existed.

Rector

Church of the Holy Nativity

Chicago, Ill.

I think you should become more liberal in your views about competing ideologies.… No doubt there are many things wrong with Roman Catholicism, secularism, Judaism, atheism, agnosticism, and so on, but I think the more advanced viewpoint is that we should be tolerant of others’ beliefs.

East Chicago, Ind.

Roman Catholicism … is definitely out to capture America. This unfortunate situation is developing fast as Protestantism becomes more and more tolerant of all religious dogma and less and less tolerant of sound doctrine.…

Washington, D. C.

THE REAL IMPERATIVE

Edward W. Greenfield made some criticism of the faith in public education expressed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (May 12 issue). In general, however, Mr. Greenfield was far too favorable toward the Assembly’s pronouncement, and he failed to set forth the real educational imperative confronting Christian people today. The statement by the … Assembly had no time for the private Christian school.… This … is disgusting; for the U.S.A. church is theoretically committed to the Reformed Faith … which has historically stressed the relationship of all of life and of all aspects of education to the living, sovereign God of the Scriptures.

Pulaski, Pa.

Thanks for an exciting issue (July 21). Dr. Cullmann, Mr. Mahler and Mr. Bodey all speak convincingly and hearteningly. I should like to see Mr. Bodey’s thesis followed up with attention to Christian Day Schools. My experience in the past three years has pointed up an almost frightening lack of training in these grades which might give our children the means to grapple with matters of God in a right way. I do not believe our school has found a completely satisfactory way of doing: but I am convinced we are on the right track and that others can contribute independently once they reach out to do the job of training for Christian intellectual strength.

St. Thomas Epis. Ch. & Southwest School

Houston, Tex.

GREEK ORTHODOX MISSIONS

How can any well-informed Christian resent the lack of Eastern Orthodox enthusiasm for “Protestant Missions” in Greece where Orthodox churchmen are doing a great work for Christ?… Is the precious thing called “evangelical effort” a peculiar treasure of “Protestants”? I know of no church in Christendom more concerned with … “evangelical zeal” and “evangelical effort” than the Eastern Orthodox Church.…

Priest-Diocese of Erie (Episcopal)

Youngsville, Pa.

• In History of the Orthodox Church, Constantine Callinkos writes of the growing interest in union between Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He attributes their friendship to “the recognition by the Orthodox Church of the validity of Anglican Orders, which has always been disputed by the Roman Church; secondly, to the abstention of the Anglican Church from efforts to convert the Orthodox; and thirdly, to the exchange of letters of peace on ceremonial occasions” (p. 132).—ED.

AN AFTERNOON IN WALES

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in 1940 I was conducting evensong at a country church called Cwmcarvan, near Monmouth, Wales. No sooner had I started the service than I noticed a gentleman coming in, and who sat in a pew in front of the pulpit.… The visitor was none other than the famous philosopher, author, and professor, the late Dr. C. E. M. Joad, whom I knew had been an agnostic and rationalist for 40 years since his college days at Oxford.

The rest of the congregation consisted of ordinary country people and I began to wonder how Dr. Joad would react to the sermon, which strange to say, dealt with three challenging questions as if they were meant for him: Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Christ? Do you believe in immortality?

I did not have long to wait for his answer, because the following Sunday, Easter Day, with the rest of the parishioners, Dr. Joad walked up and knelt before the altar to receive Holy Communion for the first time in 40 years.

Mathern Vicarage

Chepstow, England

As a result of reading your scholarly and objective book reviews …, I have gained much guidance and inspiration.

Phoenixville, Pa.

VACATION FROM BINGO

In regard to the poor underpaid ministers (July 7 issue) …, do you recall the establishing of most of our churches by men who … worked six days on the farm and rode horseback for Saturday night and Sunday service with no pay?… In Kansas … I was told … if a sinner should die in August …, he would be a “goner” as all the pastors are on their vacations resting from their bingo parties, ice cream suppers and organizational programs.… No work today offers the leisure, benefits, and comforts as the ministry. Ask the average man … about the supposed watchman on the wall … grabbing every penny he can.

Evansville, Ind.

THE GREAT MIDDLE AREA

I have only one thing to ask concerning the magazine and that is, Can’t you make it a little more simple …?

Rockford, Ill.

Provided you keep the academic standing of your magazine high, it is destined to carry much weight in the religious world for many years to come.

Lookout Mountain Baptist Church

Lookout Mountain, Tenn.

Far and away, you have succeeded in one of the original intentions of the magazine—providing a responsible journal on the intellectual level of The Christian Century, from an evangelical standpoint.

Bethany Baptist Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your defense of ecumenism by compromise is, to use an understatement, extremely disheartening.… I would much rather have The Christian Century in the hands of my people than your paper. At least they could detect the open denial of biblical truth.

Johnstown, Pa.

I have found the articles to be thought-provoking, scholarly, sane, and intelligently tolerant—qualities lacking in much so-called conservative literature. This is the sort of publication a conservative may proudly commend to his liberal friends.

First Baptist

Washington, N. J.

We are praying that it will continue to meet the need for a religious magazine in that great middle area between the devotional or how-to-do-it magazines on one hand, and the theological and scholarly journals on the other.

Wheaton Coll.

Wheaton, Ill.

Your journal is the most inspiring reading and fundamentally meets my needs in teaching my Sabbath school class which I have been doing for the past 26 years.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your publication is most stimulating, fresh, constructive and charitable. It is now a priority in my reading and I look forward eagerly to it.… I find that your paper helps to keep us together in the English-speaking world.

St. Paul’s Vicarage

Finchley, England

One cannot accept some articles inspired by the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures but they are so enlightened that they command respect and our differences become clear. They reveal our oneness in Christ rather than our different approach to the word of God. Its virile Protestantism and its advocacy of evangelism is most reassuring and a joy to read.

Bournemouth, England

I find it thought-provoking, and an excellent means of keeping in touch with current religious trends.

Australasian Missionary College

Cooranbong, N. S. W., Australia

Congratulations on a magnificent paper! Always stimulating, fruitful and appropriate to today’s conditions. It is much appreciated “down under.”

Ashfield Baptist Church

Ashfield, N.S.W. Australia

I find it very stimulating. I am the Vicar of a suburban parish in Cardiff with a big Council Housing Estate on it and it is very hard work with little opportunity for intellectual stimulus.

Cardiff, Wales

I read [it] with avidity.

Eccleshill Cong.

Bradford, England

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