The Lost Grace of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has become in many ways one of our most characteristic national institutions. Whatever it may have started out to be, we now have in our calendar a unique and colorful holiday that has thoroughly sold itself to the American people. Its recognizable components consist of a long week end, proclamations about prosperity, the gathering of the clan, a feast of turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie, followed by football on television. What all this has to do with giving thanks to the Heavenly Father is not quite clear. The citizenry increasingly resists the idea that Thanksgiving should be viewed as a “religious” occasion. Our culture accepts it rather as a pleasant interlude between the seasons of leaf-raking and snow-shoveling.

To speak of the lost grace of Thanksgiving, therefore, is to highlight a loss that we can ill afford. For we are dealing with the precious realities that mark the Christian as a different species from the humanist or the Marxist. To whom can the Communist give thanks, apart from himself or the ghostly memory of “Our Father Lenin”?

No finer Thanksgiving experience could come to America than for all 180 million of us to sit down quietly and read or listen to the One Hundredth Psalm. The Word of God teaches us that the attitude of gratitude is both delicate and mysterious. It can be crushed and killed by the uplifting of a skeptical eyebrow; yet its psychology is hidden in the unfathomable depths of divine love. Gratitude is a way of life, a temper of being, an index to spiritual health. “O Lord that lends me life,” cried Shakespeare, “Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.” Principal Watt of Edinburgh’s New College put it another way: “O Thou who hast endowed us with so many gifts,” he would pray at the Rainy hall noon meal, “Now grant to us just one gift more—a grateful heart.”

How does one come by a grateful heart? Too often our reflections on thanksgiving are limited to sighs of relief that we are “not as other men,” in squalor or in sickness, or in Russia. We pause on automotive tiptoe while waiting for a traffic light to change, espy a battered car and murmur, “Maybe I haven’t made it to the top yet, but I’m better off than that poor devil, thank God.”

Real Thanksgiving can never start with a measurement of the human factor; it always starts with God, the giver. Practically everything we know about God is associated with his quality of givingness. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matt. 7:11). The unpolluted air we breathe, the fabrics we wear for our bodies’ protection, the water we drink, the shelter overhead, are all in truth from the gracious hand of the Sustainer of life. The rich natural resources under America’s feet, which are the real source of our wealth, are his provision for our needs.

If there is one human fault more universal than any other, and possibly more irritating to God than any other, it is our habit of assuming credit for things that can properly be ascribed only to the goodness of God. As Abraham Lincoln told a war-torn nation in 1863, “We have forgotten the gracious Hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”

Small wonder that Paul invokes the principle, “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” Physical characteristics, state of health, even state of affluence—to boast about such things or complain about them is to expose ourselves to divine disfavor. America today needs Christians who are ready to give thanks to God for the shape of things as they are, much in the spirit perhaps of the old lady who had only two teeth left and rejoiced in the Lord because they “hit.” These are the healthy souls, who don’t need to waste precious energy day-in and day-out defending themselves. These are the radiant spirits who can still do the Lord’s work on this battered planet, and bring results.

Blessed indeed are the thankful ones who have not turned the cup of life upside down; they have already received an earnest of an imperishable reward.

UNITED NATIONS OBSERVES 15TH BIRTHDAY IN SOBER MOOD

The 15th anniversary of the United Nations was more subdued than earlier commemorations, and well it might have been. Although many propagandists still hail the organization as the world’s best hope for peace, a new awareness is evident that dedication to principle rather than to organization is the basic issue.

Is eligibility for membership in the U.N. a matter of geography or of principle? Instead of pleas that Red China be admitted, one now can also hear some responsible leaders insist that the U.N. would not be destroyed, but might even be enhanced in some ways, were Soviet Russia to withdraw.

Assistant Secretary of State Francis O. Wilcox, a Methodist, told a special U.N. service in Washington Cathedral (Episcopal) that basic U.N. objectives harmonize with the great principles of the Christian religion and that all religious groups should support the U.N. But, we would urge, keep an eye on principle, not on organization. We sometimes get uneasy over the big leap from Christian goals to secular programs and parties. The U.N. is a conference of spokesmen for secular nations, not a gathering of Christians. Even Secretary Wilcox, in another mood, took a wider tack: “Let us all—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant or Jew—from whatever race or creed, dedicate ourselves anew to the great task.…” Surely the U.N. has served as a temporary means of deterring aggression. But that is no reason for idolizing it as the Christian’s best hope for world peace. Only those who confuse the apostolic armory with political world processes can make that mistake.

PRESERVING LOYALTIES IN A CHRISTIAN COLLEGE

A Baptist leader in Washington, D. C., stopped us at luncheon the other day to relay good news: “We’re working on a Baptist college for Washington!”

“The Baptists have already lost one university here,” we said (George Washington University was founded as a Baptist institution; today its philosophy is a formless conglomerate, and evangelical vitality survives only in small campus pockets). “How are you going to ensure Christian integrity?” we asked.

“Oh,” replied our friend, “this is going to be a college—but we’ll have a religion department in which we’ll teach theology courses.”

The distinguished Baptist theologian A. H. Strong two generations ago saw that Christian realities must integrate all of life and thought or Christianity will count for little. Despite his burden for a great Baptist university in Chicago, he was persuaded to settle for a secular university with a Baptist divinity school attached. He little dreamed that, before many decades, even divinity school professors would be teaching naturalism (as they surely did in Chicago’s humanistic era), despite the fact that Baptist funds helped to pay faculty salaries and such professors remained eligible for Baptist retirement benefits. Not infrequently a professor from the university’s divinity school would embarrass candidates for ordination for holding the Apostles’ Creed intact. Some Baptist seminaries are still theologically on the move. In the North (Philadelphia, for example) and in the South alike, neo-orthodoxy has registered gains. Whether new administrations will recapture the theological heritage of these institutions remains to be seen.

One fact is sure in any event. New or old, an educational enterprise wearing theology only on its cuff is a long way from fulfilling the ideal of a Christian institution, in which one’s view of God supplies starch for the whole fabric of life. The Baptist cause in the North has long lacked the inspiration of university education fired by evangelical conviction and piety. It has indeed risen to the vision of this need in successive generations. But both the Chicago Midway and Washington Circle are reminders that the survival of evangelical institutions depends not only on vision and funds given in the twentieth century, but also upon a faith delivered once-for-all in the first.

U.S. SUPREME COURT DEFERS ON BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The United States Supreme Court, which has sometimes vacillated uncertainly in recent years between upholding American principles and setting new precedents, last week sidestepped the question of the constitutionality of daily Bible reading in public schools. It returned to the lower courts for reconsideration the question of the propriety of Bible readings in Pennsylvania’s Abington Township schools, where the Unitarian parents of three school children in Roslyn, a Philadelphia suburb, protested that some of the Bible selections ran contrary to their personal religious beliefs and family convictions.

In view of the Supreme Court’s failure to rule on the issue, the Pennsylvania statute remains under a cloud of uncertainty. Pennsylvania law required the reading of 10 verses of the Bible, by teachers or students, at the opening of each school day. In the Abington schools the Lord’s Prayer was also customarily repeated in unison. After the Abington Township case was filed against school officials, the law was changed in 1959 to permit children of protesting parents to be excused from participation “upon the written request of parent or guardian.”

In effect, the Supreme Court implied that this amended statute left the original law in doubt. Pennsylvania authorities argued that the change really made the Bible reading program a matter of voluntary participation. The Supreme Court vacated an order by a three-judge Federal district court banning further Scripture readings in the township schools. The District Court held, in principle, that the constitutional requirement of separation of Church and State also necessitates a separation of Bible and public schoolroom. The Supreme Court has directed the lower court to re-evaluate the case in the light of the amending statute.

There is little doubt that the American mentality is today in flux. The masses are unaware of their heritage, and are vulnerably exposed to new ideologies. Both sectarian authoritarianism and aggressive minority groups exploit this vacuum in American life to partisan advantage. To preserve American ideals, they contend, we need more and more to detach ourselves from our foundations, and attach ourselves to novel viewpoints. The sad fact is that American history seems too short for many Americans to learn from history. But it will be shorter still if we do not soon discover that the newer ideologies, when given free sway, may pose more of a threat to the American heritage than an embellishment. The choice is not between biblical ideals and neutrality; it is between biblical realities and nihilism.

FAREWELL SALUTE UNTIL THE DAWN

Evangelical Christianity has lost a sturdy champion in the passing of Dr. Samuel G. Craig, longtime editor of a magazine originally using the name Christianity Today, which ceased publication some years ago. No literary descent was involved in our use of the same title, the choice having been made solely on the merits of the name itself. But the editors of this CHRISTIANITY TODAY wish to pay tribute to the editor of the first one as wielder of a trenchant pen in his lifelong obedience to Jude’s exhortation: “Earnestly contend for the faith, which was once delivered unto the saints.” His service continuously manifested loyalty to what Dr. Benjamin B. Warfield, in a preface to one of Dr. Craig’s books, called “that great triumphant shout which we find imbedded in the Epistle to the Hebrews—‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.’ ”

Samuel Craig’s scholarship and convictions followed in the train of previous occupants of his Princeton, New Jersey, home (where his funeral was held): Dr. Francis L. Patton, Dr. George T. Purnes, and Dr. Robert Dick Wilson. His modesty, urbanity, and abounding sense of humor gained him the respect and even affection of those who opposed his theological convictions. His dedication to these was deep—he willingly suffered debarment from honors and posts of larger influence which otherwise would surely have been his.

But his hope was the hope so well expressed in the Scots Confession of 1560, and it comforts us in the hour of Dr. Craig’s homegoing:

… Sik as continew in weil doing to the end, bauldely professing the Lord Jesus, we constantly beleve, that they sall receive glorie, honor, and immortality, to reigne for ever in life everlasting with Christ Jesus, to whose glorified body all his Elect sall be make lyke, when he sall appeir againe in judgement, and sall rander up the kingdome to God his father, who then sall bee, and ever sail remaine all in all things God blessed for ever: to whome, with the Sonne and with the haly Ghaist, be all honour and glorie, now and ever. So be it.

LET’S SHARPEN OUR WORD POWER: REAL PIETY IS NEVER MOSSY

To clear the theological air, we recommend a restudy of the differences between piety and pietism. While making valuable contributions to the stream of Christianity, pietism has been criticized in every age for its leanings toward doctrinal superficiality and anti-intellectualism, as well as its withdrawing and quietistic tendencies. Today many Christian leaders are using the weaknesses of pietism as an excuse for a stepped-up assault on piety. They think that in passing judgment on a particular movement, they are exempting themselves from an obligation to a life of devotion. A distracted ramble through a moss-hung liturgy is about all they feel able to attempt by way of cultivating the inner life.

To wrestle in prayer, to sense a warm affection for the Lord Jesus, to speak tenderly and lovingly of the goodness of God, to confess the witness of the Holy Spirit—these are the marks of piety; the platform is not simply to refrain from smoking, to avoid vulgar conversation, or to be seen carrying a Bible with a black cover.

Today other words besides pietism are used to lash the devout: “emotionalism,” “individualism,” and the like. Pious talk is all right during chapel hour, sophisticates aver, but even there it should be restricted to the hymns. One should get on to “the business of the Church.” That business turns out to consist of two classifications: promotion and social criticism. Both have their place; yet in the life of the Church every time one or the other usurps the place of primacy, a sickness of spirit soon follows. For that place must be reserved for Jesus Christ the Lord, not by a complimentary reference now and then, not by mere invocation and benediction, but by the acknowledgement of his Crown Rights.

In her brilliant biography of Henry Martyn, Miss Constance Padwick describes an early-day missionary contemporary of Martyn who sailed to India from England with rather grand ideas and a young, sweet, quiet wife. In the new land the wife fell ill and after awhile slipped away. Then, says Miss Padwick, “There passed from her rugged husband’s life a touch of mellowing softness. He was in danger of hardening into the ecclesiastical strategist.”

We stand today in the same danger. After all, the chief business of the Church is to bring men, women, and children face to face with Jesus Christ, and to keep them close to Him. Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia: where Christ is, there is the Church. But turn the statement around, and it is not necessarily true. Anything but Christ crucified and risen is secondary in the divine order.

We are saved by the atoning death of Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross, not by the subjective faith of the early Church or the conversations of the twentieth century Church. It was Christ, not his Church, who ascended on high. Had not the “two men in white apparel” been present at the ascension, the Church would have been left staring and speechless, quite probably waiting for someone to move the previous question.

Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy wrote not long ago, “I went on a swing around the Los Angeles area recently, holding a series of evangelistic rallies, and it came to me with a new force that we are geared for a formal service of worship, but we have well nigh lost the ability to put on a meeting aimed at people who need to find Christ, and find him now. Yet there was a hunger for the Gospel, and young people are waiting eagerly for the Church to set before them the claims of Jesus Christ.”

There is only one way to recover that gift and that power for the Church, and it is by the resurrection of genuine, personal, radiant, contagious piety, molded to biblical patterns. Conformity to the environment is not the answer. The coloration of our culture is attractive but it does not bring men to the Cross; it does not fill men with the Holy Spirit; and it does not convey supernatural power. We need a fresh breath of holy fire that will sweep through our churches and institutions, filling men with a passion for Christ that will once again astonish the world. Above all, God wants men to whom the knowledge that they have been with Christ will cling without cloying as a gentle fragrance.

Before Christian leaders can relate men and women to God, and before they can speak for God and his Church, they must first know him themselves, know him intimately, and be known by him. Let us preach the Christian home, the Christian economic order, the Christian interpretation of life; it is still true that Christ alone holds the key to them all. If in our critique of pietism we come to the place where we look sideways at a warm love for the Lord Jesus, and prefer a menthol cigarette to the free exercise of devotion, we have indeed sold our birthright for a mess.

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