NCC Study Report: Economics and the Church

Pittsburgh, says John Gunther, “is indeed steel’s own citadel; civilization based on industrial aggrandizement reaches here its blackest and most brilliant flower.” A fitting site, then, for the wide-ranging and provocative Fourth National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life, convened in November by the National Council of Churches through its Department of the Church and Economic Life. Long before its post-World War II renaissance, the city heard itself described by Charles Dickens as “hell with the lid lifted.” While manfully striving to keep such lids firmly clamped down, the NCC conference reflected a borrowed glow from Hell’s Kitchen itself, onetime scene of social gospel prophet Walter Rauschenbusch’s ministrations.

It was not that the four-day conference shared Rauschenbusch’s zeal for socialism, nor did it even speak often of the “Kingdom.” And if it lacked to a degree the prophet’s optimism regarding the Christianization of the social order, it did seem to share his pervasive concern for social processes, his relaxation of emphasis upon individual salvation, and to an extent his deep-rooted conviction that society was evolving, that it was in fact process and in its measureless plasticity awaited the choice and decision of the will.

Conference theme was “Ethical Implications of Rapid Economic Change in the U.S.A.” and the conference mood reflected priority of emphasis to explosive locomotion rather than to divinely appointed destinations. President William Howard Taft’s son Charles was in the chair most of the time, but there was a Bull Moose cry in the air: “faster, faster!” Theologian Roger Shinn harked back to an Old Testament time when God preferred to live in tent rather than temple “for he was a God on the move.” With an eye on automation, Methodist minister J. Edward Carothers, secretary of the Department of the Church and Economic Life, announced, “We’re in a revolution.” The Christian ethic “is not a final ethic” but a “growing ethic.” Albert Whitehouse, a United Steel Workers district director, prophesied a day when virtually all man’s work would be done for him by machines. Responded Dr. Carothers: “Maybe we will have to tax the machines to care for people displaced by them.” Looking to new machines, he asked if the Church could “excite the American people to be experimentally minded.” The least it could do “is to tell the truth” about the revolution, and the most it could do is to “become a stabilizing factor in it.”

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

WIDE-RANGING REPORT TO THE CHURCHES

Salient points of general report adopted at National Study Conference on the Church and Economic Life:

• In view of the population explosion, “attention must be given to education for population control,” and “extraordinary efforts must be made to minimize waste” of natural resources.

• “Automation is a conduit to filling life with goods and maybe even goodness” but also threatens “the emptiness of free time.” Christians should be concerned and “address themselves to the problems of how to expand employment opportunities—then new satisfactions are before the many and society is headed for a new splendor.”

• The churches must assist in finding how the mobile part of our population “can develop a portable responsibility that will set them quickly beside more settled citizens in the important affairs of the communities in which they successively reside.”

• Change is “coming too slowly” in some sectors of life. Job opportunities are not growing rapidly enough. “Governmental institutions and methods are inadequate for new needs.” “But Christians who know whose world this is and who their Lord is can get some things going, encourage others already going, and get in the way of what ought not to be going.”

• “Christians must do everything in their power to promote the creation and the use of the institutions of peace.” Nation and citizens “must share our knowledge, experience and treasure in an adequate and sustained program of economic and technical assistance to the people of the emerging nations. Where practicable this should be done through agencies of the United Nations, or in concert with others of the more economically advanced countries. The safety of democratic institutions and the extension of freedom with justice … depend in large part upon our continuing economic strength. To bolster that strength we have responsibility to work for a system of trade among nations based on mutual benefit and progressive reduction of trade barriers with due consideration for the special economic problems of newly developing countries.”

• Family patterns are changing, and the churches are charged to find new ways to deal with the “puzzling contemporary family.”

• The church’s ministry to the individual (demonstrating “by word and action the infinite worth in God’s sight of every person”) continues, but it “must in this age be supplemented by her work to preserve, develop and encourage the growth of every institution and every experience which can restore the sense of dignity and significance to people who have lost it and equip others against the danger of losing it. This enterprise is almost limitless in its … opportunity.”

The 490 delegates and observers from the NCC’s 31 member denominations had in effect been called as spiritual attendants during the birth pains of the new era of automation. Two-thirds of the 432 church-appointed voting delegates were lay leaders of industry, labor, government, and education, thus considerably outnumbering clergy. Ever since its notorious Fifth World Order Study Conference in Cleveland four years ago (which called for U.S. recognition and U.N. admission of Red China), the NCC has been extremely careful to point out that such conferences speak only for themselves and not in behalf of either the NCC or its member churches. However, conference reports are voted “received and commended to the churches for study and appropriate action.” (In an unguarded moment an observer may catch himself musing on how many such conferences would be called if most of them came out with reports opposed to the prevailing views of NCC leadership.) Roughly a week’s time was taken after the Pittsburgh conference for final editing of reports, which indicated to some the caution used in handling what was regarded as a delicate subject.

The general conference report was adopted overwhelmingly with only two dissenters. Economic change was declared to be a paramount challenge to the Church, second only to annihilating war. The report noted specifically four problem areas: the population explosion, automation, population mobility, and centrifugal developments in the family. Church responsibility in these areas assumed broad proportions (see box). Church concern extended, for example, to preservation of “values related to the owner-operated farm.” There were also six “topic group reports” voicing other concerns.

By way of historic contrast, the Westminster Confession reads strangely indeed: “Synods and councils are to handle or conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or by way of advice for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”

One matter not introduced at the conference as a lively concern was church-state separation. The general drift seemed to be toward bigger government to accomplish church-inspired programs. One NCC official remarked upon the revolution which will have to take place in theological seminaries to prepare men for the type of training now envisaged to confront the technological crisis. Theological undergirding for ethical pronouncements was minimal or absent. The same official looked forward to the time when there could be joint pronouncements by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews. Some delegates introduced theological remarks on occasion but often apologetically, as if they were an intrusion. The dread label “pietistic” was feared.

The NCC declares that its constitution forbids it “to determine theological matters, which are the sole concern of its member Churches.” But NCC lack of reticence about issuing ethical pronouncements would seem to propel it back to the liberal fallacy of earlier decades of divorcing theology and ethics or reducing theology to the status of servant to ethics.

The concern of the delegates for the great technological problems which confront mankind was laudable. Whether such church conferences are to be a large part of the solution to these problems, the nation and the churches have yet to decide. A great effort is to be made to promulgate Pittsburgh pronouncements throughout NCC churches for study in a continuing program in 1963 and 1964.

Evangelical misgivings might have been lessened had the conference stressed the necessity of internal spiritual regeneration as requisite for a degree of success at living the Christian ethic. But the emphasis rather fell upon an external pressing down of the ethic upon society through education. Technological revolution, family revitalization, neighborhood renewal and redevelopment—these were all concerns. Individual regeneration—it was missing … inaction.

A Pre-Cuba State?

Oppressed masses are losing faith in political leaders and may resort to violence. This was Dr. Richard Shaull’s warning to NCC’s fall study conference on Latin America. The Princeton Seminary professor described Brazil, where he formerly served, as already in a “pre-Cuba state.”

Talking Things Over

A daring, four-day verbal clash between 120 ranking religious partisans in Washington last month successfully launched a comprehensive, long-term drive for interfaith amity.

So potentially explosive was the program of the 34th annual meeting of the National Conference of Christians and Jews that one leading religion reporter, perhaps half serious, asked officials whether closed-door workshops had provoked any fist fights.

They had not, but this year’s NCCJ meeting drew special attention because it featured the First National Institute of the organization’s four-year, $325,000 Religious Freedom and Public Affairs Project made possible by a Ford Foundation grant.

It was unique in that it marked the first time such a representative gathering had frankly discussed the conflicts resulting from religious pluralism in America. A wide spectrum of theological opinion was represented and discussion included a multitude of topics.

Said Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and a conference participant:

“Evangelical Protestants have tended to shy away from NCCJ because they dislike an interfaith smorgasbord that dulls sectarian loyalties, and the free expression of competitive traditions in this dialogue will encourage and reassure them.”

The conference demonstrated that even though religious ignorance is waning, controversy and conflicts are getting worse. If serious ill will and violence is to be avoided, candid inter-faith conversations are indispensable.

Also made clear was the fact that interfaith conversations need not promote a generalized religion. Indeed, the liberal Protestant tendency to sacrifice sectarian distinctives for a vague humanistic consensus was in full retreat.

Among participants in the November institute, in addition to such religious figures as Dr. Glenn Archer, Dr. John Cogley, the Rev. Paul Empie, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, Dr. George L. Ford, Dr. Roger L. Shinn, and Dr. Joseph B. Sizoo, were social science professors, politicians, educators, lawyers, and pollsters.

Subsequent NCCJ institutes in connection with the Religious Freedom and Public Affairs Project will focus on substantive matters nationally as well as locally. Specialized programs are being arranged for clergymen, politicians, lawyers, and journalists.

What might be considered the most provocative remarks at the first conclave came from Dr. Franklin H. Littell, professor of church history at Chicago Theological Seminary. Littell said that the “good old days” of a “Christian America” were a myth, that early colonial society was “nominally Christian and in fact heathen” and that the religious liberty sought by the predominantly Protestant settlers was “their own not that of others.”

The theme of the institute, “Responsibilities of Religious Freedom,” was highlighted by four workshops which analyzed current religious conflicts in the public order.

The conference was held in the Mayflower Hotel—some sessions in the same room in which a widely-publicized “religious issue” meeting was held in 1960 with Norman Vincent Peale as a leader.

Little was said, strangely enough, about President Kennedy as the first Roman Catholic ever to occupy the White House. One workshop was devoted to the examination of the religious vote as a whole. There seemed to be some agreement that Kennedy’s religion cost more votes than it produced, but that it won the election because it got him votes in the strategic areas.

Dr. Gerhard Lenski, associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, said it “was essentially a victory of the Catholic community rather than the Catholic Church.”

During the election campaign and afterwards, the sociologist remarked, Kennedy “has taken pains to disassociate himself from the special political interests of his church,” while still striving to maintain the public image of himself as a member of the Catholic community.

Judging from opinion polls, Lenski said, “this seems to be a highly successful formula satisfying the great majority of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.”

Rabbi Robert Gordis of Jewish Theological Seminary took note of numerous criticisms of church-state separation and asked whether the principle is in danger of being abandoned just when it is needed most.

Although a number of divergent views were expressed on the First Amendment, most participants said they could not effectively rewrite it without inserting unwelcome restrictions on religious freedom. Thus the First Amendment’s very ambiguity seemed in retrospect to be in its favor.

Msgr. Francis J. Lally, editor of the Boston Pilot, said America needs to discover a “moral consensus,” but added that he did not know how it could be done.

Baring Religious Ties

Involvement of religious institutions in the U. S. foreign aid program was spelled out for the first time last month in a report made public by the Agency for International Development of the State Department.

In a letter dated November 9—three days after the election—retiring AID Director Fowler Hamilton disclosed that 17 educational projects in 12 countries commit U. S. funds to institutions with religious links.

Hamilton’s letter, addressed to Senator Clinton P. Anderson, explained that “where religious-affiliated institutions have been relied upon it has been solely by reason of special skills, experience or technical qualifications that have nothing to do with religious affiliation.”

He stressed that in no case “are United States assistance funds going into the advancement of any sectarian religious purpose.” He also emphasized that the program requires guarantees “that there will be absolutely no discrimination on religious grounds in the matter of who will benefit.”

Hamilton added: “Because the opposite impression was evidently created by AID Policy Determination Number 10, ‘Religious Organizations and the United States Aid Program,’ adopted July 16, it was withdrawn August 21.”

His reference to the policy determination recalled the controversy it aroused last summer. Key Protestant churchmen charged that it violated the principle of separation of church and state.

Hamilton subsequently ordered a review of relations between U. S. foreign aid programs and religious-affiliated institutions.

His findings showed that voluntary agencies with some degree of religious affiliation currently handle about 70 per cent of surplus American food distribution abroad.

Also disclosed was the fact that AID has contracts with at least 44 U. S. church-related educational institutions in connection with its technical assistance training program.

The most costly religious tie, however, is with educational institutions abroad. Ironically enough, the biggest share goes to Colombia, where some 200 Protestant schools were closed by authorities in recent years. The other countries with religious involvement in U. S. educational aid funds are Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Kenya, Afghanistan, Chile, Congo, Ecuador, Korea, Liberia, and the Philippines. Of specific religious schools listed ten are Roman Catholic and six are Protestant.

Largest single project: the 3.77 million dollars earmarked for developing Colombia’s Roman Catholic-oriented public school system. None of the money is to be used in the so-called “mission territories.”

Tax-Free Housing

The U. S. Internal Revenue Service says ministers employed in religious schools are entitled to tax-free housing allowances.

Revenue Ruling 62–171 applies even if the ministers teach secular subjects, but to qualify they must show that they also perform certain pastoral functions.

In its present wording, however, the ruling raises a question whether ministers in all types of religious schools are eligible. The provision refers to teachers and administrators in “parochial schools, colleges, or universities which are integral agencies of religious organizations.” Some observers wonder if the phrase embraces independent religious schools.

Trials On The Gridiron

The following report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Herman Weiskopf of Sports Illustrated magazine:

“I try to remove from my life all that is not beautiful to Christ.”

These are the words of Paul Dietzel, Army’s young, talented, and controversial football coach, who outlines his strategy for Christian living as carefully as for last week’s Army-Navy game.

“Several years ago I became convinced that I could no longer talk to young men about being ȧ Christian and then get myself involved in worldly affairs,” Dietzel remarked. His back to the imaginary goal line, Dietzel rededicated his life to Christ.

It was not always so. Dietzel gave his life to Christ at an early age, but then his parents were divorced while he was yet in grade school. He worked nights in a bowling alley, later lied about his age so he could get a job in a meat market. His spare time was spent in a pool hall. No longer did he defend his Christian goal line.

Then, as a junior in high school, he met Anne Wilson, a young girl who was to turn his life back to Christ and her name to Dietzel. She told him that if he wished to date her, he would have to get out of the pool hall and back to church.

That was in Mansfield, Ohio, where Dietzel and his future wife began to worship together at the First English Lutheran Church. Dietzel was born in Fremont, Ohio, and lived in several towns in the same state during his early years. Most of his religious ties have been with Methodist churches.

“During the war a chaplain told me that no one influenced a young man’s life more than his coach,” Dietzel said. “There have been a few games, I suppose, where my team might have done better if I had allowed some questionable tactics to be used. It might have brought me some added honor. In the long run you lose anyway, though. You try to teach by the example you set.”

The chaplain was Pat Murphy, and it turned out that Dietzel subsequently attended his church while coaching at the University of Cincinnati. Dietzel said Murphy has had a great influence upon his life.

Dietzel’s move to Army this year was accompanied by much criticism. Some felt it unethical for him to leave Louisiana State University, where his coaching contract still had several years to run and where he had won almost every conceivable honor in college football.

“I was tried and convicted by the press without a chance to defend myself,” Dietzel recalled. “What was lost in the shuffle was the fact that the same thing happened in reverse only a few years before. It was in 1955 that I had just signed a two-year contract as line-coach at Army, when LSU asked me to come down and be head coach. After I agreed, LSU asked Army to release me from my contract. There was no fuss. Then when Army asked LSU this year to release me from my contract so I could be head coach at West Point, it was a different story; turnabout wasn’t fair play all of a sudden. I never broke a contract, but I was torn to shreds by the press.”

Dietzel was even excoriated recently on the manners of the cadets. It seems that when the Army team huddles, the cadets in the stands issue a long sh-h-h-h-h. As the huddles break the cadets’ sound effects suddenly change to that of an exploding bomb and a cry of “go Army.” This is supposed to simulate a sizzling fuse and subsequent explosion, or what is known as the “time-bomb huddle.”

According to Dietzel, a number of people, however, felt the sh-h-h-h was not a fuse, but a plea for silence. They berated Dietzel, saying it was unfair to ask for silence when Army huddled without granting similar courtesy to opponents.

“And they also complained that opposing quarterbacks had a hard time with signals because of the noise made by the cadets,” Dietzel said. “I can appreciate this, but I notice that whenever a quarterback held up his hands to request silence, he got it almost immediately. Sometimes the noise would be back later, but what I can’t figure out is why the quarterback simply didn’t raise his hand again for silence.

Dietzel, at 38, is already one of the finest coaches in the nation. His very success, though, has made him subject to scrutiny from all angles. He has been accused, among other things, of being too cordial, too handsome, too enthusiastic. These are difficult accusations for anyone to answer.

“I have removed many things from my life in an effort to be a better Christian,” said Dietzel, who currently serves as vice president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. “Still, I have certain human desires and I pray that I can eliminate those that are not pleasing. I am only a coach, not a preacher.”

An Organization Spared

A move to dissolve the 90-year-old Lutheran Synodical Conference was defeated by a 177–53 vote at its 47th regular convention in Chicago last month.

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, having a majority of the delegates, outvoted the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. The latter two had sought dissolution of the conference, which embraces nearly 3,000,000 Lutherans. The split was underscored as delegates set up separate Communion and prayer services.

The Wisconsin Synod and the ELS suspended fellowship with the Missouri Synod a year ago last summer on grounds that it condoned theological liberalism.

Delegates to a special Wisconsin Synod convention held just a few days before that of the synodical conference were primarily concerned with educational matters. But they did vote to memorialize the conference to take steps toward “an orderly dissolution.”

Defeat of the dissolution move leaves the conference intact, but the Wisconsin Synod’s next convention could well take action to withdraw its membership. Hoping to avert such a development, synodical conference delegates adopted a series of “suggestions” aimed at better communication and discipline.

The Missouri Synod, the American Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church in America currently are exploring the possibility of forming a new cooperative agency to succeed the National Lutheran Council. The Wisconsin Synod frowns on cooperation with bodies with which it does not have doctrinal agreement, but the word was discreetly dropped last month that it was participating with the other three denominations in an urban church planning study in Milwaukee. District officials of the Wisconsin Synod urged congregations to take part, stating that “none of the fellowship principles which the Wisconsin Synod has upheld are in jeopardy.”

Moving Backward

Fall enrollment at seminaries accredited by the American Association of Theological Schools shows a 1.1 per cent increase over 1961. Total number of students was 20,696, slightly higher than the last two years and representing a return to the enrollment recorded in 1956 and 1958.

Totals have fluctuated so closely to the 20,000 mark during recent years that the 1962 figure cannot be interpreted as a trend.

“There is no basis for complacency,” said Dr. Jesse H. Ziegler, associate director of AATS.

He declared that since 1956 “the general population, population reaching age 21, number receiving bachelors’ or first professional degree, Protestant church membership, and numbers of Protestant churches have been steadily advancing. To maintain the same absolute numbers means relatively to move backward.”

El Paso Evangelism

Today’s wickedness compares with pre-Flood times, Billy Graham declared during his eight-day crusade in El Paso, Texas, last month. At a youth rally he challenged young people to dedicate their lives to Christ with the same fervor Communist youths follow Marxism.

Graham described the campaign as one of his most successful, the total of 3,771 inquirers representing 4.4 per cent of the estimated total attendance (86,000). This compares with an average of 3.16 per cent for his 115 previous crusades around the world.

Sympathy For India

Support for India and its Christians in their conflict with Red China came from the World Council of Churches three weeks after heavy fighting erupted.

Central Committee chairman Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, vice-chairman Dr. Ernest A. Payne, and general secretary Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft issued the following statement:

“At this critical hour for the life and spirit of India, involved in a struggle to defend its national security, the officers of the World Council of Churches desire to assure the Churches and Christians of India of their profound sympathy and express the hope that just and peaceful settlement can be reached.”

Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs and Sir Kenneth Grubb, chairman, also issued a statement:

“In order that justice may be served and enlarged conflict avoided we … urge widest possible support by world public opinion and by governments for the withdrawal of Chinese forces to positions held prior to the recent intensified military action and the prompt initiation of negotiations or acceptance of impartial arbitration for the peaceful settlement of the border dispute. The pursuit of territorial claims by aggressive military action rather than by methods of peaceful settlement must be condemned.”

Nicest Of All

Eucharistic vestments have no doctrinal significance but they do “look nice,” said a woman speaker at last month’s meeting of the House of Laity at Westminster. Another disagreed: she preferred clean white surplices to vestments that were dirty. Resisting the lure of such bewitching byways, the Church of England’s lay representatives debated the real issues behind a proposal to approve the wearing of vestments. (The House of Bishops and Clergy had already given its consent at the “general approval” stage.)

Introducing the measure, Mr. H. Montgomery-Campbell of London said that he recognized the strong feelings and sincerity of the evangelical wing, but urged acceptance on the ground that because many clergy wore vestments, legislation had to be made for the existing position. Various members supported him: it was suggested that vestments asserted continuity with the pre-Reformation Church; that some Anglicans were driven to Rome because they were refused vestments; that Lutherans wore them; that it was merely a question of clergy preferences at the tailor’s; that there should be a principle of “live-and-let-live.” Another supporter put in some adroit work by asserting that even some evangelicals disagreed with the last-century court decisions which pronounced vestments illegal. He did not find it necessary to mention that such disagreement stemmed from the evangelicals’ view that the decision ought to have been reached on other historical grounds. (Mystifying to non-Anglicans, the whole matter evidently turns at present on the incredible argument that since perhaps one-quarter of the English clergy flaunt the law by wearing vestments, the law ought to be changed.)

In reply to supporters of the measure, other members strongly objected to the attempt thus to “write off” the doctrinal significance which the wearers placed on vestments. Every detail of the Communion service, they claimed, should reflect that this was the corporate act of the whole church—you did not do that by having one man ornately garbed in the distance at one end of the church, with the congregation at the other. Why ape Rome? Why vestments for only one service and for only one man? If beauty was wanted, why not dress up the verger and the church-wardens also? Mr. George Goyder of Oxford urged that old quarrels be buried and argument forsaken, and that they get back to the Bible, to the task of evangelization, and to the simplicity of Christ which had nothing to do with vestments.

When the motion for general approval was put to the vote, the chairman, Sir Kenneth Grubb, found it necessary to order a count before it was established that the measure was approved 86–56.

In view of the fact that evangelicals are very much in the minority in the House of Laity, it is noteworthy and almost without precedent to find such a sizable proportion of the House voting against a measure at the general-approval stage.

The approved measure has yet to go through various revision stages before being presented to Parliament for final ratification.

J. D. D.

The Deserted Vicar

“This village is the most ungodly I have ever known,” said the Rev. Paul Smythe, 57, Vicar of Horningsea in England’s Fen district. He had just come from his sixteenth-century church where not a single member of his congregation had turned up for morning worship. The vicar, who has been there 18 years, said that he had unsuccessfully applied to the Bishop of Ely for a transfer, and added: “Each time I try to climb out of the Fenland mud someone kicks me back in again.” He complained that he was the most unpopular person in the village (population about 400). His parishioners retort that Mr. Smythe shows little interest in them, has so far raised only $280 toward a $25,000 repair bill, and spends all his time in the university library of nearby Cambridge. “What else can I do?” asks the vicar.

J. D. D.

Rome And Revelation

The first session of the Second Vatican Council draws to a close this week after two months of deliberation. The council’s ten working commissions will continue to meet following adjournment of the first session December 8. The second session is scheduled to convene May 12 and continue through June 29.

It took five weeks for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to arrive at its first substantive action—a 2,162–46 vote approving in principle a long draft decree on liturgy. The decree was said to reflect a measure of reform toward making public worship more understandable.

Meanwhile, Pope John XXIII did some legislating of his own by inserting St. Joseph in the Canon of the Mass.

Next the council took up a discussion of divine revelation and promptly found itself in the middle of a verbal hassle. A draft decree introduced by ultra-conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani was roundly criticized. Ottaviani took on an image of intransigence. Objections to the decree “produced an electric shock through the whole council,” according to the Rev. Robert A. Graham, a Jesuit who is serving as Religious News Service correspondent.

“This is the first open clash between two concepts at the council,” said Graham. “Some here hold that doctrine is the most important issue facing the council; others, however, say that pastoral concerns are the most urgent considerations today.”

The specific issue involved was the extent to which Scripture and tradition are to be regarded as separate entities.

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