Can God Still Be Found in Any Public Schools?

Yes, but you have to look hard, say Christians who teach in them.

The nation’s public schools are dens of secular humanism, say many conservative preachers. But just how true is that? Are there any local public school districts where Christian values are still taught?

The Christian Educators Association is an organization of Christians who teach in public schools. Recently they gathered for a convention in Roseville, Minnesota, and interviews showed that many Christian teachers do indeed have a difficult time conveying any of their Christian beliefs. Others, however, find the door wide open. This is truer, as might be expected, in rural school districts. But one teacher, working in a poor Chicago school, finds parents very eager to have him instill Christian values during after-school meetings with troubled students.

In short, many Christian teachers find themselves boxed in by court rulings on church and state separation. But since school districts are controlled locally, prevailing attitudes apply, and the situation is not the same in all parts of the country.

Maybritt Urback is an elementary school teacher from suburban Minneapolis, and she didn’t mince words about the attitude in her district. “I don’t feel comfortable anymore in my school,” she confessed. “A moral climate worse than 10 or 15 years ago exists.” To drive this feeling home, she mentioned how not long ago she asked her class of second graders, “If you had one wish of what you’d like to do with your life, what would it be?” A seven-year-old boy said he wanted to be a doctor so he could look at all the nude girls. He was drawing pictures of nude girls and showing them to other little boys in the classroom. Urback told the boy’s mother, and found out he’d been watching sexually explicit cable television programs. The mother’s response was that she wanted her children exposed to all things in this world so they would grow up with a broad mind. “It was ridiculous,” Urback added. “This is what you spend your day fighting.”

Other drawbacks were mentioned by Jeff and Carol Howard, speech therapists for a number of schools in and around Sacramento, California. Describing a sort of paranoia climate that Christian teachers labor in, they pointed out, “Anything done in school that smacks of a religious overtone is hush-hush. If a child shares a religious involvement that he or she had over the weekend, the child is silenced in favor of little Johnny who attended a football game and wants to talk about it.”

Judy Young, an elementary school teacher from LaPointe, California, said something similar. She once suggested to her principal that their school could do a lot more with death education—helping children better understand death and dying. The principal was afraid death education might touch on matters of religion, so he suggested they leave it alone.

Such irritations grow into mature frustrations for these and other teachers when they find they cannot effect positive changes in their schools. Maybritt Urback, for instance, told about a third-grade boy who would come to school with cigarettes and Playboy magazines. This boy, whose arms had bums from having to iron his own clothes, would be frisked by the school principal each morning. Urback assessed the boy’s home situation and told the school administration, “I want a social worker on this case.” The administration said, no, it didn’t want to get involved. “Pass the boy on to the next grade, and he’ll be out of your hair next year,” they said. When the boy got to fifth grade, he was busted for marijuana; a couple of years later he wound up in a drug rehabilitation center. “It’s happened like that over and over again,” added Urback. “It upsets me every time.”

Robert L. Simonds, president of the Christian Educators Association, told of four teachers who, a short time before the convention, lost their jobs for refusing to belong to the National Education Association (NEA), an umbrella organization for local teacher unions. (Actually, 11 teachers were fired May 3 in Fremont, California, for refusing to join the local NEA affiliate.) Most conservative Christians would differ markedly with the goals of the NEA. A bill now before the California legislature would require all Los Angeles public school teachers to pay NEA dues whether they belong or not.

Jean Ekblad, an elementary school teacher from a small Wisconsin town, received a written directive last spring forbidding the use of the Bible in class. She had shared Scripture at Christmas and Easter and had featured a display of pictures depicting the Easter story. When her principal saw the pictures, he told her to take them down because it was illegal and parents would be offended.

Ekblad contested, saying that legally she had the right to use the Bible to supplement the study of literature and history in her classroom, and she produced legal documents to support her position. The principal argued, called her into his office, and said he understood the law to allow “no sectarian teaching in the classroom.” The superintendent of schools came angrily into the office and said to Ekblad, “You realize this borders on insubordination. I don’t want to hear about it again.” Ekblad felt crushed. “It’s almost impossible for me to share my faith,” she added.

But how impossible is it for other teachers to share Christ and integrate Scripture into classroom studies? To talk with some, you would think all the talk about humanism and suppression of Christian ideas is exaggerated.

Don Enns, for instance, a teacher from a small town in central California, feels no pressure whatsoever in living an open daily testimony in his school. “I use holidays to witness,” said Enns. “I let students know it’s not ‘winter break’; it’s ‘Christmas vacation.’ It’s not ‘spring break’; it’s ‘Easter vacation.’ ” His school has a Christian principal and a number of Christian teachers.

Enns also uses current events to bring the Bible into class. Just talking about the nation of Israel, he pointed out, has been a touchstone. “I locate it on the map,” he said, “and ask who knows where the name Israel comes from.” Then he turns to the Bible. In his 20 years of teaching, no one has ever complained.

Jewel Dodson, a sixth and seventh grade teacher also from rural California, claimed, “I’ve never had a bit of criticism for using the Bible in my teaching. I think it’s because parents appreciate Christian values being taught to their children.” An example of a routine exercise in Dodson’s classes would include a recent art project. Students were learning to print on scrolls, and verses from Proverbs were used as subject matter. The best scrolls were posted in front of the room. Dodson then used the Proverbs later in the week in reading, math, and social studies classes to show how they fit into other parts of life.

Both Dodson and Enns feel free to counsel children in their schools, even to lead them to Christ if the situation arises. Other teachers share this kind of liberty too.

For instance, Marylyn Bungert, a high school teacher in an ethnic suburb of Chicago, told about how she witnessed to a girl who, sobbing in class, had been beaten up by her father. “I took her into my office and told her I knew how bad her situation was, but that God really cared for her and so did I.” She spent time with the girl and has noticed a marked improvement in the student’s attitude. Bungert’s husband also teaches in the school and has similar stories. “We believe that if the Lord leads, we should share our testimonies in class,” Mrs. Bungert added.

Though the freedoms Enns, Dodson, and Bungert experience may be far greater than is common, some teachers appear to be making their own religious liberties, thereby enduring in their tight systems,

Mark Hennebach, for instance, a tall, bearded professorial type, who lives and teaches junior high school in a poor section of Chicago, said, “I don’t even try to evangelize kids during class hours. But I will call parents of my most troublesome students and say, ‘Your child reminds me a lot of myself when I was that age: always lying and getting into trouble. I’d like to keep your child after school for one hour to tell him about Jesus Christ.’ Mothers will say, ‘How many days would you like to keep him?’ ” Hennebach has led more than 20 students to the Lord through witnessing outside of class hours.

Several teacher’s, including Hennebach, talked about successsfully ministering through Bible clubs after school. Even Jean Ekblad, though threatened with dismissal, started one. Ekblad admitted, “It got to where I was saying, ‘I’ve got to express myself.’ Finally, a church provided facilities for a Bible club, and it gave me the freedom to win some of these kids to the Lord.”

Working within the system means, for these teachers, constantly girding up to do what they feel is right, even when critical voices and faces permeate the atmosphere. Judy Young, for instance, featured in her classroom a cross silhouetted against a sunset for Easter last year. A parent who had been critical, came in one day, unannounced. Young’s first thought was to shelve the project immediately. “But then,” said Young, “I thought, ‘No, I don’t want her to think she’s scaring me. I want to have courage and see if God will bless it.’ ” Young did not touch the display, and the parent didn’t say a word.

Robert Simonds said, “Most Christian teachers are teaching solid moral values and using their Bibles and testimonies whenever possible. Many think that’s true everywhere. But it isn’t. Think of all the teachers who aren’t Christians. New teachers especially are indoctrinated in humanism, and they are simply conveying what they’ve been taught—that there is no God, no absolutes, no right, no wrong.

“Humanism is very subtle,” Simonds added. “And most teachers are not even aware they are teaching it. In any number of ways, it affects every classroom in America.”

White House Files Prolife Court Brief

The Reaggn administration has added its considerable weight to the abortion debate by suggesting that the Supreme Court might have been wrong in 1973 when it struck down all state laws restricting abortions.

The Justice Department all but asked the high court to overturn that controversial decision in the Roe v. Wade case. The Reagan administration lawyers made their arguments in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late in July with the Court as it again prepared to take up the volatile abortion issue. Early in the summer the Court agreed to rule on the constitutionality of new abortion laws passed in Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia. Its decision will come next year.

While the administration’s brief did not ask the Court to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, it did ask the justices to expand the authority of states and local governments to restrict abortions, and it was critical of activism in the federal courts. “Vesting the courts with broad authority to second-guess legislative judgments is inherently antidemocratic,” the brief said. It noted that the Constitution does not mention the word abortion, and it argued that constitutional rights to abortion were based on “a combination of shadows.”

The abortion laws the court will consider all place restrictions on abortion, ranging from mandatory hospitalization to a 24-hour waiting period and counseling by a physician about the fetus’s development. The Court is expected to focus primarily on these impediments without considering larger issues such as the unborn child’s right to exist. Attorneys believe, however, that the Court’s decision could signal a change in course from the past decade’s progress toward unrestrained access to abortion at any stage.

Because two U.S. circuit courts of appeals reached conflicting decisions on the issue of mandatory hospitalization, the Supreme Court agreed to accept the cases and settle the discrepancy. In Missouri, the court ruled that required hospitalization is unconstitutional. But in Ohio, a different appeals court retained a hospitalization requirement even though it struck down all other provisions of an ordinance passed by the Akron City Council (the ordinance does not apply elsewhere in Ohio).

The Virginia case involves a physician who is appealing his conviction for violating a mandatory hospitalization requirement in that state. Because the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling allows states to restrict abortions after the first three months of pregnancy, prolife legislators have required hospitalization to guarantee the woman’s safety and to limit the number of abortions.

In its Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court decided that a woman’s right to privacy outweighed all other considerations during the first three months of pregnancy, and the decision to abort was affirmed to be between a woman and her physician, with no outside interference.

But the Court also ruled that during later months of pregnancy, state legislatures could impose restrictions based on a “compelling interest” in the mother’s health, as long as those restrictions would not “unduly burden” the woman. Because interpretations of “health” have been drawn very broadly, to include mental and emotional well-being, the practical effect of Roe v. Wade has been to enable women to obtain abortions at any stage in pregnancy.

The case involving the Akron city ordinance could prove to be the most significant, because Ohio lawyers are pressing for far-reaching considerations by the Court. Akron city attorney Robert D. Pritt has asked whether state regulation of abortion might be allowed even during the first trimester. If the Court addresses this question, it could take the opportunity to soften its earlier ruling about the paramount importance of a woman’s right to privacy.

Norman Bendroth of Christian Action Council (an evangelical prolife group) said, “The Court has its finger to the political winds. Given the spirit of this administration and Congress, they may well back down on stands taken in the past.”

Other questions presented to the Supreme Court by the city of Akron involve regulations passed by the city council in 1978. All of the following were struck down by the circuit court of appeals before taking effect because of a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Akron Center for Reproductive Health (an abortion facility):

• Parental or court consent for girls under 15 who seek an abortion.

• A waiting period of 24 hours before an abortion is performed, except in the case of a medical emergency.

• A required counseling session in which a physician tells his patient about risks and techniques of abortion.

• A requirement that the doctor tell the woman about details of fetal development.

Supporters of these types of regulation believe their value lies in providing a woman with a chance to weigh her decision more carefully. Counseling sessions would also provide information about alternatives such as adoption.

Requiring doctors to describe physical characteristics of the developing fetus to a woman seeking an abortion has consistently been struck down in the courts, but prolife attorneys say that without this, informed consent is a misnomer. Abortion advocates say the information is medically irrelevant and could serve to pressure the woman not to abort. Proabortion lawyers will encourage the Court to stand on precedent.

Thomas J. Marzen, chief counsel for Americans United for Life, anticipates a mixed decision from the Supreme Court, which will begin hearing oral arguments this fall. Overall, he is optimistic: “We have nothing to lose by going to the Supreme Court. The other side has everything to lose.” Marzen describes the tactics used by prolife lawyers as “whittling away at the problem areas” in the Roe v. Wade decision, rather than launching a frontal assault on it. His organization is preparing friend-of-the-court briefs on each of the cases.

The only Supreme Court consideration of abortion restrictions since Roe v. Wade came in 1976, when it ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth that requiring consent of anyone besides the pregnant woman, such as husband or parent, is unconstitutional.

Both sides will watch the Court closely for indications of how it might rule in a more far-reaching consideration of abortion.

Nowhere in its consideration of abortion has the high court examined the right to life of the unborn child, nor has it considered when personhood begins. This is why prolife activists are focusing so intently on the passage by Congress of either a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution or a Human Life Bill stating that life begins at conception. If either measure were passed, prolife lawyers could then challenge abortion clinics and physicians in court with violating the unborn baby’s Fourteenth Amendment rights, which include a guarantee that “no state shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

BETH SPRING

Peace Academy Bill Introduced In Congress

The fresh interest in nuclear disarmament around the world has sparked an unusual bill in Congress. With evangelical Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oreg.) as a prime sponsor, legislation to establish a federally funded U.S. Peace Academy has gained the support of 53 senators and more than 100 representatives.

Making a science as well as an art out of negotiating peaceful solutions to conflict is an idea as old as George Washington, and its supporters in the capital hope its time finally has arrived.

John Dellenback, president of the Christian College Coalition, served on a nine-member commission that recommended establishing the academy using tax revenues. “It holds out the opportunity to do research, education, and training in a field where there is a lot of knowledge, but none of it has been marshalled into a coherent body of information,” Dellenback said.

Specific research tasks the academy might undertake include the design of effective negotiating procedures, standard cease-fire agreements, and checklists for mediation. It would not be empowered to set policy or intervene in international disputes.

The academy’s purpose would be symbolic as well as practical, according to Dellenback. “It is important that the world see that the United States is really serious about walking every possible road to achieve the resolution of conflict without violence.”

Support in the Senate for the legislation crosses political boundaries, and the academy is seen as complementing, not opposing, defense department activities. Conservative senator Roger W. Jepsen (R-Iowa) testified in favor of the academy, saying, “If this added training to our future negotiators prevents even one small war that otherwise would have started, the Peace Academy will rank among the best expenditures ever made by this government.”

One commission member, the late Congressman John Ashbrook of Ohio, opposed the report’s recommendation to establish the academy. He challenged the basic premise by questioning “whether peace research is now or ever will be a coherent and rigorous academic discipline.” Peace studies have not proven to be more than “a passing fad,” he said.

Ashbrook also questioned whether the new entity would be free enough from governmental control to be willing to “bite the hand that feeds it” if necessary. Another concern was whether the academy would become a roosting place for liberal faculty members “who believe that the way to make peace … is to grovel.”

Two efforts similar to the proposed academy currently operate at international levels. One is run in conjunction with the United Nations and another is just getting under way in Costa Rica. Among U.S. schools, peace studies are offered at about 80 colleges and universities as well as at specialty schools such as Tuft’s University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Supporters of the academy trace its beginning to a 1783 circular from George Washington, which said “there can be little doubt but Congress will recommend a proper peace establishment for the United States.”

Numerous variations on the present theme have been introduced in Congress throughout the past two centuries with no concrete results. Between 1935 and 1976, more than 140 bills to establish a peace agency of some sort were introduced.

Hatfield, Randolph, and Sen. Spark Matsunaga (D-Hawaii) sponsored a bill in 1977, establishing the commission that recommended the present legislation. The commissioners visited the three military academies (West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy), and won the endorsement of Gen. Andrew J. Goodpastor, the former superintendent of West Point, who confirmed that these schools do not offer systematic training in negotiation procedures.

The proposed legislation, S. 1889, authorizes Congress to appropriate $15 million for buildings and grounds, as well as start-up funds of $6 million for fiscal 1983 and $10 million for fiscal 1984. The academy would most likely be housed by a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

Religious community support has come from the American Jewish Committee, the three historic peace churches (Mennonite, Quaker, and Brethren), United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Catholic Charities, and United Methodists.

Dellenback, whose Christian College Coalition represents more than 60 evangelical liberal arts colleges across the country, hopes that evangelical support will materialize as well. He sees the academy as “a stride toward making the world the kind of place Christ would have it be. It’s one more part of the search for peace.”

Reader’S Digest Attacks World Church Council

Though no stranger to criticism, the World Council of Churches (WCC) has issued a five-page, paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal of an August Reader’s Digest article that asks, “Which master is the World Council of Churches serving … Karl Marx or Jesus Christ?”

It is not the first time the Digest, which prefers political conservatism, has attacked the WCC. The magazine published a similar critique in 1971. Then, as now, the wcc’s antiracism grants were at the center of the storm.

The recent Digest article, written by roving editor Joseph A. Harriss, holds that the WCC reflects a “militant anti-Western mood,” is sour on capitalism, and looks as “much to Marxism as to Christianity” to solve the world’s woes.

Harriss notes that the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism in 1978 gave $85,000 to Marxist guerrillas fighting in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). “At the time of the grant, the [guerrillas] had murdered 207 white civilians and 1,712 blacks, and only weeks before had slaughtered nine white missionaries and their children,” writes Harriss.

The WCC replies that it gives away $85 million annually, with $66 million going for refugee, relief, and development work. It denies that there has ever been any evidence that the grant to Zimbabwe was used for purchase of weapons or that the guerrillas were responsible for the murder of the missionaries.

The Digest laments what it considers the Third World bias of the WCC, adding that only 28 of 301 member denominations are American. What the Digest does not mention, the WCC rejoins, is that the U.S.—with its 28 member denominations—has more churches than any other single country in the world. Harriss sees WCC general secretary Philip Potter, a West Indian clergyman, as “incarnate” of the council’s Third World viewpoint. “He is fond of citing Marxist writers,” Harriss wrote.

The WCC replies that Potter’s “knowledge of literature and history is well known, and the book he knows the most about is the Bible.” Potter is said to have taken his motto from John Wesley: to “be a man of one book.” Potter’s quotations from Marxist sources should be understood in a biblical context, according to the WCC.

The Digest quotes another WCC official, Emilio Castro, as saying, “The philosophical basis of capitalism is evil, totally contrary to the gospel.”

“What is not quoted,” according to the WCC, “is Pastor Castro’s much repeated conviction that all systems, capitalist or socialist, are equally under the judgment of God and in need of repentance.”

The Digest also complains that no WCC funds go to dissident groups in the Soviet Union, where Lithuanians, Ukranians, Moslems, and evangelical Christians are repressed. The WCC answers that it cannot publicly criticize such countries, because WCC members in the Soviet Union may consequently be harmed.

Ten U.S. denominational leaders denounced the Digest article in a statement released by the WCC. The denominations they represent—all members of the WCC—include the Episcopal church, United Methodist church, United Presbyterian church, and the Lutheran Church in America.

The statement said: “We welcome fair and honest criticism. But this article presents a biased and unfairly negative view of the World Council, unsubstantiated by facts and contrary to the realities we have personally experienced.”

Actually, the WCC’s antiracism grants have attracted criticism from many quarters, including some inside the council itself. A 1979 quarrel over the aid to Zimbabwe resulted in the dismissal of the head of the council’s Faith and Order Commission.

That official represented council members who believed strongly in theological study independent of social action projects. But the WCC was seen as favoring an approach that would tie theological study to what the New York Times called “an overriding commitment to social justice programs.”

The Times, not known as a defender of orthodox Christianity, also noted that some council members feared their leaders were out of touch with the grassroots church. “Though the recent expansion of the council has taken place most rapidly in the developing nations, where liberation issues are hottest, most churches there are decidedly evangelical, with an overriding concern for personal faith,” the Times reported.

The WCC’s shift to a predominantly socio-political interpretation of salvation began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Conferees at the 1973 assembly in Bangkok declared that “we see the struggle for economic justice, political freedom and cultural renewal as elements in the total liberation of the world through the mission of God.”

Evangelical Women Criticize The Church’S ‘Medieval Theology’

Imagine a Communion service in which women lead, preach, and serve. Above the altar hangs a banner, “How happy is she who has had faith that the Lord’s promise would be fulfilled (Luke 1:45).” Loaves of bread and pitchers of grape juice are arrayed on the Communion table, in back of which are seated several women pastors.

This was the scene at the fifth Evangelical Women’s Caucus (EWC) conference, July 21 to 24 in Seattle, Washington, where 700 men and women met to address the concerns of the Christian feminist.

Those opposed to or unsure of the traditional conservative Christian view of women had plenty of food for thought coming from workshops on everything from feminist theology to two-career marriages. Like a woman who sported a black and yellow “Jesus is a feminist” button, delegates did not see God as opposing women in leadership, against women balancing careers and children, nor any other of the gains Christian feminists have been working toward since the EWC began in 1974 as an offshoot of Evangelicals for Social Action.

Women’s ordination was also covered. “We live today with the legacy of medieval theology that bars women from full participation in the church,” said Michigan author Patricia Gundry. The theology that woman is not created in the image of God was incorporated into medieval canon law, she told delegates. “We can claim our birthright although some want to tell us we are illegitimate children,” she added.

The condition of ordained women was summarized at one session by a blackboard sketch of a woman walking on water. Underneath were the words “But can she preach?”

“Women pastors are judged a lot more on their appearance than men are,” said Donna Frey DeCou, a United Presbyterian minister in the Seattle area. “People have the sexual-imagery-in-the-pulpit problem. You have to have a gentleness, but a thick armor.” “I always feel I have to justify my sense of God’s call to the ministry 20 times more than a man does,” a conferee told her.

The Bible’s position on women in passages such as 1 Timothy 2:11–15, which some interpret to forbid women to teach men, was covered in several workshops. United Presbyterian minister Aida Besancon Spencer, also a New Testament professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, said the I Timothy passage actually favors women as pastors. In her “Biblical inerrancy and Christian feminism” workshop, she suggested the passage applied solely to the women at Ephesus, where Timothy was stationed when Paul wrote his letter.

Other passages in both letters to Timothy imply that the prohibition against women teaching was directed only against the women apostates plaguing the Ephesian church, not against all Christian women everywhere teaching anything, Spencer said. Otherwise, Paul would have restrained other New Testament women mentioned in leadership: Priscilla, Phoebe, and others.

The stance that God does not speak more authoritatively through men than he does women because male and female are one in Christ was adopted by speakers who said the church desperately needs women in leadership.

“The church today is so task oriented because of the male focus on work rather than relationships,” stated Marchiene Vroon Reinstra, who pastors a Presbyterian church near Holland, Michigan. “Men thought up the ‘lines of authority’ system. Men think things must be either/or; women think in both/and. Women are more inclusive; they could accept both sides of the infant baptism question, for example.”

Women at the conference did not fit the stereotype of the strident feminist. They ranged from college-age to midsixties; were mostly white and middle-class with the exception of a handful of black women, a slightly larger group of Japanese-American women, and a sprinkling of men.

“There are quite a number of men who support this,” said blind singer Ken Medema, who composed music especially for the conference. Since he has taken a stand with Christian feminists in the past five years, invitations for him to appear at other Christian gatherings have decreased, he said, and Christians still send disapproving mail to his San Francisco apartment.

Although the Bible doesn’t discriminate against women, many churches do, conferees agreed. Christian businesswomen especially feel alienated from a church that doesn’t understand why they don’t stay home or stick to more traditional female occupations.

“As women rise higher and higher in the corporate structure, they feel more and more isolated,” said a woman serving as a county commissioner in Washington State. “It’s even worse for the Christian businesswoman. Traditional Christian women’s groups don’t fill her needs.

“She also must choose whether she can risk losing friends. The higher she rises, the fewer people there are who understand her. How many men have to make that choice?”

JULIA DUIN

Personalia

E. Bailey Marks has been named vice-president for international ministries of Campus Crusade for Christ. Marks was director of Campus Crusade’s work in Asia and the South Pacific for 13 years. The organization, based in Arrowhead Springs, California, has about 16,000 staff members.

Grady C. Cothen, 61, plans to retire as president of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board on March 1, 1984. Cothen said the move is due to health. He has been with the Sunday School Board since 1975.

Robert K. Johnston will become vice-president and dean of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. He succeeds Glen P. Anderson. Johnston has been a professor of religion at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green since 1974.

Liberal Seminary Training In Denmark Challenged

The Lutheran Church of Denmark trains its pastors at the divinity schools attached to the Universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus. The denomination claims 94 percent of the population as its members. Recently their liberal teaching has been challenged by an association founded in 1967 with the purpose of providing a theological alternative to students. This small effort has grown gradually, and now 15 percent of the faculty’s students are also taking the alternative courses.

Back in the mid-1950s, a group of students organized a movement of prayer meetings and Bible study. Basic to their activities was an unshakable confidence in the Bible as the wholly inspired, authentic revelation of God, as well as a vital personal knowledge of Christ as Savior. While the official student Christian movement in Denmark was declining in numbers and influence, this new group filled the void. Out of it has come the present movement toward an independent theological seminary.

Tension between revival movements and church theological faculties is nothing new in Scandinavia, but in Denmark it has not previously intruded on the inner workings of the church. For example, the Inner Mission of the Danish Church, the main channel of past pietistic faith, has always serenely accepted in its circles the pastors trained in the two official faculties.

In Norway, on the other hand, the pietistic movement founded the Free Theological Faculty in 1908. Over the years, this much more conservative seminary has attracted an increasing majority of students away from the official faculty at the University of Oslo. Today over 80 percent of all Lutheran pastors are trained here, and some of the country’s leading bishops are graduates. The result is a distinctly evangelical strain within the Norwegian church. A number of its pastors, led by some bishops, have insisted on upholding the Lausanne covenant of 1974 in the face of the ecumenical emphasis emanating from Geneva.

It is possible that the alternative faculty at Aarhus may emerge to fill a similar role within the framework of the Danish Lutheran church.

ROBERT P. EVANS

Deaths

Dora (Mrs. J. Hartwell) Hillman, 77, a patron of Pittsburgh evangelical causes, founder of the Ligonier Valley Study Center, and a Young Life board member; July 20, in Greenwich, Connecticut, of cancer.

J. B. Phillips, 75, British pioneer translator of the New Testament into contemporary English (The New Testament in Modern English), author of Your God Is Too Small and The Ring of Truth; July 21, of natural causes.

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