A Medium-Sized Faith

Communication with the dead appears to be a live option for a growing number of influential clergymen who believe they have made contact with deceased relatives “on the other side.” One is the Rev. Dr. Edward W. Bauman, pastor of Washington, D. C.’s Foundry Methodist Church, seminary lecturer, and instructor of a Bible telecourse seen coast to coast (his new series started this month).

Like California’s Resigned Bishop James A. Pike—who asserts he has communicated with his dead son at least six times—Bauman originally thought spiritualism was “bunk.” But after he and a physician friend spent an evening with the world’s foremost medium, Arthur Ford, Bauman was a believer.

The tall, vigorous minister confided that he went to see the Philadelphia medium and onetime Disciples of Christ minister in a “very skeptical frame of mind” to “poke holes in the whole business.” During the “sitting,” “very convincing” personal messages came through from Ford’s spirit control, just as reputedly happened in the now-famous Pike séance televised in Canada last month and rebroadcast in the U.S.

Although Bauman didn’t detail what he heard, he says the information could not have been researched beforehand. And—as was true of Pike—the psychic excursions which Bauman has pursued have profoundly influenced his theology. He and another District minister, the Rev. Ernest Martin of the neighboring Church of the Holy City (Swedenborgian), are active in a quickly expanding and respected organization called the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship, founded by Ford. Bauman is a national executive council member.

Members—who include scientists and psychologists as well as clergymen—explore “psychic phenomena and mystical experience within the framework of the church.” They pay $10 a year dues.

A parallel organization, the Association for Research and Enlightenment, is headed by Hugh Lynn Cayce, son of the late clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. The ARE is making inroads on church-related people who seek new dimensions in extra-sensory perception and psychic experience. A spate of Cayce-inspired paperbacks relating to ESP, reincarnation, and diet and health fads abound on bookstore shelves.

One of the surprising things about all the psychic interest is the serious hearing it seems to be getting. “Pike’s séance would have created a storm of ridicule a few years ago,” says Bauman. Today, forty-two universities have special departments investigating psychic phenomena and parapsychology. At the University of Virginia, former psychiatry Chairman Ian Stevenson, a leader in the field, is collecting data about persons who have memories of past lives.

Reincarnation and karma (belief in “one eternal self” with a carry-over of perfection and retribution into successive incarnations) are central to both the SFF and the ARE. Ford, who settles for “optional reincarnation”—“you don’t have to unless you want to”—told a large and well-dressed audience in posh, Baltimore suburban Towson Presbyterian Church that Christ was incarnated in Jesus because “he had something to say.” Therefore, Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same person, he explained.

Ford also projected his spiritized theology: Sin is simply an “honest mistake” in which instinct bests spiritual values, and hell is only the spirit world, according to the Bible.

The 72-year-old master medium (he has had forty years’ professional experience) said Pike hasn’t jettisoned any basic beliefs. He called Pike’s book If This Be Heresy “as important as Luther’s theses on the door.” Cayce also referred admiringly to Pike, telling a curious audience in Washington, D. C., it had been revealed to him in a dream last June that “a high church official would soon be suggesting ideas on survival.” “Could this be Bishop Pike?” he asked ponderously.

Bauman arranged for Ford to speak in Foundry Church a week before Halloween and hopes to get him and Pike to speak together next spring.

Bauman affirms his brush with the psychic world has brought previously “speculative” doctrines to life, like “the communion of the saints,” but he has some reservations.

He’s not convinced that reincarnation is a fact—though he is “open to the possibility”—and warns against too much dependence on mediums. “It’s not something you play around with,” he said in an interview. “The demonic is always very close.”

Why should the Church be interested? Ford, Cayce (a Presbyterian elder), and Bauman refer to First Corinthians 12. Prophecy, tongues-speaking, and healing are all a genuine part of the movement, Ford maintains. None of the three has spoken in tongues, but neither do they rule this out as a “genuine” possibility.

What they fear most is that spiritualism may float out of the mainstream of religious experience and be relegated to cults and “isms.” Devotees are urged to stay in their own churches and “keep all this in perspective.”

Yet the movement has all the trappings of a religious cult. Cayce advises: (1) Form small groups, (2) meditate individually and together, and (3) spend a week at Virginia Beach (headquarters of ARE). The psychic-content books are virtually “sacred writings” to ardent followers, and one man paid tribute to Edgar Cayce as “a saint.” Mediums give charismatic, prophetic leadership. “Jesus might have been another man like Edgar Cayce, only more so,” remarked one awed woman at an ARE meeting.

The spiritualist thing has stirred up a cauldron of protest from churchmen who are less than entranced. Some say the communication bit is a fake: “The medium is the message.” And they cite King Saul, who once invoked the Witch of Endor to call forth the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel—and wished he hadn’t. Bauman says such warnings are needed but do not close the door to investigation of the “other side.” In any case, those on the far-out frontier of the psychic seem to prefer a minimum of orthodox theology, a maximum of credulity, and a medium-sized faith.

PERSONALIA

Jesus Garcia Valcarcel, founder of Spain’s Catholic charity agency, ran for one of Madrid’s seats in the national legislature on a platform of church-state separation.

The Rev. George Hafner, a New Jersey priest, stopped serving informal Masses in private homes, and his bishop agreed not to excommunicate him and his followers (see October 13 issue, page 43). Later, at Monmouth College, Hafner said “the entire Christian Church has become corrupt.”

Fred Buschmeyer, 67, newly retired secretary of the United Church of Christ, takes a Sydney, Australia, Congregational pulpit next month.

‘Negligent’ Healer

Clergymen and a jury in Toronto got exercised over an exorcism and faithhealing cult. The upshot is that Anglican Canon G. Moore Smith has been fired.

A coroner’s inquest found Smith and his wife negligent in not calling a doctor for Katherine Globe, 18, who died of a brain abcess and meningitis in the Anglican rectory during a prayer service in which cultists were attempting to exorcise evil spirits from her. No criminal charges against Smith were expected, but Smith’s superior, Bishop George Snell, ordered a halt to the group’s meetings while the bizarre “healings” were investigated.

Meanwhile, a chartered airplane left Windsor, Ontario, with 116 gravely ill passengers bound for the Philippines and treatment by faith healer Antonio Agapaoa. One Roman Catholic priest helped raise the $658 fare for his nephew, who suffers from muscular dystrophy.

William L. Nobles, graduate dean of the University of Mississippi, next year will become president of Mississippi College, a Baptist school that refuses to sign compliance with the civil-rights act of 1964.

Pope Paul is expected to visit Colombia and Brazil, the largest predominantly Catholic nation in the world, next year—his health permitting.

Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to mark his seventy-seventh birthday by laying the cornerstone of the National Presbyterian Church and Center in Washington, D. C., on October 14.

The Rev. Secundino Bermudez, president of the West Indies Mission’s Association of Cuban Churches, was incarcerated last July, according to mission officials in Miami, Florida. Castro’s police gave no reason for the mysterious seizure.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

Last month’s Episcopal Church convention voted to permit non-Episcopalians to take Communion on occasions of “spiritual need” if they have been baptized in the name of the Trinity and profess personal Christian commitment. The statement denied this is “open communion.” In another change, non-Episcopal ministers can now participate in burial and marriage services and speak from Episcopal pulpits.

Repudiating a radical program of its Board of Evangelism and Social Service, the General Council of the United Church of Canada said it is not interested in encouraging U. S. youths to dodge the draft.

The United Church Observer, official publication of the United Church of Canada, says Israel stands “condemned before the world” for its expansionist policies and “harsh, inhumane treatment of Arab refugees.”

The American Baptist Convention, with 80,000 tenants, claims to be the biggest private non-profit housing manager in the United States. Meanwhile, church councils in southern California and Michigan voted to start huge housing projects for low-income families.

The Methodist mission board, protesting apartheid, plans to withdraw its $10 million investment portfolio if the First National City Bank of New York renews a credit deal with South Africa. Meanwhile, two Methodist nursing homes in Maryland were cut off from Medicaid payments because of alleged segregation.

The National Council of Churches asked the U. S. Supreme Court to review an appeal challenging the constitutionality of federal aid to private schools.

The 1,834-church Baptist Bible Fellowship International came out against ecumenism and “all civil disobedience.” Miami pastor Al Janney was named president.

The reassembled synod of the Christian Reformed Church narrowly bypassed a harsh rebuke and instead aimed a mild reprimand at Calvin Seminary Professor Harold Dekker, who wrote nearly five years ago that the church view on “limited atonement … impairs the principle of the universal love of God.”

The 12,300-member Conservative Congregational Christian Conference chose the Rev. Raymond Ortlund of Pasadena as president and agreed to an exchange of literature with the Evangelical Free Church.

The 20,500-member Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches voted further study of an invitation to merge with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and of altar and pulpit fellowship with The American Lutheran Church.

Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary purchased a twelve-acre campus from a private girls’ school southeast of Denver, and plans to move next summer.

Six professors and forty students were expelled from Brazil’s Campinas Theological Seminary. One of the victims, the Rev. Robert Evans, blames a struggle for leadership in the nation’s Presbyterian Church.

Former agriculture secretary Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon Apostle, told a church convention that “today’s civil-rights movement is a Communist program” and defended the church’s ban on full membership rights for Negroes as God’s will.

MISCELLANY

A year later, the bizarre murder of the Rev. Dr. Robert W. Spike of the University of Chicago Divinity School is still unsolved. This month Columbus, Ohio, prosecutors dropped first-degree murder charges against William Minor after a judge ruled out a confession as evidence, saying constitutional rights were violated.

The posh Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D. C., in which the Vatican holds a major stock interest, is said to need an addition to turn a profit. But Newsweek reports the Kennedy family plans to fight the move because it would detract from the nearby John F. Kennedy arts center, now being built.

U. S. Roman Catholics on October 22 were to begin mandatory, “temporary” use of a mostly-English Mass. English has been required in the “people’s” section for three years, but the canon (central prayer) has just been authorized in English.

Dominican Republic Roman Catholic bishops have issued a pastoral letter urging wealthy landowners to make their property available to alleviate “the dire poverty” of peasants.

The passports of five Quakers who sailed to North Viet Nam with medical supplies last April have been revoked by the State Department. The five were crew on the ketch “Phoenix,” which currently is making another run into Haiphong. Mrs. Diane Bevel, the wife of an assistant to Martin Luther King, Jr., also lost her passport for making what the State Department called an “unauthorized” visit to Hanoi.

Fifteen top clergymen of various Christian communions in Syria notified the government they will not reopen their schools if they are under full control of the government education ministry.

Singapore’s Trade Union Center has been chosen as the site for the Asian Congress on Evangelism in November of 1968, first of a series of regional conferences projected to follow last year’s World Congress on Evangelism. A second world congress in 1971 is also under discussion.

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