For blossoming Israel it represents an ironic if serious dilemma: The very people credited with having retained their identity for some four thousand years—including two millenniums of world-wide dispersion—now seem woefully divided on the question: who is a Jew?

World Of Judaism

The majority of Israelis feel that it is enough if, in good faith, one says that he is a Jew. Orthodox rabbis feel this is not enough. Onlooking Christians, in turn, recall the words of Jesus of Nazareth to Jews of his day, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did”; and Paul’s words to the Romans, “He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal.”

“Who is a Jew?” The question never much bothered Israel for the first decade of its new existence as an independent republic. Only once had the matter come up, in 1955 when an opposition member of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) cried out bluntly, “Who is a Jew?” The speaker of the house quickly dismissed the question, “We all know who is a Jew,” he said, “there is no point to this question.”

By 1958 the Knesset was not so sure. Immigrants streamed in from Poland, where war and oppression had encouraged intermarriage. According to traditional Judaism, children of mixed marriages take the nationality of the mother. But what was to be said for children of Jewish men who had taken non-Jewish wives? The majority feeling was that if both parents consent to consider the child Jewish, the race should be thus recognized. But Orthodox rabbis who, in Israel, hold influence in such personal matters, protested.

The dispute came into full focus when, last spring, the Minister of the Interior, Israel Bar-Yehuda, began to revise identity cards issued to the population for security purposes and for rationing (which ended in Israel just a few weeks ago).

Applications for identity cards always have asked for religion, nationality, and citizenship. Many Israelis consistently refused to state their religion and the actual identity cards never included a person’s religion. Bar-Yehuda’s revision eliminated a statement of citizenship from the card as well, retaining only “nationality” (which in the Near East often means “religious persuasion or community”).

Bar-Yehuda also ordered that if a person declared himself to be a Jew, registering authorities should record him as such on the identity card.

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Rabbis and religious political leaders interpreted the new orders as an infringement of their traditional policy on who has the right to be called a Jew. According to Orthodox Judaism, the only persons who are Jews are (1) those circumcised by rabbinical authority; (2) born to a Jewish mother; or (3) (in the case of women) those who have subscribed to Jewish baptismal rites.

Orthodox protests of Bar-Yehuda’s orders were supported by certain religious parties, which promptly pulled out of the coalition government.

In the ensuing hassle, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion suggested an altered registration policy: any person should be registered as a Jew who declares “in good faith that he is a Jew and does not belong to another religion.” Ben-Gurion may have reasoned that Orthodox and governmental authorities must accept the word of immigrants anyway.

Ben-Gurion’s logic was challenged by some Israelis who asserted that religion is an independent consideration, that a person could be a Jew and a Christian as well.

Finally, Ben-Gurion decided that the whole question of who is a Jew should be put to Jewish leaders throughout the world. A 1500-word letter, dated last October 27, was circulated to foremost Hebrews in a number of countries.

“We shall be grateful if you will be good enough,” he wrote, “to give us your opinion of the course which we should pursue in the registration of the children of mixed marriages both of whose parents, both the Jewish father and the non-Jewish mother, wish to register their children as Jews.”

None of the replies were made public immediately, although a number are reported to have already been received.

One of the letters went to Rabbi Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.

Glueck refused to reveal the content of his reply but predicted that his answer “will excite attention.” “It is not the answer that will be generally given,” he said.

Left-wing Zionists reportedly are inclined to free the term “Jew” from any religious connotation.

A close observer of the Jewish identity problem is Dr. R. L. Lindsay, an American now with the Baptist Convention in Israel. Dr. Lindsay is at present preparing a book manuscript on “Israel in Christendom: the Problem of Jewish Identity,” which basically is the thesis for a doctorate he earned from a Southern Baptist seminary five years ago.

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“Despite the distinct political coloring the whole subject has taken,” Lindsay says, “the debate doubtless is of major significance to Jewish history. Jews have traditionally been both an ethnic and religious body, a kind of religio-national body which the Jews themselves now find hard to explain.”

‘Advanced’ Religion

A new center of scholarly religious study, under Jewish auspices but interfaith in scope, is planned with the aid of some 20 of the most prominent university professors in the United States.

The new center, to open in the fall of 1960, is being projected as a religious counterpart to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Science at Princeton, New Jersey, “with one very serious difference,” according to Rabbi Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion.

The difference, said Glueck, is that at the Princeton Institute invited professors can “lock themselves up in their rooms and talk to nobody and see nobody for the years of their stay there.”

“Ours is different,” he explained, “not in the caliber of the professors, but in the fact that the five to 15—eventually—who will be invited for a year or more are supposed to be in constant, regular, seminar communication with each other. There is to be no seclusion.”

The center will be located on the Hebrew Union campus in Cincinnati, but Glueck emphasized that it will be independently operated. It is to be named the Frank L. Weil Institute for Advanced Studies in Religion and the Humanities. Weil was chairman of the board of governors of Hebrew Union until his death about a year ago.

Glueck said the center will be operated under a yearly budget of between $250,000 and $1,000,000, to be acquired in gifts from individuals and possibly foundations.

Professors will be invited “on the basis of competency,” he added, “irrespective of creed, color or what have you … to apply particular disciplines to a central religious problem which has an impact on modern life. What we’re concerned about is the fact that we see this huge world outside of us outstripping our moral behavior.”

Among the approximately 20 members of the center’s board of advisors, including several from Hebrew Union, are Dr. Perry Miller, professor of American literature at Harvard, and Chancellor Harvie Branscomb of Vanderbilt.

Protestant Panorama

• Foreign missions functions of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church will be merged into a unified program, according to an announcement made last month at a mid-winter meeting of the Congregationalists in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania. The missions program merger was hailed as a major step in formation of the United Church of Christ.

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• Communist authorities in East Berlin are demanding adherence to regulations which have set forth principles and methods in promoting Red rites as substitutes for Christian ceremonies. Church sources say the regulations reveal for the first time in detail the East German regime’s plans to develop Communist ideology into an atheistic “counter church.”

• The Board of National Missions of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. plans to more than double its urban church renewal program. The board’s annual appropriation for faltering city churches is being raised from $800,000 to $1,800,000.

• A new Catholic directory claims a 10 per cent jump in the number of priests serving England and Wales—from 2,677 in 1956 to 2,964 in 1957.

• After a year and a half absence Auxiliary Bishop Fulton J. Sheen returns to television this month with a new series called the “Life of Christ.”

• The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod may use a newly purchased 140-acre tract in the Detroit area for establishing an additional college.

• Highlight of the 1959 United Appeal by Church World Service will be the “One Great Hour of Sharing” observance on Sunday, March 8. Special offerings are planned in thousands of churches. American Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches are being asked to raise $11,250,000 this year for overseas relief and rehabilitation.

• The newly-organized Presbyterian Church in Hawaii held its first services Sunday, February 15. Pending erection of a church building, services are being held in the Honolulu YWCA. The Rev. William E. Phïfer, Jr., formerly of Monrovia, California, and the Rev. Philip Y. Lee, former Congregational pastor in Honolulu, are ministers of the new church.

• Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother of England, is expected to be received by Pope John XXIII when she visits Rome next month.

• The Swedish church of Lye on the Island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea recently marked its 900th anniversary, according to the American-Swedish News Exchange.

• The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan will be subdivided into three districts. Plans for the split were announced last month at the 126th annual convention of the diocese. The move follows a reorganization report described as the most thorough study ever made of an Episcopal diocese.

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• Miss Darina Bancikova is the first ordained woman to be placed in full charge of a Slovak Lutheran congregation. The church has been ordaining women for several years, but until now their appointments have been limited to assistant pastorates.

• The Metropolitan Dayton (Ohio) YMCA is sponsoring a 15-week “Faith Appreciation Seminar.” Public meetings feature talks by various religious leaders, among them Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Greek Orthodox, Mormons, Jews, Quakers, and Unitarians.

• “Forward in the Faith of our Fathers” is the theme of this year’s 75th diamond jubilee anniversary of the Evangelical Free Church.

• A breakfast meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, marked the placing of the 40,000,000th portion of Scripture by the Gideons.

• Music for America is sponsoring a spring sacred music tour featuring well-known Gospel artists. April concerts are planned for Denver, Colorado, Des Moines, Iowa, and Lincoln, Nebraska.

Australian Crusade

Billy Graham’s Australian crusade opened before some 10,000 persons packed into the largest stadium in Melbourne February 15. Another 5,000 stood outside in the rain.

Graham, a rare affliction still causing discomfort in his left eye, used John 3:16 for his text for the opening Sunday afternoon meeting. More than 600 responded to his invitation.

Mass Evangelism

The evangelist donned a raincoat and spoke for five minutes to milling throngs which had been turned away from the stadium. Another 100 responded to his plea for decisions for Christ.

The meeting inside had begun early as crowds quickly occupied all available seats once doors were open. Even an annex auditorium, where proceedings were relayed by television, was filled. People waiting to get into the stadium lined up eight deep around an entire block and stretched a half mile away.

Graham’s welcome to Australia was described as overwhelming. Crowds jammed airports at both Melbourne and Sydney, where the evangelist had arrived after a three-week vacation in the Hawaiian Islands. Crowds gathered in streets outside his hotel, singing and cheering.

Graham was officially welcomed by Sir Edmond Herring, lieutenant governor of Victoria. Sharing in the opening program were the Right Rev. N. Faichney, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, and Dr. A. H. Wood, president general of the Methodist Church.

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“Sunday was a deeply moving and deeply impressive commencement to the crusade,” said Dr. Stuart Barton Babbage, noted Australian theologian.

Wood said he was “very deeply impressed. Dr. Graham deserves the full support of all churches.”

The stadium in which the crusade opened had been rebuilt for boxing and wrestling events of the 1956 Olympics. Later, meetings were to be held in the Myer Music Bowl, on which construction workers were putting finishing touches.

Graham said on his arrival in Australia that “I have not come to point a self-righteous finger at the sins of Australia. I have come to preach the message that every clergyman gives from his pulpit every Sunday. The message is the same as it has been for 2,000 years.”

Church support of the crusade was considered unprecedented.

“This crusade has evoked a wider cooperation than anything else in my lifetime,” said Dr. Leon Morris, vice principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. “The worst that can be said is that there are a number of clergy who are standing aloof, and would probably be not sorry if the crusade failed. Against this is the fact that prominent representatives of every major denomination have linked themselves with the crusade.”

The Melbourne meetings were slated to continue for four full weeks, with the closing meeting Sunday, March 15. Following these meetings, Graham and his associates are to visit the island state of Tasmania for two meetings: in Launceston on March 16 and in Hobart on March 17.

Associate evangelists will begin week-long crusades in the three principal cities of New Zealand and Graham is scheduled to speak at two concluding services at each place. The New Zealand schedule includes the Rev. Grady Wilson as the evangelist in Auckland from March 20 to April 4; the Rev. Leighton Ford in Wellington from March 30 to April 6 and the Rev. Joseph Blinco in Christchurch from April 1 to 8. Graham will speak in Auckland on April 3 and 4, in Wellington on April 5 and 6, and in Christchurch on April 7 and 8.

The Sydney crusade will begin Sunday, April 12, and is to run four or five weeks.

Associate evangelists also plan to conduct meetings in other cities of Australia, beginning in Brisbane, where Ford will be speaking from May 17 to 31. Blinco will conduct the crusade in Adelaide from May 21 to June 4 and Wilson will be in Perth from May 30 until June 7. Graham himself will address meetings in Brisbane on May 29, 30, and 31; in Adelaide on June 2, 3, and 4 and in Perth on June 6 and 7.

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Wcc Executives At Geneva

The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Geneva last month, voted to withhold formal comment for the time being on the Vatican’s announced intention of calling an ecumenical council.

The committee nevertheless appointed a small group to keep it posted on “implications and developments” in connection with the proposed Roman Catholic gathering, to take place in Rome in 1961.

In the committee’s judgment, the lack of sufficient information about the ecumenical council made it impossible to make any specific statement at the present time.

The members, meanwhile, voiced general approval of a statement regarding the planned Catholic assembly issued by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, general secretary of the WCC.

Ecumenical Movement

“Much depends,” said Visser ’t Hooft, “on the manner in which the council is called and the spirit in which the question of Christian unity is approached. The question is, how ecumenical will the council be in composition and spirit.”

The announced view of the Executive Committee was that the experience of the ecumenical movement as expressed by the WCC indicates that “progress towards unity is made when churches meet together on the basis of mutual respect with full commitment on the part of each church to the truth of the Gospel, to charity, and to a faithful interpretation of its deepest convictions.”

Actual cooperation among churches in service, in working for “a responsible society” and a durable peace, and in theological discussions were listed as “fruitful first steps” to inter-church relations. Efforts to secure religious liberty for “all people in every land” were also named.

WCC officials still are interested in setting up a formal link with Orthodox churches in Russia. They say they have received no word of reply after talks last summer, but they are hoping for a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to be present at the next Central Committee meeting.

A Vatican Radio broadcaster indicated last month that Protestants would not be invited to take part in Rome’s coming council, but that talks with Protestants might be sought in connection with it.

Dr. Herbert S. Mekeel, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said favorable attitude of liberal Protestants toward Protestant-Catholic cooperation ignores “mighty gains of the Reformation and, thus, fails the great Protestant public.”

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Motion Pictures
Contrasting Roles

Last November, Washington’s Playhouse sponsored a two-week run of “The Mark of the Hawk.” The 80 minute color film produced for release in commercial theaters represented an effort by the pre-merger Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. to create public interest in Christian missions. Actress Eartha Kitt played a lead role. (CHRISTIANITY TODAY reviewed “The Mark of the Hawk” in its July 7, 1958 issue.)

Three months later, Miss Kitt was back on the Playhouse screen in a different picture. This time she played the role of a prostitute in United Artists’ “Anna Lucasta.”

After Luther, Pius

The late Pope Pius XII will appear on movie screens across North America this month in the first dramatic feature film ever made showing extensive scenes of the Vatican. The film, titled “Embezzled Heaven,” was completed shortly before his death. Produced by Rhombus Productions in Vienna and Rome, the full-length color picture is scheduled for Easter release by Louis de Rochemont Associates, which in 1952 made the film “Martin Luther” for Lutheran Church Productions.

Christian Witness
Motivating Men

A new national men’s organization, Christian Men, Inc., has been formed in Corpus Christi, Texas, to “conduct attitude and opinion studies and encourage Christian witnessing.”

Howard Butt, Jr., vice president of a grocery chain and noted lay evangelist, is president. Leonard L. Holloway, public relations director for the Baptist General Convention of Texas for the past six years, is executive secretary.

The group will sponsor motivation studies, prepare and distribute literature for business and professional leaders, conduct Christian influence workshops, schedule laymen-led crusades and coordinate activities with other men’s groups.

The Bible Vs. Communism

Has distribution of Communist literature outstripped the Bible? The American Bible Society, after a study, thinks not. The society estimates the Bible publishers around the world have turned out at least 1,500,000,000 Bibles since 1917. The society says its investigation shows that publication of Communist literature fell short of Scripture publication total for the same period.

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Theological Education
Alumni Protest

Loss of accreditation in the American Association of Theological Schools by Temple University School of Theology was branded an “arbitrary” move by leaders of the interdenominational seminary’s alumni organization last month. The group denounced the AATS accrediting commission for failing to give a bill of particulars with its action.

Special Report

There is reason to believe that Martin Luther would be pleased with the good works of American Lutherans, who since 1939 have contributed more than 147 million dollars for spiritual and physical relief the world over. But what the Reformer would designate as a basis for inter-Lutheran cooperation and organization is at present subject to debate among his American progeny. This was pointed up in Milwaukee’s Astor Hotel where the National Lutheran Council gathered February 3–6 for its 41st annual meeting—the first to be convened in the Badger State where Lutherans constitute almost two-thirds of all Protestants.

Organized during World War I as a cooperative agency to further U. S. Lutheran interests, the NLC’s domestic program includes the fields of social welfare, student work on college campuses, immigration services, public relations, research and statistics, radio and television, home missions planning, and service to military personnel. Overseas activities embrace foreign missions cooperation, material relief, refugee resettlement, and “theological cooperation.” Many of the programs abroad are channeled through the Lutheran World Federation, membership of which includes 50 million of the world’s 70 million Lutherans.

The NLC is made up of eight church bodies with constituencies totaling five million members—about two-thirds of American Lutheranism. Three of the groups—The Evangelical, American, and United Evangelical Lutheran churches—will unite in 1960, to form The American Lutheran Church, known already as TALC. The Lutheran Free Church voted to remain outside this union but may join later. Another planned merger may be realized by NLC’s four remaining members—the United, Augustana, American Evangelical, and Finnish Evangelical (Suomi Synod) Lutheran churches. The latter grouping is considered by many to be the more liberal theologically although some Protestants would equate it with rank conservatism, the general position of Lutheranism in the American theological spectrum being as it is.

Though the number of Lutheran bodies once hovered around 200, due to mergers it is now reduced to 16. NLC’s most obvious omission is the large, robust and theologically-conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (2,228,000 members), an omission which was dramatized the first day of the conference. Though the Missouri Synod cooperates in several phases of the NLC program, notably, in world relief, refugee aid and service to armed forces members, she had been approached further about possible membership in the NLC and the Lutheran World Federation—during “this time” of “remoulding” of Lutheran “organizational life.” Missouri Synod President J. W. Behnken’s negative reply, read aloud for “its importance,” affirmed the vital importance of doctrinal agreement to organization unity and pointed to “a state of flux” in the doctrinal positions involved in the aforementioned NLC mergers. He also spoke of the efforts of the Synodical Conference—comprising the Wisconsin Synod, Slovak Church, and Norwegian Synod along with Missouri Synod—“toward greater Scriptural harmony in doctrine and practice.” Relations between the Wisconsin and Missouri synods have only recently improved after a period of strain. The former is said to be even more firmly committed against membership in NLC than the latter, which differentiates between cooperation in spiritual areas and in “physical” matters such as relief contributions.

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Upon hearing the Missouri reply, councillors (there were 37, including 12 laymen and two women) looked at one another with exasperated smiles. An NLC rejoinder expressed the regret, which was obviously felt, and hopes for future conversations, though the Council would now proceed with its own reorganization in view of pending mergers.

At a dinner celebrating NLC’s 40th anniversary, efficient and effervescent Franklin Clark Fry, called American Lutheranism’s most influential figure, saw the 40 years as a reproach to NLC for not having become one church body. Dr. Carl E. Lund-Quist, executive secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, praised the Council for “encouraging Lutheran churches to participate in the ecumenical movement.”

NLC meetings deal largely with routine matters and produce relatively little debate. Most councillors know by now the points of agreement and difference among the various bodies, and they are restricted in action by certain guidelines of competence laid down by the churches.

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But lively debate did accompany approval of a document called “Toward a Statement of National Policy,” though its form was questioned more than its content. Aimed at the American citizen for discussion, it called for advancement of the “international interest” and the sharing of American resources as expressions of “love and justice.” More adequate international organization was advocated, though total commitment to the U. N. for “international equilibrium” was lacking.

The Council also: endorsed plans of Lutheran Film Associates for a sequel to “Martin Luther” on the church’s struggle behind the Iron Curtain; heard of effective Lutheran action to halt army camp adoption of patron saints.

Dr. F. Eppling Reinartz, retiring president of NLC (his successor: the Rev. Norman A. Menter of the American Lutheran Church), hailed as genuinely important the unanimous adoption of a plan for closer cooperation with other Protestants in placement of new churches, with safeguards for each denomination’s right of final decision.

Historic Lutheran “apartness” in America has been due partially to language and liturgical distinctions and in part to desire for maintaining the purity of the Lutheran confessional heritage. Only three of the eight NLC bodies belong to the National Council of Churches—five to the World Council.

Evangelicals see hope for a strong conservative witness by Lutherans to American Protestantism, looking for Lutheran insight to distinguish between an end to isolation and an accommodation to the theological dilutions of much of modern Protestantism—which would mean the exchange of a marvelous Reformation heritage for something less than pottage.

And with more than 86 million dollars reported spent last year by all Lutheran health and welfare agencies in America, the burden of proof was still on Luther’s opponents to show that the doctrine of justification solely by faith militated against good works.

F. F.

Hispanic Countries
Martyrs Of 1959

Protestants in Colombia have suffered long and hard at the hands of intolerant Roman Catholics. Missionaries now report a new wave of violent persecution which began with the loss of three lives.

On a coffee plantation near San Vicente the Rev. Luis Ignacio Rovira, 24, led a small congregation in song. “How many of you are ready to die for Jesus?” he asked. “I am ready to die for Jesus, even if it is tonight.”

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That was January 24. After the service Rovira and his Christian friends were sitting on a porch when shots rang out of the darkness. As the believers scattered they heard one of the attackers cry, “We are going to do away with these Protestants.”

After spending the night in nearby caves and fields, the Christians returned to find Rovira dead. A four-year-old boy also died from gunshot wounds. Two other persons were injured. A missionary counted 150 bullet holes in the walls.

Several days before, a mob had broken up a Protestant funeral service in San Vicente and had stolen the body.

Another report from southern Colombia told of a young Indian Christian being clubbed to death while witnessing to a group of Roman Catholics.

Prayer For Spain

Christians the world over are being urged to set aside March 15 as a day of prayer for Spain, where Roman Catholic influence is subjecting Protestants to many kinds of persecution.

The call to prayer was issued by the Washington office of public affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, which charges that 20 Spanish Protestant churches were closed in 1957 and another six in 1958. Moreover, many young people in Spain have found it virtually impossible to secure marriage licenses, according to an NAE statement.

Late Winter Walk

Winter had come early to Washington and by February the cold seemed to have been spent. What frosty air was left made for an invigorating walk between agencies where developments significant to the Christian conscience broke frequently.

In the House, a resolution calling for “immediate establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican through appointment of a United States envoy” was introduced by Democratic Representative Victor L. Anfuso, a Roman Catholic from Brooklyn, New York.

A few days later, Senator John F. Kennedy, also a Roman Catholic, was quoted in Look magazine as being against appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican. Kennedy announced himself in favor of continued separation of church and state. He said, moreover, that he was “opposed to the Federal government’s extending support to sustain any church or its schools.”

“As for such fringe matters as buses, lunches and other services, the issue is primarily social and economic and not religious,” he said. “Each case must be judged on its merits.…”

Nation’S Capital

Many churchmen looked to the U. S. capital with new concern as the Eisenhower administration announced a legislative bid to guarantee loans for construction of educational buildings. One observer, worried about the bill’s church-state implications, said it appeared to have “as many mouse traps as a granary.”

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A large number of church-related colleges, Bible schools and seminaries already are in line for help from the government-sponsored student loan fund established under the National Defense Act of 1958.

Other bills introduced in Congress would exempt clergymen from revealing in Federal court communications made to them as ministers; increase from five to ten per cent allowable corporation tax deductions for charitable gifts; legalize mailing of church bingo advertising; make it a federal offense to cross a state line to avoid prosecution for destruction of educational or religious structures; strengthen a District of Columbia law against pornography; and authorize government subsidies for transportation of Washington school children.

And, in the Senate, appropriations were doubled for a special subcommittee studying juvenile delinquency. In the House, resolutions were urged to call on the United Nations to open sessions with specific prayer and to designate February 3 of each year as “Chaplains’ Day.”

The Supreme Court rejected appeals from three Jehovah’s Witnesses who claimed that draft calls violated their freedom of religion.

Interest in governmental affairs prompted 250 denominational representatives to gather for a “Churchmen’s Washington Seminar” sponsored by the National Council of Churches. Methodists, in turn, were thinking about setting up a “legislative office for social issues” in Washington while Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State drew 1200 registrants to a St. Louis conclave.

Mobilizing opinion on social issues, the American Society on Christian Social Ethics was founded January 30–31 in Washington by 50 teachers, mostly at the seminary level. After meeting ten years as a small informal study group (Dean Liston Pope of Yale was one of the founders), the movement emerged from “the baling-wire stages of improvization” to become a national society. Dr. Henry Kolbe of Garrett Biblical Institute was named first president.

Two Panels Featured

The organizing convention mirrored an already established slant of interests. Dr. Das Kelley Barnett of Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, who had acted as the group’s president pro tem, indicated that the Hazen Foundation, long a subsidizer of religious books on economic themes, had supplied funds toward travel expenses of those attending, and that the American Association of Theological Schools had secured $3,000 to assure the new movement’s vigorous start.

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Two panels featured the Washington program, one on economics, the other on race relations. Both left theological concerns far in the background.

A panel on “A Christian Ethics for an Affluent Society” censured John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. With Dr. Douglas E. Jackson of Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, as chairman, panelists were Dr. John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary, New York; Leon Keyserling, chairman of President Truman’s Council of Economic Advisors; and Robert B. Wright, chief of the Economic Defense Division, U. S. Office of International Resources.

Charge of Inadequacy

Bennett held that Galbraith’s work inadequately depicts U. S. responsibility as a rich nation in a world of poverty, and also ignores areas of poverty still existing in the U. S. Although he said he had “long left behind the confident, dogmatic socialism of 20 years ago,” Bennett nonetheless urged expanded state activities in housing, schools, health and transportation.

Keyserling protested Galbraith’s “plague on both your houses,” that is, the economic left and right. He urged full production, full employment, higher unemployment benefits, and shared Bennett’s criticism of the “traditional economist” who makes “the demand for his goods” the criterion of “the limits of production.” But whereas Bennett conceded that full employment may lead to cheap products and to work lacking in meaning, and spoke of it rather as “a necessary evil,” Keyserling—frequently thundering the words “moral” and “immoral”—saw nothing evil about it. “If unemployment is the best way to fight inflation, it would still be evil to avoid full employment,” he contended.

Wright Backs Keyserling

Wright said that needy foreign nations must get help either from the Soviet bloc or from the United States. American society, he added—agreeing with Keyserling—is “not affluent” (Webster: affluent: adjective, “wealthy; abounding in goods or riches”; noun, “a stream or river flowing into a larger river or into a lake”). Russia has given many nations economic aid, technicians, and trade. In contrast with other lands, poverty in America is the exception, not the rule.

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Wright rather ineffectively met criticisms of American foreign policy. But his reference to Communist “slave states” drew a protest from Professor John Howes of Wesley Theological Seminary, the host campus. Several participants concurred with Howes, until Professor Edmund Smits of Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul, related his forced imprisonment and brainwashing by Communists in Latvia. “There are injustices on both sides,” he said, “but we must see the qualitative difference—two positions on human rights, two ways of life—and not close our eyes to an order that tends to annihilate the Church.”

A New But Indefinable Order

Panel and audience seemed to assume that Christian ethics requires an economic levelling of society. Mr. Keyserling emphasized that “any kind of inequality is indefensible”; “the only pure morality gives everyone the same thing.” This prompted a question by Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “Do the members of the panel hold that it is sinful or immoral for one person to have less than another; where is a just line to be drawn objectively in terms of an ideal ‘more’ and ‘less’ by what dynamism is such a balancing to be achieved?”

Mr. Wright dismissed the question as outside his specialization. Dr. Bennett, long a free enterprise critic and advocate of expanding state activity, implied that inequalities are sinful, but adduced no fixed line of justice and, rather curiously, appealed to spiritual rather than legal solutions. “There is a burden of proof on all who have more, which gives them an advantage over others. Is this a right? We must promote self-judgment. There is no objective norm, but a regulative principle, a progressive judgment upon all who have this advantage over others. We must rely on pressure of conscience; it is quite impossible to advocate equality through laws of regimentation.” Mr. Keyserling defended absolute equality, but said “This system in the American economy would be unworkable; it would reduce production and give each person less than now.”

What Is Alternative?

Professor Don Smucker of Bethany Biblical Seminary, Chicago, then asked Dr. Bennett for a fixed statement of position. “Fifty years ago the alternatives in economic debate were materialistic capitalism and simple socialism. Today’s discussion assumes a ‘pluralistic mixed economy.’ Precisely what is this alternative?”

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Dr. Bennett declared “the old dichotomy no longer relevant. One important development in Christian ethics since the World Council assembly in Amsterdam is the renunciation of both Christian capitalism and Christian socialism. But one wing in the United States would absolutize capitalism. We must get rid of the identification of Christianity with any absolute or system.”

Asked whether he has “any vocabulary” to describe the new alternative, Bennett demurred: “Any vocabulary gets outmoded very quickly.” He heaped abuse, however, on defendants of capitalism, as reactionaries motivated by vested interest.

Although Bennett refused to distinguish his “third way” from socialism, his revolt against free enterprise distinctives was apparent. Social discussion among participants was clearly sympathetic to a pluralistic economy in which free enterprise policies are progressively narrowed through state controls. Only here and there could one detect an open doubt. But at the dinner table talk one delegate thought it strange that Dr. Bennett’s Union Theological Seminary should cling so fast to its wealthy endowments and properties, and that Christian ethics professors should mobilize their criticisms of a free economy in comfortable new divinity quarters made possible by a million dollar gift from the Kresge Foundation.

C. F. H. H.

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