Winds of Promise

Discontents of youth with the American evangelical establishment run far deeper than many pastors and members of conservative churches think. “Seminar Seventy,” a recent gathering of several hundred young persons under twenty-five, not a few of whom seem destined to become leaders in evangelical Christianity, underscored this mood of dissatisfaction.

The judgment of some of these young people often seems harsh and overstated, and a twenty-sixth birthday may inaugurate a peculiar metamorphosis. But they are willing to bring themselves no less than their elders under sharp criticism for the sake of a more authentic Christian commitment. They deserve to be heard, and much of what they are selling we dare not put aside. Here is what this constructively critical youth wants from American evangelical churches:

1. An aggressive effort to promote the acceptance and equality of the American Negro and to overcome any and all racial discrimination in the churches. Charging their local churches with lack of compassionate concern and love for minority groups, and for those with life-styles other than their own, these young people want an interest in human beings not simply as “souls to be saved” but as “whole persons.”

2. More active involvement by evangelical Christians in socio-political affairs and prompt involvement in the urban crisis. Church members should stand up and be counted in the political arena, it is felt, and be in the forefront of concern for responsible government.

3. An honest look at many churches’ idolatry of nationalism. Although not wholly committed to pacifism as a valid philosophy, young people are concerned over the Church’s uncritical stand on war and peace. They are deeply troubled by massive technological destruction of life and property, and by the fact that since World War II the United States alone has spent one trillion (1,000 billion) dollars for destructive weapons.

4. Adoption of new forms of worship and activity, rather than perpetuation of traditional patterns that no longer appeal to moderns. Many challenge the established “evangelical liturgy” (structure and times of services) and call for flexibility in form and format to make churches more meaningful in community life. Large churches, they think, should decentralize into smaller units for effective outreach, and should experiment with such ministry-to-youth forms as coffeehouses, art, drama, rock music, multi-media approaches, and new worship patterns. The old wine is fine, they feel, if served from new decanters. They complain that in far too many churches the Sunday-evening service continues to be evangelistic year after year even though no one can remember attendance by the unchurched or unsaved. Why not discontinue certain outworn meetings, they ask, so that fresh creative ministries can be established, some perhaps in people’s homes?

5. An end to identifying college and church administrators with economic power structures whose commitment to the status quo inhibits needed changes. Many evangelical youth would rather see religious institutions economically bankrupt than normally insensitive.

6. Involvement of young people in effective policy-making in the churches.

7. An end to judging spiritual commitment by such externals as dress, hair style, and other participation in cultural trends, including rock music. They deplore church officers who consider a lad unspiritual, and unfit to serve as youth leader, because he refuses to cut his hair to middle-class standards.

8.A new spirit with regard to ecumenical or non-ecumenical attitudes. Today’s young people are not anti-ecumenical in the way their parents once were as they opposed transdenominational involvement; at the same time they make no bones about leaving local churches that in their view forfeit the right to be called Christian. Some think that the institutional church, and the evangelical establishment as well, has “had it,” and that only the underground church now remains as a hopeful spiritual instrument. “I know the Church as a corporate community is important,” one such spokesman remarked, “but I cannot for the life of me see that importance in my home church.”

9. A curtailment of future church construction programs, and concentration, rather, on evangelical investment in persons, in order to practice the Christian concepts and priority concerns of helping, sharing, and sacrifice.

10. An earnest wrestling with new problems, even if the solution is not immediately at hand. The “pat answer” approach puts them off, as well as hurried moralizing, sometimes appended to what they call a logical-legal approach. Professing to be sick of “God-words,” they express an openness to “perceptive thinking.” This may, however, bog down in a random mosaic of impressions; in fact, some of these young people are in danger of forfeiting the world of objective truth to mystical alternatives.

11. Bold and, if need be, costly involvement in the revolutionary struggle of our day. Many evangelical young people seem persuaded not only that revolution is inevitable but that it is already upon us, and that the United States is already involved. For them the question is not when and how will revolution come; it is, rather, who will lead what’s already here. They consider Jesus a revolutionary in the sense of demanding radical social change, though not of using violence for forced overthrow of governmental structures.

12. Finally, a reappraisal of “life values.” If black-power groups are revolting for a larger share in the affluent society, not a few young evangelicals reflect the opposite white hippie revolt against affluent mores. They seem to be devoid of, even to disparage, material ambitions (at least at present, before they establish their own families and operational budgets). They want their homes open to persons of other races and life-styles for the sake of both neighbor-love and spiritual witness. They dislike being scorned by parents who are unclear or ambivalent about their own values. At one church-related college, 30 per cent of the students preferred not to go home for Easter holidays; a feeling of multi-alienation was the reason for staying away. Their counterparts on secular campuses traveled to “where the girls are.” Most of the church-related students simply said they have “no place to go”; they covet neither the physical pleasures of unbridled sex nor the pale spiritual values in cold storage back home.

CARL F. H. HENRY

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