Three Years after Slayings—Auca Witness Renewed

NEWS

CHRISTIANITY TODAY

Sunday, January 8, 1956—Five young missionary men landed their light plane on a sandy beach of an eastern Ecuador river. Their objective? To meet a group of Auca Indians and accompany them back into the jungle, with the ultimate aim of being able to preach to them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A flight over the Auca settlement confirmed that a party of native men was on its way to the river. Exactly what happened after that still is not known. But the fatal consequences have gone down in modern missionary history. Those who died at the hands of spear-bearing Aucas: Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Yoderian, and Nate Saint.

Within three years after the slayings, a prolonged friendly contact had been made with these same Aucas by Elliot’s wife and Saint’s sister. Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot and Miss Rachel Saint spent nearly all of October and November living in Auca territory. With them was Mrs. Elliot’s four-year-old daughter, Valerie. They talked with the very men who had committed the murders.

The three returned to Arajuno, a missionary outpost, and Miss Saint and Valerie went on to Quito. Mrs. Elliot, after a few days rest, went back to the Aucas.

While at Arajuno, Mrs. Elliot wrote the following (which, to avoid wrongful exploitation, is Copyright 1958 Pursuant to Universal Copyright Convention Sam Saint Attorney in fact; used by permission):

We had a very pleasant and uneventful trip down the Anangu River to the Curaray, sleeping on the Curaray Sunday night, traveling on up to Dario’s house on Monday and coming on out here yesterday (part way in a downpour which made roaring rivers out of the trails). I was awakened this morning at five by Dabu, who walked into my bedroom and said, “Gikari! Are you asleep?” He wanted fire, which I gave him and soon Kimi, Kinta, and Munga were in the bedroom too, sitting on the bed! Such is life. They are a great bunch and it is surely fun to be with them. Munga is getting over his shyness. Dabu never had a bit. He is the most outgoing individual you ever saw. The Quechuas are awed to see full grown Auca men out here, but it is moving to see them shake hands, play ball together, share their chicha, when you think what fear each had for the other a few months ago. When Dabu slept in Dario’s house I thought what a miracle had been wrought—it was Dabu who helped burn Dario’s house a year ago. Dario told me he had waited in hiding for several days for the Aucas to come, his gun loaded and in hand. If they had appeared then, he would have killed them. Today they are playing … ball like brothers.

Pray for our return to the tribe.

More details of the Auca witness are contained in the following account, also copyrighted, which Mrs. Elliot brought out of the jungle with her. She begins by describing a Sunday meeting:

Some give evidence of paying attention, others behave as Indians everywhere normally behave when seated in any company—one hunts lice, another compares the fly-bites on her legs with her neighbors, another exhibits her child’s putrid case of foot fungus …

But one never knows what may sink in. The wonder is that any of it does, but it seems to. Pray for clear understanding, on their part, of the love of God. If I nearly despaired of teaching this to the Quechuas, I don’t know how we’ll ever teach the Aucas.… I found among the Quechuas that the things which to us demonstrate affection, concern or real love, to the Quechuas often demonstrate either nothing at all, or just gringo stupidity. Dawa’s parents were killed by Kimu, then he took Dawa for a wife. I asked if she felt sad or loved her parents; she said, “Why in the world would I love them? They were no good—they were only going to die anyway.” John tells us that the proof that we belong to God is that we love the brethren. The Lord is going to have to do some really obvious miracles in this tribe. Start praying that they’ll learn what love is, even if their vocabulary contains only one apparently … inadequate word.

It seems to be one of the Aucas’ favorite sports—to see someone or some animal suffer. They tease and whip the dogs without mercy, pull their ears, yank their tails. And I saw a boy hold a baby up to a nest of stingless wasps which get into your hair and drive you wild with tangling and biting. His amusement at the baby’s screams knew no bounds. Today one of the girls had her little nephew whipped with a vine “because he was crying.” These give some glimpse of the kind of mind with which we deal. Do pray that we might show them what love means—I see I repeated this from above but the emphasis is not undue.

Protestant Panorama

• Canada will get another Protestant university if plans of 100 United Church of Canada leaders materialize. The school would be built somewhere in northern Ontario.

• Ground was broken last month for a new headquarters building for the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Franklin Springs, Georgia. The church’s publishing house also will be located in the new building, to be occupied in the summer of this year.

• “How Can I Make Prayer More Effective?” is the title of a sermon a great many people would like to hear. The title was the favorite in a national survey, detailed results of which will be announced in the January 18 issue of This Week Magazine.

• The United Church of Christ plans to establish a national “Lay School of Theology,” believed to be the first of its kind in the country. The pilot test for the project will come in June when a week of courses in theology, Bible, and “practical churchmanship” will be held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

• Financial pressures are forcing reappraisals in the Latin American missionary literature movement. The publication Verbo is being suspended.

• A mass rally of 1,500 highlighted observances in Philadelphia which marked the 150th anniversary of American Methodism’s first constitution.

• A Protestant minister was honored last month for originating the idea of combining traditional Hallowe’en celebrations with sharing small coins among the world’s needy children. The Rev. Clyde Allison, Philadelphia Presbyterian, was cited by officials of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund as a check for $850,000 was presented to UNICEF by representatives of the three major religious groups in America.

• United Presbyterians are introducing a new monthly magazine for women, Concern. The first 100,000 copies were scheduled for mailing December 29.

• A Moody Press booklet titled “If I Marry a Foreigner” is causing controversy in Japan. A U. S. Air Force chaplain banned its distribution after it had caused criticism in the Japanese press. The booklet warns servicemen on the perils in taking a bride of “heathen religion” and different cultural background.

• The National Association of Evangelicals set aside the week of January 4 through January 11 for a nationwide observance of Universal Week of Prayer. The observance is being sponsored by NAE’s Spiritual Life Commission, headed by the Rev. Armin Gesswein.

• A special assembly of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation failed to reach agreement on a controversial proposal to equip the Swiss army with atomic weapons.

• The Churchmen’s Commission for Decent Publications is calling on book and magazine publishers to “set their own house in order” and adopt a voluntary code against obscenity and indecency.

• The 19-year-old youth director of a Montgomery, Alabama, Baptist revival center claims to be a third cousin of Pope John XXIII. Mrs. Juanita Shaw, wife of an airman, says her maternal grandfather and the pope were first cousins and grew up together in Italy.

• Nearly $750,000 has been raised toward the $2,500,000 goal for the new headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.

• The Presbyterian Church of Central Africa, founded by the Church of Scotland Mission, is being handed over to Negro African control.

• Missouri Synod Lutherans in western Iowa completed late in the fall a highly successful “Preaching-Teaching-Reaching Mission.” Visitation work was at the core of the project, which resulted in increased church attendance, a prayer life quickening, a greater sense of spirituality, and many conversions.

Africa And Asia

The Methodist Premier

The Premier of Western Nigeria, in a commencement address last month, called for a program of evangelism to combat “the anti-Christ doctrine threatening to engulf the so-called civilized world.”

Chief Obafemi Awolowo spoke to the first graduating class of the Sudan Interior Mission’s “Higher Theological Seminary” at Igbaja.

“In this country today there are still 10,700,000 pagans who have not yet embraced the faith of our Lord,” said Awolowo, the country’s leading lay Methodist. “The responsibility of bringing these teeming millions into the Christian fold mainly rests on the shoulders of Nigerian evangelists, working side by side with their European and American colleagues.” (The estimate of pagans was conservative.) Added the chief:

“Most of the outstanding figures in Church and State in this country are the products of the selfless labors of the early missionaries who risked their personal comfort and lives. As was envisaged from the start by these pioneers, the work of evangelization is rapidly passing into the hands of indigenous missionaries.

“In the present context of world affairs, we need a Church led by evangelists who are sufficiently informed and equipped to cope with the abstruse subtleties and logic of agnostic or atheistic materialism, with its attendant disregard for human freedom and dignity.

“I therefore wholeheartedly congratulate the graduating students of the Igbaja theological seminary and pray for them the guidance of the Holy Ghost in the great task that lies ahead of them.”

The Rev. R. J. Davis, West Africa field director of SIM, spoke of the occasion as “a real milestone in the history of the mission.”

“As the country rapidly approaches independence, I am glad I am a missionary now to see the fruit of the work which my predecessors have prayed and worked for,” he said. “The work of evangelization is no longer dependent on us alone but also on our African brethren. It is a privilege to work with them.”

The graduates all had taken a “lower seminary” course in past years and had held pastorates in various parts of Nigeria and French West Africa. Graduating at the same time from the women’s division were the wives of some of them, the first women graduates of the seminary.

W. H. F.

Blacklisted Sadhus

In the land of the Hindus, the Sadhus are looked upon as “the holders of divine power” by the illiterate and religious-minded people of rural India’s 500,000 villages.

This past fall, police raided a place where a Sadhu and his followers were believed to be detaining young women for immoral purposes. The police were greeted with a shower of spears and gunshot. The Sadhu was jailed.

Elsewhere, Indian police were arresting some Sadhus who were wearing garlands of human skulls. Authorities charged them with kidnapping children and sacrificing them before the goddess Kali to “attain divine power.”

Despite the incidents, the “holy men” still enjoy a special status.

Indian Ecumenism

Lack of agreement on “the nature of the church” seems to be the only thing standing in the way of a union between the church of South India and the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches ein India. As a result of talks held the last two summers, a joint statement was issued recommending establishment in 1959 of a joint negotiations committee.

The talks were well enough advanced, the statement indicated, to attempt a draft of a constitution for an enlarged Church of South India. Such a church would include Lutherans and others who might still want to join.

Lutherans were still asking, however, questions such as these: What is the meaning of the historic episcopate? In what does the continuity of the ministry lie? What constitutes the validity of the ministry?

Anglicans Vs. Apartheid

A resolution calling on all its parishes to eliminate racial discrimination “in a manner appropriate to them” was adopted unanimously last month by the Synod of the Anglican Church of the Province of Capetown, South Africa.

The synod thus joined the Dutch Reformed Ecumenical Synod in rebuking concepts of a “superior” race or one “entitled to a privileged position.”

A Miracle Of Modern Missions

In the following dispatchCHRISTIANITY TODAYCorrespondent James Dickson describes how an evangelistic movement among primitive peoples sparked the development of Christianity on Formosa:

Until the time of World War II, aborigines in the mountains of Formosa were known as the “Formosan Head-hunters.” Even the efficient police system of the Japanese government failed to stop the murderous customs of these primitive peoples.

In every village was erected a schoolhouse, where young people were given elementary educations in the Japanese language. One requirement was the study of the Shinto religion, exalting the emperor of Japan and the imperial ancestors. No other religious teaching was allowed. Christianity was banned entirely.

The amazing story of how an elderly Atayal tribeswoman named Chi-oang became a believer, took a two-year Bible school course and went back to start a movement which resulted in the conversion of more than 2,000 members of her tribe, is now history. Her witness was carried on despite the fact that Christianity was outlawed, the Bible was a forbidden book, and no public meetings could be held. Secret gatherings were held in the mountains after midnight. Representatives came from surrounding villages for instruction, returning before dawn to their own villages, where they witnessed to others.

Police took drastic moves to try to stamp out the movement. Homes were searched and Bibles were burned. People thought to be believers were dragged to police stations and tortured if they refused to recant. Yet the determined fury of one of the most ruthless police-state systems known to man found itself helpless to crush the movement. One feeble old woman with no special talents and little training was the guiding spirit. God had demonstrated again what he can do with a fully-dedicated person. It has been said of Chi-oang that “never has any person done so much for so many with so little opportunity.”

But this was only the beginning for Christianity on Formosa. Missionaries returning after World War II found religious freedom. Believers were evangelizing all the villages of the Atayal tribe. Churches were being erected in a score of villages. Before long a Bible school was up, training leaders for the expanding church. Soon the trained nationals were going to other tribes to preach. Converts took it for granted that they were to witness to others. This was a distinctive feature of the aboriginal work in Formosa. In all tribal groups there has been a thriving Christian movement before there have been any graduates of Bible schools. It has been a lay movement. The churches have increased much faster than it has been possible to train leaders. Even today, it is largely laymen who are presiding at worship services and going to new villages for witness.

In our older churches, there is a tendency to professionalize our religious work. We must have specialists for every task, and often laymen become too timid to do anything. We sometimes find churches where the elders feel they cannot pray in public. It is difficult for them to publicly take part in any service because they feel that there is someone who can perform the task so much better than they can.

In more primitive churches the Christians have no specialists, and they know that if they do not witness and do the work of the church, it will not be done. They soon get a joy from such work that is sometimes not experienced by most believers in more developed churches.

“Where did you first hear the Gospel?” I asked an elder of an Atayal church.

“While I was working in the fields along with a believer from another village,” he replied.

This seemed to be the normal way to hear of Christianity.

The writer has sometimes gone to villages in the mountains, where no missionary or Chinese pastor has ever gone, to dedicate church buildings and examine candidates for baptism. Almost invariably the work was found to be started by lay Christians from other villages.

The aboriginal church in Formosa now consists of more than 350 congregations which belong to the Presbyterian church, and about 100 of other denominational groups. Roman Catholics also have been concentrating on tribal work during the last five years.

The necessity of providing this growing church with a ministry of its own has been increasingly apparent to those of us who are engaged in this work. It has therefore been decided that the most able young men who are graduated from the Bible school should be given a special short course, ordained to the ministry, and given their own churches to supervise.

The young men have had only a primary school education and three years in the Bible school. It has been most difficult for aborigines to get a “middle school” education, for they can only do so through competitive examinations. They find the tests hard because the instruction is in Chinese, in which the aborigines are less proficient.

Yet young pastors take over their new responsibilities readily. And in most cases, we have been pleasantly surprised at the spiritual acumen, executive insight and pastoral leadership shown by them.

Formosa Education

Until three years ago, the island of Formosa did not have a single Christian college. An urgent, longstanding need was met with the opening of Tunghai University.

Now, nationals also are being trained at Taiwan Theological College. About 60 students are enrolled in its six-year course. Another 20 are attending the new School of Christian Education near Taipei.

Continent Of Europe

Retort From The Wcc

Greek Orthodox bishops based their statement on a “grave misapprehension” when they attributed an anti-trinitarian concession to the World Council of Churches, the WCC General Secretariat charged last month. The charge was in reply to a message from the 13th assembly of the Orthodox Church in Greece, which announced that only their laymen could participate in WCC activities (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 22, 1958). The Greek Orthodox assembly said it was led to take “a reserved attitude concerning its participation in the conferences of the Protestant ecumenical movement” because the basis of the WCC Constitution fails to mention the holy trinity, with the thought to draw in anti-trinitarians.

This was the explanation given by the WCC General Secretariat:

“The message of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece refers to the Basis of the World Council of Churches, that is the article of our Constitution which says: ‘The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.’ This Basis was taken over from the Faith and Order movement. It had been originally formulated by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. at its convention in 1910. The invitations to the World Conferences on Faith and Order at Lausanne and Edinburgh were issued on this basis. The only churches which declined the invitation because they found this basis unacceptable were churches taking a Unitarian standpoint.

“The Evanston Assembly adopted a statement on the nature and function of the Basis (Official Report p. 306) which states specifically: ‘By joining together, the churches seek to respond to the call and action of their Divine Lord. The World Council must therefore consist of churches which acknowledge that Lord as the second person of the Trinity.’

“It is therefore clear [that the statement that the holy trinity is not mentioned in the basis of the World Council of Churches with the thought to draw in the anti-trinitarians] is based on a grave misapprehension.”

United States

Anticipating Australia

Evangelist Billy Graham says he is anticipating Australian crusades with “great confidence, not in myself but in the power of the Gospel message.” “Trusting in the prayers of God’s people,” Graham says, “the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and the unfailing power of the Word of God, it is my purpose to preach Christ, crucified and risen.

“This gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. I believe this will be true in Australia as in all other parts of the world.”

Even as Graham looks toward the Australian campaign, which begins next month, Americans are beckoning him back for further effort at home.

The Washington Council of Churches has invited him to conduct a one-week crusade at Griffith Stadium in the District of Columbia during May or June, 1960.

Last month he talked with ministers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about a possible crusade there in the summer of 1960.

The day following the Oak Ridge meeting, Graham went to nearby Clinton, where he addressed an overflow crowd on the grounds of the dynamited high school.

Integration cannot he enforced by bayonets, be told some 2,500 (including some Negroes) who jammed the undamaged gymnasium of the desegregated school. “Love, obedience and understanding are needed, instead of force.”

“The law in itself is powerless to change the human heart,” he added. “Only love can do that and only Christ can bring that love.”

The evangelist declared that “we must not even hate the depraved minds who commit acts of hatred and violence, but we must have the grace to forgive them.”

Graham also spoke last month at a dinner in Washington which honored Brooks Hays, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who was defeated for re-election to the House as representative from Little Rock, Arkansas. The testimonial dinner was held the day after a special House committee voted, three to two, to recommend that the 86th Congress undertake a full investigation of Hays’ defeat. Dr. Dale Alford, segregationist member of the Little Rock school board, won the seat by 1,200 votes in a last-minute write-in campaign.

Earlier in December, Graham addressed 1,400 young people attending a 4-H Club Congress in Chicago. “As other youths of the world are marching for other ‘isms’,” he pleaded, “let us march together for the Cross and for Christ.”

Graham scheduled a meeting with Indianapolis ministers for January 8. He also planned to attend a lay convention in Louisville January 9–10, then fly to Texas for a state Baptist conference on evangelism.

En route to Australia, the evangelist hoped to stop in Hawaii for a rally January 25. His Australian crusade will open with a mass meeting at Melbourne Stadium February 8.

Meanwhile, it was announced that television network coverage enabled more than 100 million persons to witness Graham’s crusades last year.

The ‘Special’ Issues

“To give church people a preview of some of the special issues which will confront the first session of the 86th Congress,” the Washington office of the National Council of Churches made public last month a priority listing drafted by denominational staff representatives in the nation’s capital.

The top ten issues were said to have been selected “out of many morally and spiritually significant issues.” There was no attempt, however, to spell out moral or spiritual significance in any of the categories. Neither did the report take sides.

“While the question of the ‘filibuster’ is a parliamentary rather than a legislative issue,” said Memo, official publication of the NCC’s Washington office, “its importance for the manner in which highly controversial issues may be handled in the Congress is so great that all citizens should realize what is involved; hence, the first article in this issue.”

Other domestic affairs explained as worthy of particular scrutiny: federal aid to education; agricultural policy and program; attacks on the Supreme Court; and extension of peace-time draft.

Leading issues in international relations were summarized in this order: a Senate subcommittee’s study of foreign policy; military and economic foreign aid; international exchange of persons; disarmament and outer space; and U.S. support of the United Nations.

Why and how were these issues placed above others? Criteria, explained an NCC spokesman, were (1) pertinence to “church people,” and (2) chance of consideration in the first session.

With the criteria in mind, denominational staff members took a look at a mass of issues. Each was given a “high,” “medium,” or “low” rating. The ten issues which garnered the most “highs” were compiled as the priority list.

The question of alcohol advertising, the spokesman said, failed to make the top ten because it is traditionally a “second session” issue.

Also conspicuous by its absence was the hope of many clergy leaders that obscenity laws be made even more stringent.

Other issues which failed to make the top ten: legislation to crack down on labor and management racketeering; a bill to provide stiffer penalties for bombings and hate literature; civil rights; secrecy in government; and tighter obscenity laws.

The idea of an “honest elections bill” drew very little support in the consensus.

Memo noted that its report had the cooperation of staff members of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, National Lutheran Council, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Needed: Home Renewal!

Americans make a “grave error” if they assume that the United States is a Christian nation, according to General Secretary Roy G. Ross of the National Council of Churches.

In an address prepared for delivery at the 50th anniversary dinner of the NCC’s Division of Home Missions, Ross warned of a secularism “which may completely undermine the church as has happened in other nations, unless the church is renewed and given more relevance to the culture in which she operates.”

Ross was unable to be at the dinner, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The address was read by an associate, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy.

The dinner marked the golden jubilee of the Home Missions Council, formed in 1908, which merged later with the Council of Women for Home Missions to become the Home Missions Council of North America. In 1950 the group became the Division of Home Missions with the organization of the NCC.

A Baptist Pastor’S Marathon Swim

At Hanover Baptist Church, near the winding and widening Potomac in rural eastern Virginia, membership prospects include a middle-aged crabber who has not worshiped publicly for 20 years.

Pastor Max A. Greene has been explaining the regenerate life to the crabber, whose family attends services regularly, ever since coming to Hanover almost two years ago. Even when the conversation turns to the tides and currents of the nearby river, as it did one day last spring, Greene tries for spiritual applications.

“What do you think would be easier,” asked Greene, “for me to swim the Potomac or for you to come to church?”

The crabber guessed it would be easier to occupy a pew and, in fact, agreed to, provided Greene made it across.

“Be sure your insurance is paid up,” Mrs. Greene jestingly cautioned, when on a hot July Saturday the minister said he would attempt the Potomac swim.

Friends accompanied the trunks-clad Greene in a boat. He swam the 1.8 miles to the Maryland shore in an hour and 45 minutes. After a five-minute rest he swam back in a strong tide in two hours.

The crabber, who watched the pastor push off, had left. Six months later, he still had not come to church although the two kept on good terms.

“I don’t understand it,” says Greene. “He’s a man of his word even if he makes no Christian profession.”

The 35-year-old minister, an ex-Marine who graduated from Lenoir Rhyne College and the Southern Baptist seminary at Louisville, says his efforts are not exhausted. “I think persistence is important. I may try something else.”

Sunday Laws

The U. S. Supreme Court rejected last month two Constitutional appeals from business firms convicted of violating Ohio’s Sunday laws.

In a unanimous opinion, the court refused to review the cases “for want of a substantial federal question.” The court had acted similarly in 1957 in the cases of similar appeals from Sunday laws in Arkansas and New Jersey.

The Ohio appeals were filed by two men who had been convicted in separate prosecutions of opening supermarkets and requiring employees to work on Sunday.

Both appealed under the First Amendment which provides for church-state separation. One also challenged an exemption Ohio provides for those who “conscientiously observe another day of the week as their sabbath.” He contended that this denied “equal protection of the laws” by favoring one religious group over another and setting up a “religious test” under the law.

The other appeal also challenged the legality of the words “work of necessity” which is exempted by Ohio law.

Court observers say the court’s refusal to hear the arguments settles, as firmly as can be settled in American law, the fact that it is Constitutional for states to enact such laws as they see fit, restricting the right of businesses to operate on Sunday—or any other day of the week.

‘Fund For Pious Uses’

The fabulous enterprise which is the “daddy” of all life insurance in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund, marks its 200th incorporated year January 11.

Originally a vision of clergymen concerned about the welfare of wives and children, the fund was chartered in Philadelphia by Thomas and Richard Penn, sons of William Penn, in 1759.

The fund, now interdenominational, has never contested a claim or had a law suit in the two centuries since it began as “The Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and for the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers.”

Its 60,000 insured as of January 1 will share in a financial commemoration of the milestone—checks totalling a million dollars representing the usual high (compared to general service policies) dividends plus a 50 per cent bonus.

Incorporation was preceded by the “Fund for Pious Uses,” established in 1717. The charter was granted three years before Equitable of London was chartered to serve the general public. The fund thus claims it was “the first life insurance company in the world founded on modern lines that still is in existence.”

Milestone Service

A service was scheduled for January 11 to mark the 200th birthday of the oldest life insurance company in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund. The service was to be held in Philadelphia’s Old Pine Street Church, founded in 1768.

The anniversary also will be marked by a dinner, January 27, for the company’s board members and employees.

And a thriving existence it is! Fund assets have gone from £5,050 in 1762 to $68,553,726, with $194,000,000 worth of insurance.

Dividends are higher and premiums are lower because ministers generally live longer. Average policy is for $4,000.

Eligibility? Regulations were revised, says the fund, “as sectarianism became less important than community welfare. Today it insures Protestants of many faiths. More than 30 denominations are represented. Less than 25 per cent are Presbyterians. Not all are clergymen.

There are foreign missionaries, ordained and unordained, who are United States or Canadian citizens, theological and pre-theological students. Wives, widows (not remarried) and minor children of ministers also are eligible.”

The company still maintains its head-quarters in Philadelphia. Offices are located in the Alison Building, an eight-story structure built in 1924 and named after the fund’s first secretary, Dr. Francis Alison. The company also owns two other buildings in Philadelphia.

The company maintains some 25 representatives in offices in 13 states and Toronto, Canada.

Fund president for the past 23 years has been Dr. Alexander Mackie, who holds a master’s degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Parsons’ College, Iowa. Mackie is president of the Philadelphia Presbyterian Foundation as well, taking care of a half-million dollars in endowment funds for the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

The fund’s 58-member board of directors includes, in addition to church leaders and theologians, attorneys, industrialists, and university officials as well as financiers.

Schools And The Amish

Amish parents in Hardin County, Ohio, were given until January 10 to show cause why they should not send their children to public schools.

Authorities in the county are seeking an injunction which could close Amish private schools. Named in the action are 39 parents of 56 children enrolled in two private Amish schools. They are charged with failure to meet state requirements for classroom space, curriculum and teacher certification.

The long-standing controversy over one-room Amish schoolhouses may already have been broken, however, at least in Hardin County. There, late in the fall, a member of the Amish school board enrolled his eight children in a public school—on the condition that no photographs were to be taken and that the children would not be required to stay for extracurricular activities.

The school board member, Alvin Lambright, said he was “tired of law suits, fines and jail sentences.”

Aldein Weiss, superintendent of schools, appointed “big brothers and sisters” to look after the Amish children. “This may be a solution to our problems,” he said. “All other problems will be solved democratically as they arise.”

The Cost Of ‘Security’

Experiences of Amish farmers in Ohio supply a striking illustration of how welfare statism not only encroaches upon religious freedom, but provides forced “security” at the expense of devotion to principles that undergird thrift and a sense of social responsibility.

Amish refusal to pay for social security is based on their belief that the Bible enjoins them to care for their own (cf. 1 Tim. 5:8), rather than to rely on public assistance.

Federal authorities seized livestock and cash assets to satisfy the social security levy, even though Ohio’s Wayne and Holmes counties record not a single case of Amish solicitations of aid.

Time magazine commented that “the plight of the Amish was a footnote reminder that the welfare state has its victims as well as its beneficiaries.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Bishop Ralph A. Ward, 76, of the Methodist Church, in Hong Kong … the Rev. C. Denis Ryan, 59, president of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand, in Christchurch … Montague Goodman, 83, president of London Bible College … the Rev. D. R. Davies, 69,author and clergyman (once Congregational, later Church of England) … Dr. Claude S. Conley, 57, president of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches and Presbyterian leader, in Pittsburgh … the Rev. Arthur Haake, 54, chairman of North and South American missions board, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in San Francisco … Dr. Paul E. Keen, 70,professor emeritus of New Testament literature at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Naperville, Illinois … the Rev. Edward J. Tanis, well-known leader of the Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Haven, Michigan … Dr. Harold C. Osterman, 51, former president, Eastern District of the American Lutheran Church.

Elections: As chairman of the NCC Division of Foreign Missions, Dr. Clara M. French … as president of the Mecklenburg (Charlotte, North Carolina) Christian Ministers Association, Dr. James F. Wertz, first Negro ever named to the post.

Appointments: As president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. H. Leo Eddleman (see Retirements) … as pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, the Rev. Paul B. Smith, son of Dr. Oswald J. Smith (see Resignations) … as dean of the new Methodist seminary in Kansas City, Dr. William F. Case … as professor at Andover-Newton Theological School, Dr. Culbert G. Rutenber … to the faculty of San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary as professor of English Bible, Dr. Frank L. Waaser.

Resignations: As pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, Dr. Oswald J. Smith … as Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, Dr. John A. F. Gregg, effective February 19.

Retirements: As president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Roland Q. Leavell … as executive vice president and secretary of The Sunday School Times, Harry J. Jaeger.

Activities: Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, secretary of public affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, planned an 80-day world missions tour beginning January 4 … Dr. John Henry Strong, son of Baptist theologian Augustus H. Strong, marked his 92nd birthday in Santa Barbara, California, with a long hike … Dr. Leon Morris will be a visiting guest professor at Columbia Theological Seminary beginning late this year … Dr. Harold B. Kuhn held a series of preaching missions at U. S. air bases in Europe last month.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.