World Baptists: Touring Tokyo

“Why are we here? Because we have a mission and a ministry of reconciliation through Christ!” With these words, former Baptist World Alliance president Theodore F. Adams welcomed 8,556 Baptists from seventy-six countries to Tokyo’s huge sports palace, the Budokan, for their twelfth world congress.

Why had the delegates come? For the biggest Christian gathering ever held in Tokyo. For hand-shaking, back-slapping fellowship. For a week of addresses, discussions on the Church’s social role, workshops, top music, and evangelistic preaching.

By closing night (July 18), however, many delegates were still asking themselves just what—at least for this conference—that mission and ministry Adams referred to really involved. Despite a profusion of “name” speakers and the best musical talent from scores of world Baptist bodies, the prevailing mood as summed up in the conversation of one official on closing day was: “Almost everyone seems dissatisfied. Not one person has come to me and said, ‘What a great convention!’ ”

A major complaint was the overwhelming (and apparently often insensitive) American dominance of the congress. Nearly 6,000 of the delegates came from the United States. Nearly all speeches, songs, and announcements were in English; only major addresses were translated even into Japanese (1,300 Japanese delegates were present). A Haitian panelist commented: “While I am speaking about world peace, I have no peace in my heart, because I’m speaking in a language that’s not mine.”

Even the youth delegates, who spent much time in their group sessions demanding more representation in BWA decision-making, squabbled for nearly two hours one afternoon over American domination at the youth enclaves.

More significant to many was a seeming lack of seriousness about the conference as a whole. Most speakers stressed unity—“Reconciliation Through Christ” was the official theme, and debate was largely avoided. But in most cases it seemed to be a unity of indifference (or suppression) rather than of deep fellowship.

When Roger Hayden, an English pastor, sought to discuss the resolutions presented for congress action, he was quickly thwarted by deft BWA president William R. Tolbert, Jr., vice-president of Liberia. The resolutions passed without debate. When two panelists seemed to take opposite positions during a discussion of human existence, they quickly ended debate with the mutual remark, “But basically we agree, don’t we?” One delegate complained of the “bureaucratic tone” of speeches; a check of the program showed more than 100 church administrators on the agenda. Several blamed the “shallowness” on an agenda that packed eighty talks on nearly forty topics into only thirteen general sessions.

New World Baptist Head: Bringing Together 31 Million

V. Carney Hargroves sees the presidency of the Baptist World Alliance as a “kind of public-relations post” to bring together the world’s 31 million Baptists. As the new BWA president, the 70-year-old pastor, who has been at Second Baptist Church of Germantown (Philadelphia) since 1932, would like nothing more than to share that unity with Baptists in mainland China. “I think they’re still there,” he said in a post-election interview. “And I’d like most of all to go visit them during these next five years.”

Travel in Communist lands would be nothing new for the small, quiet-mannered American Baptist clergyman and former North American Baptist Fellowship president. He taught in Kiangsi province in the 1920s and was one of the first Americans to visit Russia after Stalin’s death—a trip that he likes to think helped open the way for extensive cultural contacts between East and West. He has traveled in every Iron Curtain land except Bulgaria and Albania.

Looking ahead, Hargroves sees himself as an activist, an “issues man.” One thing he would like to do is bring together the world’s confessional bodies, as well as non-Christian religious leaders to work systematically for world peace. Sensing current trends, he also wants to involve youth more actively in BWA leadership. And he wants to lead Baptists into broader ecumenical cooperation.

“I’m ecumenically minded,” he says. “I believe in cooperation. And I mean cooperation with Catholics, too. Above all, I pledge my efforts to achieve unity among Baptists. This is essential.”

Perhaps a member of the Tokyo host committee struck the root of the problem when he observed that “by far the delegates’ most predominant motive in coming to Tokyo was travel, not spiritual growth—a chance to see Expo 70 and the Far East.” Tokyo merchants recognized this. And one newspaper ad proclaimed a “Welcome to the Baptist and Urologist Conventioners.” Hundreds of delegates left Tokyo in mid-week to continue tours of Asia. Quipped evangelist Billy Graham on closing night: “I’ve never seen so many women delegates shopping as I’ve seen here … I think almost every one of you bought a camera.”

The congress did have lively, probing moments. Several evening sessions included strongly evangelistic addresses sandwiched between colorful pageants depicting Scripture passages and Baptist scenes around the world. Although a few speakers centered on either the social or spiritual role of the Church, most balanced the need to follow both of Christ’s commands—love God, and love man.

For example: Harold Stassen (a former American Baptist Convention president), even while calling for a revision of the United Nations charter to include all nations (including two Viet Nams, two Chinas, and two Germanies), said he prefers to be known as a “Minnesota farm boy who at the age of twelve accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour and tried only to follow that acceptance.” Stassen, a former governor of Minnesota, was the youngest of seven United States drafters and signers of the United Nations Charter twenty-five years ago.

The official congress message urged “men to repentance and faith and the way of the cross,” while official resolutions dealt with social problems ranging from peace and ecology to poverty and racial justice.

Angie Brooks-Randolph, United Nations General Assembly president and an active Baptist laywoman from Nigeria, defended the Church’s historic teaching on salvation, then called for the Church to speed up greatly its work in areas such as seeking peace and fighting poverty.

Another unexpected, lively moment came when the nominating committee chairman presented American Baptist minister V. Carney Hargroves as its choice for BWA president—with the remark that “so great has been the spirit of unity that never in sixty-five years has there been a nomination from the floor.” Immediately another committee member rose from the floor to nominate former Southern Baptist head Herschel H. Hobbs of Oklahoma City.

Most delegates thought the challenge was an expression either of Southern Baptist (by far the largest BWA component) pique over being bypassed in the presidential nomination, or internal maneuvering by conservative and liberal Southern Baptist factions. Hargroves won, 841 to 636 (see story adjoining).

A call for Baptist churches around the world to participate in a world evangelistic effort of reconciliation between 1973 and 1975 was presented by Rubens Lopes of São Paulo, president of the Brazilian Baptist Convention.

For the first time, a commission presented a report on Christian unity, discussing ways Baptists can relate more closely to those of other denominations. Unity among Christians is one of the burning issues of the times, declared George Beasley-Murray of Spurgeon’s College, London.

By far the liveliest session came on the final night, when some 12,000 persons, many non-Baptist, turned out to hear Billy Graham preach on “Youth on the March.” Several Japanese youths (who had initially fought the holding of a BWA congress in Tokyo) protested the evangelist’s silence on Viet Nam by passing out leaflets, chanting briefly, and clapping their hands.

Their efforts were largely ineffective, however, as Graham preached faith in Christ as youth’s only genuine answer. He decided “on the spot” to issue an invitation; several hundred persons came forward to make decisions for Christ.

The very aliveness of the final night contrasted sharply, in the minds of not a few delegates, with the business-as-usual tone of most other sessions. Early in the week, BWA General Secretary Robert S. Denny had said: “Eight thousand of us are in Tokyo, spending $12 million.… This is good. Let no one say, ‘We should have stayed home and given money to something else.’ We would not have given the money.”

By week’s end, however, it was a point to ponder.

JAMES L. HUFFMAN

25 Years Later: ‘No More Hiroshimas!’

Twenty-five years after he crawled from the rubble of his office at a Christian girls’ college in Hiroshima, Japan, Takuo Matsumoto, college president, Bible translator, and Methodist minister, visited the United States with five other survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to observe the anniversary of the blasts—August 6 and 9. Speaking in Portland, Oregon, last month, his skin still discolored by radiation from history’s first atom bomb explosion, he said he bears no grudges against the United States.

Matsumoto, now 82, feels his life was saved through a series of miracles. He was knocked unconscious by the blast. After about an hour, he relates, he crawled out of the wreckage of his office “struggling like a ghost out of hell.” Minutes later the collapsed building burned to ashes. He said 352 students and eighteen teachers died, and his wife was killed also.

After dragging eight girls out of the wreckage of the chapel, he kept searching for more. Many were blown to bits; a few were blinded by the flash. He later came to the United States for treatment of radiation sickness.

Despite his age, Matsumoto is director of the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima. Reared and educated in Japan, he also studied at Ohio Wesleyan University, Drew Seminary, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chicago. He translated the New Testament from Greek into Japanese seventeen years ago; 40 million copies have been distributed in Japan. He is now helping with another translation into commonly spoken Japanese.

Matsumoto planned to see President Nixon August 6 and give him a message from the mayor of rebuilt Hiroshima along with a piece of polished black coral with a pearl in the middle crafted by A-bomb survivors.

“I got a Christian education in the United States. I owe so much to America,” he said in an interview. “It taught us Christian love, cooperation, patience, forgiveness. My father was converted to Christianity by an American missionary, and we learned from America what Christian love means.”

But declaring that war is “utterly childish,” Matsumoto added that it is hard for him to explain to non-Christian friends the apparent contradiction of the United States sending “tens of thousands of soldiers to destroy people.”

His mission in this country is “not to mull over tragedies but to look for ways to build a new world on peace and love.” He also said he hopes countries possessing nuclear weapons will dispose of them. “They have slaughtered enough innocent people,” he asserted. “Let us have no more Hiroshimas!”

WATFORD REED

Madalyn’s Manifesto

About forty men and women bent over green-checkered tablecloths drawing up a manifesto demanding historical recognition, acceptance as individuals, and an end to discrimination.

A task force of Negro or Mexican-American churchmen preparing demands for their denominational convention? Hardly. Rather, businessmen, merchants, housewives, educators, and farmers were attending the nation’s first state convention of atheists in Austin, Texas.

Described by mogul Madalyn Murray O’Hair as the “avant-garde of atheism,” the group adopted the “American Atheists’ Manifesto” in the only open session of the two-day meeting July 25–26. Newsmen were pledged not to identify participants.

Most sessions were devoted to problems atheists face, like being refused passports because they omit “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Mrs. O’Hair said conventions eventually will be held in every state, and urged participants to identify themselves to their families, employers, and employees.

Although the meeting was much smaller than the 150 to 500 persons anticipated, Mrs. O’Hair assured the convention that they represented 4 million atheists in Texas, based on an estimate that 40 per cent of the American population does not attend church. The manifesto, declaring reason as the supreme authority, will serve as a religious philosophy to gain tax-exempt status for the farcical Poor Richard’s Universal Life Church.

MARQUITA MOSS

Heresy At Concordia? A Matter Of Interpretation

Although Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president Jacob A. O. Preus intimated way last February (see March 27 issue, page 33) that he would move against liberal professors in the denomination’s seminaries, the declared “investigation” only began to stir up a hornet’s nest in recent weeks.

Amid charges, countercharges, and denials, several things appeared relatively certain early this month: (1) The probe will be carried out this fall and will involve perhaps a dozen faculty members who teach biblical exegesis at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis; (2) Concordia president John H. Tietjen denies that his staff teaches anything contrary to Missouri Synod doctrine.

Whether Tietjen actually “welcomes” the investigation, as he told reporters, is doubtful, however. More realistically, he is whistling boldly, asserting that “It is not Lutheran to expect uniformity in interpretation of Scripture passages or agreement on the nature and authority of biblical texts.…”

Preus, who carefully avoids the epithet “heresy trials” when referring to the probe (it could result in the expulsion of faculty considered heretical), sees his constitutional responsibility for the “doctrine and life” of the church as a mandate for the action. He doubtless would prefer not to be the hatchet man, but pressure from the theological right leaves him almost no room in which to maneuver.

Said Preus in an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “The use of the historical-critical method, so-called, in dealing with the Bible is the root of the problem and needs to be settled and clarified. … The very fact that [it often leads] to the rejection of plenary and verbal inspiration as though it were a scientific impossibility is sufficient reason for investigating its application in our seminaries.…”

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.