Page 5801 – Christianity Today (2024)

If a liberal arts education is correctly defined, no defense is needed; if it is not, no defense is possible. The term “liberal arts,” despite all its contemporary ambiguities and misinterpretations, comes from a simple Latin phrase: artes liberales, meaning work (or activity) befitting free men. Unless, therefore, no man is in any measure free, or, being free, is incompatible with any form of activity—premises that few, I think, will affirm—then the only task remaining is one of definition, not defense.

At once, however, we run into ethical and social tensions generated by the difference between a pagan (classical) conception of the inequality of men (basically, some free and some enslaved) and the Judeo-Christian view that all men and women are “created equal” in the sight of God, however feebly that essentially theological view may operate in modern Western democracy. It is inherently offensive to us to view any kind of work as befitting only one class of persons, some “menial” (originally meaning simply that pertaining to the household), and some appropriate to a higher “caste.” All work, we say, is dignified (dignity, remember, once had the meaning of “worth, merit, rank, authority, power”); “to work is to pray,” and similar pieties. And we wrestle with Ruskin’s question in Sesame and Lilies: “Which of us … is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest—and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?”

In short, from the first step we confront the difficulty of making compatible with our humane, democratic social theories an educational concept deriving from the highly stratified society of classical paganism. Free men were to be prepared for one kind of life, slaves for another, and the study of the liberal arts was for the former. For the latter, education was at most on-the-spot training in a vocation, a skill, engaged in so that free men might have the leisure to pursue their own creative activities.

So we have, in large measure, redefined a liberal arts education to make it fit our social and ethical theories, and to make it compatible with our avowed belief in the dignity of all work. That is, we have defined it as a vocation, a means of making a living, putting it alongside welding, or engineering, or accounting, or computer programming. Thus defined, the concept is not possible to defend, on the simple ground that it does not work. One does not get paid simply for being “liberally educated.” Not that accountants, welders, engineers, and computer programmers, as individuals, may not be liberally educated, nor that their work may not be enhanced by a liberal education: they often are, and their work often is. But a liberal education is not that “skill” for which employers pay wages.

The office of every dean of a liberal arts college—surely mine—is the setting for a recurrent scene: concerned parents, sometimes accompanied by offspring, asking the question: “My son (or daughter) has just earned the A.B. degree with a major in history (or philosophy, or art history, or literature); where does he go now to get his job? We’ve put a lot of money into his education, and we want to know what he is trained to do.”

The theoretically correct but uncomforting answer is that the student has been cheated if the college, while pretending to provide him with a liberal education, has done no more than to train him for a job. Dissatisfaction with this reply, however, is not always the result of faulty parental understanding. Often the unhappy fact is that four years in a liberal arts college have provided neither a marketable vocation nor a liberal education. Liberal arts colleges today suffer from their own identity crisis, and it is not surprising that in the past few years the general public has become increasingly disenchanted with them. The sight of raging, unkempt, vandalizing college students in the late sixties and early seventies led many to doubt whether the characteristics of a liberally educated person—surely including civility, ethical maturity, literacy, and rationality—were in fact being fostered on the campuses of the nation. Public disillusionment has produced a severe decline in public moral and financial support of higher education, and the need is urgent for almost all liberal arts colleges to reassess what they are doing.

We seem to have lost our way, and when one is in that condition it is wise to retrace his steps. Indeed, to do so in the sense of studying the past in order to learn its lessons and avoid repeating its mistakes is a basic objective of a liberal education, however out of fashion it may be in a day that sees “relevance” only in the contemporary. It has been said that to try to confront the future without a knowledge of the past is like trying to live one’s memory, and many contemporary distortions of the liberal arts concept are the product of such amnesia. Countless books over the centuries have examined the nature of a liberal education, and these lines can do no more than glance at a few of the major strands of thought.

As we have noted, the basic concept of a liberal education derives (in the Western world) from classical origins; and we have noted that the term “free” in Athens, Alexandria, and Rome meant the condition of not being a slave—the condition, that is, of not being forced to do any work one does not choose to do. The free man is simply one who can choose his own work, his own creative activity, and one who has the leisure, means, and opportunity to receive an education befitting his station. All his “work,” therefore, may be called “art” in the sense Santayana meant when he defined that word as embracing everything one wants to do when he does not have to do something else. It could as well be chemical research as architecture; as well mathematics as learning to play a musical instrument; as well geology as painting a picture. Only servile labor—work one is forced by master or circ*mstance to do—is excluded as “unbefitting,” or beneath the dignity (rank, worth, merit) of, a free man.

The slave, on the other hand, was trained to perform those burdensome chores imposed by the exigencies of this life—making and mending clothes, raising crops, making pots and pans, cleaning the streets, cutting hair, rowing boats, copying documents, and the like. Roughly, one was the intellectual life and one was the physical life, though the lines overlapped. From the earliest times, however, such roles as those of ruler, warrior, priest, and creative artist were considered inherently to befit the free man. Others were “workers.” Categorized and rigidified, such roles were familiar in medieval Europe as the “estates” (from “status”) into which everyone was pigeonholed.

From the first, therefore, a liberal education was designed for only one class or status of society, and was aimed essentially at the individual’s self-fulfillment, his own enlargement and happiness. To modern ears the concept sounds opprobriously selfish, smacking of exploitation and elitism. And of course it involved both. No one can deny that the vaunted Greek civilization was built on slave labor, or that educational opportunities were available only to favored classes—and usually only to the male sex. One should not, as the old saying went, “be educated above his station [status].”

Mitigating the rigors of such theories, however, were several practices and understandings. For one thing, those in the more favored class were taught, as a part of their education, to recognize their responsibility to all others. One sees this vividly in the proper education of a “prince” in Renaissance Europe, which included vigorous exhortation to service, justice, and philanthropy. Even in a quite different pagan tradition, the Germanic, it is clear that the chieftain (Beowulf, for example) had the duty of giving his life for his people, as they had the duty of obeying him. Status brought duty, and it was part of the role of a liberal education to teach obedience to that “stern voice of the daughter of God.” For another thing, practice, even in the Greek and Roman world, often blurred the distinctions. An able Greek slave in a Roman household might, though in legal servitude, be the intellectual center, the tutor, and the arbiter of art and learning for the entire family, and receive respect as such. In a later age this was called “rising above humble origins,” or, as in the case of Horatio Alger, above servitude to economic pressures.

It may be said, then, that the classical origin of the word liberales need not totally deprive the concept of validity in our own time. No man is altogether free, whatever the law says. He is a slave of inertia, bad health, economic pressure, circ*mstance, intellectual limitations, sin, and other restraints. But a liberal education is aimed at enriching that portion of his life which is free, that it may be lived more abundantly.

The other word in our term, artes, also requires a backward glance; and it is illuminating to realize at once that a negative derivative from the same root is “inert.” Artes does not, therefore, mean “arts” in our usual sense—the fine arts—but any study, activity, or craft. Indeed, the “liberal arts” of the medieval curriculum included, in the trivium (“the coming together of three roads”), grammar, rhetoric, and logic (note the gratifying emphasis on literacy); and, in the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. To call a liberal arts college a “college of arts and sciences,” therefore, is redundant, but often necessary in our day of etymological ignorance. Physics is as much one of the “arts” as sculpture, chemistry as much as literature. Any area of knowledge, any “discipline” (a definable body of coherent knowledge, from discere, to teach), presents the opportunity for the exercise of the peculiarly human capability of intellectual curiosity; and when such an exercise is undertaken voluntarily as a means of living a fuller life, of developing one’s broadest intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and philosophical capacities, it is one of the “liberal arts.”

Occasionally, of course, the happy chance arises that one discovers that the capability he voluntarily (selfishly, if one wishes) chooses to develop is one the world will pay him money to exercise. This is simply a matter of good fortune—to be able to engage in “art” (that which one wishes to do anyway) and make a living from it at the same time. The fact does not debase the art into a mere vocation, nor identify it as one “beneath the dignity” of its practitioner. It simply means that one is at once both amateur and professional.

Today we often distinguish between the amateur and the professional by ascribing a higher skill to the latter. It should be the reverse. When a free man pursues his own bent because he loves it (as an amateur) he should be better at it than the one who “slaves” at it for money (for his keep, as it were). The comparative devaluation of the amateur is relatively recent. Perhaps snobbery played a part in earlier days, when to be paid for one’s work was to lose status, but the fact is that finer work was presumed to come from the lover of his task, regardless of reward, than from the paid hack. (Edmund Spenser, for example, was an amateur—depending on patronage, true, for the leisure he needed to write. Shakespeare as dramatist was a mere artisan, a maker of plays, paid by the job, and he had to seek status by writing such poems as Venus and Adonis, untainted by the need to earn money. When Shakespeare’s contemporary, Ben Jonson, dared to publish his plays as if they were an amateur’s “Works,” he elicited the derisive inquiry: “Pray tell us, Ben, wherein the mystery lurks; / What others call ‘plays’ you call ‘Works’.”)

The main point, though, is that the term artes excludes no subject, no area of knowledge, no discipline befitting the attention of a free man and serving to enrich his life. Our deepest understanding of the term artes, however, comes from the facet of its etymology that suggests order, balance, and harmony, “that which is complete, perfect of its kind, suitable” (A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Ernest Klein, 1971, p. 51). Only within a philosophy that teaches an orderly universe, with hierarchy and interdependence, and with right human conduct as an essential part of its comely operation, can a liberal arts education be truly fostered. And not surprisingly we find that it is within a contemporary philosophy of fragmentation, disintegration, and “dissociation of sensibility” (Eliot’s phrase) that the traditional liberal arts concept has been most eroded. In Aristotle, who of all the ancients had the greatest influence on education in the Western world down through the Renaissance, we find a clear position: true learning inculcates virtue. Morality is that characteristic which distinguishes human beings from animals, and virtue is, by definition, the unique quality of manliness (manlikeness) (see Eric Partridge’s Origins, 1959, p. 783). Add the strong theistic element in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the study of religion naturally became the center of medieval and Renaissance liberal education—theology, the queen of the sciences (“science,” of course, meaning “knowledge”), because of all disciplines it best reveals the harmony and orderliness of the universe God has created.

What this all means is that a liberally educated man should be distinguishably a good man—balanced, rational, and righteous, a student and lover of virtue. And here our contemporary vision has tragically faded. Few would maintain today that our liberal arts colleges, by and large, strive above all else to inculcate virtue. Materialism, determinism, and the quantification of all knowledge makes such an attempt seem almost anti-intellectual. Today we tend to call educated that man or woman who knows much, whether it be about nuclear physics, Slavonic philology, genetics, or comparative government. We do not ask: Has his education made him wise and happy? virtuous and enlarged in his essentially human capabilities? righteous and loving? And yet these are the questions to which a liberal education is supposed to provide at least a partially affirmative answer.

Someone has said that until social studies and technology had demonstrated the interdependence of men and nations on a shrinking planet, and until man’s eyes were properly directed downward to this earth as his one and only home, people were so busy saving their souls that they let the world go to pot. Now that we have progressed “beyond freedom and dignity” we are busy doing the reverse.

So here we are today, with a superfluity of institutions purveying a kind of education called “liberal,” but one that is only superficially, or tangentially, in accord with traditional purposes. Furthermore, in a laudable (if impracticable) effort to give every young American a chance to “go to college,” we have compromised with intellectual standards and diluted intellectual enlargement with job training. And in response to the demand for complete secularization in state-supported institutions, we have largely eliminated the religious core of value-oriented studies and substituted vast quantities of more or less esoteric information. This kind of a “liberal arts education,” shorn of its true strength, cries out in vain for defense. None is possible.

But so long as there is a difference between the fulfilled human being and the unfulfilled one, between an enlarged intellectual capability and a narrow mind, between a heightened intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual sensibility and a debased one, and (most tersely) between virtue and vice, some human beings will always use such freedom as they may have left in the pursuit of a truly liberal education. To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius’s ironic assertion that one may live well even in a palace, one may say that it is possible to acquire a liberal education even in a liberal arts college. But it is not always easy; moreover, one need not go to college to get it, nor does the possession of a diploma guarantee its possession. No great harm, though. “Nothing can be taught, but anything can be learned,” and our liberal arts colleges (with widely variable effectiveness, true) still provide the best environment in which an earnest seeker may liberally educate himself or herself.

If the student while in college can learn to write with some clarity and facility; to think with reasonable vigor and orderliness; to become acquainted with the past (and with a foreign language or two); to begin to explore the vast realm of literature and art and music; to take a few paces into the marvels of science and number; to sense in some measure the power and beauty of virtue; to practice at least a little civility and compassion toward others; to inaugurate (in short) an acquaintanceship with and a desire to emulate the best that has been thought and said in the history of the world—if he can do such things he will not only bring greater effectiveness to whatever money-earning skill or profession he may later choose, but he will make an investment that will pay dividends both to him and to society.

I am happy to announce the appointment of Melvin J. Sorenson as general manager of CHRISTIANITY TODAY beginning June 1.

Mel is an accounting-management graduate of the University of Illinois and has logged many years in business. He spent thirteen years with Christian Life Publications as vice-president, publisher, and secretary of the corporation. His earliest work was with R. R. Donnelley printing company in Chicago. He comes to CHRISTIANITY TODAY from Compassion, which has a notable ministry around the world in providing homes for orphans and other needy children. We welcome him to his new assignment.

Please keep praying for the International Congress on World Evangelization, to be held in July at Lausanne. At a time when one government after another has toppled and world inflation as well as shortages begin to exact an almost intolerable price, God’s people must be challenged to finish the task of making the Gospel available to every person in the world.

Almost five years ago, during an international gathering of evangelical leaders held in Bogotá (Colombia), a small group of men met to take a look at the theological situation in Latin America. They were impressed by the absence of an authentic Christian voice speaking to the issues raised by life in this part of the world and saw that, after four centuries of Roman Catholicism and one century of Protestantism, theology had not even begun paying to Latin America its debt of showing the relevance of the Word of God to practical life. They say that, as a result of this theological deficit, in countries where Christianity is regarded as the official religion, Christ remains silent in the face of the most acute human needs and problems, and the Church, for all its fantastic growth, is unable to cope with the ideologies of the day and open to every wind of doctrine.

That meeting proved to be the beginning of what may turn out to be the most significant theological development in Latin America for many years, namely, the formation of what now is known as the Latin American Theological Fraternity. To be sure, the last five years have also seen the rise of the (mostly Roman Catholic) “theology of liberation,” and this has become a live option not only among Roman Catholics but also among Protestants. Moreover, the general picture of the Church in Latin American countries continues to be largely that of “a church without theological reflection” (“Current Religious Thought,” Feb. 1, 1974). Even so, there are signs that under the name of the Fraternity an evangelical alternative is taking shape and beginning to make an impact on the Church.

The Fraternity has defined itself as “a fellowship of evangelical thinkers serving Christ and his Church, convinced of the value of theological reflection in relation to the life and mission of the Church.” Its international membership of about forty includes not only seminary and Bible school professors but also people drawn from a variety of fields, from education to natural science. About 90 per cent of the members are Latin American; the others are British or North American missionaries who have lived in Latin America for a number of years.

The first purpose of the Fraternity is “to foster reflection on the Gospel and its meaning for man and society in Latin America; to stimulate the development of evangelical theological thought that is true to the Word of God and that makes an effort to listen to the biblical message, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the concrete historical situation.” Accordingly, each member is required to submit at least one substantial paper per year in the field of his interest; to remain a member he must fulfill this requirement. Several of the papers have been printed in booklet form for wider distribution. One can hardly exaggerate the importance of this production of theological literature originally written in Spanish or Portuguese for a church whose reading for several centuries has been largely restricted to translations from English or German.

Another purpose of the Fraternity is “to provide a platform for dialogue among thinkers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and God and who are willing to think in the light of Scripture so as to build a bridge between the Gospel and Latin American culture.” The two consultations held so far by the international body as a whole (Cochabamba, 1970; Lima, 1972) set a high standard for the deliberations and showed that the search for a happy combination between faithfulness to the Gospel as revealed in Scripture and relevance to the historical situation was to receive a great deal of attention within the Fraternity. The regional conferences held in Mexico, Peru, and Brazil in 1971–72 provided unparalleled opportunity for people to come to grips with a number of critical issues facing the Church in Latin America. The Biblical Theology Commission and the Pastoral Ministry Commission met in San Jose (December, 1973) and the Life and Mission of the Church Commission met in Buenos Aires (March, 1974) to deal with “Biblical Concepts of Liberation,” “The Pastoral Ministry and Man in Latin America,” and “Man and the Structures in Latin America Today” respectively. A number of the papers will be revised on the basis of the discussions and then published in book form. The conferences sponsored by the Fraternity are thus proving an effective means of bringing into existence a body of literature urgently needed today.

One more purpose of the Fraternity is “to contribute to the life and mission of the Church of Christ, without pretending to speak in the name of the Church nor to be the theological voice of evangelicals in Latin America.” An aspect of the ethos of the Fraternity from its very inception has been an ecclesiological emphasis; theology has been conceived, not as an end in itself, but as a means to the end of building up the Church and helping it to discharge its mission. In this connection the study conferences for pastors, which are becoming a regular feature of the Fraternity’s work, may be the most adequate way in which the theological ferment spreads among those engaged in the pastoral ministry.

In a massive survey of church growth in Latin America published at the end of the last decade the authors rejoiced that “North American and European theological emphases concerning secularised Christianity find little echo in Latin America, where the Evangelical Church is too busy fulfilling its mission to be troubled by these theological issues.” Paradoxically enough, such an evaluation was made at a time when the only theological project taking shape in the Protestant camp in Latin America was precisely one built on the premises of secularized Christianity, sponsored by Iglesia y Sociedad en América Latina (the Latin American branch of the Church and Society Department of the World Council of Churches).

For all their expert knowledge of church growth, these authors failed to see that evangelicals have been all too busy to be troubled, not only by “North American and European theological emphases concerning secularised Christianity,” but by any theological questions. Latin American evangelicals have therefore run the risk of reducing the mission of the Church to rote repetition of unassimilated doctrinal formulas coined in North America or Europe. Where theological questions related to the meaning of the Gospel and its relevance to secular society are regarded as an interesting pastime (at best) or an unnecessary distraction (at worst), the Christian mission easily degenerates into superficial activism.

This analysis goes a long way in explaining the situation of the Church and its mission in Latin America today. But it also throws into relief the strategic importance of the Latin American Theological Fraternity to the evangelical cause in this part of the world.

Authoritative accounts of Soviet repression of Baptists continue to reach the West. One of the latest reports was released last month by the London-based Center for the Study of Religion and Communism, a scholarly research organization. The report is based on information provided by a leader of the Soviet human-rights movement headed by physicist Andrei Sakharov. The informant told of reprisals against Baptists in the town of Taldy-Kurgan in Kazakhstan (Soviet Central Asia). He also read the text of an appeal signed by more than 1,800 Baptists in Central Asia. It was addressed to the Soviet government and the United Nations.

The Taldy-Kurgan incident involves an “unregistered”¹In most cases “unregistered” denotes that a congregation has chosen, usually for separatist reasons, not to be affiliated with the main Soviet Protestant body, the 500,000-plus-member All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. The council operates under state recognition—and quasi-supervision. In some cases, however, authorities have simply refused to register congregations, thereby evading the necessity of reporting their existence. The unregistered congregations are improperly called “underground” churches by some Western mission agencies; many of them meet openly, attempting to practice—and demanding—the religious freedom set forth in the Soviet constitution. congregation of Baptists. In February six members of the church were tried and sentenced to prison terms of three to five years. Four of the persons were also deprived of parental rights to their children, but at last word the children had been hidden to prevent authorities from taking them away from their mothers. (The Soviets for years have removed children from families where religious instruction has taken place. “This inhuman practice seems to be on the increase,” observes Michael Bordeaux, who heads the London center.)

The court sentence at Taldy-Kurgan included a description of the church’s life: “The defendants used various forms of propaganda: the reading of sermons, listening to tape-recordings [including recordings of religious broadcasts from the West], the performance of choral and solo religious verses and songs, of literary-musical compositions accompanied by musical instruments.” Children’s meetings were held also.

Technician-designer Yakov Pavlov, one of the defendants (he was sentenced to five years and deprived of four of his eight children), in a final speech to the court stated:

We do not call on people to disobey the authorities, as we are accused of doing. We fulfill everything the law demands from every citizen of the U.S.S.R., as long as it does not touch on our religious convictions. Our meetings are conducted openly. All who want to attend have the chance to do so. You cannot call our meetings illegal, because the authorities know us, they have frequently been at our meetings and written down the believers’ names.…

Charged with distributing slanderous information about the persecution of believers, Pavlov replied:

These are not deliberately false reports, as we are charged, but the truth, the bitter truth. And if the authorities were interested in establishing the facts, then they could get much more detailed information from the places where these things happened.… Do you really think someone would sit down and write a deliberate lie to the [Communist] Central Committee, to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, to the General Procurator? Of course not. Can you accuse us if, after this trial, all believers in the Soviet Union learn the truth about your charges against us, how many people you tried, what sentences you gave them, and how many children you thereby left as orphans? After all, believers throughout the world may also get to know about this. Would that make it false tales? Of course not. In this case we could say: There’s no point getting offended at the mirror; it reflects your true face.

The accused were charged with violating Lenin’s Decree on the Separation of Church and State, a violation spelled out in the Kazakh penal code. In a statement to the Kazakh supreme court in March, a Soviet human-rights advocate pointed out that this section of the Kazakh code violates the United Nations Pacts on Human Rights, ratified by the Soviet Union last fall.

Comments Bordeaux: “[The spokesman] is clearly trying to test the Soviet government on a specific case of human rights in the light of that ratification.” He sees “a growing connection between the human-rights circles and religious groups struggling for the right to practice their faith.”

The appeal from the believers in Central Asia cites other cases of repression against unregistered Baptist congregations with the familiar pattern of arrests, fines, confiscation of literature, and other harassment. At Frunze, capital of Kirgizia, for example, a Christian wedding in the home of a church member was reportedly broken up by sixteen carloads of police. A fight broke out when the police tried to seize the pastor who was performing the ceremony. The police hauled several members off to the police station and confiscated Christian literature, evoking “indignation and outrage not only from the believers present but also from the unbelievers.”

There are references in the appeal to the organized work of the unregistered Baptists:

Our spiritual center, the Council of Churches, elected by the church, is still unable to carry on its ministry in freedom. Because of persecution, the majority of its members cannot live at home with their families. In spite of numerous petitions to you by believers, [our] publishing agency is forced to do its work in conditions of continual persecution. And we have such a huge need of Christian literature. We cannot be silent about the fact that the number of believers in prison is growing, as is the number or orphans left without the breadwinner, while all petitions from the Council of Prisoners’ Relatives remain unanswered. And the CPR itself is subject to repressions.

Recent disclosures show that hundreds of hymnals and thousands of pieces of Christian literature, including Scripture portions, are produced monthly by the clandestine presses. Until the Soviet Union implements its constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and the U. N. decree it has ratified, the believers must carry on their publishing ministry behind closed doors. But worse, they must go on living out their lives in circ*mstances that are sometimes brutally harsh.

Holland: Liberation And Deliberation

The Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerk, the smaller of the two big Reformed bodies in the Netherlands) voted 56 to 25 to support the World Council of Churches’ controversial Program to Combat Racism. Debate in the 450,000-member denomination has sometimes been heated; critics of the program say WCC grants are being used to fund terrorist groups in Africa. The synod’s action reversed a 1972 policy of no endorsem*nt for the program. A leader of the church’s sister denomination in South Africa said the move may result in severed ties between the two bodies.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of South African churchmen opposed to apartheid, including Anglican bishop A. A. Zulu, one of the WCC’s six presidents, are speaking out against the program grants. The most recent WCC grant to black liberation groups amounted to $322,000.

Religion In Transit

President and Mrs. Nixon and their friend C. G. (Bebe) Rebozo attended the Key Biscayne (Florida) Community Church on Easter Sunday and heard Pastor J. A. Geschwind preach a traditional Easter message. Churchgoers outside greeted Nixon warmly. On Easter a year ago the Nixons attended the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church where then pastor John A. Huffman, Jr., preached a sermon on a passage that included Acts 26:26; to make a clean break with the past might involve shedding friends, he said. A week later Nixon announced the resignations of aides Ehrlichman and Haldeman.

About two dozen government leaders attended the tenth annual National Prayer Breakfast of Canada. It was sponsored by the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast Group, which meets weekly. Jean Beliveau, retired hockey star of the Montreal Canadiens, was guest speaker.

U. S. Catholics gave $6.5 million last year to their church’s emergency relief fund, the bulk of it for overseas aid in more than sixty countries.

Louisiana voters approved a new state constitution that removes bans on state aid to parochial and private schools.

The 12-year-old Missionary Orientation Center at Stoney Point, New York, is closing. It was operated jointly by the United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Reformed Church in America, and the United Presbyterian Church. Officials cited the declining number of missionary appointees, blaming the decline in part on increased indigenous leadership overseas, inflation, and reduced contributions from local churches.

Radio preacher Carl McIntire recently told a Senate subcommittee he intends to broadcast from offshore ships registered abroad and thus evade the Federal Communication Commission’s licensing powers and the need to observe its so-called Fairness Doctrine. The way is open for a court test; a federal court rejected an FCC request to broaden an earlier restraining order barring McIntire from broadcasting from an American ship.

DEATHS

JAMES CHARLES MCGUIGAN, 79, appointed in 1945 as the first English-speaking Canadian Catholic cardinal; served for thirty-six years as archbishop of Toronto; in Toronto.

W. ANGIE SMITH, 79, retired United Methodist bishop of Oklahoma who “ordained” evangelist Oral Roberts, and an early advocate for rights of American Indians; in Dallas.

HENRY J. SOLTAU, 85, United Methodist minister who became a leading anti-vice crusader, heading the Anti-Saloon League and the Minnesota Good Government League for many years and fighting to the end (just before his death he failed to get the Minneapolis city council to defeat an ordinance that bars discrimination against hom*osexuals); in Minneapolis.

D. P. THOMSON, 77, retired Church of Scotland evangelist and author of many books and tracts on evangelism and Scottish church history; in Crieff, Scotland.

Call it the Jesus movement or whatever, there’s still plenty of Christian activity among young people. To assess the scene and to better report it editors of the so-called Jesus newspapers have planned a weekend conference in Akron, Ohio, in June, headed up by Jesus Loves You publisher Craig Yoe. There are numerous papers but they are somewhat isolated from each other.

The William Carey Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth has been organized in Pasadena, California, “to implement projects relevant to the evangelistic and missionary task of the church.” Dr. Arthur F. Glasser of the Fuller Seminary School of World Mission is president and Donald A. Hamilton, a systems engineering expert, is executive director.

To discontinue publication:Trends, a United Presbyterian bi-monthly devoted mainly to exploring social-action issues (circulation slid from 27,500 to 8,500 during its six-year life), and Colloquy, an education monthly published by the United Church of Christ in conjunction with the two major Presbyterian denominations (circulation plummeted from 76,000 to 30,000 in the last two years of its five-year existence).

The Church of Scientology has filed a $2.5 million suit against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch over a series of five articles on the group’s activities.

Personalia

Dr. Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, was named to the advisory council of a relief project of the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, based in Washington, D. C., according to a BJU alumni publication. The foundation is reportedly a front group for the Unification Church, headed by Korean prophet Sun Myung Moon.

Dr. Harold A. Bosley, 67, a prominent liberal United Methodist clergyman and author, will retire in June from the pastorate of New York’s Christ Church, where he succeeded Dr. Ralph W. Sockman in 1962. At one time he was dean of Duke University’s divinity school.

World Scene

East African evangelists Festo Kivengere and Zeb Kabaza are conducting a month-long crusade in Hokkaido, Japan (the island has a population of five million). Sponsored by the twenty-four Anglican churches of the Hokkaido diocese, the crusade marks the first time black Africans have conducted an evangelistic campaign in Japan, say mission sources.

Cairo Radio reported that Muslim religious leaders in Egypt reacted “with horror” to a proposal that would, in effect, end the Muslim male’s prerogative of ` Under Muslim law a man may have four wives. Mrs. Aisha Rateb, minister of social affairs and the only woman in the Egyptian government, recently said she will sponsor a bill allowing a woman to divorce her husband if he marries a second wife. Islamic law allows only the husband to obtain a divorce.

The recent triennial South American conference of Mennonites in Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay (there are thirteen German-speaking congregations with about 4,600 members) met in economically depressed Uruguay and took note of a decision to move the Mennonite seminary in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Asuncion, Paraguay. Economics and declining enrollment were cited for the move. On the bright side, 226 young people in the conference were baptized last year.

Dismissed: a libel suit filed in London by the Process Church of the Final Judgment, a group that teaches “the unity of Christ and Satan,” against the British publisher of a book about Charles Manson (convicted killer of actress Sharon Tate). The British court ordered the group to pay costs of the hearing, estimated at $40,000.

HELP WANTED

Another grim times-have-changed tale: A Scottish highland minister recently announced to members of his congregation that they must revive the ancient and “pious custom” of mourners digging graves for their relatives because no one will accept the job of gravedigger. Young people, says Episcopal rector James Duffy of Ballachulish, are “just not interested.”

Vatican officials are disturbed at the noise tourists make in the Sistine Chapel, showplace of Michelangelo’s frescoes. They will now pipe “very weak” music into the chapel, instruct tour guides to be silent, and call for quiet over loudspeakers if the noise gets too loud.

India’s Kerala State high court upheld the death death penalty for a 33-year-old Hindu priest who beheaded a six-year-old son of a neighbor in an act of sacrifice to a Hindu goddess last June. Said the court: “There can be no justification whatever for sacrificing the life of a human being to please a god or goddess.…”

Membership in the Portuguese Baptist Convention has almost doubled and mission offerings almost tripled since 1967, according to a European Baptist press report. Now there are forty-one churches with about 2,500 members, and total mission giving last year topped $25,000. A small but thriving seminary is in its fifth year (eleven enrolled), a lay training school is operating, a bookstore in Lisbon serves hundreds of customers weekly, and two weekly broad casts are aired over the land’s leading radio network.

The first Papua New Guinea national to become a “foreign” missionary is Ela Amini, 39, of the United Church of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. He will work at an Australian Presbyterian mission among aborigines on an island off the north coast of Australia.

Archbishop Damian, elderly primate of the suppressed Orthodox Church of Albania, died last November, according to an Orthodox Church source. Religion was banned in the Communist nation in 1967.

Four evangelistic question-and-answer films taped by evangelist Luis Palau were aired during prime time four consecutive nights on Paraguay’s national television channel.

In what is hailed as a significant ecumenical gesture Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus has made available the monastery at Agia Napa for use as a conference center “for the aims of the World Council of Churches and other churches.” The project, including expansion of facilities, will cost about $250,000, according to official estimates.

“I don’t want to see the church split. I don’t want to see the church in anguish. However, I don’t want to see the church lose the Word of God.” That was how Edwin C. Weber, first vice president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, summed up the essence of the struggle that is tearing at the heart of the LCMS. He was addressing a recent meeting of 1,200 LCMS laymen in Minnesota.

Miles away in Omaha a man on the other side of the LCMS controversy was saying much the same thing at a meeting of the so-called moderates: “We don’t want to break away, and we don’t want a split in the church. There has been enough fragmentation.” But, continued Arthur C. Repp, the conservatives don’t seem to want to heal the breach; they want instead the exclusion of those who hold differing views of Scripture and those who favor a more open approach to church life. (Repp was theology professor and second in command at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis until February when he joined forty other professors and the majority of the students in a walkout to protest the suspension of Concordia president John Tietjen.)

The two statements reflect at least one common area of agreement throughout the LCMS: just about everybody is upset about the turmoil, and nobody really wants schism.

The turmoil is taking its toll. Last month Concordia’s acting president, Martin H. Scharlemann, 63, resigned because of physical and nervous exhaustion. He retains his position as a professor but is on a leave of absence. Vice President Robert Preus said he will take up the slack but not the post. A search committee was named by the seminary’s board of control to find a replacement, but it may be months before one is named. Few, if any, of the best qualified men would be willing to take the job right now; too much remains unresolved, and rebuilding will take at least four or five years. (A president cannot be appointed until the heresy and malfeasance charges against Tietjen are settled and he is out altogether.)

There are other casualties, among them some of the students at Seminex (short for “Seminary in Exile”), the school organized in St. Louis by the dissidents who left Concordia. Several first-year men said in interviews they were disillusioned by the fracas and intend to switch to another vocational pursuit after sticking out the year “for the sake of the cause.” LCMS president J. A. O. Preus says he’s confident that “the kids who have really sensed the call of God will return.”

Seminex is at the center of much of the misery in the Missouri Synod. Currently the matter of placement of the 125 Seminex seniors is of utmost importance. Under LCMS procedure the 46-member council of presidents (composed of the 40 LCMS district presidents, the LCMS president, and the five LCMS vice presidents) places or assigns ministerial candidates in response to calls from churches. But the council can place only those who have been certified by an LCMS seminary and board. A church that calls an uncertified man violates the LCMS bylaws and is subject to suspension of membership in the LCMS.

In a curious turnabout Seminex leaders and their backers in Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), an organization of pastors and laymen identified with the pro-Tietjen or moderate position, dusted off an article in the LCMS constitution that seems to pit congregational autonomy against the LCMS bylaws. In short, the article states that no resolution imposing anything upon an individual congregation is binding if it is not in accord with Scripture or if it appears “inexpedient.” Therefore, suggested the Seminex appeal, a congregation can assert its autonomy and do what it deems scriptural and expedient in the matter of placement. (Some of the same moderate leaders in times past opposed such a stand when taken by conservatives.)

At any rate, the council has reportedly received nearly 150 calls, and there are less than 90 graduating seniors from Concordia, St. Louis, and Concordia, Springfield (Illinois), to fill them. The council gathered early this month to thrash out the issue. Also facing it was what to do about the placement of third-year men as “vicars” or interns. Seminex in March rejected the stipulation that interns are to be under the supervision of the LCMS board of higher education.

Meanwhile, a deep rift opened along another front last month. Dr. William H. Kohn, executive secretary of the LCMS mission board, resigned after months of hassling between the conservative-dominated mission board and most of the mission staffers. A week later four more staff executives resigned: William F. Bulle, secretary for medical missions; Mrs. Marion Kretzschmar, executive assistant for designated gifts; Walter H. Meyer, assistant executive secretary for North America; and James W. Mayer (he was dismissed in January as secretary for South Asia but had remained on staff). Two others said they would resign when they returned from trips: William F. Reinking, secretary for Asia and the Middle East, and Paul H. Spregy, secretary for East Asia.

Other resignations were threatened. Meyer told a rally audience that many of the 350 LCMS mission personnel around the world are lined up behind the moderates and that sixty-nine of the ninety LCMS headquarters staffers have protested the actions of the conservatives.

The missions squabble involves mostly issues of administrative policy and separatism. Some moderates believe President Preus is behind it all, but Preus told CHRISTIANITY TODAY he opposed the board’s firing of Mayer (which triggered a staff revolt in February and led to last month’s resignations). “I tried to handle it differently,” he said.

Executive Herman H. Koppelman, associate secretary for world missions, was named to replace Kohn.

Kohn indicated in a statement that dissidents may set up an independent mission board within the framework of ELIM. He called for the resignation of mission board chairman Waldo J. Werning and criticized the board’s alleged legalism, spirit of isolationism, and “unethical dealings with people.”

The split over missions is bound to add to the confusion in the churches, where many members are still trying to sort out the issues, and to detract from what Preus believes is the basic issue at stake: the inerrancy and authority of Scripture.

Other Lutheran bodies are being drawn into the fray. President Robert J. Marshall of the Lutheran Church in America and President David Preus of the American Lutheran Church both issued statements last month. Marshall said the LCA is not interested in proselytizing but would welcome congregations that may choose to leave the LCMS. In tracing the history of the LCMS dispute, he said the possibility of schism exists, and he pointed out that the LCA position would be closer to the moderates than the conservatives. David Preus in an interview said of the conflict: “This is not the witness the world needs today.” He called for “a moratorium on further divisive action” within the LCMS, suggesting there is room within the family for differences in theological approach.

Whatever, the suffering goes on: the uprooted lives, the uncertainties, the tensions, the suspicions, the frustrations, the hardships. And it is clear that the seeds of schism have not only been sown; they have already sprouted.

BIG CHURCH

With a membership under 150 and an average Sunday-morning attendance of 65, Jones Chapel United Methodist Church of Etowah, Tennessee, isn’t on anybody’s list of big churches. But it’s probably Number One as far as the neighbors are concerned. After a tornado struck the area last month, the church’s administrative board voted to donate the entire $2,800 sanctuary-renovation fund and the $1,100 Easter offering (which had been earmarked for the fund) toward replacing nearby homes that were destroyed in the storm.

Rebuilding

Church members are among the thousands of persons rebuilding on the shattered remains of life and property following last month’s devastating tornado strikes (see April 26 issue, page 39). Nowhere are the circ*mstances more difficult than in the small town of Xenia, Ohio, where at least six churches were destroyed and others severely damaged. Among those demolished was Xenia Missionary Church (its parsonage was also leveled, as were others). Three church leaders and several children of members were killed, and fourteen families lost everything.

Church services are being held in homes and in borrowed or rented halls. Some congregations with buildings intact are sharing their facilities with less fortunate ones (the independent Xenia Baptist Temple, for example, has moved in with a nearby Methodist church; services are held at separate times). An interfaith council formed to coordinate church relief efforts reported that offers to take in homeless congregations exceeded demands. The congregation of First United Methodist Church, whose property was destroyed, had recently merged with another congregation meeting in a newer building that was untouched by the storm; the tornado in a sense cemented the merger.

First Lutheran held its Palm Sunday and Easter services in members’ homes pending arrangements to hold future meetings at the YMCA. Pastor Jerry Volz disclosed a grim fact probably true in most cases: insurance coverage on the church property was not adequate to cover the cost of rebuilding at today’s inflated prices.

The personal wounds may be slow in healing. United Methodist minister Robert Meredith, a Xenia-area pastor who also serves as a hospital chaplain, told Religious News Service there may be lingering emotional and psychological sores. The initial shock over losses may be followed by feelings of guilt at having survived, depression, and anger.

Meanwhile, a number of church groups both locally and from across the nation have sent money, goods, and manpower to assist the stricken people of Xenia in their task of rebuilding.

Celebrities: The Difference

Celebrities have been making the religious news columns lately. Evangelical Newsletter, published by Eternity, reported a testimony by Mickey Rooney (“Since I accepted Christ as my Saviour, my life is altogether different”); Rooney credited a message by evangelist Billy Graham as the key in his conversion experience. (Rooney, known for his affiliation with the Church of Religious Science, is said to be attending an evangelical church now.) Reading the Living Bible in a hospital led to transformation of life for Jeannie C. Riley, the mini-skirted singer famous for her rendition of “Harper Valley PTA,” the newsletter noted. Joanne Pflug, who starred in M*A*S*H, was “reborn as a new Christian, baptized in Pat Boone’s pool, then married to a Jesus Freak,” it added.

A Dallas newspaper featured an account of the conversion of Bertha Louise “Lulu” Roman, formerly a star on the “Hee Haw” TV show. The show dismissed her after she was arrested a second time on narcotics charges. A hospital crisis involving her baby son led her to look to God, she told a reporter. Next she visited Southern Baptist pastor Howard Conatser and “prayed the sinner’s prayer.” She said the love and care “I got free” from members of Conatser’s church overwhelmed her. Court appearances are still ahead but she’s confident God will work out everything for good.

Former actress Betty Hutton, the star who married and divorced five times and went through an estimated $1.5 million, turned up recently as a cook and housekeeper at the rectory of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. She told reporters she had been “down and out without a dime to my name” when she met a priest in Boston in February. He pointed her to St. Anthony’s. “I have found Christ at last,” she said. “I have studied the Bible all my life but always he eluded me. I found him here in this simple church.” (She had been baptized a Lutheran in 1958. In 1965 she and one of her former husbands, jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli, joined a Pentecostal church.)

Terror In Rhodesia

Guerrillas in Rhodesia last month killed Pastor Frank Kakunguwo, a leader of the Evangelical Church, and Richard Tsinokwadi, a lay administrator of a Christian high school in Mavuradonha. Kakunguwo was serving as chaplain of the 200-student school, a project of the Illinois-based Evangelical Alliance Mission, which founded the Evangelical Church of Rhodesia. The mission was forced to close the school following the murders when national workers, citing fear, refused to show up for work. (Earlier, the mission closed two “bush” stations because of terrorism.)

Wesleyan Wishing Well

Breakthroughs in two critical areas have sparked new optimism for the eventual merger of the Wesleyan and Free Methodist denominations. The two churches have been studying merger since 1970, when a joint Committee on Merger Exploration (COME) was formed.

Negotiations had bogged down somewhat over two issues: the inspiration of Scripture and control of denominational colleges. But both issues were successfully resolved—at least to the satisfaction of the twenty-six-member commission—during recent meetings in Winona Lake, Indiana. A proposed basis for merger was scheduled to be presented to a joint meeting of the two denominational boards this month. The issue will then go to the Free Methodist General Conference next month, and to the 1976 Wesleyan General Conference. A merging conference could be held in 1978. Proposed name for the united denomination: Wesleyan Evangelical Church.

The Wesleyan Church itself is the result of the merger in 1968 of the Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Methodist denominations along with the Reformed Baptists of eastern Canada. At their merging conference the Wesleyans adopted a resolution calling for conversation with the Free Methodists. A corresponding resolution was approved by the Free Methodists a year later.

The question of biblical inerrancy nearly brought merger talks to a halt in 1972. While both Wesleyans and Free Methodists are committed to the full authority of Scripture, the Free Methodist Church has never attempted to define a specific view of inspiration. This was also true of the Pilgrim Holiness Church prior to merger. The Wesleyan Methodists, however, adopted a statement in 1923 affirming the inerrancy of the original biblical manuscripts, and inerrancy was affirmed in the 1968 Wesleyan Methodist-Pilgrim Holiness merger agreement. In the current talks between Wesleyans and Free Methodists, the Wesleyans insisted on a similar statement. Free Methodist commission members wanted a more generally worded statement, in keeping with their tradition.

PRESERVING THE EVIDENCE

Pastor John Varner of the Pentecostal Christian Fellowship Church in Keokuk, Iowa, looked up from prayer during a Friday evening service and saw two nude young men at the door, apparently intent on streaking in church. “Grab them,” Varner instructed. The men who grabbed the youths wouldn’t let them get dressed until police arrived and arrested them.

In the recent COME meetings, the stricter view apparently prevailed. The approved statement on the Scriptures reads, in part:

These Holy Scriptures are God’s true record, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit. They have been given without error and transmitted without corruption of any essential doctrine. They are the singularly authentic and authoritative revelation of God’s acts in creation, in history, in our salvation, and especially in His Son, Jesus Christ.

The other critical issue involved control of the ten educational institutions affiliated with the two groups. While Wesleyan schools are under ultimate denominational control, Free Methodist institutions are largely self-governing. Some Free Methodists have feared that a move toward denominational control would provoke such denominational schools as the 3,000-student Seattle Pacific College to go completely independent. COME members came to a compromise agreement on this issue. It provides for administrative coordination while maintaining the status quo in actual operations for the foreseeable future. They also agreed that the highest administrative office in the merged denominations will be “bishop,” maintaining Free Methodist practice.

Unsuccessful merger talks between Free and Wesleyan Methodists were held in 1907–15 and 1943–55. The latter attempt was broken off by the Wesleyans, in part over opposition to the use of the “bishop” title. In recent years the two denominations have drawn closer together and now collaborate in several areas. A Wesleyan was recently named executive director of both the Wesleyan and Free Methodist seminary foundations at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, and a new joint hymnal is to be published soon.

If merger succeeds, the new denomination will have a total U. S. membership of 150,000 or so. While the Wesleyan Church (84,000 members) is now somewhat larger in U. S. membership, Free Methodists (65,000 members) have more than 70,000 overseas members, making the two groups roughly compatible in worldwide constituency.

Prospects for approval of the merger proposal at the approaching Free Methodist General Conference appear generally favorable. While Wesleyan approval in 1976 also is likely, opposition could emerge during the two-year interval. In addition to general conference approval, a two-thirds aggregate assent by the annual conferences (districts) of each denomination is also required. If union is approved, denominational officers elected in the 1974 and 1976 general conferences will hold office until the 1978 merging assembly.

HOWARD A. SNYDER

Holiness Themes: Heritage And Hope

New stirrings and vigor were evident as some 700 delegates gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, last month for the 106th annual Convention of the Christian Holiness Association (CHA). New chapters of the CHA and its associated theological society were announced in Canada, the Caribbean, the Orient, and elsewhere. New seminars on doctrine for reexpressing the holiness message are planned. There were reports of the existence of administrative position papers attempting to rethink the role of the association; these may surface at a future CHA meeting. In short, there are signs of a new and more aggressive stance despite increasing financial pressure (1973 CHA administrative income was $50,000, expenses $55,000).

With roots in a “National Campmeeting Association,” founded in 1867, the CHA is a remarkable amalgam of denominations, mission agencies (independent as well as denominational), camp meetings, educational institutions (about fifty), local associations, and other groups produced by the midnineteenth-century “holiness revival.” They have joined together for “cooperative ministries” such as publishing (joint Sunday-school materials), education, missions, and evangelism.

Member and cooperating denominations include nearly twenty groups, among them the Church of the Nazarene, the Salvation Army, the Free Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church, and the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), with a total membership of some two million. Many of these groups also belong to the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), providing about one-third of the NAE’s denominational membership. CHA affiliates are distinguished from other NAE groups primarily by advocacy of the classical Methodist doctrine of “entire sanctification.”

The CHA annual meeting provides the occasion for evening rallies in classical camp-meeting style (special effort was made this year to restore that style of music), inspirational addresses (this year’s teacher was Nazarene Albert Lown of London), prayer services, study seminars, and the forging of interdenominational cooperation.

Afternoon sessions were devoted to “futurology.” One of the speakers, President Frank Stanger of Asbury Seminary, surveyed holiness eschatological views since Wesley. There is little uniformity. Just what the views of Wesley himself were is a matter of dispute. Holiness origins were dominated by postmillennialism conjoined with radical social reform. Latter generations were deeply influenced by premillennialism and the rise of prophecy conferences. Meanwhile, the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) has been consistently amillennial since its founding in the 1880s. Stanger, setting a pace of restraint and toleration, underscored the biblical hope of Christ’s return but without detailed speculation.

Trends and concerns were perhaps more easily discerned in seminars. The two most popular of five programs were devoted to Pentecostalism and its growth. Though Pentecostalism is viewed by many as a sort of split within a general holiness persuasion, holiness leaders have been among the sharpest critics of the various factions of the tongues-speaking movements. While holiness reaction is still essentially negative and defensive, there is some evidence that bitter acrimony may be giving way to more open dialogue. Members of the CHA Wesleyan Theological Society recently attended and participated in the program of the newly formed Society for Pentecostal Studies. And holiness leaders and thinkers seem to be finally accepting the patrimony charge that the holiness movement fathered Pentecostalism.

The historic role of women in the holiness churches, where women have been ordained for over 100 years, was traced at a CHA women’s meeting. Early holiness origins had close associations with feminism, and such churches as the Nazarene and the Pilgrim Holiness have until recently had large contingents of women ministers. But this practice has largely vanished with increasing conformity to middle-class values by members of holiness bodies. Although the current president of the theological society is a woman, Mildred Bangs Wynkoop of Trevecca Nazarene College, there was not a woman among the sixty new CHA officers and committee members elected.

An emerging social commission brought together Roger Bowman, black director of outreach in the Church of the Nazarene, and Ronald J. Sider of Messiah College, organizer of the recent workshop that produced the so-called Chicago Declaration on evangelical social concern (see December 21, 1973, issue, page 38), to discuss alleged institutional racism. Current commission effort is focused on uncovering and refurbishing the significant history of holiness social concern (Wesleyans were strongly for abolition of slavery, Nazarenes were founded in part over the issue of missions to the inner city, the Salvation Army is one of the largest non-governmental social service agencies). The commission also engineered a convention resolution amounting to near endorsem*nt of the Chicago Declaration (the only other CHA resolution called for preservation of income-tax deductions for charitable contributions).

Retiring president Bishop Henry Ginder of the Brethren in Christ Church was praised for using his term for significant consolidation. Leadership has passed to B. Edgar Johnson, general secretary of the Church of the Nazarene.

DONALD W. DAYTON

All In The Family

Increasingly, more evangelicals this decade than last seem bent on grappling with the big social and political issues of the day. Evidence last month: a conference on Christianity and politics, the second such conclave sponsored by the political science department of Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The conference brought together 350 persons (110 were students) representing a variety of socio-political positions, from Anabaptist church-state separatists to some Reformed churchmen who come close to wanting a Christian political party, from the Post-American’s left-of-center Jim Wallis to Edward Rowe of Applied Christianity (formerly Christian Economics), who is miles right of Wallis. Yet despite their differing social and political views, all were theologically in the same family.

Most of the time was given to speeches (race, church lobbying, the institutional church, a historical survey of the attitudes of various church traditions toward social action), and they sparked little debate. Political science professor Rene Williamson of Louisiana State University stirred up the most reaction with his contention that the church should not endorse quota systems or get involved in stockholders’ actions as a way of pressing for social change. Williamson, a Southern Presbyterian who says he approves church involvement in certain areas of socio-political action, described much current denominational activity as “irresponsible.”

Chicago pastor William Bentley, president of the National Black Evangelical Association, castigated the predominantly white male audience for a weak record on the race issue.

In the opinion of some female participants, the absence of a platform representative for the women’s issue suggested even more loudly how little evangelicals have done in eliminating sexual discrimination.

The two-day meeting was organized by Professor Paul Henry of Calvin and funded in part by Living Bible publisher Ken Taylor’s Tyndale Foundation, which last fall also provided money for the conference that produced the so-called Chicago Declaration of evangelical social concern.

Marriage: Pre, Mid, And Post

Living and Loving, by A. N. Triton (InterVarsity, 1973, 95 pp., $1.25 pb), Sex, Satan and Jesus, by Richard Hogue (Broadman, 1973, 160 pp., $2.95 pb), Marriage Encounter, by Antoinette Bosco (Abbey, 1972, 128 pp., $4.95), Heaven Help the Home, by Howard G. Hendricks (Victor, 1973, 143 pp., $1.45 pb), and Till Divorce Do Us Part, by R. Lofton Hudson (Nelson, 1973, 132 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Andre S. Bustanoby, marriage and family counselor, Bowie, Maryland.

These four books handle a broad range of themes under the subject of marriage—everything from pre-marital sex to divorce, with stops in between.

Living and Loving is a provocative little book that pastors would find especially useful in their work with college-age people who are grappling with premarital problems such as dating, sexual behavior, and establishing a meaningful relationship with the opposite sex. The author emphasizes the necessity of building friendship and companionship into the relationship. Man does not live by bed alone—a harsh reality a couple faces after marriage when the only thing their relationship ever offered was sex.

Sex, Satan and Jesus is also geared to youth looking for ways to handle their sex drive properly. The style of the book is the same smash-wham-bang approach that Hogue uses in addressing youth conferences. He has packed his book with anecdotes and quotes that colorfully describe the sexual revolution and the pressure upon young people to join it. He also writes of the disillusionment of many who have. Though it is unlikely that a rebellious teen would read the book, it is a good resource for pastors, youth workers, and parents who need to get in touch with the kind of pressure their kids are under.

Hendricks is in a league by himself. If you’ve had the delightful experience of hearing him speak you’ll enjoy reading Heaven Help the Home. Hendricks has a genius not only for telling the reader what the Bible says about the Christian home but also for telling him how to go about implementing these biblical principles. At the end of the chapters on family worship and sex education he has a recommended reading list and resources for further research. At the end of the book he offers a worksheet for mothers and another for fathers—specific things they can do to improve the quality of the home life. He also offers a work sheet to help the reader formulate family goals. My shattered nerves! How practical can you get?

The reader should not get the idea, however, that building a Christian home is just a bag of tricks to be learned. Hendricks comes booming through again and again with the message that the real secret of a good home life is a good relationship between husband and wife and between parents and children.

Marriage Encounter introduced me to an exciting new tool for marriage building—the marriage encounter. This is not the typical Carl Rogers type of group encounter. The encounters are private ones between husband and wife.

I was disappointed, however, that the book didn’t provide more specific information on what is done at the retreats where couples are instructed on how to have meaningful encounters.

’Till Divorce Do Us Part is a compassionate approach to the subject of divorce and remarriage. However, Hudson seems to fall victim to a malady that afflicts many counselors. The agonies of his clients seem to condition his exegesis. He sees a “literalistic” approach to the Bible as an impediment to the Christian who is trying to work his way out of the divorce dilemma. His exegesis leads him to the conclusion that the Bible permits divorce and remarriage for believers for reasons other than infidelity.

This book ought to be read by all who are caught up in the divorce/remarriage debate. Hudson does a good job of presenting his case, which forces the reader to evaluate carefully his own position.

All these books reinforce the fact that a close relationship with a member of the opposite sex can be either rapture or tribulation.

The Land Of Promise

Historical Geography of the Holy Land, by George A. Turner (Baker and Canon, 1973, 368 pp., $11.95), is reviewed by William Sanford LaSor, professor of Old Testament, Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, California.

After decades of little apparent interest in biblical geography and history, the world of biblical scholarship has been blessed with an abundance of geographies and atlases, most of them of very high quality. Dr. Turner has added a historical geography, which combines the historical data and the geographical features in an interesting and lucid manner. He has illustrated this with many photographs, some of them of outstanding quality, and fifteen maps in the text in addition to twenty-six color maps.

There are several kinds of geography. There is physical geography, such as Denis Baly has given us in The Geography of the Bible (1957) and (with A. D. Tushingham) Atlas of the Biblical World (1971). There is also political geography, an example of which is James Parkes’s A History of Palestine From 135 A.D. to Modern Times (1949). The biblical scholar may be interested in the physical data such as Cenomanian and Eocene limestone, and he certainly should be interested in the mountains, valleys, watercourses, rainfall, and other physical characteristics that find a large place in the biblical account. He may have a keen interest in the political tides that have swept over Palestine, from the Egyptians in the fifteenth century B. C. (or even earlier) to the British, Jewish, Syrian, and others of the twentieth century A. D.—though much of this lies outside the biblical period. But he can hardly call himself a biblical scholar if he does not have a deep interest in historical geography, for the Bible combines geography and history with a revelation of God in a way not found in any other religious literature. In fact, the covenant with Abraham, which is basic to biblical theology (Gal. 3:6 ff.), is tied to the land of the promise (Gen. 12:1 and often elsewhere in the Bible).

Turner has limited himself to Palestine, including the Negeb and part of Sinai but excluding Transjordan, and he has developed his work geographically rather than historically. In other words, an area such as Upper Galilee or the Maritime Plain or Judea is discussed as a unit, with the historical elements ranging from the earliest (8000 B. C. in the case of Jericho) to the latest (A. D. 1972, in the case of Jerusalem) for each. Jerusalem is treated in three chapters with the historical development as a basis. An author has to decide on a plan, and then stick to it. The geographical outline has its advantages and is well illustrated by what is possibly the greatest of all historical geographies, that of George Adam Smith. The reader is concentrating on geography rather than history, and the author is supplying geographical details for that area. Obviously, these do not change greatly from period to period.

On the other hand, the biblical student is usually working from the record of events rather than from geographical units. Therefore, in the opinion of this reviewer, the historical development would have been more useful. Turner, however, has sought to meet this problem by supplying thorough indexes, both of persons and places and of Scripture references. But the historical continuity is lacking. If the student is seeking help in tracing the wilderness journey, for example, he will find little here. He will, on the other hand, find insights connecting Sinai with Moses and Elijah, and even extending to the transfiguration scene with Jesus, and he will learn that Ain Qudeirat rather than Ain Qedeis is the more likely location of Kadesh Barnea.

Turner supplies many bits of information from archaeological discoveries, and in some cases reviews the evidence for or against the various theories of the identification of a biblical site. Therefore the student will learn, for example, that four sites have been proposed for Emmaus; Turner gives a brief discussion of each and seems to favor Qubeiba as the most likely. Obviously, because of space limitations, Turner could not treat every disputed site this way.

Turner obviously has visited Palestine carefully and is familiar with many nooks and crannies that the tourist rarely gets to see. In numerous instances his descriptions of views are very graphic, sometimes even exciting.

There are some points that raise the critical eyebrow. Why, for instance, does Turner quote the fifteenth edition of George Adam Smith (1909) when the twenty-fifth edition (1931) is better, is still in print, and is the one generally quoted? And why does Turner refer to the historic route on the east of Megiddo as “Iron Wadi,” “the Valley of Iron,” and “the Iron Road” but never by the familiar name Wadi Ara? Some will probably question the statement referring to striking contrasts of climate, elevation, and flora and fauna, “These features make Palestine a uniquely favorable site for divine revelation.” Using other data from the Bible, we might conclude that God could and did reveal himself in all sorts of geographical locations. Palestine was, however, uniquely favorable for the people of God to receive and meditate upon divine revelation, in part, at least, because of its “splendid isolation.” The statement, “From Herzliyya east to the border of the west bank of the Jordan at Qalqilya is only ten miles,” is confusing; Turner is obviously referring to that part of Hashemite Jordan which was known as the “West Bank,” and not to the west bank of the Jordan river. To speak of the Yarqon as “the major river of the south of the Litani” makes no sense to me; I assume that some word or words have dropped out of the sentence. The statement that “the canyon of the Kidron” is “known locally as the ‘Valley of Fire’” is not quite accurate; the Kidron valley and the Hinnom valley join southeast of Jerusalem to form Wadi en-Nar, “the valley of fire.” The seaport of Antioch (in Syria) is not Salamis but Seleucia; Salamis is located on Cyprus.

Turner gives seven pages of bibliography, with many titles of great value to the student. He deserves our appreciation for this useful and interestingly written volume.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Christian Faith in Black and White: A Primer in Theology From the Black Perspective, by Warner Traynham (Parameter [705 Main St., Wakefield, Mass. 01880], 121 pp., $7, $3 pb). An instructor in the Episcopal Seminary in Cambridge presents a case for a distinctively black theology, since the prevailing one is distinctively white. How about trying biblical theology?

The Boy Who Stayed Cool, by Carl F. Burke (Association, 125 pp., $2.95 pb). Forty stories of young people of the Bible retold in the vernacular of the street. Follows in the tradition of this jail chaplain’s other books. Appealing to younger teens.

The Religion of Dostoevsky, by A. Boyce Gibson (Westminster, 216 pp., $6.95). A thorough and penetrating study of the seeming contradictions between the Russian author’s personal profession of faith in Christ and his writings. Especially for the literature student.

Education and the Endangered Individual, by Brian V. Hill (Teachers College Press, 322 pp., n.p.). An examination of ten modern thinkers—including Kierkegaard, Whitehead, Buber, Maritain, and Reinhold Niebuhr—to see how consistently they held to the worth of the individual. Of considerable value to educational theorists, including those who are Christians.

Psalms 1–72, by Derek Kidner (InterVarsity, 257 pp., $5.95). Eighth addition to the highly regarded “Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries” series.

Faith and Morality in the Secular Age, by Bernard Haring (Doubleday, 237 pp., $6.95). In contrast to past ages in which the secular and religious were everywhere conjoined, modern secularization has made religion the object of personal choice and commitment. The author, a Roman Catholic priest, points out the challenges this affords to communicate Christianity in language faithful to truth but intelligible to contemporary man.

John Wesley: A Theological Biography, Volume II, Part 2, by Martin Schmidt (Abingdon, 320 pp., $12.95). Final portion of a major study of the founder of Methodism.

The Angry Arabs, by W. F. Abboushi (Westminster, 288 pp., $8.95). A Palestinian-American’s balanced overview of the history and thinking of the Arabs, especially where related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Jews For Jesus, by Moishe Rosen with William Proctor (Revell, 126 pp., $3.95). Account of the conversion of a leader of the Jews for Jesus movement. Well written and very informative.

The Geography of the Bible, by Denis Baly (Harper & Row, 288 pp., $10.95). Thorough revision of a widely commended reference tool. Written with both advanced and beginning Bible students in mind. Numerous charts and photographs help bring to life the Palestinian setting of the Scriptures.

The Pastor and the Patient, by William Jacobs (Paulist, 186 pp., $1.95 pb). A starting-point for becoming aware of the wide range of new issues in medical ethics that have arisen in recent years.

Liberal Christianity at the Crossroads, by John B. Cobb (Westminster, 125 pp., $4.95). A liberal Christian’s attempt to speak for the position of that branch of the Church after the social upheaval of the sixties. Enlightening, but certainly not encouraging.

No Hope But God, by Claude Fly (Hawthorn, 104 pp., $4.95). Inspiring account of the author’s eight-month ordeal as a captive of Uruguayan rebels and the spiritual growth it produced.

The Vagrant Lotus, by Douglas A. Fox (Westminster, 222 pp., $3.50 pb). A basic but thorough introduction to Buddhist philosophy.

You and Your Retarded Child, by Nancy Roberts (Concordia, 77 pp., $.95 pb). One minority group for which others will have to speak up is the retarded. This is a helpful introduction for parents of a retarded child. Stresses parental adjustment made possible by faith. Many choice photographs.

Deuteronomy, by Anthony Phillips (237 pp., $11.95, $4.95 pb), Jeremiah 1–25, by E. W. Nicholson (221 pp., $9.95, $3.95 pb), and The Wisdom of Solomon (136 pp., $6.95, $2.95 pb). The three latest additions by Cambridge University Press to its “Cambridge Bible Commentary” series.

Pentecost Behind the Iron Curtain, by Steve Durasoff (Logos, 128 pp., $1.50 pb). Despite persecution, Pentecostalism is flourishing in the Soviet Union.

Two Centuries of Methodist Concern: Bondage, Freedom and Education of Black People, by James P. Brawley (Vantage, 606 pp., $12). Recounting of the role of the United Methodist Church in black history and education in America. Includes the contribution of each of the colleges, extant and extinct.

Flavius Josephus: Selections From His Works, edited by Abraham Wasserstein (Viking, 318 pp., $8.95). Useful selection with annotations from writings of a Jewish historian born shortly after the beginning of the Church.

The Decision-Makers, by Lyle E. Schaller (Abingdon, 223 pp., $5.95). Study of the decision-making process within the local church and suggestions for improving it. Mixes the academic with the practical. A guide for the church leader; provides helpful definitions and some constructive suggestions.

Two Become One, by J. Allan Peterson (Tyndale, 127 pp., $1.50 pb). Thirteen Bible studies on marriage and the family. Intended for married couples to use together or in groups.

A Major Philosopher

Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin (Simon and Schuster, 1973, 314 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Robert Brow, Anglican rector of Cavan, Millbrook, Ontario, Canada.

Here at last is the required interdisciplinary introduction to Wittgenstein. Janik and Toulmin rescue Wittgenstein from the confines of English philosophy and set him where he belonged: in the dazzling circle of pre-1918 Viennese intellectuals. This will be a standard work for philosophers, but it should also be of interest to scientists, historians, and theologians.

The authors demonstrate, I think conclusively, that Wittgenstein came to study under Bertrand Russell with a quite definite problem in mind. Kant set the form of the problem when he attempted to define the limits of reason, and thereby distinguish the sphere of facts from that of values. The heart of Wittgenstein’s problem and his tremendous moral earnestness derived from his exposure to Kierkegaard and Tolstoy. His methodology depended on the scientific models of Herz, Boltzmann, and Planck, as opposed to knowledge by impressions in the tradition of Hume and Mach, the fathers of the Vienna circle of logical positivism.

Armed with this background to Wittgenstein’s thinking, Janik and Toulmin show how both Bertrand Russell and the logical positivists approved and yet totally misunderstood the Tractatus. They offer a satisfying explanation of the sudden shift to values, ethics, and mysticism in the last few sections of the Tractatus. A key of tremendous philosophical importance is that the difficult word Bild should be translated “model” rather than “picture.” In the seventh chapter the authors brilliantly outline the continuity and yet the great changes in Wittgenstein’s later work.

Theologians will inevitably find themselves more and more out of their depth if they fail to grapple long and hard with Wittgenstein. Here is an excellent book to begin with. For a brief introduction to the theological problems Donald Hudson’s paperback is worth buying, Ludwig Wittgenstein (John Knox, 1968). A sixty-five-page bibliography is given in K. T. Fann, Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy (University of California, 1969). Wittgenstein’s work first agitated theologians through Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science (Humanities Press, 1958). Systematic theology will eventually have to be written in the light of Wittgenstein’s later work, but as yet nothing of significance has appeared.

Prophets Without Transcendence

The Psychology of Religion, by Wayne E. Oates (Word, 1973, 291 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, clinical professor of psychiatry, University of Illinois, Peoria.

The psychology of religion is a concerted effort to bring sacred and secular definitions of human life into dialogue with each other. This is the broad conception of the task Wayne Oates sets for himself on the first page of the book. He believes that the value systems of contemporary psychologists of personality embody the humanistic elements of prophetic religion with the transcendental aspects stripped away.

Oates is a well-known author and seminary teacher, having contributed to the literature of pastoral counseling for many years. This is frankly a textbook, developed in and written for the classroom. Each chapter concludes with study questions in addition to extensive citations. Oates draws widely upon literary as well as technical sources.

He states his orientation as phenomenological, describing as the primary features of the method setting aside one’s biases and interacting with another person as a participant observer. The method recognizes another’s selfhood and requires an emptying of rank and viewpoint on the part of the helper.

A chapter considering the origin of religion deprecates simplistic and reductive concepts in favor of theological considerations that include the character and intention of God, and Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. The separate soliloquies of religion and psychology, Oates affirms, must become an active dialogue through a deep reciprocity of methodology. He closes the chapter without enunciating the steps to such a common methodology.

Christian experience is examined as a dynamic process of development that is determined by decisions occurring at crucial points during movement toward an ultimate goal. Oates allows that God may break through some of the distortions of interpersonal relationships to encounter the person directly, or through other personalities or communities.

Following chapters on conversion and mysticism that are fairly conventional, the author ranges widely to mingle such far-out topics as LSD, laboratory studies of sleep, operant conditioning, the counter culture, and demon possession with more common subjects such as prayer, temptation, sin, forgiveness, and faith.

As a former student of Anton Boisen, Oates has long had an interest in psychopathology and religion and has conducted studies in that direction. The present volume is strongly influenced by this interest, and at times there is an overvaluation of the pathologic. Examples: inclusion as a type of conversion a category that is “part of the psychotic process,” or Boisen’s view of psychosis as a frequently constructive reaction.

Oates’s book is a stimulating addition to recent psychologies of religion. It may rather quickly become dated, however, because of its emphasis upon some contemporary and perhaps transistory phenomena.

An Important Reference Work

A Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions, by Geoffrey Parrinder (Westminster, 1973, 320 pp., $10.95), is reviewed by Mathias Zahniser, Program in Religious Studies, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

In reading, conversation, and through the media, Christian pastors and reading laymen frequently encounter references to deities, beliefs, practices, and places of worship that are a part of non-Christian religions. In addition, more attention is being drawn daily to these religious traditions in the public schools. Very timely, then, is the appearance of this handy, one-volume Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions, the best such dictionary available. As a dictionary, it will be useful for defining and illustrating beliefs, practices, and places of worship of the great religions of the world, but it will not serve as a tool for research or the preparation of lessons or sermons.

Although the emphasis is on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, a considerable number of entries relate to the religions of the Far East, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Europe and the Americas have been included as well. The only serious competitor on the market, S. G. F. Brandon’s Dictionary of Comparative Religion (Scribners, 1970, 704 pp., $17.50), treats both Christianity and biblical Judaism in addition to the religions treated by Parrinder. Although it is larger, it is no more adequate for information on non-Christian religions than Parrinder’s volume.

Another excellent feature of Parrinder’s work is its abundant line drawings. These drawings show details much better than photographs do and thus better illustrate the corresponding entry. Black and white photographs are also included, illustrating objects of worship, temples, holy men, sacred writings, and places of pilgrimage. Brandon’s work contains neither line drawings nor photographs.

The dictionary is also free of the annoying abbreviations and other reference jargon that are present in many encyclopedias and dictionaries. A reference book is enhanced if the reader does not have to consult a table of symbols and abbreviations every time he tries to read an entry.

Unfortunately, the bibliography at the end of the volume is inadequate and poorly balanced. Nevertheless, this excellent volume can be recommended wholeheartedly as a one-volume dictionary of non-Christian religions.

How Old Is Gnosticism?

Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidences, by Edwin M. Yamauchi (Eerdmans, 1973, 208 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by David M. Scholer, assistant professor of New Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Yamauchi, a history professor at Miami University (Ohio), has written a timely, important, and helpful book in the field of gnostic studies.

The book is timely because of the contemporary interest in the Coptic gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945. Although specialists have studied these texts for several years, their complete publication and translation into English, scheduled to be completed in a few years, means that a broad range of New Testament and early church history students will be giving their attention to these writings.

Yamauchi’s book is important because it deals with the most crucial question about gnosticism for those whose focus of interest is the New Testament and the development of early Christianity. That question is whether or not gnosticism was a pre-Christian religious movement. The traditional view is that it was not. However, if it was, then New Testament writers could have been influenced by it and could have engaged in polemic against it. Yamauchi, through a systematic analysis of the available evidence, argues correctly that it is not historically established that there was a pre-Christian gnosticism. Therefore this book serves as a judicious reminder to all who read and study in the area of early Christianity to be diligent in assessing evidence concerning gnosticism.

This book’s helpfulness lies in its survey of the evidence. Yamauchi reviews a mass of detail on the texts and history of scholarship, not otherwise easily available, in the areas of patristic literature, Hermetica, Iranian, Syriac and Coptic literature, Mandaeism (Yamauchi’s specialty), and Judaism. Everyone, including specialists, should find this extensive survey of opinions useful. However, this book will probably be difficult reading for the person not already somewhat familiar with gnosticism.

A major flaw of this book is that too often the argument is developed by simply citing scholarly opinion for and against a position rather than through an assessment of the primary texts. Further, it is difficult to perceive the rationale for the order in which the evidences are presented.

It should be observed that although Yamauchi established his main point, questions about gnosticism are not yet settled. Even if there is no pre-Christian gnosticism, the evidence may indicate a non-Christian gnosticism that would also revise the traditional picture of early Christian history. Furthermore, the forthcoming full publication of the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts means that the answer to Yamauchi’s question will be debated for some time in terms of the new evidence. It is not certain, therefore, that the position he defends, that there was no pre-Christian gnosticism, can always be maintained.

During the 400 years between the Testaments there arose independently of the biblical revelation that golden age of Greek intellectual achievement from Pericles to Aristotle. Nobody dreamed that its outcome would be one of the darkest periods in Western history, when even the intellectual elite in the Roman empire would glorify suicide as man’s highest option. Writing of The Early Days of Christianity, F. W. Farrar commented that the marked characteristic of the upper classes was “despairing sadness” and that “even for those who had every advantage of rank and wealth, nothing was possible but a life of crushing sorrow ended by a death of complete despair.”

The modern West, which enthroned the myth of scientific utopianism and eclipsed the scriptural view of reality, is likewise now slowly slipping into an age of despair. The totalitarian dislocation of masses of mankind, the deliberate scientific destruction of multitudes of people whether at Auschwitz or Hiroshima, the technological depersonalization of external reality, the cultural uncertainties and social instabilities of the modern world, the prevalent ethical confusion and spiritual doubt, and the flight from rational and conceptual modes of comprehending man and his plight have conspired to magnify a sense of man’s brief and ultimately meaningless existence in an indifferent cosmos. Whether correlated with Roman Stoicism or modern secular contingency, the motif “whatever will be, will be” holds little hope for man in quest of personal meaning and enduring worth.

The ancients used the term melancholia to describe the gnawing fear of losing one’s grip on reality that haunted man amid encroaching despair. This was no mere matter of Monday-morning blues, or an occasional period down in the dumps; rather, it was the onset of total and unremitting despair that drained the emotions and immobilized the will.

Despite its affluence, the American scene shows unmistakable signs of mounting melancholy. The modern American has many advantages that ancient Greeks lacked—a much higher standard of living, medical science to confront sickness, alleviate pain, and delay death. Yet a dismal and mournful mood is settling over widening reaches of American society.

Two sets of statistics tell an unhappy story. One concerns mental depression. Four to eight million Americans are said to be suffering from this affliction. Multitudes of these victims lose interest in normal sex relations and all else; they give themselves over increasingly to the wish for death. Medical science has resorted to talk-therapy, anti-depressant drugs, and even shock treatment (usually as a last resort), but relief is often only temporary.

Modem science has found no sure cure because it is confused about the cause or causes. Some analysts too readily reduce the problem to one of brain chemistry; others concentrate on adverse childhood conditions, or on the stress of modern living. But the main problem of the mentally depressed is their sense of the pointlessness of life.

With the contemplation of suicide as an escape, we are faced by a second statistical barometer. The number of suicides has been climbing in the United States from a rate of 10.6 per 100,000 population in 1960 to 11.1 in more recent years. The total number for 1969 is 22,364 suicides, despite the progress in combatting poverty, pain, and disease. Hungary and Czechoslovakia have the world’s highest suicide rate, but the United States stands fifteenth highest in the world, with a worse showing than France, Japan, and Taiwan. Specially noteworthy is the fact that the younger and affluent—not, as might be thought, mainly those in adverse economic circ*mstances—are prominently involved. Suicidal death rates have decreased in the older age brackets but have increased notably in the 15–24, 25–34, and 35–44 year spans.

The avoidance of suicide is increasingly seen as a mere matter of primitive superstition, religious bias, or personal preference. The notion expressed by Montesquieu in The Grandeur and Declension of the Roman Empire gains currency, that every man should depart from this world stage by his own script. This reflects not simply his options of burial, cremation, or leaving his body for medical research, but that of self-destruction as well. If pain and fear of suffering were once major motivations for suicide, a cheap view of life seems now to be more decisive, especially the loss of confidence that life makes sense and is worth living.

The ancient Hebrews publically read the Book of Ecclesiastes on the happiest of days, the Feast of Tabernacles. They knew its final message to be not the futility and vanity of life but God as the maker and judge of life and desirably its polestar even from youth. But the secular modern mood relativizes the whole of reality and exempts nothing from change and decay. As a penalty, it is haunted, as was H. G. Wells, by the notion that the order of nature has no “greater bias in favor of man than it had in favor of the ichthyosaur or the pterodactyl” (The Fate of Man, 1939). Only a few years later, in Man at the End of His Tether (1945), Wells wrote of “a jaded world devoid of recuperative power.… Ordinary man is at the end of his tether.” This latter sentiment, of course, also has the sound of a New Testament verdict, but it is unenlightened by the realities of redemptive revelation and hope. The Bible maintains the dignity and meaning of man’s life on the basis of divine creation and redemption, and a divinely assured destiny. The Christian revelation assigns every human thought and act high importance, and its evangelical vitalities reflect the pervasive happiness and abiding joy of a spiritually renewed life.

Neither scientific empiricism nor secular philosophy can vindicate fixed norms and a final meaning and worth for human life. Apart from the biblical basis of a divinely ordained universe and a moral afterlife, modern thought has been unable to contend persuasively for the enduring significance and meaning of man’s daily existence. If death means personal annihilation and the cosmic spheres are indifferent to individual concerns, all man’s notions about the objective value of his being and acts, whether singly or collectively, are of the nature of myth.

If modern man truly wants a cognitive basis for faith in God and in the dignity of man, he has nowhere to turn but intelligible divine revelation—in short, to the scriptural Word of God. The alternative is nothing short of Bertrand Russell’s verdict in A Free Man’s Worship: “All the labor of the ages, … all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.” And that is a thinly veiled invitation to universal despair and racial suicide.

The following is a guest column by David J. Seel, physician, Houston, Texas.

Paul the apostle was able to grasp, as few men have since, the scope of the spiritual struggle that constitutes the fabric of history. “For our fight is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, against superhuman forces of evil in the heavens” (Eph. 6:12, NEB). For such a conflict the Christian must be armed with weapons divinely potent for the demolishing of strongholds in contemporary society, for the destruction of every humanistic speculation that rears its proud head against the knowledge of God.

Our culture is under the sway of determinism, which views man as a machine and excludes the possibility of a personal God. Modern thinking is also under the influence of existentialism, which denies the value of reason in finding ultimate truth and purpose. And finally, contemporary philosophy removes all moral categories; we are left in a sea of relativism, without a concept of moral responsibility.

Paul makes it very clear, in the first chapter of Romans, that the fundamental error is an intellectual decision with moral consequences. Man rejects God’s revelation and “suppresses the truth”; man retains his self-centered thinking even at the cost of his rationality, and thus becomes “futile in his thinking”; he is left with no absolute values and thus becomes “void of judgment.”

The first of the weapons of God is, appropriately, truth. The Christian begins with the evidence of God’s existence both in the creation and in his intervention in human history. This personal God communicates with men, reveals his truth to his creatures. It is this content-ful message that we buckle on as we go into battle: we do not launch out in blind faith but are undergirded by the knowledge that God’s truth stands, whether we do or not.

The second part of the Christians’ armor is the “breastplate of righteousness.” The New English Bible calls it the coat of mail of integrity. Perhaps this is what Jesus called being “pure in heart”—being of unmixed motives, transparent but also possessed by a righteousness not our own, the goodness of the indwelling Christ. How important for the soldier of Christ to be judged pure in motive, guileless in behavior, free of hypocrisy and inconsistency!

The third feature of God’s armor is the footwear of the Gospel of peace. The metaphor implies that an agile soldier needs shoes that speed him on as he carries the message of peace with God. He is a courier of victory, a herald of good tidings, urgent in his desire to publish the message, enthusiastically announcing it as he encounters an expectant world. How different from most of us foot-sloggers, who drag ourselves forward into each day witnessing out a sense of duty rather than praising God out of a sense of joy!

The fourth weapon is faith, our shield against Satan’s missiles. We may expect the Adversary to hurl every kind of difficulty in our path. The subtle temptations of security, the pressures of conformity, the dismay of misfortune, the pain of criticism, the burden of grief, the pride of our professional dignity—all these flaming arrows and more will be fired at us. How many great warriors have gone down because their faith faltered under the assault of Satan. It is not blind faith we require but the affirmation of God’s promises and the assurance that nothing can separate us from his love—whether death, life, or the powers of hell.

The fifth of God’s weapons is the helmet of salvation: the saving life of Christ within the Christian. The resurrected Christ who indwells him through the agency of the Holy Spirit—this is the guarantee of salvation, the foretaste of victory. This is what makes the disciple invincible in trouble: Christ in control; we, yielded to his use. It is this adventure of surrender to Christ’s Lordship that provides the ultimate assurance of his Saviourhood.

The Word of God is the sixth of our weapons: it is alive and active; “it cuts more keenly than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the place where life and spirit, joints and marrow divide. It sifts the purposes and thoughts of the heart.…” The greatest tragedy of the Church today is its neglect of this instrument. The authority of the Bible is undermined, its authenticity is questioned, its relevance is denied. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, is, like Excalibur, lodged in stone, the stone of our unbelief.

The last part of God’s armor is prayer. When all other weapons seem inadequate to cope with the viciousness of our foe, when truth is twisted and integrity ridiculed, when our urgent proclamation of the news of peace with God falls on deaf ears, when our faith in God’s promises falters, when some gnawing sin has alienated us from our Saviour and his indwelling presence is dimmed, when our involvement in the world has interfered with our study of God’s message, when, in short, we are backed to the wall, there is yet prayer.

Prayer is more than a means of crying for rescue and escape from our adversary. It is a channel of spiritual power; it is participation in the spiritual activity of the Godhead; it is involvement in the intercessions of Christ, who ever lives to intercede for us. So we struggle on empowered, in partnership with our Creator and Redeemer God, and if we listen we can almost hear the cheers of that great cloud of witnesses in the eternal grandstands who eagerly watch our moment of history.

So must we “wield the weapons of righteousness in right hand and left. Honour and dishonour, praise and blame, are alike our lot: we are the impostors who speak the truth, the unknown men whom all men know; dying we still live on; disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; in our sorrows we have always cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we own the world” (2 Cor. 6:7–10, NEB).

Christians have a stewardship stake in three major areas: their time, their talents, and their treasure. What they do with these three assets is a good index of their surrender to the Lordship of Christ, Lordship that is to apply to the totality of the Christian’s life. And in a culture that continually urges “Buy! Buy more things, costlier things!,” the Christian’s use of his money makes a particularly clear point about the depth of his Christian commitment.

The figures in the accompanying graph are for 1971. The church membership figures are for full or confirmed members (excluding children) and are from the latest Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. (We did not include Canadian churches because we did not have the per capita income figures for Canada.) Using statistics for 1971 supplied by the U. S. Department of Commerce, we based our survey on a per capita income of $4,164.

A tithe of the annual per capita income would be $416. The table compares the annual contribution figures for some of the leading denominations with the amounts that would have been contributed had all the members tithed. In addition to the statistics for individual denominations we include a composite of forty-two church groups to give a general picture.

What conclusions can be drawn from these figures? First, of denominations with 400,000 or more members, only one came close to obeying the tithing commandment of the Scriptures. This was the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose income was in excess of $169 million, around $10 million less than a full tithe. This is a remarkable performance compared to that of other groups.

Second, if the forty-two churches had given a tithe, the amount would have exceeded $17.5 billion. The actual amount given was $4.4 billion. The difference between what was given and what should have been given by the tithe was $13 billion. (It should be noted that many church members also contribute to a variety of Christian and charitable enterprises as well as to their churches; this is not, of course, reflected in our figures.)

The third conclusion is obvious. Had all church members given a tithe of their income the following things could have happened: (1) Many more clergymen could have been paid decent salaries; (2) the missionary outreach of the churches could have been expanded rather than retrenched and the Great Commission brought much closer to fulfillment; (3) the churches could have offered very substantial help to needy people, especially those of the Third World who suffer greatly from malnutrition or are even starving to death.

At a time when Americans are the most affluent people in the history of mankind, the practice of tithing would go a long way toward solving some vast problems. It would also counter the trend of depending on government to meet all human needs and would keep Christians and churches in the forefront of the battle against poverty, sickness, and suffering.

The Humble Voice

Christians who speak out on political and economic issues must be continually reminded of the need to speak with humility, to communicate the awareness that they might be wrong. The editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY often receive such reminders, as did the two who attended the recent Conference on Christianity and Politics (see News, page 53).

The evangelicals who gathered at Grand Rapids hold in common a commitment to the Lordship of Christ over every dimension of life. But they differ in their views on a number of timely issues. There was evidence at the conference of the ever-present danger of laying exclusive claim to the authority of Christ and his Word for views and programs that are in fact shaped at least as much by one’s own economic, ethnic, social, and psychological situation as by biblical exegesis.

This is not to say that Christians should be silent on affairs of state. (Indeed, sometimes silence in the face of wrong conveys indifference or worse.) It is to say that when we speak we should take care to distinguish between the explicit commands of God and the inferences we draw—however compelling they seem—in applying these commands to the issues of our time.

Finding Our Foremothers

The Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. are giving the old slogan Cherchez la femme a positive twist. They are embarking on a three-year search for “hidden heroines” as part of the American bicentennial celebration. The idea is to come up with unknown or little known women and girls who have contributed to the building of our nation, and others who are doing it now.

Like Eliza Tibbetts, who introduced the navel orange to California in the 1870s, and sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington, whose late-night horseback ride roused the militia in the New York area during the American Revolution, and Namahoyke Sockum Curtis, a nurse and pioneering volunteer worker in the nation’s capital at the turn of the century, and the first black woman to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

This is a commendable undertaking, and Girl Scout groups connected with churches would do well to make special efforts to find overlooked women in American religious history. Their success could conceivably make necessary the revision of some standard works of religious history!

With Mother’s Day now upon us, what better impetus could we ask for?

Strange Bedfellows

To counter the growing activity of religiously motivated “right to life” organizations, a “Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights” was formed earlier this year in Washington, D. C. Located in the United Methodist Church Building, it numbers among its members several boards and divisions of Christian churches, as well as the American Humanist Association, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The coalition’s prime reason for supporting abortion “rights,” as given in its own publicity, is absurd: “In a pluralistic society it is essential that all religions have the right to practice their beliefs freely and that the state remain completely neutral.” Some religions have beliefs that no government can allow them to practice without interference—the burning alive of a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband, for example.

If the RCAR uses deceptive rhetoric to substantiate its position of total support for the present Supreme Court-imposed status quo on abortion (i.e., abortion on demand), it is also rather deceptive in attempting to give the impression that major Protestant bodies endorse its position. A recent RCAR press release announces that the General Executive Board of the Presbyterian Church in the United States has “become a member.” When asked what it meant for their General Executive Board to be a “member” of a “coalition,” Southern Presbyterian officials responded that their membership should be understood as going only so far as their General Assembly resolutions directed. But the relevant General Assembly resolutions, passed when most of the states had moderate to severe limitations on abortion, call for legitimatizing abortion under certain circ*mstances. The resolutions are not to be understood to mean, CHRISTIANITY TODAY was advised, that the Presbyterian Church in the United States supports abortion on demand (the situation prevailing today), and hence the “membership” of the General Executive Board in the RCAR cannot mean that either.

However, the RCAR, intent on giving the impression of broad Protestant support for its position, which is essentially affirmation of abortion on demand, has no interest in broadcasting the fact that the Presbyterians’ membership means anything less than total support. Therefore, unless Southern Presbyterians wish to be understood—and pressed into service—as advocating abortion on demand, they had better publicize their reservations themselves. Perhaps one way to do so would be for their General Executive Board to join a “right to life” organization as well. If a less than total endorsem*nt of abortion on demand lets them join the RCAR, logic would also suggest that, since they do not totally repudiate the concept of a right to life for the unborn, they should also support a right-to-life lobby. Otherwise the General Executive Board will appear to be parlaying its parent body’s reservations about the legitimacy of totally forbidding abortion into an endorsem*nt, without reservations, of abortion on demand.

Preaching The Son At Sun Devil

In a sense evangelist Billy Graham often finds himself in the devil’s territory. That’s where the sinners are. But in this the year of The Exorcist his schedule calls for him to hold a crusade in Sun Devil Stadium of the Arizona State University at Tempe, May 5–12 (the stadium’s name comes from the nickname for the university’s athletic teams).

No one needs to be reminded that so far 1974 seems to be the year of the devil. Fascination with Satan and demonic powers has definitely been on the increase, and the film The Exorcist exploits the trend. This is lamentable. To the extent, however, that this trend simply means that the devil is being taken seriously, it is to be welcomed. The devil is real, and needs to be taken into account!

Time magazine reported recently that acknowledgment of the devil’s existence is growing. A survey by the Center for Policy Research in New York was said to have suggested that 48 per cent of American adults are certain that the devil exists—and the sampling was taken long before the debut of The Exorcist. A 1964 poll showed only 37 per cent believing that way. It certainly helps Graham and every other true evangelist if hearers do not first need to be convinced that human beings must cope with Satan.

Graham had what might be called a devil of a time getting the place. A months-long legal battle preceded a unanimous ruling of the Arizona Supreme Court that Graham’s use of the 50,000-seat stadium is constitutional. The court was asked to bar the crusade on grounds that it would violate the principle of church-state separation, even though the crusade sponsors planned to pay $39,995 in rent. We hope the hassle is over so that those connected with the crusade can get to the job of evangelization and let the Sun of Righteousness shine in.

Watergate: How Widespread?

Perhaps the most tormenting worry put upon us by Watergate is, How wide, how deep, and how pervasive is the immorality now being laid bare? Was it “merely” a brief, irrational binge, or is this the way government, business, labor, and individuals operate all the time? Americans used to look down their noses at other nations whose leadership circles were known for their graft and corruption. Now we must wonder how much this is true in our own land. We have an idea of how much morality or lack of it there is in the circles in which we move, but how about that big “out there”? Who knows how bad things really are on a wide scale? Only God knows.

Clare Boothe Luce recently said, “Watergate is the great liberal illusion that you can have public virtue without private morality.” Truly it is an illusion, but it is not limited to liberals—or even to non-Christians, unfortunately. Countless people of all political persuasions believe in their hearts that what they do personally does not matter so long as the system is ethically intact. Such an outlook may be a direct result of the false notion that religion is and should be a private affair and that ethics must follow suit. Is it surprising that we cannot agree on the proper means of social order and justice?

Seeking The Last Word

The arrogance of certain contemporary religious thinkers is something to behold. Consider, for example, this quotation from the introduction to the Pentateuch that appears in The Jerusalem Bible:

For many centuries all five of the books were attributed to Moses as the sole or principal author. However, modern study of the texts has revealed a variety of styles, a lack of sequence and such repetitions and variations in narrative that it is impossible [italics ours] to ascribe the whole group to a single author.

This is yet another restatement of the documentary hypothesis, which has been widely debated for many years. It began from what was regarded as an open-mindedness toward the Bible, which is part of the broader arena of academic freedom. It has concluded, at least for the editors of The Jerusalem Bible, with not simply rejection of the prior view but outright dismissal of it as an impossibility. They are saying that no one need bother to try to prove Mosaic authorship; it cannot be done.

We have previously sought to defend Mosaic authorship, but we are not bringing the matter up again simply to reiterate our position on this particular point. We here address ourselves to the larger context, namely the paradoxical narrowness of today’s supposedly “liberal” theological thought. True, scholars today often have more information than those of bygone days upon which to base conclusions. But perhaps data previously available have been lost. Should it not also be granted that more data may turn up in the future? And if those contingencies are possible, on what grounds can the term “impossible” be used?

Much such dialectic unfortunately dots the theological landscape in the time in which we live. The Jerusalem Bible simply reflects a mentality that writes off the infallibility of Scripture only to substitute its own.

Recruiting The Recruited

Is a big new student mission movement in the offing (see Ralph D. Winter’s article, p. 12)? No one can answer that question in the affirmative—yet. But signs point in that direction.

A second question is no less important. If a vast reservoir of missionary recruits became available, under what agencies would they serve to finish the job of evangelizing the world? Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship is a non-denominational, para-ecclesial organization, and some large denominations have regarded it as competitive. But Inter-Varsity brought together at the Urbana missions convention more students than any other group has assembled for a similar purpose.

Although the missionary zeal among students was stirred by a non-church-related organization, every denomination ought to thank God for the Urbana conference. And the denominations ought to use the impulse to fill their dwindling missionary ranks.

The Road To Bankruptcy

The United States’ public debt in 1920 after World War I was $24 billion. By 1930 it had been reduced to $16 billion. A decade later, as a direct result of the great depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s spending policies, the national debt rose to almost $43 billion. By 1950, following World War II, the debt increased to $257 billion, and it continued to rise for twenty-three years to $458 billion. Now it appears that the deficit for the current year will be $20 billion.

The United States has a “pay as you go” policy for taxpayers but a “spend now—pay later” policy for the federal government. Right now the Congress is considering legislation that would provide life-long medical benefits for all citizens. Certainly we need to be concerned about the skyrocketing costs of medical care, and we ought somehow to assist persons who are inadequately served by existing programs. But, in view of our huge deficit, we should do this only after careful scrutiny.

As with Sweden, for example, there is a limit to how much national debt even a wealthy country can afford, for no nation can provide all of the services its citizens want without going bankrupt. Also, the welfare state saps individual initiative, increases the size and cost of the sustaining bureaucracy, reduces the citizenry to dependence on the largesse of the state, and at last assures some form of totalitarian control that spells the death of democracy. The old cliché is still true: everything costs something. And men and nations go broke and deserve to go broke when they try to consume more than they can produce and pay for.

Pleasing To God And Men

We are often and rightly told that Christians, in the words of the apostle Paul, are to “speak, not to please men, but to please God” (1 Thessalonians 2:4). But those who use this verse to justify harshness and brusqueness in “telling it like it is” forget what Paul goes on to say about how he did deal with these Thessalonians.

Contrary to a “letting the chips fall where they may” attitude, Paul says “we were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children” (v. 7; notice also that Paul was not hung up on his masculinity—he was able to use figuratively an attribute that is literally feminine). In addition, Paul was not like the self-proclaimed “soul” winner who has no concern for others as whole persons: “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (v. 8).

Neither was Paul the kind of person to say, “Do what I say, not what I do.” Instead, Paul was able to write, “You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our behavior to you believers” (v. 10). God can and does use us to minister his word in spite of inconsistent living, but this is not his preference, and the Christian spokesman, even though his aim is to please God rather than man, must nevertheless do what he can to have the kind of reputation of which Paul was able to speak.

Only after speaking of his being a nurse, a friend, and an example does Paul mention again the kind of speaking that we tend to associate with pleasing God, even if it displeases man: “Like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to lead a life worthy of God” (vv. 11 and 12). Observe that even here Paul cannot refer to his responsibility of exhortation without also mentioning the ministry of encouragement.

We are to conduct ourselves with the aim of pleasing God, and this may result in displeasing men. Paul himself had “suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi” and had to minister in Thessalonica “in the face of great opposition” (v. 2). Because Paul’s aim was to please God, he did not let such rejection by men discourage him. But those who did accept the message God had entrusted to Paul also found in his behavior that which was very pleasing indeed. Gentleness, fatherliness, exemplary behavior, genuine friendship—such should characterize the servant of God.

Rum, Romanism, And Rebellion

For several decades following the War between the States, Republicans rallied support by denouncing the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” (In those days rum and rebellion were not highly thought of.) Democrats now outnumber Republicans in the United States by a ratio of roughly 3:2 (pre-Watergate), but this is not to suggest that the slogan was entirely without merit.

As a result of the increasing popularity of rum and rebellion, thoughtful demagogues seeking rhetorical thunder have been forced to leave off attacking them and confine themselves as a last resort to anti-Romanism. Ever since John F. Kennedy, the striking power of anti-Romanist rhetoric has been markedly reduced as well. No Democrat, for example, has thought it worthwhile mentioning that the Watergate complex (of buildings) was financed and in part owned by the Vatican. But recently two issues have surfaced, and there seems to be some utility in the old bombast. Of course it is seldom called “Romanism” today: usually some circumlocution is used, such as “the attempt by one church to enforce its particular beliefs on everyone.” This line has been used with some success on the issues of abortion (pro) and parochiaid (contra). Since the Roman church is on record as being opposed to murder, robbery, slander, and other similar pursuits, it would appear that laws forbidding them violate the traditional principle of separation of church and state. On the other hand, inasmuch as Roman theologians, including the great Thomas Aquinas, taught the legitimacy of taxes, military service, and monogamous marriage, it would appear that the public laws promoting them likewise violate church-state separation. Here some really breathtaking vistas emerge.

For those unfamiliar with Roman Catholic teaching on basic ethical and social issues, a fairly reliable guide to whether a particular law or position violates the traditional separation of church and state is found by comparing it with the Ten Commandments and other biblical teaching. With some notable exceptions (cf. M. Luther, J. Calvin, et al.), Romanist ethical teachings are derived from the Bible. Whatever is taught about ethics in the Bible is fairly likely to be reflected in the teachings of Catholicism, or if not of Catholicism, then at the very least of some other particular church. Hence, it automatically will be fair target for expungement from American law. The possibilities are endless. With careful work, we may eventually be able to abolish all public laws that reflect the convictions of a particular religious group. It may not be easy: even formally atheistic countries such as the U. S. S. R. still retain a number of public laws paralleling one or more of the biblical commandments. But the Russians were always Orthodox. Their feeling for the dangers of Romanist-inspired legislation may yet be undeveloped.

EUTYCHUS VI

Pulling Together

Just a note to congratulate CHRISTIANITY TODAY on the March 1 book issue. Dr. Donald Tinder and [the other] reviewers did a superb job of pulling together much of the vast “literature” which poured from the presses during the year. The article on church history was especially broad in its coverage.

IRIS V. CULLY

Editor

The Review of Books and Religion

Belmont, Vt.

I have had to tear myself away from the March 1 book issue. This—and everything CHRISTIANITY TODAY does in book reviews, whether special editions or regular coverage—is the finest and of a help which is almost unbelievable. The astounding thing is that you have been able to cover so much so well. I consider CHRISTIANITY TODAY to be the best single source for bibliographic help on current releases in all areas of study. Some specialized journals do a more thorough job in their particular areas and some periodicals at least list more books than you do. But no one has been able to touch upon so much and yet give significant help.

WALLACE ALCORN

Wheaton, Ill.

Numbers Only?

Your editorial of March 15 on “Mission Retrenchment” apparently measures the “evangelization of the world” by the number of missionaries sent by Western churches. That may be one measurement, but it discounts the evangelization being done by indigenous Christians. That those people are products of the work of Western missionaries in the past may be indisputable, but they are independent now. At least, this seems to be true of the Anglican Communion in such areas as East Africa, where Christian growth is phenomenal.

The Episcopal Church has fewer missionaries overseas, as your graph shows, but that does not mean it has less commitment. Most of its overseas bishops are indigenous, elected by their dioceses. They receive lump-sum support from the Episcopal Church budget and are free to spend it on particular needs, including American missionary salaries. But in most cases the American missionaries work under or side-by-side with local clergy, no longer in the top leadership positions, which is as it should be.

THE REV. WILLIAM B. GRAY

New York, N. Y.

The item indicated that among other National Council churches American Baptists have fewer missionaries now than was the case in 1958. Nothing was said about the underlying differences of the theology of missions that brought about these differences. American Baptist missionary work for years has had a policy of training indigenous personnel to do the work. The decrease in the number of American Baptist missionaries does not represent defeat but success. The administration of almost all Baptist institutions and conventions is today in the hands of well-trained nationals. This represents in a large measure one of the objectives laid down by Adoniram Judson as long ago as the early 1800s. While American Baptist missionary personnel is down from 354 in 1953 to 265 in 1973, or 25 per cent less, the number of national church workers has increased from 3,867 to 6,308, or 63 per cent. Church membership has increased by 82 per cent over the same period. When this background and purpose of mission is taken into account we probably have far more “missionaries” than we would have had by another theology of missions that failed to develop national leadership.

FRANK A. SHARP

Communication

American Baptist Educational Ministries

Valley Forge, Pa.

Use Of Time

Basic to Rusk’s theory of a Thursday crucifixion is that the phrase “three days and three nights” must approximate seventy-two hours (“The Day He Died,” March 29). As the Jews counted the day on which something happened as the first day, the phrase simply means the day after the next or the day before yesterday. The Hebrew parallelism in Hosea 6:2 makes this clear. “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up.” The third day is for the Jews two days later. Night and day simply mean without interruption as it does in Esther 4:16–5:1. Since it is part of the earliest proclamation that Jesus rose “on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:4) and the Gospels call this day the first day of the week, the only choice is to stick to a Friday date for crucifixion and take another look at that computer’s moon calculations. Maybe it was moonstruck. Anyone knowing Hebrew use of time would not say that the three days and nights were between 11:59 P.M. Friday and 12:01 A.M. Sunday, but 5:59 P.M. Friday and 6:01 P.M. Saturday, the time when the first day of the week began. Easter dawn services might have to be replaced by Saturday sunset services, but there are obvious advantages.

DAVID P. SCAER

Professor

Concordia Theological Seminary

Springfield, Ill.

Through A Maze

Thank you for the concise and informing news report on the Abilene Christian College Bible Lectureship (“Churches of Christ: Holding the Line,” March 15). Ron Durham has done quite a detailed task to supply your readers with some of the ecclesiastical and social background of the Churches of Christ, and perhaps it is this very detail which evoked such responses as that by brother Norman (“Eutychus and His Kin,” “Objections,” April 12). The only bias I could see in the original report was the normal evangelical “slant” for which CHRISTIANITY TODAY stands. However, in a religious group wary of anything called “theology,” and currently in the process of agonizing our way through a maze not unlike that of the more visible Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, any reference to the symbol of self-criticism (Mission Journal, one of four such critical periodicals within the “brotherhood”) without “equal time” to the older, more conservative journals, naturally draws sharp criticism.

DAN GRIGGS

Church of Christ

Monroeville, Pa.

I would like to express my gratitude for the news article. Since I am a member of the Church of Christ I would like to see CHRISTIANITY TODAY give more attention to the news and issues in the Churches of Christ. For too long we have been isolationists. Ron Durham’s article is a step in the right direction. The very fact that one of us writes you in such a heated manner proves that there are some significant boilings going on which other evangelicals are unaware of. You can help us be more honest with ourselves by looking at us critically.… We, too, are going through our trying times, just as everyone else.

DARRYL TIPPENS

Assistant Professor of English

Oklahoma Christian College

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Wedding Concept

The article “Whatever Happened to Church Discipline?” by J. Robertson McQuilkin (March 29) was great. It is biblical, has balance, and is badly needed in the church today. The wedding of unity with purity is a beautiful concept.

LEIGH NYGARD

Free Methodist Church

Moses Lake, Wash.

McQuilken’s insistence on limiting discipline to those guilty of “moral delinquency” and “teaching heresy” is too narrow. The Christians at Thessalonica were told to note the man who “refuses to obey what we say in this letter,” and have nothing to do with him (2 Thess. 3:14). While it is true that the immediate context deals with idleness, would not the principle be established that one’s “refusal to obey” apostolic commands is grounds for discipline? Such behavior may result in immorality, heresy, willful stumbling blocks, calloused indifference toward the church, or a number of other things. Is not any public sin for which one refuses to repent a reflection upon the people of God and the name of Jesus Christ, and will not deliberate sin cause one to be lost? It seems to me that the key to discipline lies in one’s attitude toward the Word of God, and his refusal to obey the apostles’ teaching, rather than merely in the two specific areas suggested by Mr. McQuilkin.

DAVID TARBET

Church of Christ

Danbury, Conn.

A Question

In “The Messianic Jew” [Feb. 1] Louis Goldberg states:

A group of people in the State of Israel today call themselves ‘Messianic Jews’.… Their faith and hope is centered in Jesus as the Messiah, but they identify with Jewish people and claim that they are still Jewish.… God has a purpose to preserve this nation for the day when the fullness of the Messianic kingdom will be instituted and all within the nation will know the Messiah. The people Israel are a witness people to the covenants and promises of God. Out of this people have come the distinctives of the oneness of God, the oracles of God, and the Messiah of God.

One of the covenants which God gave the twelve tribes of Israel in the Sinai desert was the “Sabbath Covenant” of Exodus 31:12–17. The racial Jew is still today a witness to this “perpetual covenant.” The Apostle Peter shows that the Messianic reign of Jesus Christ is the sabbatical millennium of a week of 7,000 years (2 Pet. 3:8). Does the Messianic Jew observe the “Sabbath Covenant” as a witness to the world like the racial Jew does? If the Messianic Jew observes the “Sabbath Covenant,” what is his New Testament authority, since the observance of Sunday is supposedly in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ at sunrise Sunday morning?

WM. C. KELLEY

Beaumont, Tex.

On Deaf Ears

With regard to Paul L. Maier’s article on anti-Semitism (“Who Was Responsible For the Trial and Death of Jesus?,” April 12):

Certain contemporary Jewish leaders would be quite pleased to be able to say that the New Testament teaches anti-Semitism. On one hand they plead for brotherhood and understanding, but on the other hand they are grasping for straws to prove that Christianity is inimical to Judaism. If it weren’t for the tragic fact that anti-Semites used the charge of deicide throughout the ages, the whole thing would be quite silly. What court would ever convict a person of murder when the murdered man was alive? Whatever role certain Jews might have had in the humiliation of the Saviour, the concept of racial guilt is simply not allowed by Scripture. However, Dr. Maier’s arguments are liable to fall on deaf ears so far as the Jewish community goes. There are leaders who find it too convenient a defense to believe that there is something intrinsically anti-Jewish in gospel Christianity.

MOISHE ROSEN

Corte Madera, Calif.

ERRATA

Because of a production mix-up some of the copies of the April 26 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY were published with two photos in reverse position. The photo of the Louisville seminary hall and of the Reverend Eusebius Stephanou should have appeared with their respective stories on pages 39 and 44. We regret the error.

Kenneth Hechler’s name was misspelled in the April 12 news story “Stalled on the Hill.” Also, he is not a member of the judiciary committee as mentioned but of other House committees, including science and astronautics.