Why can’t Johnny read? He would like to. The letter is from Mary, and presumably could evoke delightful emotion. But he can’t read it because Mary can’t write. Or, rather, she is a creative writer. Her letters do the twist with imaginative abandon. An “S” may swell like a spanking spinnaker or slump like a slovenly slattern. However, no two are alike.
Mary’s writing was never regimented. She never traced letters in kindergarten nor did she copy “specimens” in the grades.
Of course, in the Old Days we did all that. Feet on the floor, paper at a proper angle, back rigid in spite of a kink. “Round and round and round we go; touch the line above, below.” Arm movement isn’t dead yet. A school teacher friend of mine, also trained in the Old Days, has a kind of Mae West jacket on her fountain pen to give it that Coca-Cola bottle grip beloved of the Arm Movement.
I must confess that I left the Movement on graduation from sixth grade. My writing teacher warned me not to use a fountain pen. That was before the days of status symbols, but the fountain pen was as modern as a Model A Ford.
Since then, I have been writing with a fountain pen and with my feet on a desk (or window sill). When I want someone else to read it, I use a typewriter. That brings in regimentation with a vengeance: the uniformity of the machine.
I suppose Pastor Peterson would see here the modern paradox of science and freedom. We write illegibly in individual freedom but communicate through the pica standard of the typewriter.
He preached on 1 Peter 2:21 recently, and presented the picture in the “example” that Christ left in his suffering for us. The word means a writing sample, “the dotted line of the copy-books of childhood.” Christ’s patience furnishes a pattern for our hand to follow, as well as footprints for our feet. The pastor found in Christ who is the image of God the one Pattern that can be slavishly copied in perfect freedom.
EUTYCHUS
Liberal Social Ethics
Frank Farrell’s articles (“Instability of Liberal Social Ethics,” Jan. 5, 19, and Feb. 2 issues) exposing the shifting-sands basis of liberalism in its approach to international problems are of great value; a truly original contribution.
ROBERT STRONG
Trinity Presbyterian Church
Montgomery, Ala.
The fact that liberal social ethics may have been wrong in some of its allegiances and predictions doesn’t render it valueless.…
Isn’t it possible that any attempt to trace theological positions or social declarations in “evangelical” literature would also reveal some confusion and inconsistency?…
ERNEST L. BOYER
Dean of Instruction
Upland College
Upland, Calif.
The word “unstable” is a euphemism.…
ROY STRICKLAND
Sterling, Va.
I enjoyed [the articles]—noticed that the author used liberals to confound liberals! This all goes to prove … that it is never fair to condemn all liberals or most any other group for that matter!
HENRY H. ROWLAND
Berkeley Springs, W. Va.
I am enclosing my … subscription renewal so that I may follow his reasoning on this matter.
O. V. STUBBS
Austin, Texas
I have followed with appreciation your analysis of liberal social ethics.… Now that you have worked at the much needed task of critical analysis may I urge CHRISTIANITY TODAY to also make a positive contribution by stimulating vigorous evangelical thought on current issues of social concern, such as the problem of the church and war. The nature of our age forces such questions upon Christian people and I think it most urgent that the best informed evangelical thought, of which I consider CHRISTIANITY TODAY representative, bring its biblical and theological insights to bear on the discussion.
EDGAR METZLER
Executive Secretary
Mennonite Central Committee,
Peace Section
Akron, Pa.
I especially would like to commend the articles.…
WAYNE WHITE
Cleveland, Tenn.
The viewpoints have changed on both sides in the past years.…
SYLVAN L. NUSSBAUM
Allen Street Methodist Church
Centralia, Mo.
Mr. Farrell’s articles reflect careful research in the efforts of liberal writers and seems to consistently reflect their “instability”.…
We conservatives stand with a unique advantage as we view the contradictions … of liberal social pronouncements. They have been dead wrong far too often.
Our advantage lies in the fact that we have never been wrong in our social pronouncements and efforts. Fact is, we have never made any mistakes; we have yet to move in this area, to make a stand, to declare ourselves.…
GEORGE V. ERICKSON
San Anselmo, Calif.
Warmest congratulations on your superb series.
GILES A. WEBSTER, O.F.M.
Atlanta, Ga.
ED GREENFIELD
Splendid—a terrific job.…
Church of Reflections
Buena Park, Calif.
The Church gets its “social ethics” concept from scientific socialists who have gotten their basic anti-miracle concepts across to churchmen.…
We have wars because part of the world (socialistic, whether Socialist Republics or Hitler’s National Socialism) wants to enslave the rest of the world and control its thought! Always they fight the free man, the independent, the Christian.
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L. V. CLEVELAND
Canterbury, Conn.
Care in research is quite obvious and does not admit of any argument, either in facts or in regard to the conclusions drawn from the facts.
C. GREGG SINGER
Chairman, Dept. of History
Catawba College
Salisbury, N. C.
Consequences Of Smut
Foster’s case against obscenity (“Another Side to Censorship,” Feb. 2 issue) is strengthened and enlarged by reference to recent testimony of psychiatrists, juvenile court judges, law enforcement officials, and clergymen before Congressional committees and elsewhere, of obscenity’s serious moral and criminal consequences; e.g., chief neuropsychiatrist Nicholas Frignito of Philadelphia’s Municipal Court stated to a House Subcommittee his court has case histories of criminal behavior, including homicide, resulting from sexual arousal due to “smutty” books.
“Some of these children,” he said, “did not transgress sexually until they read suggestive stories and viewed lewd pictures or licentious magazines.… The filthy ideas implanted in their immature minds impelled them to crime” (“Obscene Matter Sent Through the Mail” Sept. 1959, p. 17).
W. G. REITZER
Washington, D. C.
I wish the really frightful depravity of the average Hollywood and foreign motion picture, and the newspaper advertising pertaining to these pictures, could be brought out and denounced, as well as the flood of salacious literature so prevalent everywhere today.
MARY LOU SAUSSER
Corte Madera, Calif.
Bonus From The Editor
Bully for Eddie Rickenbacker and his letter on the “Three B’s” (Eutychus, Jan. 19 issue). You ought to blow it up in print big enough to see and run it again.
While my subscription price doesn’t entitle me to information service, would you be kind enough to tell who this Eddie Rickenbacker is? Perchance the one of flying fame?…
VANDER WARNER, JR.
Oak Grove Baptist Church
Bel Air, Md.
• The name’s the same, but the author of our “Rickenbacker letter” is a young pastor from Carlton, Texas. He is enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The better known of the two is chairman of the board of Eastern Airlines.—ED.
The letter … seems to reflect a general viewpoint of many who would term themselves conservative Protestants.…
These Germans and Swiss are theological masters in our time, not because they have been forced upon us, not because they are trying to play God. That some people fall down and almost worship them only speaks of the tendency for idolatry to be found in all human affairs. And that others look upon them as some sort of demons indicates that even as men have false gods, so they often create false devils.
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American Protestantism needs to be confronted by the Three B’s—for the good of its soul.… No more than any other human beings, are they to replace the Bible. But God is a living God, and we need to listen to his voice wherever he chooses to speak. For me, … it is extremely difficult to believe that he has not at times spoken through the pens of Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann.
BOYD MATHER
Evanston, Ill.
Were I an old time Methodist, I would shout Amen to the Rickenbacker letter.… Those three B’s remind me of what Paul found at Corinth and endeavored to correct. Neither they nor the other … heads of the wilderness of denominationalism expose much evidence of genuine realization of the truth our Lord repeatedly emphasized in his great intercessory prayer.…
O. L. WILLSON
Monmouth, Ill.
Unwrap The Word!
Modern man does not understand because we throw our theological jargon at him on Sunday, with which he is most unfamiliar, and the rest of the week he deals in earthy, everyday English.
Recently I read of a man who sought advice of one of our governmental agencies about using a certain chemical in his business. They wrote a negative reply, but it was couched in such technical language he couldn’t understand it, so he assumed it was all right and wrote back thanking them and informing them he would proceed to use it.… Then the department saw the light and wrote back, “Don’t use this chemical, it will rust the hell out of your pipes!”
If we are to get Christ’s message to the masses, we too must take the wrappers off the Word.
ELRY E. PONTIOUS
Cap Haitien, Haiti
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