The Medium Is the Expo

The city of Montreal—just recovering from a typical winter of towering snowdrifts and sub-zero temperatures—is taking the wraps off the pavilions at Expo 67, which opens this week. While the 150,000 planted shrubs on the two-island site soak up the warm spring sun, visitors from the tropics will be able to photograph the surging St. Lawrence River yielding its ice floes to the mighty tides churned by large ocean-going ships.

Nestled among the huge pavilions at the first major North American fair recognized by the International Exhibitions Bureau are two contrasting centers of Christian witness. Moody’s “Sermons from Science” pavilion got in on a scientific ticket. (An application from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which was at the New York fair along with Moody, was refused because only a single “Christian Pavilion” was to be permitted.)

The united pavilion is a major ecumenical breakthrough for Canada. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, United Churchmen, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans have joined forces to put up a $1.3 million pavilion which some observers think will be the most controversial in the whole of Expo.

The only religious symbol, a T-shaped “tau” cross (the form most likely used in the Crucifixion), stands at the gateway. From there, the total-communication theme of Canadian communications prophet Marshall McLuhan takes over. The “medium is the message,” in photos of contemporary events, surrealistic pictures, variated sounds taped in New York City, and changing light patterns.

Visitors will be led through three stages. Stage one shows life as it was before the Fall: a garden of beauty, tranquility, flowers, and a pool (which is to represent baptism—if anybody can make the interpretation). Stage two is life as it is. A multitude of pictures in four-dimensional squares depict almost every conceivable area of life, from the innocence of a newborn baby to the non-innocence of a strip-tease joint. A gentle slope leads to a dungeon-like area of weird sounds, frightening screams, and pictures—pictures of hideous brutality, of dead bodies lying on the streets, of concentration camps, of segregation and race riots, of atomic explosion, of earthquake and its aftermath.

A fourteen-minute film showing man at his worst climaxes this experience-in-the-deep, which one newsman described as “a Christian trip to Hell and back.”

The Rev. H. E. Bartsch, a Missouri Synod Lutheran who is deputy commissioner of the pavilion, says “people will want to run from this scene to the next stage, where by Christ, through Christ, and in Christ, man finds his answer.”

Stage three provides the “answer”—if you are good at interpreting imagery. It is supposed to be a message of hope, with a modern-day presentation of Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and Pentecost, through the use of large paneled pictures on which Scripture verses are flashed.

The man who designed the presentation from axioms drawn up by a theological committee was Charles F. Gagnon, 33, whose church affiliation was unknown at the pavilion office. Gagnon has said that the last stage is “where people will find the answer without being told the answer. We will implant psychological intonations that will make them discover what the film is about and what Christianity is about.” Officials know this is an experiment, and they will have to wait and see if the message is in the medium.

There will be no spiritual counseling at the Christian Pavilion. Those who want it will be told by a hostess where to find a church in downtown Montreal. The pavilion has no provision, either, for prayer or meditation. Bartsch explains, “The approach we are following is the best under the circumstances. It is a miracle that we have come as far as we have.”

In contrasting approach, but fully as contemporary as the Christian Pavilion, “Sermons from Science” commands a prestigious corner lot in the midst of the Arab-Jewish architectural confrontation and is flanked on one side by the towering Russian pavilion. The Moody project is geared for an expected 8,500 spiritual inquirers, and more than 2,000 counselors have been recruited across Canada. “Sermons” uses six languages, compared to two or three in most other pavilions. Expo is expected to draw 15 million visitors from around the world, including sixty heads of state, and Moody planners estimate three-fifths of them will pass by their pavilion’s main entrance. Thus they expect a greater proportional response than they had at New York. “Sermons,” which cost half as much as the Christian Pavilion, will use the direct approach in presenting the Gospel, as it did at New York and Seattle. The program includes Moody science films, live demonstrations by George Speake, and a nine-minute film talk by Leighton Ford.

Arthur Hill, a prominent physician in Sherbrooke, Quebec, thinks “Sermons” will be one of the greatest evangelistic efforts ever made in that province. By one estimate, 2,000 of the multitudes of nominally Roman Catholic French Canadians will accept Christ. But pavilion director Keith Price says that “there will be no proselytizing done at Expo. Everyone will be directed back to the church of his choice.”

The United Church of Canada Observer has regretted editorially the “tragic disunity” represented by the two pavilions. But the Christian Pavilion’s Bartsch, after touring “Sermons,” said, “I think they have a valid presentation.” And despite the Observer’s appeal for a boycott of the Moody effort, many United Churches are in support.

One is St. James in downtown Montreal, one of the most sophisticated, posh churches in the denomination. Its two evangelical clergymen, Douglas Pilkey and Newton Steacy, are not only backing the Expo efforts but also running a little theological Expo of their own, with two dozen big names on as many Sundays. Steacy says, “Our people want to know what men like Bishop Pike and Harvey Cox are saying”; but these much-traveled gadflies will be balanced by such conservatives as Leighton Ford, Harold Ockenga, Richard Halverson, David Hubbard, and George Duncan.

Germany: Still Astride The Wall

Protestant church leaders in East Germany withstood pressure from Communist political bosses this month and retained organizational unity with pastors and congregations in West Germany. The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKID), to which most Protestants belong, still straddles the East-West border, though since the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 the church has had to hold separate synods. The Eastern churchmen have been urged by their government to break off ties with the West.

At the latest meetings the churchmen had to resist harassment to perpetuate a semblance of unity. As a token of their link, they elected a politically quiet figure, Bishop Hermann Dietzfel-binger of Munich, to the supreme office of council chairman. He succeeds Bishop Kurt Scharf, who had been nominated for re-election but who declined to be a candidate against Bishop Hanns Lilje of Hanover, who also was nominated. The anti-Communist Lilje could not get the necessary two-thirds majority, so the delegates tapped Dietzfel-binger as a compromise.

Western delegates met in West Berlin, the Easterners thirty-five miles away in Furstenwalde. The Eastern delegates had planned to meet in East Berlin but were forced to move at the last minute. The agendas at the two meetings were alike, and the churchmen tried to coordinate matters through secret couriers. Some messengers from the West were reported to have been intercepted by Communist police officials.

About four out of five of East Germany’s 17 million people are said to be at least nominally Protestant. Among the 59 million West Germans there is a considerably higher proportion of Roman Catholics. There has also been pressure on East German Catholics to declare their independence from the West.

Viet Nam: Under God?

At the last minute, the men who wrote South Viet Nam’s new constitution bowed to Buddhist pressure and eliminated a reference to God, according to U. S. Catholic Press. But when the National Assembly finally promulgated the constitution this month, the deity had been re-inserted.

The preamble adopted March 14 declared that “the Vietnamese people must assume responsibility before the Supreme Being and before history for renewing the tradition of independence and accepting new ideas.” The monk Thich Tam Chau, head of one of the nation’s two major Buddhist factions, sent a letter of protest that was read to the National Assembly. Four days later, a majority reopened discussion and voted to drop the words “Supreme Being.”

In reaction, a crowd of about 3,000 Roman Catholics, including many priests, surrounded the Assembly building for several hours, protesting the “godless constitution.” After Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, a Buddhist, said he had no objection to the reference and would try to get it restored, the crowd dispersed.

There was no objection to another provision, that no faith will be the nation’s official religion.

Clearing The Papal Air

A mistranslation is causing wide misunderstanding of a key passage in the Pope’s latest encyclical, according to an educator from Rome. Father Felix Morlion said in an interview with Religious News Service that a passage that seems, in English, to be an attack on the capitalist “system” is actually directed against extremist “opinions” on laissez-faire capitalism. Morlion is president of the papally approved Pro Deo University in Rome.

The passage in question reads, in the English translation: “It is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation.”

In the Latin text of the encyclical, the word “opinions” corresponds to the English text’s “system,” according to Morlion.

The priest said that the encyclical, known as Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), which calls for more compassion and social responsibility toward the downtrodden, does not condemn capitalism as a system. It is said to be aimed at “only those egoistic, laissez-faire opinions which are indifferent to human life and dignity and would subordinate all this to profit, competition, and private property made into absolute values.”

The chief of last summer’s World Conference on Church and Society in Geneva, Paul Abrecht, said there are parallels between the papal message and the conclusions of the meeting conducted by the World Council of Churches. These parallels, he said, offer “the prospect of a united Christian social thinking on a broader range than ever before seemed possible.”

Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reported that the Vatican had rejected a suggestion that Populorum Progressio approved government birth-control campaigns in non-Catholic countries. The Pope’s ambiguous remarks on the population problem were interpreted widely as an easing of traditional strictures against artificial contraceptives (see April 14 issue, p. 45).

Rescue Mission Stew

In a “first” for the era of demonstrations, down-and-outers boycotted a rescue mission in Marysville, California, that requires men to attend evangelistic services to get food.

It began in mid-March when the Rev. John Baker, 28, of St. John’s Episcopal Church—one of twenty-eight sponsors of Twin Cities Mission—invited the men to his church for coffee and donuts each morning “with no strings attached.” Over at Twin Cities, the Rev. C. W. Renwick dished up breakfast to those who had tickets handed out at worship the night before.

Baker’s breakfasts became gripe sessions about Twin Cities, followed by voluntary one-hour prayer services that drew about one-third of the men. About fifty men began boycotting Twin Cities, while a mere half-dozen stuck with the mission (where they get overnight shelter; the strikers are left to their own ingenuity). As the news spread in the town of 10,000, non-churchgoer Gail Zimmerman opened her used-goods store to strikers for evening meals and voluntary, after-dinner services run by laymen.

Renwick, who is sponsored by the Pentecostalist Full Gospel Businessmen, says Baker is “stirring up dissension among the men and giving them the impression that food is more important than the Gospel.” Advice to “hold out” came from his board chairman, Yuba City carpenter Raymond Tiner, and from Clifford Phillips, Fresno mission operator and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions.

Baker says “human dignity” and “freedom of worship”—not theology—are at stake, and thinks narrow mission policies distort the true image of Christ. Although an anonymous Indiana lawyer has offered funds, he denies plans to start a rival mission. He says he just wants Twin Cities Mission “to listen.”

So on Easter Sunday, down-and-outers at Zimmerman’s had chicken and dumplings followed by a voluntary service. Renwick’s mission served a sermon followed by stew.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Extracting The Cotton

What is the function of the religious press today? To be “more theological and pastoral than it has been in the past,” Roman Catholic publisher Phillip Scharper told the mostly-Protestant Associated Church Press meeting in New York this month.

The appearance of Scharper, a layman who is editor-in-chief of Sheed and Ward, coincided with the admittance of new Catholic members to ACP and announcement of a joint meeting with the Catholic Press Association in 1969.

Scharper said Christian publications fail to communicate with those “outside the church in this technological age.… You cannot sit with cotton in your ears and ignore the world God so loved.”

As if to extract the cotton, the aim of this year’s ACP program, said United Church Herald’s J. Martin Bailey, was “to introduce the role of denominational journals in the controversial age in art, war and peace, and political involvement.”

Scharper also urged the religious press to discard “trivia,” “ecclesiastical doodling,” and a “house-organ orientation.” To serve a broader function, the religious press, according to Scharper, will have to pare away these elements and replace them with “ever more deep theological editorials and columns” in many sectors, both Protestant and Catholic.

ACP’s annual awards went to Mississippi’s Baptist Record and the American Lutherans’ Scope for physical appearance; to the Church of the Brethren’s Messenger for improvement; and to the Methodist student monthly motive for content.

T. E. KOSHY

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