Free Europe: A Spiritual Decline?

Counting heads is a perilous guide to the extent of the Christian impact, but no evangelical can study with complacence the Christian situation in non-Soviet Europe (attested by the survey in this issue). Greece, closely linked with the New Testament, still forbids its translation into the modern Greek understood by the people, only 1½ per cent of whom attend the national church. Spain, which figures in Paul’s itinerary, was the home of the infamous Inquisition, the ghost of which still lurks today in the crushing restrictions laid upon Protestants. Italy, which heard the Gospel in apostolic times, has a frightening history of secularism, and the largest Communist affiliation outside the Soviet bloc. France, reached by Christian missionaries in the second century, shows a record of anti-clericalism, rationalism and moral decadence, and in its World War II collapse General Weygand saw the chastisement of God for its abandonment of the Christian faith. Germany, from Charlemagne’s day the champion of the Papacy, and later the cradle of the Reformation, recently stood by consenting to the greatest atrocities against humanity in world history, so that the birthplace of Luther has exchanged one godless philosophy for another. The Vatican, which controls the lives of 530 million Roman Catholics, during one single pontificate swung the balance in favor of three dictators at the most vital moment in their respective careers: Mussolini, “the man of Providence,” in November 1922; Hitler, in January 1933; and Franco, whose gory victory Pius XI acclaimed in 1937, and whom he later decorated with the Supreme Order of Christ.

A fatal tendency of our time is the blurring issues by irresponsible uses of the term “a bulwark against communism,” as though the opposite of what is wrong is not frequently wrong also. Whatever we think of Marxism and its meteoric rise to world power in four decades, its terms of reference are at least unequivocal—we know where we stand in the face of blasphemous boasts that its armies will pursue the God of heaven up to his throne and deal with him there.

But the chief enemy to the advance of the Gospel in Europe is located neither in Moscow nor in Rome. The same spiritual malaise is evident in countries where communism is not an issue, and in which Rome has only tiny minorities. Parts of Lutheran Scandinavia, for example, have a suicide rate unparalleled in any other land. Pinpointing worldliness as the real foe, one who stands outside both Roman and Protestant traditions spoke some ominously true words in these pages some months ago: “If I were asked to choose between the dialectical materialism of the Soviet and … the practiced commercialism of the West,” said Dr. Charles Malik, former President of the U.N. General Assembly, “I am not sure I would choose the Western brand.” We have lost the sense of what he describes as the eternal battle raging between Christ and the devil.

George Bernard Shaw, toward the end of a long life of unbelief, seemed to feel what a pitiable dance he had been leading around the altar of Baal, for in Too True To Be Good he penned the pathetic confession: “The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt.… Its counsels which should have established the millennium have led directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once.… In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshipers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.”

At the time of writing this, a 25-year-old student is walking through Italy, bearing on his shoulder a huge wooden cross. He is making what he calls a “pilgrimage for the sins of the world.” In that is the germ of a blinding truth: that modern Christians desperately need a true spiritual understanding of the guilt of many generations, that the world’s present plight is something to which we, all of us, have contributed. Nineteen centuries of Christianity misunderstood and opportunities lost should spur us on to prayer without ceasing for a recovery of the apostolic initiative, so that God’s truth may again ring out clearly to a world rich in delusions, but in which atheists are losing their faith. It may be that

The work that centuries should have done

Must crowd the hour of setting sun

but God is pledged to answer if only we will go on wanting.

When Rome died in the early Christian centuries and her great men, her philosophers and her statesmen, died with her, she died ignoring a message of life and hope proclaimed by a despised minority. The bearer of that message, the Christian church, lived on, carrying with it the moral fortunes of the West. Today the same message confronts another staggering civilization. And it asks again, “What will you do with Christ?”

How Low Are Community Standards Regarding Obscenity On Newsstands?

“Prayer, no; obscenity, yes” was one Congressman’s sarcastic summary of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Gross oversimplification doubtless, but the reference to obscenity nonetheless had a sting. For it referred to the majority’s six to one reversal of lower court classification as obscene of three “male” magazines whose publishers freely admitted that portrayals of nude and semi-nude males in unnatural poses and attire were designed to appeal to male homosexuals by stimulating erotic interest. Yet the high court held such magazines not so offensive as to affront “current community standards of decency.”

If community standards of decency are actually this low, the Court’s decision becomes a ringing indictment against a nation of more than 100 million church members. If not, the nudity and semi-nudity on almost every newsstand must be challenged. As J. Edgar Hoover has observed, hope for a reversal of an immoral trend lies with an aroused public.

Supreme Court Prayer Ban: Where Will It Lead?

The U. S. Supreme Court evoked a tidal wave of criticism and but mild commendation when six of its justices ruled “it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers … as part of a religious program carried on by the government.” New York public schools abruptly terminated daily teacher-pupil recitation of the “non-denominational” prayer approved by the State Board of Regents: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

Would the ruling of the highest judiciary lead eventually to a godless state? Most critics thought so. They contended that the Supreme Court virtually exchanged the nation’s traditional “freedom of religion” for “freedom from religion,” thereby anticipating the removal of “In God We Trust” from our currency, “One Nation Under God” from the oath of allegiance to the flag, the Bible from the courtrooms, chaplains from the armed services, and cessation of opening prayers in Congress and in state legislatures. They noted that atheists or agnostics are often in the forefront of minorities appealing cases to the Supreme Court, and that legislation increasingly tends to promote the preferences if not of subversives, at least of those more interested in religious detachment than in religious commitment.

Few critics explored the other alternative; that is, just where political approval or stipulation of prayer patterns in the public schools might lead. In keeping with their Church’s traditional objective of union of Church and State, and their current desire to narrow the contrast between public and parochial schools, Roman Catholic spokesmen deplored the Supreme Court action as leading to godlessness in education. Many evangelical Protestant leaders—even some usually alert to issues of church-state separation—found little if any good in the Supreme Court decision. Some noted that since the Regents’ prayer was not specifically Christian, the Court’s action could not be deplored as anti-Christian. Did they thus imply, it may be asked, that the Court would have acted agreeably to Christian (Protestant rather than Romanist) conscience if a specifically Christian prayer were legislated upon the public schools? Doubtless their point was well-made that the Regents’ prayer originated as much in Protestant-Catholic-Jewish compromise as in the overarching faith of the founding fathers as expressed in the Declaration of Independence (however offensive to agnostics the emphasis on dependence upon a personal deity might have been). One vocal Protestant churchman dismissed the Regents’ prayer as innocuous because it included no reference to the Mediator. Christians adhering to the New Testament view of prayer, that God’s answer is pledged only to petitions offered “in Jesus’ name,” might further have deplored the promotion of a religion-in-general doctrine of intercession implied in the New York devotional. Biblical Christians therefore could have considered themselves discriminated against as much as atheists.

A second look should lead all critics to second thoughts about the Supreme Court decision. It can be defended, and commended, as compatible both with a proper Christian attitude toward government stipulation of religious exercises, and with a sound philosophical view of freedom. It does not preclude anyone’s private prayers in the classroom; it does not even exclude group prayers; what it does exclude is government-approved prayers in the public schools. If free-thinkers fear that government-approved prayer may lead to religious coercion, the devout and the godly ought to fear lest it lead to government-disapproved prayer (as in Russia).

It must be granted also that public education does not really exist for the exercise of spiritual devotions. Its prime purpose, however, is presentation of the whole body of truth. Unfortunately, the growing climate of academic and legal prejudice against American religious traditions makes it increasingly difficult to confront the younger generation in our public schools with truth about God and the moral world. The Bible has a proper place in the curriculum, not simply as literature, but in the dialogue about truth. If God is banished from the lecture periods, and survives only in some nebulous form in corporate prayer, then the inference is not remote that the notion of deity, while emotionally significant, is intellectually dispensable. The Communists could not wish for more.

Yet it must not be ignored that minority pressures have become increasingly effective in shaping the American outlook. The sharp grass-roots reaction has served notice that a long look is needed at the vanishing religious and moral traditions in public life. American policy-makers have been hitting toward left field so sharply (if we may borrow a metaphor from baseball) that more and more citizens are now crying ‘foul!’

A comprehensive insight into the Supreme Court’s views on church-state separation cannot, however, be drawn merely from this narrow strip of decision. The nation’s highest judiciary must yet rule on important cases originating in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Most imperative will be an enunciation by the Supreme Court of guiding principles that will prevent both anti-religious government and sectarian government. If the Supreme Court is unable to draw a consistent line between the wholly godless state and a state religion, then the nation needs a new team of umpires.

The Church’S True Head And The Believer’S Task

A new concept of the Church seems to be developing among Protestants. More and more church leaders are assuming ecclesiastical prerogatives which properly belong only to the Head of the Church. The Bride, it seems, is taking precedence over the Bridegroom. Frequently we even hear that it is the Church which redeems.

Whenever its leaders forsake the Church’s spiritual mission in order to make particular pronouncements and endorsements in social, political and economic affairs, they do disservice to individual Christians. When a church hierarcy allows its own proclamations to take precedence over the personal initiative and responsibility of the body of believers, then it has depersonalized the individual Christian. To force a Christian into corporate commitment to debatable politico-economic programs soon undermines his sense of personal responsibility to be “salt” and “light” in a secular society. The more such programs replace authoritative preaching and divinely mandated service, the more uninstructed Christians become preoccupied with the mere motions and mechanics of religious activity.

The cliché that “The Church is mission” can actually dull individual motivation to witness for the Lord. And insistence on unified budgets and regimented giving can decrease the average Christian’s feeling of spiritual stewardship in regard to money. Further, growing emphasis on formalism and liturgical aids to worship can threaten the individual believer’s private devotional life. Moreover, to stress organization while minimizing the content of Christian faith may weaken a member’s spiritual commitment.

The depersonalization of Christians that inheres in promoting corporate efforts may do great harm to the cause of Christ. Ostensibly the Church should equip believers with the proper spiritual weapons to win their battles for the Lord. These battles cannot be won by propaganda and pronouncements, nor by lobbying in the halls of Congress. They can be won, however, by committed Christians who wield their influence in the areas of personal responsibility. Only as believers live like Christians can there be effective and lasting wit ness in the world to the transforming and keeping dynamic of Jesus Christ.

The spiritual powerhouse where men learn the claims of Christ and experience his redeeming grace should be the Church. Here men should be so instructed in the Word of God that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, becomes a living reality in daily life. A depersonalized Christian may look good as a statistic but on the spiritual battlefield he is a sorry and tragic spectacle.

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