Campaign 72: Confrontation for Christ

“Have you been born again?” That question, normally associated with revivals and not with political happenings, has been heard over and over again during political rallies this year. And it will be asked many times—and in many ways—at this summer’s two national conventions.

Most of the candidates have already heard that question. Senator Edmund Muskie, campaigning in West Palm Beach, was confronted by Jess C. Moody’s sixteen-year-old daughter Martha (Moody is a well-known Baptist minister). According to Moody, the senator, who is a Catholic, seemed slightly flabbergasted but replied that he was a church member. He commented that throughout New Hampshire young people asked him the same question.

When someone asked George Wallace about his spiritual state, his answer was anything but vague, reports Moody. Wallace testifies that at the age of thirteen he was born again during a little Methodist church revival. In the December issue of the John Birch Society’s American Opinion Wallace was quoted: “I have accepted Christ as my personal Savior.…”

The Wallace campaign has had an evangelistic atmosphere. One observer reported that Wallace rallies combine “old-time rural evangelism, slick country-music salesmanship, and tried-and-true evangelical oratory.” Baptist preacher George Mangum of Selma, Alabama, travels with the campaigns, opening each rally with a “spiritual conversation with our God about some of the political problems in our country.” And, as in a rural revival, ushers pass buckets through the crowd while Mangum appeals for money.

Many Wallace supporters consider him “a good Christian man.” Before he was shot Wallace had planned to attend Billy Graham’s recent Alabama crusade. A report that Graham agreed to coach Wallace on television communication techniques is untrue. Grady Wilson, associate evangelist, nearly denied entrance into the predominantly black West Indian island of Barbados because of Time magazine’s report, wired the editors that the information was incorrect. “Graham has not spoken to Wallace in years,” said Wilson and he reminded the magazine that Graham stays out of politics. A return letter from Time acknowledged the error, reports Graham headquarters.

Other candidates, too, have been questioned on their salvation, Moody reports. A press aide to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey said the senator, a Congregationalist, attends church services as often as possible. In Washington he worships at Chevy Chase Methodist Church and in Waverly, Minnesota, at the Presbyterian Church of Waverly.

Senator George M. McGovern, son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister who graduated from Houghton College, once studied for the ministry. He attended Garrett Seminary and student-pastored for a year at Diamondhead Lake Methodist Church in a small Illinois town. Although McGovern lacks his father’s belief in evangelical Christianity, according to aides, he has a high regard for the Bible. On his office wall hang his favorite Scripture verses.Luke 9:24; Micah 6:8; Matthew 25:40; John 8:7, and Luke 6:31.

The climax of campaign witnessing efforts by many Christian young people will begin when Democrats and radical demonstrators roll into Miami.

Demo 72 (the name stands for demonstration, not Democrat), led by Richard Bryant of the Miami Baptist Association and Sammy Tippitt, a Chicago street preacher, has plans to inundate beach and street people—and while they’re at it, the year-round Miami-area residents as well—with gospel literature. Bryant estimates that a thousand kids will be handing out material: a street version of the Gospel of John, a small newspaper called “The Daily For Every News” that is designed for both straights and radicals, and a psychedelic street paper Tippitt prepared.

Members of the Christian World Liberation Front, some Chicago street Christians, and various Miami-area church groups are involved. Demo 72 training sessions will be held on the seventh and eighth of July; on Sunday the ninth, a giant-sized beach prayer meeting will start the effort.

Reports from Miami describe shopkeepers and citizens as “uptight and hysterical”: they fear another Chicago. Jack Cassidy, a United Church of Christ minister and one of the leaders of Religious and Community Leaders Concerned (RCLC), verifies these reports. RCLC has a more structured—and not so evangelistic—approach.

Cassidy explains that RCLC will be working with officials as a neutral third party. Inside the convention hall the group will man a “retreat center,” not really a chapel, says Cassidy. However, chaplains will be on call if needed.

While Christians and radicals confront each other on streets and beaches, Jack Day’s singing group, The New Directions, from Riverside Baptist Church in Miami, will be “soft-selling” the Gospel inside the convention hall. The group was chosen as the official entertainment for the convention by Dick Murphy, Democratic national coordinator. This is a first for a church group—or any religious group.

The group is to sing four times a day and be televised at least once a day. Its 139 young people, ranging from thirteen to twenty-five, have been well trained theologically as well as musically, says the director; when they aren’t performing they will be witnessing.

The opportunities for evangelism are great, report those involved. Never before has so large and intensive a witnessing effort been planned for a political convention. But some expect heavy trouble, contrary to what the demonstrators themselves say will happen. Moody comments that the Church has only “danced around the counterculture people and never really confronted them.” The two conventions this summer will offer a good chance to see if the Church can confront and steal some counterculture advocates—as well as uncommitted delegates—for Christ.

Religion In Transit

Canadian Catholic hospitals will close if provincial governments force them to perform therapeutic abortions, warned hospital association president John Connors.

Moody Institute of Science’s Ultimate Adventure, a movie documenting the first successful motorcycle trip across the Sahara, won the National Evangelical Film Foundation’s “Best Film of the Year” award.

TV evangelist Rex Humbard (he’s on 324 stations weekly) is trying to sell $12.5 million in bonds to finance Mackinac College, purchased last year and set to open this fall.

The Canadian Churchman, an Anglican journal, and the United Methodist New World Outlook, a mission magazine, took top honors in the Associated Church Press awards program.

Personalia

Miss Emily V. Gibbes, a United Presbyterian, will succeed retiring Dr. Gerald K. Knopf as head of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Education. She is the first black woman to hold a top NCC position.

The Rev. Max V. Putman, 52, minister of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario, was elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Southern Baptist minister Shirley Carter, 27, the second woman to be ordained by her denomination, and W. Pringle Lee, 52, a Catholic priest until they met in 1970, were wed in Columbia, South Carolina, last month.

World Scene

The 60,000-member Presbyterian Church of England and the 176,000-member Congregational Church in England and Wales voted to proceed with merger this fall, the first union across denominational lines in Britain. Parliament is expected to approve it next month. Dissidents vow to maintain a “continuing Congregational Church.”

For the first time in its 112-year history the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano appeared with a signed editorial (by editor Raimondo Manzini), signaling a major change in policy. The editor will have more freedom in determining political views, while the paper will be the official organ of the Holy See only in release of Vatican news and pontifical documents. Even so, viewpoints can be expected to reflect Vatican thinking.

At its annual meeting the eighty-church Baptist Union of Ireland reported continued growth in membership, a record enrollment at its theological college, and a decision to send missionaries to the continent, commencing with Belgium.

A Vatican art-restoration expert says he is confident Michelangelo’s famous “La Pieta”—badly damaged by a vandal last month—can be restored to near-perfection because of a “perfect” cast made of the masterpiece ten years ago.

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