Eutychus and His Kin: December 21, 1962

Choir Of Angels

Pastor Peterson has demythologized Christmas. For at least three generations our Christmas program has followed the traditional scenario. No script has been needed for years. Even the props are standard; the manger, the shepherds’ crooks, the crowns of the wise men, and ‘the angels’ wings are always stored in the attic.

The actors vary a bit, but the casting is uniform. Mary and Joseph are recruited from the Senior department, the shepherds are Junior boys, and the angels are Beginner and Primary girls. We still have a choir loft behind the pulpit, and the most theatrical part of the program is the apparition of the angels.

First a blue light shows the sleepy forms of the shepherds on the platform; then a white spot bursts out on the herald angel rising to her feet in one corner of the loft. At the conclusion of her announcement the whole angelic choir stands to sing as a floodlight is switched on.

A few improvements have been made in the last few years. The herald angel part is now taken by Miss Fixture since it was found that the sudden illumination often left a Junior angel more terrified than the shepherds. The wise men have gone back to stocking feet after an unsuccessful experiment with “zoris” for sandals.

That was before Pastor Peterson began preaching about Christmas. Last year he shook up our wise men tradition. Most of us knew that the wise men came much later than the shepherds, and that the Christ-child was most certainly neither in a stable nor a manger by then. But the Pastor made the details of the biblical narrative so vivid that people began to notice the contrast with our pageant.

This year he treated the shepherds and the angels on the Sunday before our program. The pastor demythologizes in reverse. He doesn’t treat the biblical accounts as myth, but shows the mythology in our understanding of the Bible. Where, for example, do we get our notion of feminine, fluttering, infant angels? The heavenly host is the army of the mighty sons of God attending the Lord of Sabaoth. When the Pastor described these Mighty Ones shouting glory to God in the fields of Bethlehem, it seemed that these angelic invaders must burst the gates of hell and demolish the walls of darkness. They did not hover in heaven, they stood on earth. They did not bring greetings to men of good will; they proclaimed the peace of God’s rule to the men of God’s pleasure.

Yet they came as evangelists, not avengers, to declare the peace of the Prince. The Lord of the angels is found of the shepherds in swaddling clothes.

This demythologizing is disturbing. How can you put that in a program?

EUTYCHUS

Ecumenics And Merger

With mild alarm, I read … “A Layman Views Church Merger,” by Justus N. Baird, Jr. (Nov. 9 issue). In his pattern of logic, Mr. Baird seems to commit one of the oldest fallacies in the world. This is the premise that because a given movement may possibly fall victim to certain misuses, the entire movement must therefore be evil.

It is perfectly true, I admit, that the enthusiasm of some persons for modern ecumenical efforts is stimulated by the rather shallow motive of a yen for organizational bigness. No human motive ever is simon-pure. But above this—and I am confident that it does lie above—is the imperative of Christ himself that “they all may be one.” …

A. HUGH DICKINSON

St. Philip’s Church (Episcopal)

Laurel, Del.

His illustration of the birds seemed to be the keynote for the whole article. My conclusion: His whole article is for the birds.…

RICHARD N. MILLER

Mt. Morris, Ill.

I am in accord with Mr. Baird in that I am skeptical of mergers on the national, denominational level.

The article suggested four courses of action for the individual layman who is faced with merger and is opposed to it. I would like to add a fifth course of action which applies to merger on the denominational level.…

I suggest that the individual layman who is faced with a denominational merger should consider leaving that denomination and seeking a church which is autonomous and not controlled by its denomination. A local church of this type would be only slightly affected by a merger of its denomination with another. Although I do not belong to such a church, it has been my experience to find that the self-governing church, as a rule, has more vitality and its denomination places much more emphasis on the needs of the local church.…

The question of which type of church polity is best is not the point of this discussion. The point is simply that the layman who is disturbed by a denominational merger and questions the present “big business” organization of segments of modern Protestantism may be much more at home in a self-governing church.

JAMES H. TREDINNICK

Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

The fruit of life together is clarity of vision—a broad view of the Church in the world actively engaged in the life and death struggle to win and hold men for Christ. I say that Mr. Baird’s spiritual myopia is based upon a dollars and cents, anti-officialdom bias which is not only unreal, but unrealistic. That there are problems of communication between the national bodies and the local congregations cannot be denied. But Mr. Baird’s suggested annihilation of the national bodies that propose to merge is certainly not the answer to any of the problems which mergers raise.

KARL H. BREVIK

Bethlehem Lutheran Church

Kalispell, Mont.

Justus N. Baird, Jr. makes the following statement: “If the multiplicity of denominations confuses the African aborigine, we owe him no apology.” I beg to differ. In my opinion, an apology of the first magnitude is owed.… I have spent … three years of my life preaching Christ to “African aborigines” in Nigeria’s Eastern Region. Sincere pagans … have asked, “Sir, which Christ do you want us to follow?” I always answered them by quoting John 17:20, 21, and similar passages which teach that there is but one true Christ who prays for his followers to be one. I apologized to these Nigerians as sincerely for the sin of denominational division … as I apologize on behalf of white, professed followers of Christ who participated in the West African slave trade years ago.…

Back to the birds just a minute. Their biggest trouble was choosing a “leader” and a “flight plan.” Mr. Baird may have something there. If we really choose Christ for our leader and the New Testament for our flight plan, we could be one.…

REES BRYANT

College Church of Christ

Searcy, Ark.

It seems to me this article reflects a policy of harrassment of the ecumenical movement rather than any attempt to offer constructive criticism.…

NORMAN D. STANTON

Director of Christian Education

North Avenue Presbyterian Church

New Rochelle, N. Y.

I agree with much that [he] writes.… Certainly if splitting churches has often proved a costly method of upholding our “convictions,” then our working together, in whatever form, cannot be without some “price.”

However, I would like to add a fifth alternative, … that is supporting local councils of churches. These councils are not pushing for church merger, but they are endeavoring to be a channel through which churches, especially laymen (as opposed to ministerial associations), can work together. Local councils are not usually ambitious so far as having heavy overhead, or in endeavoring to become a sort of super organization. However, they are anxious that the Protestant churches make some united impact and witness in the community, while at the same time holding to their own peculiar beliefs and autonomy.

LEONARD R. HALL

Executive Secretary

Peoria Area Council of Churches

Peoria, Ill.

Teilhard De Chardin

May I beg to add a few words to your Review of Current Religious Thought (October 26 issue) on Teilhard de Chardin?

Teilhard de Chardin had to withdraw from his chair at l’Institut Catholique de Paris, because of his opinions on evolution. In spite of the plea of the Rector of the Institut at the time to retain him, his superiors were adamant. Ever thereafter he lived under a cloud.

All his life Teilhard de Chardin was in fact a pilgrim in exile. His career in China, Indonesia, America and South Africa, was spent abroad. If he was allowed to make occasional trips to France, he was never permitted to live permanently in his country. Under the same policy, when he was over seventy years old, in 1951, he made his last trip to New York where he died in 1955. It is true that he gave some lectures at La Sorbonne in Paris. However, even after making a personal trip to that city, he was denied by the authorities of his Order in Rome to accept a chair at Le College de France, the highest institution of learning in France.

Teilhard was forbidden to publish his works during his lifetime. Copies of them were made by friends and circulated in small circles. A short time before his death, on the friendly advice of a brother priest, he willed all his manuscripts outside his Order. Otherwise all his writings would have never seen the light. They would still be buried or scattered at large in scientific reviews.

In spite of the controversial issues raised around him, Teilhard de Chardin will remain a “Sign in our Times.”

P. M. LETARTE

Highland Park, Ill.

Ole Miss: Two Echoes

You do have some faint glimmering of the fact that the basic issue (Editorial, Oct. 26 issue) is not merely race: Hundreds fought at Oxford who have not the slightest concern with integration or segregation as such. This fact is brought out clearly in some of the articles by the newsman who died there; is that the reason the marshals murdered him?

Your wording is interesting on page 25: “Use of Federal troops and consequent mob violence.” It is quite true that one was consequent upon the other. There would have been no mob violence, as you term it, if it had not been deliberately provoked by the Federal marshals. The students, thrown out of their dormitory by marshals moving Meredith in, were arrested as rioters; coeds driven out of a dormitory where no disturbance had occurred by tear gas thrown in by marshals, were beaten with clubs and handcuffed to trees. Several Mississippi law officers trying to control the crowd were fired upon and wounded by the Federal Gestapo.…

S. S. JONES

Louisville, Miss.

Contrary to your notion, the mob violence was the cause, not the consequence, of the use of Federal troops at Oxford—as anyone who has read the daily papers during the period can testify.…

Why don’t we come right out and say that, so long as the states’ behavior indicates that they are insisting on their (states’) rights in order to deny their citizens theirs (citizens’), then the only adequate moral response to the states is raucous and mocking prophetic laughter!!

WAYNE REINHARDT

Nashville, Tenn.

Work Of Norlie

“When a man thinks he knows a lot, he has a lot to learn.” “You could not take it.” Who does not see sermons leaping from such texts? These are 1 Corinthians 8:3 and 3:2 … from Norlie’s translation.

Olaf M. Norlie of St. Olaf’s College, Northfield, Minnesota, worked quietly on it for years.… It is the clearest and most American version I have seen.…

It does not have the English literary texture of Phillips’ masterpiece, but it has certainly passed the other translations this side of the water. You are missing something if you do not have this devoted and reverent translation on your desk. I might make bold to consider myself a minor authority on the New Testament, since I have read it through each week for 30 years in a score of languages and a dozen translations.

CHARLES G. HAMILTON

Booneville, Miss.

Can’T Help Believing

One cannot help believing that the mode and doctrines of baptism on the part of most denominations is a primary cause of present world conditions. The origin of both present-day modernism and Communism can be traced back to churches that have failed to follow the Bible in doctrine and mode of baptism.…

H. F. SCHADE

Kitchener, Ont.

To Locate The Tension

In his article “Protestant-Catholic Tensions” (Oct. 12 issue), C. Stanley Lowell presents “the parochial school aid question” as one of the areas of tension.… May I suggest that this is not so much a tension between Protestants and Catholics as it is … between those who believe religion and morality to be an integral part of the educative process and those who do not.

I, a Christian Reformed Calvinist, am happy to join the Catholics in their position that religion is a vital part of education and that all children are entitled to an education from the publicly gathered tax monies, regardless of which school they may attend.… I cannot join my Protestant brothers who, apparently, believe that religion and morality can be separated from education and that the government may only support the education of children who attend these areligious and amoral schools. [I conclude] that the government favors an areligious education over against a religiously-oriented education. And, this, it seems to me, violates the Constitution, which protects the right to practice one’s religion.

It is because I believe as I do that I have joined Citizens for Educational Freedom. Although it is true that 90 per cent of CEF’s membership is Catholic (which is quite reasonable in view of the fact that 90 per cent of the non-public school enrollment is in Catholic schools), I feel quite at home with my Catholic friends, for we seek the same goal of equity in the education of our children.

JOHN VANDEN BERG

Chairman of the Board

Michigan Citizens for Educational Freedom

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Death And Taxes

When first I read my Bible I did not realize:

(1) That when it said “the moon (shall be turned) into blood” that this would be a threatening possibility within human means during my lifetime, nor that my taxes would help to make it so. I confess, I used to think the passage was symbolic.

(2) That when it said “every eye shall see him” that man himself would create the Telstar network to facilitate this visual miracle on a globular world, nor that my monthly telephone bill would help to make it so.

(3) That when it said “there shall be no night there,” that my country would send up a pilot flash in the sky to give six minutes of nightlessness to the Pacific area. With a little more experiment and control, and some more taxes, this could take on a global continuity in nightlessness.

STANLEY H. BEAN

Albany, N. Y.

Search For An Ethic

According to the New York Times, Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, urges the formation of a board of professional moralists to advise businessmen and politicians who wish to distinguish right from wrong.

Well, Mr. Warren surely needs some elementary moral advice. Any man who favors homosexuality on the same day he opposes prayer, or on any other day, is desperately in need of being told that sodomy is a sin against the laws of God.

The great trouble with Mr. Warren’s suggestion is that a body of governmental professionals to regulate the rest of us would probably be closer to the Chief Justice’s perverted moral opinions than to the divinely revealed laws of the Bible.

GORDON H. CLARK

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

Danger: Gunmen At Large

It I could go back and do it again, I’d study at least one more subject in seminary. Then I’d do all I could to see that others studied it as well. The subject is “firearms.” There is a remarkable similarity between preaching and the study of guns. Not that it should be this way, mind you, but it is nevertheless.

Let’s get down to cases. My first exposure to the types of preaching available to the pan-Protestant Christian came in the seminary. A buddy who had been assigned a preaching post in a nearby village for the coming Sunday was asked how his sermon preparation was coming along. His suave answer was as smooth as a diplomat’s coat tail. “Oh, I’m not doing a lot of work before time; I’m just going out and shoot from the hip.” The old pro himself! A bona fide hip shooter—the man who’s so confident he doesn’t even need to take aim.

Then, there’s his blood first cousin, the fast draw artist. I wonder how often this fellows shoots himself in the foot, then hops around complaining he was sabotaged. If you couple his stock-in-trade with a machine gun, then “Look out, everybody!” Already blasting forth before the choir can sit down, never letting up in the staccato delivery, he finally throws up his hands and quits, saying something about the peace of God which passes understanding. He’s never at a loss for words.

More prevalent is the type whose preparation is unquestionable. You know he has been thinking. Else how could he put together so many nice-Nelly words that really say nothing? He simply goes off in all directions at once. His condemnation of sins or admonitions to be good are so broad as to defy comprehension. He volleys forth point upon point, but since he never hits the same target twice, it’s obvious that he’s only a scattermatic trying to comprehend the length and depth and height—all in one sermon!!

This preacher too has a cousin—he’s the rifleman. Firmly positioned with only the target in mind, he is perfectly capable of putting bullet after deadening bullet through the middle. Make no mistake; this is no slouch at work. His perfect shots are masterful. The only difficulty is that the congregation may be only spectators at his shooting gallery. Who is moved by watching an expert take target practice?

Last Sunday I was incapacitated and had a fresh experience (via TV) with a type I had not seen in a long time. Here was an example of the heavy bombardier. His artillery was polished and pointing. He had the trigger of this big brass cannon filed to a fly’s weight. There would be a five- or six-word lull in the pulpit battle and then without warning—BOOM! The effect was more terrifying than “the rockets’ red glare or the bombs bursting in air.” Fact is, I never did see where the banner really was! And the lesson I learned was not to get sick and miss church on Sunday!

At least he did not disappoint you, like a friend of his—the flash-in-the-pan. Here is the preacher who “gets off a good one” in the introduction, but from there on (he must have looked a week to find that story) it turns out to be a steady downhill drag, with the emphasis on the “drag” for the last thirty minutes. There oughta be a law against having your hopes raised up like that, only to have them expire on the spot.

Two other types deserve honorable mention. The gun collector handles all sorts of firearms, but he only toys with them. One Sunday he needs only the cane-bottom chair to make like Billy Sunday; the next Sunday you would think he is lecturing on the plant life of the Falkland Islands. His buddy is the nuclear fizzizist. He begins with some wild and incoherent idea, only to spend the rest of his time cleaning up the debris created by his explosive and heretical-sounding thesis. At last, he appears from the woods, pointing to a pea-sized crater and a mountain of unrelated rubble. Somehow or other the contraption refused to go off.

But there is another kind of preacher who honestly does occupy the great majority of our pulpits—probably the one you and I hear when we can—and is not a firearms man at all. Maybe the seminaries don’t need to teach a course in this. Our favorite man in the pulpit is most likely a very uncomplicated man doing an uncomplicated thing, like the postman who simply leaves a letter in your mailbox. It is a letter of good news from God about what he has done in Christ. And your reaction is like Kirkegaard’s, “Why it’s about me that this is written! This has my home address on it.”

RAYMOND A. PETREA

Faith Lutheran

Warner Robins, Ga.

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