Christ in Las Vegas

What are evangelical churches in Las Vegas doing to bring Christ to residents and hundreds of thousands of transients who flock there each year?

Weldon D. Woodson, Alhambra, California, writer has made a special study of Christian witness in Las Vegas. Here is his report:

To hosts who have frequented the Nevada city featuring high gambling, low taxation, easy marriage and painless, simple divorce, the thought that Las Vegas even has churches may be startling. The mainstay business is gambling with the evil yoked to it. Neon lights that glitter the highway from McCarran Airport to downtown Las Vegas herald this:

GAMBLING 24 HOURS A DAY … SLOT MACHINES … “THE SHOW THAT MADE AMERICA BLUSH” … SPECIAL ACCOMMODATIONS FOR DIVORCEES …

Nevadans voted gambling out in 1909 and it didn’t come back again for 22 years. The 1931 legislature, which also put through a six-week divorce law, legalized licensed gaming.

With this, Las Vegas mushroomed from a sleepy community of 5,000 in 1925 to a feverish, brassy city of more than 50,000 today. It has become a virtual “Broadway of the sagebrush” with plush night clubs operating along its famed “Strip” which now extends some six miles south of the center of the city.

Las Vegas unashamedly emblazons the fact that it is after the tourist and his dollar. Around the clock, seven days a week, the spinning roulette wheels, clicking dice, and swishing cards lure sight-seers. There is hardly a grocery store or a drugstore without its supply of shiny slot machines, waiting to consume the visitor’s quarters or half-dollars. In 1957, Clark County, which Las Vegas spotlights as the county seat, grossed a gambling revenue of $70,158,310.

To determine how evangelical churches succeed in letting their light shine in this abysmal darkness of degredation, the author queried their ministers and among those who responded, these give an insight to the spiritual side of Las Vegas:

Charles Swan, minister of the 120-member Church of Christ, said that to reach transients and tourists, the church has complete coverage of highways with easily read signs advertising it. It carries a weekly display ad with sermon subjects for both Sunday services in the local Review-Journal and the Sun, as well as display ads for special events such as Vacation Bible School and “revival meetings.” There are not many converts among transients, but a number are brought to Christ who have been residents of Las Vegas for short periods.

“Without exception, Las Vegas is the most difficult field that I have ever labored in during the 23 years I have been preaching the gospel,” Swan said. “However, its rewards have been rich. It is a field that presents a great challenge to every Christian. A true Christian can live a Christ-like life wherever he is. Daniel endured the lions’ den and the heroes of faith recorded in the 11th chapter of Hebrews “endured as seeing him who is invisible.”

Swan stated that five per cent or less of the members of the Church of Christ are affected by the gambling in Las Vegas. These are overcome by the fanfare and constant advertising of the gambling interests. “Satan lacks nothing here by the way of allurement,” said the minister, “and newcomers who are spiritually weak are sometimes overcome by it all.”

The Rev. W. H. Higgenbotham, pastor of Las Vegas Foursquare Church, said that many people of his church work in motels and some own motels, where they have opportunities to be of great influence in winning converts. They contact those sojourning in Las Vegas for the six-week period to qualify for a divorce, the majority of whom—stated Higgenbotham—are unhappy and dissatisfied with their way of life and will give attention when one tries to help them.

Besides encouraging his members to witness to such and to encourage them to confess Christ, Higgenbotham conducts a radio broadcast over station KRBO, “Country Chapel Time,” which invites listeners to write or call for counsel or prayer. “We feel that we have been able to reach more people with this program than by any other means,” he said.

He pointed out that Las Vegas is made up of three or more classes of people. “The vacationer or sight-seer, of which there are many,” he said, “does not come to Las Vegas to attend church, so we do not have much influence in that class.

“Then there are those who work in the gaming houses as gamblers, bartenders, and what have you, whose hours are very irregular, making it next to impossible to reach them in any way. Yet in spite of that, many of them do attend church.

“Then of course there is the class of people who are ordinary shopkeepers, construction workers, and all the other workers that go to make up a city of the size of Las Vegas. Many people in Las Vegas have no connection with the gambling or entertainment world in a direct way at all.”

Higgenbotham cited his own family—three boys, one girl—as to whether Las Vegas has a bad influence on the children. The oldest son, 20, took all of his high school training in Las Vegas and is now working as a draftsman and attending the University of Nevada.

“All of our children,” Higgenbotham said, “are attending schools here and are normal in every way, and I believe their attitude is the same toward gambling as it would be if we lived in another state. Perhaps that is because of what they were taught in the church and at home.”

The Rev. William C. Arbaugh, a tall young man with a blond crew cut, graduated from Northwestern Seminary, served a year in the Virgin Islands under the Board of American Missions of the United Lutheran Church, and arrived in Las Vegas in 1951, where he became pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation. Actually, it was a church in name only, for it consisted of a group of only 14 people who met in a room in a private home.

Two years later, Arbaugh counted the attendance at a Sunday morning service. Total: 14. But slowly and humbly he and these few plodded along and today the membership comes to 130 and a $100,000 church building was dedicated in the summer of 1956.

Pastor Arbaugh pointed out that Church of the Reformation has a responsibility for serving those who come to Las Vegas from Lutheran areas. “But this is not the limit of our opportunity,” he said. “There are many people here who are not related to any church. Our job is to reach them.”

The Rev. H. L. Rippel, graduate of Northern Baptist Seminary in Chicago and a one-time student of Moody Bible Institute, who serves as pastor of the Las Vegas Bible Church, on an average each year passes out 50,000 gospel tracts. He and his members make four drives a year in homes and trailer parks, where they leave literature and invite those they call upon to attend church. House-to-house visits result in only one in a hundred attending a service, but canvassing the trailer parks results in one out of ten showing up at Las Vegas Bible Church on Sunday.

Among the many converted from visits to trailer parks, Rippel recalled a 14-year-old girl who yielded her soul to Christ five years ago. Now 19 and a high school graduate, she lives in California. “Neither her relatives nor any one from the family is saved,” said Rippel, “yet she has kept true to the Lord.”

Glenn L. Tudor, minister of First Christian Church, cited as means to attract transients to services newspaper advertising and sizable signs on the four major roads leading into Las Vegas—from Los Angeles, Arizona, Utah, and Reno. Plans call for a new building on five acres which the church purchased in a newer and growing section of the city. It is on a prominent drive, and a sign has been erected, facing both directions from which traffic approaches, stating it is the new site and that services are now being held at the present location.

“Although our church is small,” Tudor said, “we have guests each Sunday.”

The Rev. Walter Bishop, pastor of the First Baptist Church, said that his congregation—in addition to making itself known via newspaper and phone book advertising—has for more than 14 years broadcast its morning service. He stated that the church has two services in the morning, another at night, and that many visitors are in attendance. “Many good Christian people visit Las Vegas,” he said, “and of course countless local people have not ‘bowed the knee to Baal.’ ”

Walter W. Hanne, minister of First Presbyterian Church, stated that there was no Presbyterian church in Las Vegas until 1953 when he came there to organize one. Today First Presbyterian has a building valued at $350,000 and a membership of 800. “It has been a wonderful experience and the phenomenal development we have had has been most stimulating,” Hanne said.

He claimed that most people who live in Las Vegas are just normal people like any other community and are greatly interested in the churches. According to the local Chamber of Commerce, there are 70 denominational groups in greater Las Vegas.

‘Solomon and Sheba’

In the nation’s capital the Queen of Sheba came upon evil days during Christmas week. In two Washington theaters her visit to Solomon was acclaimed as virtually the greatest love story ever known. Handling the theme with some restraint was Inbal, touring Israeli dance theatre. But then there was the film—“Solomon and Sheba.”

The movie program carries a lewd picture of a fertility cult dance captioned by some of the beautiful love language of the Song of Solomon. Tastelessness and grossness pretty well characterize this “King Vidor Production.” Despite the laughable claim to “scrupulous fidelity to the biblical version”—so as to avoid “sacrilege”—and generous use of proof-texts, it is readily apparent that King Vidor reigns supreme over King Solomon in determining the film content. And Hollywood lordship over Scripture proves a fearful despotism indeed. Eastern legends are (in effect) rendered canonical, and the Queen of Sheba is set forth as “the most famous courtesan of all times.” If “the half was not told” the Queen, Hollywood is now determined to tell it to us.

Sheba turns out to be a grape-eating Italian firebrand named Gina Lollobrigida, who tries to make a perpetual sneer look attractive. Working with Egypt against Israel, her big problem is to get Solomon (Yul Brynner with hair) alone—thus to destroy him and his country, because the Hebrew religion with its teaching that “all men are equal” could mean the end of “absolute monarchs.” Unable to find a match for Sheba’s beauty in his harem, Solomon moves her into the palace and into an “adjoining chamber.” After a bathtub scene, seduction is achieved in a nauseous portrayal of an orgiastic dance “which alone cost more than $100,000 to film.” Solomon’s temple is destroyed by lightning. The Hollywood attitude these days seems to be that since DeMille used up the biblical miracles, “we’ll have to create our own.”

And here come Adonijah and Joash, to whom all sorts of unbiblical things happen (the film makers appear to have mislaid the biblical chronology), leading an Egyptian army which spectacularly accumulates at the bottom of a ravine. Sheba wonders how she can tell victorious Solomon “that I carry his child.” But the king, hearing of her conversion and awakened love for him, forgives all and apparently is comforted by Sheba’s parting assurance that their illegitimate child will one day rule over Sheba.

This is the stuff to which woefully misguided parents will send their hapless offspring to gain some Bible “knowledge.” Yet sadly enough, Hollywood’s most burning fidelity to Scripture appears to be in its meticulous—albeit expanded—depiction of sins narrated in the biblical account. But where the Bible speaks of these in terms of condemnation and judgment, Hollywood treats them with a delight born of box-office greed. And when it finally arrives at judgment, one cannot escape the feeling that not only should judgment be portrayed—it should also be shared.

F.F.

Is the Cross Adequate?

Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Methodism’s elder statesman, looking forward 175 years, sees the church in a space age confronted with “the thinking, the culture, the dreams, the problems, the limitations of the people who populate the great planets of the universe.”

Speaking in Baltimore at the concluding ceremony of a commemorative “Christmas Conference,” marking the official organization of American Methodism in 1784, Oxnam expressed doubt as to the adequacy of Christ’s death on the cross as a redemptive act for space folk throughout the universe. Among questions he posed: “What are these [space] creatures like? Did the Eternal reveal himself to them? Could he have sent his Son to each one of the planets?… Was the whole terrible enactment that we call ‘Calvary’ requisite for other human beings to learn the meaning of ‘love so amazing, so divine’?” He left his queries unanswered.

“The future will be at least a period of the stretched-mind, with fundamental readjustments in the realm of philosophy and of course theology,” said the aging sage. “As Methodism faces the future, we must ask once again, What are the priorities? Do we put first things first, and what do we mean by ‘first’? It is not simply a question of abundant power but a question also of power over ourselves. Natural limitations will no longer stand as barriers that keep us from reaching the Promised Land …”

“Methodism confronts a new world, but a new world that will be dependent upon the unchanging truths of the old world. It is a future in which there must be light, in which there will be leisure, in which love shall rule.”

Canadian ‘Heritage’

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is sponsoring a 10-week series of half-hour religious dramas and documentaries based on work of Christian churches.

The new program, called “Heritage,” is being produced in cooperation with the National Religious Advisory Council. Both Protestant and Catholic themes will be presented.

Religious Radio: Free Or Paid?

How to deal with commercial radio stations which refuse to sell time for religious broadcasts?

The question is expected to create considerable discussion this week at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters in Washington.

The NRB, affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals, numbers in its membership most of the major paid-time religious radio broadcasters in America.

Another organization, the American Council of Christian Churches, noted before the Federal Communications Commission last month that an “increasing number of radio stations are refusing to sell time to religion.”

Its spokesman, Dr. Carl McIntire, called for an investigation “of all aspects of religious radio and television programming and practice.”

“Our survey of 368 stations revealed that 236 stations, or 64 per cent, do not sell time to religion; 86 stations, or 23 per cent, will sell on a limited basis; and 48 stations, or 13 per cent will sell time in a free competitive market,” he said.

Stations who refuse to sell to religious broadcasters are expected to donate time for church broadcasting. Allocation of such free time, however, often falls into the hands of church councils. The NRB has long expressed the fear that this policy discriminates against broadcasters not represented on church councils.

Non-paying religious programs received only 3.1 per cent of a week’s total radio and television time in the latest National Council of Churches survey.

The survey, conducted by the NCC Broadcasting and Film Commission, was based on programs aired last November 1–7. It included Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish programs broadcast over 141 commercial stations in 11 major U. S. cities.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Oscar O. Gustafson, 69, Augustana Lutheran Church leader, in Litchfield, Minnesota … the Rev. Jacob Van Ess, 82, former vice president of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, in Coxsackie, New York … Dr. Pierre Wilds DuBose, 67, founder and president of Hampden DuBose Academy in Zellwood, Florida, in Orlando.

Election: As president of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dr. Allan A. MacRae, president of Faith Theological Seminary.

Appointments: As program director of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, Dr. Harry C. Meserve, a member of the executive staff of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and former minister of the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco … as assistant executive director of the National Council of Churches’ Department of Social Welfare, Arlette Pederson.

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