Religious Press: What Price Prophecy?

While they were being urged at some of the official sessions to become more “prophetic,” religious editors at the Associated Church Press/Catholic Press Association convention were wondering how to cope with the results of previous prophetic advice. The story many editors were quietly telling was one of declining circulation and falling advertising revenue. Alfred P. Klausler, executive secretary of the ACP, reported a decline over the past year of 1,401,490 in the group’s total circulation, dropping it to 21.6 million. Commenting on the troubles experienced by some of the member publications, Klausler said, “It is always something of a paradox that subscribers to church journals will tolerate and renew subscriptions to secular publications which irritate them but will not by the same token exercise the same toleration in their church journal. There must be greater religious maturity on the part of church people.”

Little that could be called real ecumenism was achieved by this first joint meeting of the two associations. Each side seemed to be operating on its own frequency. The problem was accentuated because many of the Catholic editors represented local diocesan papers published under hierarchical supervision while most Protestant editors represented publications with less geographical limitation and less immediate control. Catholic editors seemed most fearful of hierarchical oppression, while Protestant editors—especially those from denominational journals—were concerned about lay backlash.

One evidence of lay dissatisfaction is the appearance of conservative dissenting journals within the United Methodist, Episcopal, and Presbyterian folds. At least one, the Presbyterian Journal, has apparently prospered at the expense of the more liberal denominational magazine, Presbyterian Survey. In the past five years the Journal has gained about 22,000 subscribers while the Survey lost more than 50,000.

The Atlanta meeting produced no surprises. Race is still “the issue” in the minds of the religious editors of America, an almost exclusively white group. Meeting in the home town of Martin Luther King, Jr., delegates obviously felt his shadow over their meetings.

The widow of the slain civil-rights leader, Coretta King, who was one of the featured speakers, told the convention the Church is in danger of becoming “a moribund guardian to its ritual as it declines into irrelevance.” She characterized the reparations called for in the “Black Manifesto” as “meaningful symbolism,” adding that the churches should do something more significant by using the influence of their 80 million members to back legislation in Congress.

“If programs which would end poverty and abolish discrimination were enacted, all society would benefit and all society would pay the cost rather than one part of it,” she said.

In commenting on student unrest, Mrs. King said: “The young people most hostile to the Church are by no means morally degenerate.… Their appeal for racial and economic justice, for peace and for humanism, is the essence of morality.”

W. C. Fields, president of the ACP, and Monsignor Terrence P. McMahon, president of the CPA, had earlier joined in placing a wreath on Dr. King’s grave.

The hit of the three-day program was Dr. Albert Outler of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. In his quip-laden address (Pope John XXIII became Johnny Unite-Us), Dr. Outler pointed out that the locus of authority for Protestants had once been Scripture, “but we’re not working that side of the street anymore. We’ve left that to the Catholics.” He concluded that there is indeed a crisis of authority and that authority must now be found in a convergence of un-self-righteous love and critical insight in an atmosphere of freedom—persuasive insights rather than force.

Clarence Jordan, founder of the Koinonia Farm (an integrated cooperative community near Americus, Georgia) and author of the Cotton Patch Version of Paul’s Epistles, told the 400 editors: “Churches should stop accepting tax exemption on their property.” Until they do, they should pay an equivalent amount into a “fund for humanity,” he said, explaining: “We ought to spend at least as much to put a roof over the heads of our brothers whom we have seen, as to put a roof over the head of God whom we have not seen.”

ACP awards of general excellence went to the Canadian Churchman of Toronto, official monthly of the Anglican Church of Canada; Youth, a joint publication of the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, Church of the Brethren, and the Anglican Church of Canada; Colloquy, Christian-education magazine of the United Church of Christ and the United Presbyterian Church; Presbyterian Survey, official publication of the Presbyterian Church U. S.; United Church Herald, United Church of Christ monthly; These Times, Seventh-day Adventist monthly; and the Christian Century.

The top magazine winners of the twenty awards presented by the Catholic Press Association were the St. Anthony Messenger, a Franciscan monthly, and Thought magazine, a quarterly published by Fordham University. Top awards for Catholic newspapers went to the Long Island Catholic, Rockville Centre, New York, and the now defunct Oklahoma Courier, Oklahoma City.

Newly elected officers of the ACP are Kenneth Wilson, editor of the Christian Herald, president; Ben R. Hartley, editor of the Presbyterian Survey, first vice-president; DeCourcy H. Rayner, editor of the Presbyterian Record, Toronto, second vice-president.

Joseph A. Gelin, managing editor of the Catholic Universe Bulletin, Cleveland, was named president of the CPA.

PERIODICAL CHANGES AND MOTIVE’S FOUR-LETTER HANGUP

“Clearly obscene,” said the publisher of motive magazine, referring to language in the intended May issue of the controversial student-oriented publication. And Dr. Myron F. Wicke, secretary of the United Methodist Division of Higher Education, “postponed” the issue, asserting, “There is enough obscenity in the world without our adding to it.”

Motive, launched in 1941 by the Methodist Student Movement, has been published by the Methodist board for the now defunct University Christian Movement at a cost of $40,000 to $63,000 a year. The faltering campus monthly has been on the ragged edge for some time (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 25, 1968, page 43).

A special issue for March–April on the “liberation of women” also sparked fire for its liberal sprinkling of four-letter words. The “postponed” issue was edited by B. J. Stiles, now a staffer of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation in Washington, D. C.

Three other senior editorial staffers have either quit or given notice. A committee to study the future of the magazine named a non-Methodist, Robert Maurer, as editor-designate, subject to final approval late this month. United Church of Christ member Maurer, a Union Theological Seminary grad of 1968, chaired the youth delegation at last summer’s World Council of Churches’ Uppsala assembly.

Meanwhile, Good News: A Forum for Scriptural Christianity within the Methodist Church, announced formation of a board of thirty directors for the new and growing publication, edited by Charles W. Keysor in Elgin, Illinois.

Emerging from a board meeting in Tulsa are Good News evangelical renewal groups across the denomination, and a projected nation-wide Dallas convocation for Methodist evangelicals in the fall of 1970.

The magazine (circulation 9,000) espouses “deep commitment to our Wesleyan heritage of scriptural Christianity,” Keysor says.

After a long (110-year) and illustrious career, The Christian and Christianity Today, British newsweekly of evangelical thought and action, ceased publication this month because of slipping circulation (see Editor’s Note, page 2).

Another magazine being phased out is the forty-year-old Pulpit, a companion periodical of the Christian Century. Replacing Pulpit this fall will be a new journal, Christian Ministry, to be edited by Robert Graham Kemper, a Montclair, New Jersey, United Church of Christ clergyman. The change reflects the swing in ecumenical circles away from the centrality of preaching to the action context of current ministry.

Regular participation will include the National Council of Churches, the newly formed Academy of Parish Clergy (see June 6 issue, page 47), and seminaries. “We are affirming the recovery, for the contemporary church, of one of the richest treasures of the Christian heritage,” said Century spokesmen in announcing the conversion of the Pulpit. “We are affirming ministry.”

Circulation (264,000 peak in 1965, 200,000 now), and financial ($30,000 increase in underwriting during the same period) problems have dogged the Presbyterian Survey, official magazine of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. The monthly’s board of directors was to act June 12 on a proposal to change its frequency and format.

Essentially, the magazine would be changed from a forty-eight-page feature slick to a more news-oriented sixteen-page biweekly. The Survey might also get its name changed in the overhaul.

Another magazine undergoing major visual face-lifting is His, monthly student publication of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

Plumbing The Educators

Until H. Norman Wright surveyed 270 Christian-education directors recently, almost no statistical information about them and their work was available.

The assistant professor of religious education at Talbot Theological Seminary found:

• More than 60 per cent have seminary or other graduate training, and churches increasingly look for this.

• Their training was weakest in counseling, group dynamics, organization, and administration.

• Smaller churches often employ youth directors.

• Churches rarely provide comprehensive job descriptions for new staff.

• Salaries still lag behind those of secular jobs requiring comparable education; and women’s salaries average nearly $1,650 less than men’s.

• Inadequate knowledge of the opportunities and unrealistic salaries account for the low number of recruits.

• Bible schools and Christian colleges, plus individual pastors, are most likely to influence young people toward Christian education careers.

Soft Answers At Lookout Mountain

An unexpectedly large number of commissioners to the 147th synod filled the scenic, mountain-top campus of Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, for the annual meeting of the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod last month.

“Soft answers” characterized most denominational deliberations. A middle course was steered on whether Freemasons may be church officers, on the place of dispensationalism in the church, on possible union with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and on Covenant College’s acceptance of federal funds for buildings.

The church refused to establish additional requirements for local church officers, though it restated its strong disapproval of the Freemasons and other secret societies as “organized pagan religions.” A request from the Southern Presbytery to declare dispensationalist doctrine “antithetical to the system of the Westminster Confession” and to disqualify dispensationalists from holding office was referred to a study committee.

While there was considerable discussion of federal aid to Covenant College, the overture to forbid Covenant from seeking federal aid lost by a substantial margin. The school recently received $1.7 in government money for three new buildings, and such aid is essential for more contemplated expansion.

Perhaps the most significant issue was ecumenicity; it certainly was the one that most seriously divided the commissioners. Since the Reformed and Evangelical Presbyterian Churches merged four years ago, there has been considerable pressure for the RPCES to join with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a group similar in theology and outlook.

Three of the twelve presbyteries overtured synod to resist the merger but the effort was substantially voted down. The disclaimer of Fraternal Relations Committee chairman Robert Rayburn that the committee was “railroading” a merger with the Orthodox Church was refreshing in light of highhanded tactics of some large-denomination hierarchy in forcing ecumenical interests. Rayburn said the committee saw its duties as merely implementing the wishes of synod.

A “Basis of Union” with the OPC was sent to presbyteries and local churches for study during the coming year. The committee plans to ask next year’s synod, as well as the OPC General Assembly, to approve a preliminary plan of union.

Many RPCES’s consider the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to be somewhat worldly in its attitude toward Christian liberty and hyper-Calvinistic toward evangelism. As is typical of most proposed merger discussions, reports indicated a number of RPCES congregations will withdraw if the union goes through.

RPCES minister and mission executive Arthur Glasser urged the synod to fulfill both its cultural and evangelistic mandates in an age when, he said, ecumenical churches are fulfilling only the cultural mandate and the evangelicals tend to fulfill only the evangelistic one.

Genial Wilbur B. Wallis, New Testament professor at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, was elected moderator of this year’s synod.

Gordon And Conwell Announce Betrothal

Two of America’s leading interdenominational theological schools will join forces this fall to form what the new president predicts will be “one of the outstanding divinity schools in the world.” Gordon Divinity School of Wenham, Massachusetts, and Conwell School of Theology, Philadelphia, will merge to form the Gordon-Conwell Divinity School. Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, now head of Gordon, will be president, while Dr. Stuart Barton Babbage of Conwell will be vice-president.

A new 800-acre campus on Boston’s north shore is expected to house a student body of 750 within a few years, while a new Conwell property in Philadelphia will serve as the school’s urban-training center.

Asked why the schools were merging, Gordon Vice-president Daniel Weiss answered with his own question: “Why maintain two separate schools, so similar in nature and yet so close to each other geographically? By combining our total resources, we should both be able to do what we have wanted.” Namely: develop an urban-studies center, establish (eventually) an institute for advanced theological studies, and bring together an outstanding faculty.

Conwell, technically just nine years old, sports a long, rather proud history as successor of the Temple University School of Theology—founded by Russell H. Conwell of “Acres of Diamonds” fame. Conwell gained stature through Dr. Billy Graham, who initially was asked to appoint its entire board (he is now a board member at both schools), and through its heavy emphasis on urban-ministries training. One-third of Conwell’s fifty-five students are black.

Gordon, much larger, dates back nearly eighty years. Once a division of Gordon College, it now has 255 students and twenty-six faculty members.

The new school will be evangelical theologically, with faculty representing the Anglican, Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, and Presbyterian churches.

Many merger details are yet to be worked out. School officials have not decided just how the Philadelphia property will be used, nor has the governing structure been finally developed. And housing must be arranged for all students at Gordon this fall, since buildings on the new campus have not yet been started.

Despite these problems, Weiss is optimistic: “When you’re on your way to being something new, there are a lot of ambiguities on the way. But we think we have something pretty exciting going.”

BIBLE-READERS’ BEAGLE: ANOTHER GO-ROUND

Neither the Bible nor Snoopy, the ubiquitous pooch of cartoon fame, is a stranger to the space circuit. They made the scene again last month in the epic Apollo 10 lunar landing rehearsal.

Astronaut commander Tom Stafford followed the lead of the Christmas Eve moon-circling Apollo 8 crew by including Bible reading (his favorite passages: Psalms 8; 122; 148, and Isaiah 2:4, KJV). But instead of reading it live from out there, Stafford had the Scripture intoned from the pulpit of his church down here (Seabrook Methodist, near Houston) by the lunar module project manager, Brigadier General Carrol H. Bolender.

“We’re kinda out of town for church today,” Stafford told astronaut Joe Engle at the spacecraft center offhandedly, “so I just copied down a couple of things I thought might be appropriate for him to read.”

But the three space-going churchgoers (Eugene A. Cernan is Catholic, John W. Young attends St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in League City, Texas) spiked any notions of a world-wide TV audience watching their spaceploits that the three are all that heavenly minded. Besides some incredible grammar, the astronauts’ language was spiced with earthy terms and several obscenities.

“Blasphemous!” exclaimed Dr. Larry W. Poland of Miami Bible College in telegrams fired off to President Nixon and the space agency. “A disgrace to the nation.” Poland asked Nixon to hold up all decorations honoring the astronauts until they made public apology for the offending expletives.

As for that rambunctious beagle. Snoopy, he became a masco(nau)t two years ago when officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration started a safety and moralebuilding campaign and chose him as its symbol. The Stafford crew used “Snoopy” and “Charlie Brown” as code names for the lunar and command modules, but the comic strip’s creator, Charles Schulz (a Church of God member), had already had Snoopy make his own moon journey last year, beating “the Americans, the Russians, and that stupid cat next door.”

Another Texas Methodist, Robert L. Short (catapulted to fame and fortune through his The Gospel According to Peanuts and The Parables of Peanuts), sees “theological implications” in practically every frame of the Peanuts strip and considers Snoopy “a little Christ.” After Stafford and Cernan crawled back into the command module and sealed the hatch, “Snoopy” was jettisoned and blasted into orbit around the sun. What Short will make of that absolutely boggles the imagination.

Church Income: A Taxing Business

Growing demand for taxes upon unrelated business income of churches showed up in a progress report issued last month by the influential House Ways and Means Committee. The congressional tax-law drafters said they had tentatively agreed to impose levies upon churches and other groups that operate businesses having nothing to do with their exempt purpose. However, income derived from dividends, interest, rents, and royalties would still be tax free.

The committee’s agreement on exemption curtailment reflects increasing sentiment for its inclusion in the tax-reform bill the legislators currently are drafting. The National Council of Churches and the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have urged an end to church tax exemptions on unrelated business income (see May 23 issue, page 31).

Committee chairman Wilbur D. Mills has voiced hopes that new tax measures could be enacted by the House by early August. But Senate passage might not come until late fall or early 1970.

Among the committee’s tentative decisions was one to close the so-called Clay-Brown loophole wherein a church can borrow money to buy a business, then pay back the money from tax-exempt profits. The change would discourage such transactions by removing the incentive of tax exemption on the profits.

The committee also announced tentative agreement on some changes in income-tax deductions for charitable contributions. The general limit would be raised from 30 to 50 per cent. However, the base to which this percentage would be applied (adjusted gross income) would be reduced by any non-business interest deductions claimed in excess of $5,000.

The unlimited charitable-contribution deduction would be phased out by 1975. Under the present provision, if a person’s contributions plus income-tax payments equal 90 per cent or more of taxable income in eight of the ten preceding years, he is able to deduct contributions in full.

Taking Core Of Its Own

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) may have found a new way to get around restrictive local zoning laws: establish a church.

That, at least, is the way the Long Island chapter of CORE responded recently when zoning officials in Roosevelt, New York, refused to approve an application for a youth center and black library, which they feared might draw disrupters. “Our only alternative,” said local CORE chairman Lamar Cox, “was to set it up as a church.”

And so they bought a Christian Science edifice, named it the Shrine of the Black Madonna, and hired 24-year-old Baptist minister Frank Robinson as pastor. Some 100 persons turned out for an opening service that included African chants and steel drums.

Asked how an organization so often critical of Christianity justified establishing its own church, Cox replied: “There’s nothing wrong with Christianity; white men just don’t follow it.” He said national CORE officials were “enthusiastic” about the move—perhaps as a technique to be copied elsewhere.

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