The Next Ten Years

A panel of fifteen prominent religious scholars forecasts elements in Christian impact during the coming decade

What factor, more than any other, is likely to decide Christianity’s influence upon the secular thought of the next decade?

This is the question CHRISTIANITY TODAY put to a panel of religious scholars as the focal point of its anniversary-issue news feature this year. Here are the replies:

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL, professor, Fuller Theological Seminary: “The seriousness with which we receive the teaching that love is the queen of Christian virtues (1 Cor. 13)—a love which unites us with Jesus Christ in such an intimate way that we instinctively sense an increased personal responsibility to (a) live lives marked by purity of thought as well as deed, (b) support the work of the Gospel everywhere, (c) respect the dignity of all human beings, (d) help the visible church develop a state of true spiritual unity, (e) defend the civil rights of all who are willing to abide by both the Constitution and the laws of the land, and (f) cooperate in finding ways to convince the various nations of the earth that their own national interests will be furthered by replacing threatening and competitive attitudes with those of kindness and mutual understanding.”

GORDON H. CLARK, professor, Butler University: “The sovereignty of God is the only factor that will decide Christianity’s influence on secular thought. Observation gives no grounds for supposing that Christianity will have any noticeable effect in the next decade. Atheism, Communism, lawlessness, and irresponsibility in government seem to have unrestricted sway.”

JOHN H. GERSTNER, professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary: “A candid facing (or lack or it) of problems raised by a secular culture. Some of us Christians, as well as the secularists, are persuaded that most scholarly exponents of Christianity are evading the issues by various question-begging appeals to faith.”

CARL F. H. HENRY, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “Recognition or non-recognition of divine revelation and divine authority will be the determinative issue. Whenever a culture loses vision of the eternal, drifts from a living sense of the transcendent basis of morality, and otherwise flouts biblical realities, it is headed straight for heathenism.”

HAROLD B. KUHN, professor, Asbury Theological Seminary: “With respect to the influence which the Christian Church may hope to exert upon secular thought in the decade ahead, it seems probable that this will continue to be eroded so long as theologians insist upon projecting as Christian ‘existential’ systems which are essentially esoteric and gnostic in form. Unless Christian theology can disengage itself, especially, from the occult and decadent forms of second- or third-hand Bultmannism, it is likely that Christianity’s influence will become more and more marginal to the stream of the world’s life. The determining issue seems to be, not whether there may not be some grains of truth in existential forms of thought (which nearly all will grant), but whether the Church has the vigor and courage to face the world with a clear and propositional ‘Thus saith the Lord’ or whether she will continue to dispense the theological medicaments handed down by the sophisticated witch-doctors who obscure the content of the Gospel in their existential incantations.”

ADDISON H. LEITCH, professor, Tarkio College: “I am increasingly impressed by the attention being given by the Roman Catholic Church to biblical studies. Apparently, many Roman Catholic scholars accepted Barth and Bultmann as ‘biblical’ theologians, read them for their interest and importance in philosophical theology, and were led to a reassessment of the Scriptures. Coupled with this, for many other reasons, there has been a general loosening in Roman Catholic scholarly circles, making allowances for the centrality of the Word. If my assessment is correct, then I am sure that the Roman Catholic Church will experience something like the Reformation again, and it is well known that when people take the Bible seriously, they expect it to be relevant to the whole of life. The impact of the Roman Catholic Church’s taking the Bible seriously, along with their historic belief in the unity of church and state, plus their memories of history that worked in medieval times, plus their dreams that it might work again, will, I think, have revolutionary repercussions.”

JAMES P. MARTIN, professor, Union Theological Seminary in Virginia: “Insofar as the denominations in America continue to pattern their life according to the image and mores of the ‘successful corporation,’ secular thought will be reinforced in its conviction that Christian life, individual and corporate, can be completely analyzed, understood, and manipulated in terms of the behavioral sciences. This conviction will react upon the churches and intensify their secularization. On the other hand, secular thought could be challenged by the spectacle of the Church’s integrity if she took upon herself the Form of the Servant, manifested the quality of mercy (acceptance) to all men consciously for the sake of Christ and his Kingdom (not for the sake of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, or the denominational image), and did this in accordance with a biblical theology of history which overcame the static metaphysics of orthodoxy and the individualistic escapism of existentialism and pietism.”

J. THEODORE MUELLER, professor, Concordia Seminary: “Christianity’s influence upon the secular thought of the next decade will no doubt be decided by its teaching of the divinely inspired Bible with its greatly needed message of the divine Law and of the Gospel of salvation through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It was Scripture with its saving message of Law and Gospel that kept perishing Rome from destruction; and today, when the vices of ancient Rome threaten to destroy our Western way of life, which our pious fathers reared upon the foundation of the Christian faith, the Christian Church must again oppose the spread of atheism, Communism, materialism, lawlessness, and reckless bloodshed with the saving Word of God. If the Church will fail in its duty of stressing seriously and constantly the divine Word there will be nothing to keep secular thought from utter decay and to hold up the ruin toward which also our Western world is heading.”

BERNARD RAMM, professor, California Baptist Theological Seminary: “To me the most important factor concerning the influence of Christianity upon the secular thought of the future is whether or not Christian theologians can make Christian theology the compelling option it enjoyed in other centuries.”

W. STANFORD REID, professor, McGill University: “The factor, more than any other, which humanly speaking will likely decide Christianity’s influence upon the secular thought of the next decade is the willingness of Christians to face and endeavor to deal with the intellectual problems of the day. Over the past five or six decades Christians, by and large, have been shirking the responsibility of offering Christian interpretations of, and solutions to, the basic intellectual problems of the age: new concepts of the physical universe, new discoveries in the fields of human behavior, new practices in economic and social control. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, his followers must come to grips with these problems and not run away from them or ignore them. This will mean making the Gospel effectively relevant to our present situation, not merely as individuals, but as a society. We can do this, however, only by the power and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in the long run, the deciding factor is the sovereign God, himself.”

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON, professor, Columbia Theological Seminary: “That factor which is likely to have the most decisive influence in diverting the secular thought of the oncoming generation from Christianity is the removal of prayer from our public schools. Under the blessing of God, these bad effects may be curtailed if our people in their several communities will exercise their rights of religious freedom by school worship on a voluntary basis. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the people, and the rights not enumerated are retained by them, so that Congress may not prohibit the free exercise of religion.”

HERMANN SASSE, professor, Immanuel Theological Seminary of Adelaide, Australia: “The factor is in my opinion a change in the spiritual and intellectual climate of our days. It finds, in the field of philosophy, its expression in the downfall of existentialism. The more the high waters of this last system of modern individualism and subjectivism recede, the more the damage becomes visible which it has done to the very foundations of human life. For our life rests on the recognition of eternal and objective truths whose validity is independent of our subjective existence. While the element of truth contained in modern existentialism will be preserved, as no real truth can ever be lost, the longing of our time is for an interpretation of the vast universe in which we live (Weltanschauung in the strictest sense), a philosophy which, on the one hand, does not shrink back from the wisdom and the insights to be found in great religions, and which, on the other hand, as true metaphysics is a worthy companion of the growing natural science and technology of our age. We theologians, even the most progressive ones among us, tend always to defend the positions of the day before yesterday. So it is a serious question for the Christian churches whether they will see and meet the challenge before it is too late.”

WILBUR M. SMITH, professor, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School: “Secularism is increasingly sovereign in the thinking of contemporary man. I do not see any movement today within the confines of Christianity from which we could justifiably hope for a reversal of this secularizing tendency. If, however, the Church of Christ should be granted an experience of a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit, convincing multitudes in every tribe and nation of the reality of a holy and omnipotent God and of man’s desperate need of atonement for sin though the sacrifice of Christ, granting to men faith to believe the Word of God and of a life to come, emancipating them from bondage to the spirit of the age, then secular thought would at least be forced to reconsider its present indifference to the revelation of God’s love and to the fact that he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness.”

JAMES S. STEWART, professor, New College, Edinburgh: “A radical return to the basic creed of the early Church: Jesus is Lord; for this faith destroys the false antinomy between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ and reveals the whole of life, including its ‘secular’ thought and science and culture, as Christ’s domain.”

MERRILL C. TENNEY, dean, Graduate School, Wheaton College: “The impact of Christianity upon the secular mind in the next decade will be largely determined by the spiritual convictions of the laity. If Christianity becomes the refuge of a timid religious minority, it will be dismissed as irrelevant by the materially minded majority. If, on the other hand, the minority can demonstrate the reality of Christ to themselves and his relevance to the frustrations, bewilderment, and fears of this age, their faith can have a potent positive influence on the secular mind that tends to regard life as meaningless and absurd. The acceptance or refusal of individual missionary responsibility may be the critical factor in the perpetuation of vital Christian faith.”

Beauty And Holiness

For a few dramatic minutes, long enough to take in the televised finals of the Miss America contest in Atlantic City, the eyes of the nation were diverted from their usual preoccupation with politics and sports. What they saw reflected important changes in religious attitudes in North America.

The winner, 21-year-old Vonda Kay Van Dyke, professes a steadfast Christian faith. She entered the contest prayerfully, she said, because it presented “an opportunity to meet people and to impress upon them the importance of being a Christian.” She contends that “Christians need to get into this sort of thing to show that they’re not squares.”

Vonda’s bid for the title was undoubtedly enhanced by her talent as a ventriloquist: her TV appearances included a delightful dialogue with her dummy Kurley Q. Perhaps the thing that put her over, however, was her discreetly handled correction of emcee Bert Parks’s observation that she carried a Bible as a “good luck charm.”

It was not a charm, she said, but the “most important book I own.” She went on to tell of her trust in God and her confidence that “His will may be done tonight.”

Something of the rapport she had with the forty-nine other contestants in spite of or because of her Christian convictions is evident from their choice of Vonda as “Miss Congeniality.” Later, on being named Miss America for 1965, she broke into tears and never did regain composure for the television cameras. She was the first girl in the 44-year history of the pageant to win both titles.

An only child, Vonda was born in Muskegon, Michigan. There the family attended Calvary Baptist Church, but when they moved to Phoenix, Arizona, they joined the Central Methodist Church. The father is an osteopath.

Vonda traces her conversion to a fairgrounds evangelistic rally held in Phoenix when she was nine. She attended an evangelical high school and was active in Young Life. At Arizona State University, where she is a speech and drama major, Vonda has been connected with Campus Crusade. She has also taught Sunday school and vacation Bible school classes, but her most effective ministry has been in numerous appearances before youth groups with Kurley Q. In a personal testimony scheduled to appear in the November issue of Decision, she says:

“They won’t listen to me, but they’ll listen to my dummy.”

How does Vonda reconcile her evangelical witness with a bent for beauty contests? Is the commercialized display of female pulchritude really compatible with the message she proclaims? How does she feel about mass media reporting of her vital statistics around the world?

Newsweek, alluding to her affirmation of faith, described Vonda as “a Methodist Sunday School teacher whose blessings include a 36-24-36 figure,” then attributed a supposedly humorous dissent to Kurley Q: “I liked Miss Arkansas, the first runner-up. She was a sexy blonde, but I got stuck with this kid.”

Vonda minimizes the adverse aspects of her role as Miss America and seems not even to be disconcerted by her Wesleyan Methodist boyfriend’s publicly voiced apprehension that “this may affect her life.” She says she had not desired the title unless it would be “God’s will.”

Her outlook reflects a significant change in attitude among American evangelicals from the rigidly separationist view of a generation ago. The only criticism to reach her came from someone connected with the Billy Graham crusade in San Diego, where she gave a testimony subsequently telecast across North America.

A Dormitory Destroyed

A dormitory at Westmont College went up in flames as a series of brush and forest fires hit California last month. The loss of the dormitory, which housed thirty-four students, was estimated at $100,000.

Westmont, an evangelical liberal arts college, is located in a valley near Santa Barbara. At one time the fire enveloped the campus on three sides. Classes were suspended, and students and faculty members joined hands to fight the blaze.

Enter The Strings

String bands organized by the Salvation Army are enjoying a wave of popularity in Britain. At least one tune used by the army’s new crop of instrumentalists, “It’s an Open Secret,” won a place on the British hit parade.

Commissioner Erik Wickberg, chief of the staff and second-in-command of the Salvation Army throughout the world, described the phenomenon during a four-week tour of the United States and Canada.

Guitars have been used by Salvationists in Scandinavia for many years, said Wickberg, a native of Sweden, but their introduction in Britain is a very recent development.

“Singing with guitars is as old as the Salvation Army itself,” he declared, “and cannot be attributed to the Beatles or any other Eatles. They just put a new rhythm in their songs. I can’t say I’m struck with it, but my 18-year-old daughter thinks it’s wonderful.”

Missions Fatality

The aviation chief of the Lutheran Mission in New Guinea was fatally injured last month when the engine of his German-built Dornier DO-27 failed shortly after takeoff from a jungle airstrip and the plane plunged to earth and caught fire.

Captain Ray Jaensch, an Australian, died en route to a mission hospital a few hours later. He was about forty years old. He leaves his wife and four children.

One of four Australian government officials who were aboard the plane was seriously injured. The three others were not hurt.

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