Page 6244 – Christianity Today (2024)

Carl A. Mortenson grew up on a farm in Illinois. At 28, he is again working in the Illinois farm country, but not as one who, having put his hand to the plow, looks backward. For Mortenson’s life now revolves around one of the most forward-looking Christian enterprises of modern times: development of a compact aircraft specifically designed to meet the rigors of missionary use.

Electric toothbrushes and powered golf carts illustrate the vast range of man’s appropriation of technology for sheer human convenience. By contrast, there are invariably long delays in employing scientific advances for the furtherance of Christ’s Gospel. Some churchmen see this lag as one of the gravest indictments of contemporary Christianity. A key example is audio-visual equipment: only a smattering of the wide assortment now on the market has been adapted for use in Christian education.

Here and there, however, a devoted Christian catches the vision. In Quito, Ecuador, it is a group of technicians at missionary station HCJB who have been building and distributing pre-tuned radio receivers and have established the world’s first missionary television station. In Philadelphia, it was the late Percy Crawford, who pioneered Christian television. In Palo Alto, California, it has been Wil Rose, who runs a technical problem clinic for missionaries.

The late “Jungle Pilot” Nate Saint saw the need for a specially designed missionary aircraft a number of years ago: “There is no market in the U. S. for the type plane we need and consequently it isn’t built … so, we just bite our lips and go ahead with what is available.”

Mortenson, a short, brown-haired graduate of Moody Bible Institute’s missionary aviation course, picked up Saint’s challenge while serving in the jungles of Peru as a pilot-mechanic with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Almost all missionary aviators must now use light, single-engine planes, which provide little hope of survival if the power plant fails over jungle or water. But the risk involves not only missionary lives and a costly airplane: if skilled Bible translators are killed, years of research and experience are lost. A tribal generation could live and die before another trained team could achieve a similar experience level.

Mortenson might never have taken on the task of building a high-wing, twin-engine prototype had not an attack of bulbar polio threatened to end his missionary career. He used his convalescence to begin the work. His enthusiasm, moreover, caught fire with a handful of fellow Christians who set up Evangel-Air, Inc., an organization dedicated to seeing the prototype fly successfully. Dr. Paul M. Wright, head of the chemistry department at Wheaton College, is chairman of the board of directors.

The present phase of the project—development of the prototype—is the most costly. Once the bugs are worked out of this original plane, Mortenson expects little difficulty in getting an aircraft company to produce others like it. He expects that to build the plane and have it certified by the Federal Aviation Agency will cost $54,000. (By comparison, the Defense Department’s TFX will cost an estimated $6,000,000,000.) All of those dollars will come from donations; gifts thus far have ranged from $1 to $2,000.

So far, Mortenson has already given more than 5,000 hours of his own time to the project. The plane is taking shape in a 40- by 50-foot frame shop along a remote private air strip at Hampshire, Illinois. Mortenson, his wife, and their three children live in Wheaton. He drives 70 miles each day to and from the Hampshire shop, which he and former Boeing mechanic Fred Culpepper rent for $100 a month. Culpepper, a 25-year-old bachelor, works for $50 a month and is depleting his savings account to see the plane to completion.

If funds become available, the plane—to be known as the “Evangel 4500”—should be in the sky before the end of the summer. It will climb fully loaded to 30,000 feet, higher than any mountain in the world, and will be able to maintain 15,000 feet on one engine if turbo-superchargers are employed. Yet it is intended to take off normally in just 200 yards. Although its wing span is only 36 feet, the plane will carry six or eight persons or convert quickly to accommodate bulky cargo. The design blends power, ruggedness, compactness, and simplicity, with easy maintenance (e.g., a fixed landing gear). It will feature a high wing to clear obstructions on rough air strips.

Mortenson knows that missionary aviation has had an admirable safety record. “This is the Lord. By the law of averages we should have had losses.”

Mortenson did not say it, but the safety record may itself contribute to apathy even among missionary-minded Christians concerning the need for better equipment. Missionary pilots cannot always expect to escape tragedy if they continue to make single-engine airplanes do twin-engine duty. In the United States, where flying conditions are ideal, large corporations insist that their executives fly in multi-engine aircraft.

Protestant ‘Trilemma’

As Buffalo’s icy blasts melted into timid thunderstorms, the National Association of Evangelicals’ fast-moving 21st annual convention swept in a whirlwind of meetings through the Statler Hilton Hotel and sounded a trumpet of evangelical concern over contemporary trends. About 1,000 delegates attended, and capacity crowds greeted public sessions.

Its ecclesiastical continuance now taken for granted, the movement is reaching for developing maturity as an interdenominational force; it anticipates fewer financial pressures in the years ahead and aims to become, in President Robert A. Cook’s words, “a vigorous voice for practical evangelical activity and dynamic Christian unity.” Its leaders seem determined to arrive on fewer battlefields “after the issue is settled.”

Leaving no doubt of discontent over the National Council of Churches’ “intensified efforts to advance the ecumenical revolution at the grass roots level,” Dr. George L. Ford, executive director, characterized American Protestantism in terms of “trilemma” rather than “dilemma” and insisted that NAE would take a middle road between NCC’s “path of accommodation” and the American Council of Christian Churches’ “path of reaction.” Its national staff now settled in a functional headquarters building in Wheaton, Illinois, NAE sets “the full freedom of the Gospel as we preach it” over against “the forces of Communism, Catholicism, ecumenicity, and secularism.” Ecclesiastical optimism over the present ecumenical development was depicted as replaying liberalism’s past enchantment with inevitable world progress.

Hosting NAE for the second time, the Queen City of the Great Lakes showed its traditional welcome for Gospel causes. A generation before Billy Graham, Charles Finney and Billy Sunday had held successful crusades in Buffalo. Local evangelical clergy sponsor a vigorous Christian youth center, pioneer an influential pre-marital clinic, and in October will host the National Sunday School Association convention. Thus the evangelical community is able to wield an impact despite a large Roman Catholic population.

In expounding evangelical spiritual unity NAE spokesmen stress that “evangelicals are pioneers in Christian unity.” But the organization is self-conscious about its own organizational apparatus, particularly the danger that evangelical interest may thrive in many related commissions at the parent organization’s expense. Said one regional director, reflecting this need at the top for a strengthened image, “NSSA I know, NRB I know, EWA I know … but what is NAE?” The movement opposes centralized ecclesiastical controls over affiliated constituencies. But it is seeking to overcome excessive decentralization of staff.

Seeking “holy unity in amazing love,” NAE is sometimes pictured as a gelatinous group largely lacking a program of specific future objectives, but waiting for a divinely initiated breakthrough charting directional imperatives. Its thesis is that modernism is bankrupt, neoorthodoxy is groping, and evangelicals have the solution: not strategy, but power. Yet the movement seems to be asking: “Where and who is our prophet?”

The convention adopted strong resolutions on biblical authority, Communism, adult and juvenile delinquency, and race discrimination. Dr. Rufus Jones, second vice-president, called on evangelicals to practice the parable of the Good Samaritan in respect to race relations and declared that “if evangelicals had been preaching ‘the whole Bible’ it would not have been necessary to send troops into the Southland.”

The “Evangelical Layman of the Year” award was presented to Herbert J. Taylor of Chicago, former president of Rotary International. Resignation of Donald H. Gill as assistant secretary of public affairs was announced; he leaves to join International Christian Leadership.

The temper of representatives of evangelical liberal arts colleges toward federal aid was mainly softer than that of the convention generally. The Commission on Higher Education steered away from the issue, but was drawn into discussion by the Commission on Social Action. Educators did little to draw a consistent line between acceptable and unacceptable aid. They spoke rather of the atheistic consequences of complete church-state separation, of campus tax exemption as already an indirect form of federal aid, of the propriety of federal (scholarship) grants for educational purposes without a religious test in the choice of a school, and of the requirement that federal aid not interfere with the institutions’ independent judgment. There was stiffer opposition to federal aid for church-related schools at primary and secondary levels, where evangelicals have a lesser stake than Roman Catholics. The Resolutions Committee, which had referred the issue to the Education Commission, offered no resolution on federal aid to colleges, despite the association’s long history of opposition.

C. F. H. H.

A Code For Holiness

Some 435 spiritual descendants of John Wesley and Jacobus Arminius met in Chicago for three days in mid-April. Much of what happened at this year’s National Holiness Association convention had a traditional flavor. Amens and shouts of praise punctuated prayers and speeches. Speakers often used large voices and gestures to match. Seminars discussed camp meetings, the focus of the Holiness movement when it organized 95 years ago. And sermons amidst the plush rococo environs of the Morrison Hotel advocated the sober life and denial of worldly pleasures.

But the convention theme—“Charged to Communicate”—was an effort to relate this old-time religion to the space age. It was also a chance for introspection among Holiness groups, which do not always communicate to the outside world despite their vitality and superb records in giving and missions.

Chief communication remedies were perfection of Christian love toward unbelievers and an increased yielding to the Holy Spirit. While changes in technique were generally avoided, there was some feeling that traditional mass evangelism should give way to increased witnessing by individual laymen.

There was a ground swell toward more communication with groups outside the Holiness world. The spirit was not ecumenical, perhaps, but at least conciliatory. Dr. Kenneth Geiger, general superintendent of the United Missionary Church who is now entering his fourth year as NHA president, stated, “In defense of doctrine and our insistence on terminology and standards we have at times forgotten the higher law of love.” The Rev. G. B. Williamson, a leader in the Church of the Nazarene, found the interdenominational approach essential in the face of a population explosion which makes world evangelism more overwhelming every day.

A bishop of the Brethren in Christ, the Rev. Henry A. Ginder, noted a healthy trend toward more Bible teaching—a typical Calvinist emphasis—as opposed to mere Christian experience. And Dr. Leo Cox of Marion College, in summarizing a seminar, said, “Our people want to reach out, to find a place in the broader Christian movement, without surrendering their own message.”

This message is the necessity of a personal Pentecost subsequent to conversion, a crisis experience of the Holy Spirit’s power. Otherwise, NHA holds to fundamentalist theology, personal assurance of salvation, and missionary zeal. NHA represents 14 denominations (the largest: Salvation Army), individual members from other groups (including Methodists and Nazarenes), as well as 65 colleges.

NHA is interested in reviewing the content, as well as the method, of its communication. The Holiness movement is no longer mostly rural, and there is a growing awareness that concepts and terms which may have outlived their usefulness must be viewed objectively, perhaps modified or eliminated. “After two centuries, we still quote Wesley most of the time. We owe something to this generation,” said Dr. Paul Kindschi, NHA vice-president and a Wesleyan Methodist executive.

Thus, the most important decision at this year’s meeting was to schedule another meeting, in November of 1964. At this special study conference, selected scholars will review and codify common doctrines of Holiness groups for the first time. Observers from other theological camps—Calvinist, Pentecostal, and Keswick—will probably be invited. The study conference is being preceded by a series of NHA-sponsored campus seminars on doctrine. And this year’s convention saw the most auspicious group of Holiness leaders and scholars yet assembled.

Geiger emphasized that the 1964 conference is not a defense mechanism, nor did he think it would change basic Holiness doctrine. More likely, it will try to tighten up popular understanding on such topics as “sinless perfection,” which Geiger says was never a part of Wesleyan-Arminian teaching. Rather, the correct concept is “Christian perfection,” a recognition that believers can and should increasingly improve their lives. But only motives can be perfected, not performance. As Wesley said, “A man may be filled with pure love, and still be liable to mistakes.”

In official resolutions the convention found signs of decreasing American morality in “the massive volume of deceptive advertising,” “suppression or manipulation of news,” a breakdown in the decency of literature, and “cheapened and sad*stic forms of entertainment,” as on TV. It supported efforts toward racial understanding, while implying disfavor of pressure tactics. In a seminar on Christian ethics, Dr. Richard Taylor of Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City (Mo.) added professional prize-fighting to the list of targets.

Convention seminars on doctrine took a temperate view toward divine healing and speaking in tongues, current phenomena elsewhere in Protestantism which have sometimes been stressed by Holiness groups.

Spiritually, the most stirring event was not a sermon or prayer, but a concert. Just as they left to sing for the convention, the Orpheus Choir of Olivet Nazarene College saw a tornado rip into the college’s Kankakee (Ill.) campus, causing an estimated $1,000,000 damage and injuring 47 students and faculty members. Yet the students still found the resources to sing boldly of their continuing trust in God and his deliverance of them in this life and the next.

Watergate Towne

Not the least of current controversies in Washington is one involving a proposed $66,000,000 complex of apartment and office buildings along the Potomac River. One argument is that the complex, called Watergate Towne, would dwarf important points of interest such as the proposed new National Cultural Center. A corollary argument is that in the projected location, an area adjacent to the Potomac River called Foggy Bottom, it would be obtrusive (the Washington waterfront is still free of tall buildings). The controversy took on religious significance, moreover, when it was disclosed that the developer of the project, Societe General Immobilaire of Rome, is partly owned by the Vatican. That disclosure gave rise to charges in some quarters that Pope John XXIII was behind a scheme to construct a Holy Roman Empire State Building in Washington.

The height of the complex is the focal point of the controversy. Watergate Towne sponsors want an easem*nt of zoning restrictions from the 90-foot limit of “residential areas” to the 130 feet permitted for commercial areas.

Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State spoke up early. They suggested that favored treatment was being sought because the development firm was “Vatican controlled.” A letter-writing campaign inspired by POAU drew some 10,000 protests from all over the country.

Subsequently the project came under scrutiny of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, a cooperative Washington agency sponsored by several large Baptist denominations, which came up with different conclusions. Dr. C. Emanuel Carlson, executive director of the Baptist committee (and a member of POAU’s governing board), said his study could find no favoritism.

Carlson said the committee study was made solely for the purpose of being able to answer letters of inquiry. It nonetheless served to dispute the anxieties expressed by POAU.

This month’s issue of Church and State, official POAU periodical, does not refer to Carlson’s assertions specifically, but some observers see one article therein as an attempted rebuttal.

“Has there been preferred treatment for the Vatican in the Watergate Towne project?” the periodical asks. “Sources inside the officialdom responsible for zoning enforcement and easem*nt have advised POAU of pressures being exerted there and of the need for publicity.”

The POAU publication declares “there is solid documentation for the claim that the Vatican has a controlling interest in Immobilaire.”

The Baptist committee study said its investigation showed that the Vatican owns only about 20 per cent of the stock in the Italian real estate firm. A spokesman for the committee explained that this figure came from a report on the firm that appeared in Time magazine.

Carlson listed a number of Washington buildings much nearer the Capitol that have been given special exemptions beyond the 130-foot limit. He added that in view of the $25 per square foot cost of the Watergate Towne land, high-rise apartments are financially necessary.

POAU countered that the government is not obligated to change zoning regulations in order to insure a profitable investment for a private group.

The Watergate Towne land is located about six-tenths of a mile from the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial.

Carlson concluded that churches in Washington are frequently involved in exceptions to the zoning laws, as evidenced by the 301-foot tower now being erected by the Washington Cathedral (Episcopal) and the 329-foot bell tower of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Catholic).

Tallahassee Test

The U. S. Supreme Court will review the conviction of ten white and Negro clergymen for unlawful assembly in the course of an anti-segregation demonstration in Tallahassee, Florida.

The group had come to Florida on a Freedom Ride sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality.

The litigation dates back to June, 1961, when 18 northern clergymen arrived in Tallahassee by bus and proceeded to the air terminal. They found the terminal restaurant, which has separate facilities for whites and Negroes, closed. Eight of the group left on an afternoon plane, but the other ten stayed in the terminal waiting room until late evening.

Next morning they returned to the air terminal to find the restaurant still closed. They again canceled plane reservations minutes before take-off and remained in the waiting room. After they had canceled plane reservations a third time, police asked them to disperse or be charged with unlawful assembly. Upon refusal, the ten¹Rabbi Martin Freedman of Congregation B’nai Jeshrun, Paterson, N. J.; Rabbi Israel S. Dressner of Temple Sharey Shalom, Springfield, N. J.; Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, professor of religion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.; the Rev. W. P. Collier, Jr., of Israel Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church, Newark, N. J.; the Rev. Ralph R. Roy of Grace Methodist Church, New York City; the Rev. Arthur L. Hardge of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, New Britain, Conn.; the Rev. A. McRaven Warner, a Disciples of Christ minister and a church council official in New York City; the Rev. Robert Stone of Adams-Parkhurst Memorial Presbyterian Church, New York City; the Rev. Wayne Hartmire of the Church of the Resurrection, New York City; and the Rev. P. D. McKinney of Garden Memorial Design Church, Springfield, Mass.—two Jewish rabbis and eight Protestant ministers—were arrested and convicted.

A Florida appellate court upheld the convictions, granting that any citizen has a right to “freely express his views and to seek to cultivate converts to them with a view of bringing moral or political pressures” but asserting that the clergymen had carried their cause to “unreasonable lengths imposing unreasonable burdens on others.” (The net effect of the last-minute cancellations was to deny seats to would-be travelers and to deprive the airline of ticket revenue.)

In appealing their conviction, the ten argue that their arrest and conviction violate the due process clause and the equal protection of laws clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the privilege and immunities clause of Article IV and the interstate commerce clause of Article I of the Constitution, and the Federal Aviation Act.

The Outsiders

Bikini-clad coeds twisting on the beach at Fort Lauderdale last month might remind some of Salome’s dance. But a score of modern John-the-Baptists have no fear of losing their heads for taking issue with antics that have made the annual collegiate migration to Florida infamous as “Where the Boys Are.”

Most of the estimated 25,000 sun-seeking students who made the spring vacation trip this year couldn’t care less, one way or the other.

Twist and limbo contests don’t seem to excite them. Neither did the efforts of 20 students, members of an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship team, to stage debates and discussion groups.

But the Inter-Varsity team found that the vacationing students will listen if buttonholed individually. Moreover, it proved to be a wholesome spiritual exercise for those on the team. All seemed to agree that their own faith had been strengthened.

Fort Lauderdale breathed a sigh of relief when the vacationing students left. They had behaved themselves well. Only a few arrests for minor disturbances were reported, a sharp contrast to riotous activity of previous years.

Some 250 miles north at Daytona Beach, where 30,000 additional students stretched out on the sand, a Christian group of 18 professional athletes and musicians also sought to bring a witness. The group, operating under auspices of the Methodist Board of Evangelism, was headed by Ed Beck, All-America captain of Kentucky’s 1958 basketball team, which won the national championship.

Each afternoon, the group drove up and down the beach in two trucks, stopping periodically to offer entertainment and talk to the students.

“Many students made definite commitments to Christ in individual conversations with group members,” said Beck.

Beck’s party included Chicago Bears quarterback Bill Wade, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Vernon Law, pop singer Tony Fontane, and the Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Episcopal chaplain at Wayne State University, Detroit.

The group presented two evening programs, one of which drew about 7,000 students.

The experiments have given rise to several theories:

—College students are not as wild as they have been pictured. They are lonely and are looking for something, but they are not sure what.

—They want authority they can respect. (They are anxious to believe in the Bible, for example, if they can be convinced it is historically reliable.)

—They listen to somebody with a name.

—They turn up their noses at second-rate performers. They walk off even from hootenannies or twist contests if performance is inferior.

—They are impressed to find anyone giving a Christian witness who is not paid to do it.

Among a number of those who led the witness, a stronger feeling developed that Christians must reach outsiders where they are.

A.T.

A Tornado Strikes

A devastating tornado swept across the 100-acre campus of Olivet Nazarene College last month. Forty-seven students and faculty members were injured. Damage was estimated at $1,000,000.

Four buildings on the campus at Kankakee, Illinois, were declared a total loss. In addition, 57 house trailers occupied by students and their families were wrecked. The college administration building was badly damaged and rendered unusable until major repairs can be made.

College President Harold W. Reed, who was attending a pastors’ conference in Iowa when the tornado struck, said quick action by his administrative council enabled schedule readjustments with virtually no interruption in class meetings.

Reed voiced confidence that there was adequate insurance coverage to compensate for the loss. He said he was not yet able to give an official estimate of loss. Other reports said the damage easily totaled $1,000,000.

All but five of the injured were released from hospitals the following day. The tornado claimed the life of a young woman several blocks from the campus. A number of homes in the town of Kankakee were destroyed.

Reed said a class in the heavily damaged administration building had been dismissed just five minutes before the tornado struck. Had it hit 15 minutes later, he added, scores of students would have been in the dining hall.

The college, which has about 1,000 students, is affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene. It moved to its present campus in 1940. Previously the campus had been the site of a Roman Catholic college.

A Reconciliation?

Richard Cardinal Cushing, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, called for “serious efforts” by Roman Catholics for unity with the Eastern Orthodox.

In an address before the Boston College Theological Colloquium marking the Jesuit university’s 100th anniversary, Cushing asked forgiveness for Catholicism’s role in the events which led to the schism between East and West.

Subsequently in New York, Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, confirmed that he expects to enter “intimate discussions” on church unity with Cushing. He said in a television interview that he expected to receive permission to conduct the talks soon from Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Istanbul, supreme head of the Eastern Orthodox.

New Ground For Christ

Evangelist Billy Graham broke ground last month for a $400,000 pavilion to serve the spiritual needs of visitors to the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair. He expressed hope that it will “make some small contribution in helping the world choose God and peace.”

The octagonal pavilion, designed by Edward Durell Stone, will include a theater with 500 seats for the showing of evangelistic films. Trained counselors will be on hand to talk with visitors.

There will also be a chapel to seat 150, plus counseling rooms, a lounge, and offices.

“Mr. Stone has spared no effort to make the pavilion an architectural jewel,” Graham observed. “In its presentation of biblical truth it will use every modern technique that science can provide.”

The pavilion is located on a 50,000-square-foot plot donated by fair sponsors. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association will supply funds for construction and operation. Official estimate of building construction is $400,000, but a spokesman said the cost including operation may go as high as $1,000,000.

Canadian Polity

A constitution and bylaws formally establishing the Canada Section of the new Lutheran Church in America were approved last month by delegates from six Canadian provinces at an organizational meeting in Toronto.

The section comprises 125,000 communicants in 360 congregations.

Dr. Hugh Whitteker, pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, was elected president.

Observers saw the establishment of the section as a step which could lead to formation of a separate and autonomous Lutheran Church in Canada.

Global Beams

Construction of a $2,000,000 missionary radio center is under way on the Caribbean island of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles. A complex of modern buildings will house transmitters, studios, and a chapel for a new radio station to be operated by Trans World Radio of Chatham, New Jersey.

Spokesmen say their 520,000-watt short wave transmitter, now being built, will be the most powerful in the world. They will also employ a 500,000-watt AM standard broadcast transmitter, which is expected to overshadow everything in the Western Hemisphere. Both are to be on the air before the end of the year.

Gospel programs will be beamed to target areas in Europe, Africa, Russia, the Americas, and the Near East, according to Trans World Radio spokesmen.

A More Excellent Way?

“Thanks to Williams, thanks to Vidler,” writes Monica Furlong in The Guardian of London, “thanks to the splendid litter of co*ckatrices they seem to be hatching so energetically in Cambridge and elsewhere, being a Christian is now intellectually more exhausting than it has been for years.” An organization which has never shrunk from intellectual discussion about the faith is the Student Christian Movement, serving those who “desire to understand the Christian faith and live the Christian life.” Even this mild yoke is lifted as a result of the decision by the movement to encourage non-Christians to become members.

Said Dr. Ambrose Reeves, SCM general secretary and former bishop of Johannesburg who fell foul of South African Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd: “What I want to see are Christion students sitting down with other students, grappling with problems that concern us all, and bringing Christian insights to bear upon them.” SCM denies any intention to drop the word “Christian” from its title.

J.D.D.

In Praise Of Folly

An ultimatum from the Vatican to dismiss his housekeeper was being resisted last month by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen, the Rt. Rev. Francis Walsh. In a statement to the Scottish press he said: “A man’s last court of appeal is his own conscience. That is Catholic doctrine. Whether I resign or not, I hope God will give me the grace to do what is right.” His housekeeper (who became a Roman Catholic eight years ago) is the divorced wife of a Church of Scotland minister.

The Catholic Herald denounced in the strongest terms “jealous, irresponsible and scandalous tongues within the Catholic community” and added: “At a time when Pope John is going out of his way to be ‘foolish’ in his attitudes to the Communists, one may be entitled to ask whether the folly of Bishop Walsh is perhaps after all, a holy folly. The saints and those who get things done in the Church are, almost invariably, the eccentrics in one way or another.” The bishop intends to appeal to the Pope.

J.D.D.

Praising The Pope

What kind of global authority did Pope John XXIII have in mind when he penned the encyclical Pacem in Terris?

The pontiff was not specific when he suggested a worldwide “public authority” to guard the peace. Some observers, therefore, speculated that he wanted the Vatican to seek direct participation in United Nations activities.

But Vatican sources, replying to such a suggestion by a columnist of Paris-Jour, issued a denial. They said he was not thinking of strengthening the U. N. or giving it more or greater powers. Pope John, these sources added, actually meant creation of a totally new organization in some ways parallel to the U. N., but separate.

A number of Protestant and Jewish leaders commended the encyclical. Among them were President J. Irwin Miller of the National Council of Churches, Presiding Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger of the Protestant Episcopal Church, President Ben M. Herbster of the United Church of Christ, and Methodist Bishop John Wesley Lord.

Miller said Protestants “welcome the historic encyclical” and are “gratified at the growing areas of agreement among leaders and people of the Judeo-Christian heritage and of other religious faiths on basic matters affecting the peace of the world and the well-being of God’s whole human family.”

“We find remarkable similarities in this statement between Roman Catholic thought and that in our own constituency,” he added. “The encyclical parallels in many of its thrusts the policies developed through the years by the National Council from the perspective of Christian faith and ethics.”

Rabbi Julius Mark, president of the Synagogue Council of America, said the encyclical’s reference to religious liberty was “exceedingly refreshing.”

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr noted that it “brings together the natural law of Catholic theology with the natural rights theories of modern liberalism.”

Said President Kennedy of the encyclical: “As a Catholic I am proud of it … as an American I have learned from it.”

In Rabat, Morocco, an official of the Secretariat of State for Information was fired after writing that his government should take the lead in implementing the pope’s advice.

Father John Courtney Murray, noted Jesuit theologian, says that in his encyclical Pope John has taken a stand against the deterministic view of history which dictates that men are shaped by events.

In the April 27 issue of America, Murray wrote that he thinks the pope “deeply understands the disastrous extent to which men today are gripped by the myth of history which the Marxists have so diligently inculcated.”

Two instances of the pope’s “full acceptance of modern progress,” Murray noted, were his affirmation of the quality of women and his “strong insistence on racial equality.”

“In the past, papal pronouncements on political and social order have always suspended … from three great words—truth, justice, and charity,” he added. In Pacem in Terris, he declared, a fourth word has been added—freedom.

Continental Crusades

Fernando Vangioni, one of Latin America’s leading evangelists, began a preaching tour May 1 in the Galicia region of northwest Spain. He will also conduct meetings for six days in Madrid and ten days in Barcelona.

Because of a legal ban on the use of public buildings and advertising, knowledge of the meetings must be spread by word of mouth. Both cities have evangelical churches seating 1,200 to 1,500.

Vangioni, of Buenos Aires, is now an associate evangelist on the Billy Graham team. Meanwhile, Graham and his party will devote their evangelistic efforts this month to key cities in France.

On May 12 the Paris Crusade opens and will continue for eight days in a large tent at Porte Maillot, a site just a few minutes’ walk from the central attractions of the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées.

During this period a week-long series of meetings will begin in other cities under the leadership of Graham’s assistants: in Toulouse, the Rev. Eugene Boyer, well-known French-speaking American evangelist; in Nancy, associate evangelist T. W. Wilson; in Mulhouse, associate evangelist Grady Wilson; in Douai, heart of the coal-mining region north of Paris, associate evangelist Roy Gustafson; in Lyon, at the new Sports Palace, associate evangelist Leighton Ford. Graham will make one-night speaking appearances at some of these meetings.

Welcoming Pilgrims

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced last month that the United States is granting asylum to about 250 men, women and children, members of the Old Believers, a Russian Orthodox sect, now living in the Lake Manyas area of Turkey.

The group is believed to comprise the last descendants of a band of some 5,000 Old Believers who split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century over a religious dispute and migrated to Turkey.

Transportation for the Old Believers was arranged by the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration.

Members have been under constant pressure from Russia to return to the U.S.S.R. since 1959, Kennedy pointed out. An estimated 1,000 Old Believers returned to Russia last September, while some have gone to Brazil.

Kennedy said the “Soviet pressures on those remaining to join the first group intensified and the morale of this small group is declining. Immediate action is required to prevent its complete demoralization.”

He said he was extremely pleased that “this study group of pilgrims will come to our shores.”

Farmers and fishermen, the group will come to America under auspices of Tolstoy Foundation of New York, headed by Countess Alexandra L. Tolstoy, daughter of the famous Russian author.

Article 29

An amendment to the Somali Republic’s constitution which makes it illegal “to spread or propagandize any religions other than the true religion of Islam” was scheduled to go into effect this month with its ratification by the National Assembly.

In New York, Dr. Ahmed Darman, consul at the Somali Mission to the United Nations, said Article 29, dealing with freedom of religion, was amended to underscore Islam as the state religion and not to impinge on the internal activities of other religions.

He said followers of other faiths may carry on their activities “in their own communities,” but may not proselytize among Moslems. He also noted that only the Islam religion is taught in state schools.

The amended Article 29 reads: “Every person shall have the right to freedom of conscience and to profess freely his own religion and to practice its rites, subject to any limitations prescribed by law for the purpose of safeguarding morality, health and public security.

“However, it shall not be permissible to spread or propagandize any religions other than the true religion of Islam.”

The religious freedom issue was highlighted in the Somali Republic last year when Merlin Grove, 33, a Mennonite missionary from Canada, was slain by a Moslem fanatic as he was engaged in reopening a mission school. His wife, Mary, also was stabbed but survived.

Police said the assailant felt that the mission presented a threat to his religion.

Proponents of the amendment said the article’s previous wording concerning the state religion “appeared to be obscure” and called for “a more lucid and accurate restatement of that article lest it lend itself to misinterpretation and misapplication.” They said they considered that “Islam is the supreme Constitution God has created for the whole world.”

The amendment had been approved by the National Assembly last January by acclamation, and was to be ratified following a three-month waiting period.

“THE TROUBLE with you,” a certain minister told me, “is that you think dogmatically.” Perhaps I should have replied: “And you—your trouble is that you can’t or won’t think dogmatically!”

Many people regard the dogmatic mind with misgiving. This apprehension may stem from the fact that across the years the term “dogmatic” has become weighted with connotations totally unrelated to theology. The dogmatic person, in the popular mind, is not merely opinionated and obstinate, always thinking himself in the right, but is likely to be overbearing and arrogant as well, with more than a dash of egotism and a remarkable deficiency of kindness. Even where the concept is not encumbered with all sorts of adventitious meanings as in theology, a certain malodorousness seems to have attached itself to dogmatical thinking and speaking.

Actually the dogmatician or systematician is just now in a state of partial eclipse. Apart from the ecumenical issues, theological interest has centered for some time on the historical origins of Bible and Church, on textual and literary criticism, on recently discovered or devised problems of hermeneutics. As a result, even dogmaticians who theoretically uphold the divine inspiration and the inviolability of the sacred Scriptures often hesitate to make direct, positive doctrinal affirmations lest they hear the shattering remark that these affirmations are invalidated by the theological advance in other areas of study. This explains also the dubious attitude of many toward the ancient creeds. That theologians may feel at home with the Scriptures but decidedly not so with the creeds, even where these are drawn from the Scriptures sentence by sentence, may seem strange. The explanation for this is simple. Men often extol the Scriptures and even call them the Word of God but then proceed to demythologize, spiritualize, symbolize, “interpret” them to their hearts’ content. The confessional statements of the creeds do not lend themselves so easily to this treatment and are therefore often reduced to a kind of inoperative, though decorative, window-dressing. The Church of South India, for example, accepts or acknowledges the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. When the church was organized, however, assurance was given that each individual was free to interpret the creedal clauses to his own satisfaction. On this basis a leader in the CSI could declare at Melbourne a few years ago that of course each church-body regarded certain teachings as fundamental; the difficulty, however, lay in formulating these fundamentals, and it was even doubtful whether this should be attempted.

We sometimes hear it said that dogmatics must be secondary to exegesis. Certainly exegesis is basic, for what is not true exegetically cannot be true dogmatically. But genuine theology cannot be compartmentalized. The dogmatician must be a good exegete who knows and uses the Scriptures aright. And the true exegete, whose business it is to set forth the intended sense of Holy Writ, cannot and will not avoid making direct doctrinal or dogmatical affirmations.

In the early years of the Faith and Order movement, when many mission workers convened to discuss these matters, the older men in particular were shocked to realize that most of those present would not commit themselves to the Apostles’ Creed, especially to those clauses referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. After much circuitous talk someone suggested this approach: Men are by nature or predilection either poets or mathematicians. While the former are greatly concerned about truth and beauty, they do not, like the latter do, insist upon precise terminology, careful distinctions, dogmatical correctness. It makes little difference in the end, so let each follow his own bent! Significantly enough, most of those present at the meeting were content to take their stand with the poets.

This pretty little analogy is quite useless and even harmful, of course. The important question is not whether poetic feeling and mathematical ability can coexist in the same person. Considerations of time and place and circ*mstance, of need and of proper function make a difference. The man quietly at rest in some placid, sheltered bay can safely let the poet in him take control as he watches “the long light shake across the lake” or engages in original versification. Why should the captain on the bridge of a great liner not be open to the beauty of ever-changing sea and sky? Why should he not burst forth in Byronic verse or quote from Tennyson as daylight fades? The steamship company, the ship’s crew and passengers, however, rightly expect and demand of him a proper knowledge of navigation, or applied mathematics. He must be able to read marine charts and handle nautical instruments expertly. He must be aware of dangerous shoals and treacherous currents. Even in fog and darkness he must be able to make a safe landfall instead of piling his vessel against some rocky shore.

If the theologian, meaning now the preacher in particular, can infuse his message with poetic beauty—after all, much of the Bible is sublime poetry—and send his hearers away with their aesthetic feelings enriched and satisfied, well and good. But if that be all, alas for both preacher and hearers! The distressed soul that asks: Why am I here? Who is God? What must I do to be saved? What is Christian faith? and so on, gains no help from soporific talk about truth and beauty, sweetness and light. If Christian faith, principles, and conduct are to withstand the exigencies of life in a world overrun with other “goods” and goals, more is needed than simply evoking pleasurable emotions and an atmosphere of wonder. We need complete, definite, and accurate presentation of spiritual, biblical truths. These truths (to lapse into dogmatical language) must be stated thetically and, in the interest of comprehension, often antithetically as well.

Despite the multiplicity of tasks thrust upon him today, the Christian minister is primarily a teacher of spiritual truth. He must be “apt to teach” and able “by sound doctrine both to exhort, and to convince the gainsayers.” “By taking heed unto the doctrine” he is able to save himself and his hearers. Every theologian knows how often the words didaskalia and didache occur in the Pastoral Epistles. Whether or not the Greek word dogma is a cognate of the Latin docere, his very office constrains the minister both to think and to speak dogmatically. The teaching-learning process requires clear-cut concepts and sound, definite judgments expressed in appropriate language. Vagueness in teaching makes for vagueness in hearing and learning.

Thinking and speaking dogmatically should not be stigmatized as intellectualism. Such a charge, though, however false, must often be anticipated and accepted with grace and with awareness of man’s frequent unwillingness to “endure sound doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:3). The unalterable and elementary fact remains that cognition takes place primarily through the intellect, and must therefore be of the right kind. When teaching and preaching become simply an exercise in religious information; when undue emphasis is given to formal correctness of doctrine; when basic Christian faith is equated with orthodoxy—then we may speak of intellectualism. This danger exists. But one does not for that reason completely discard the whole matter of dogmatic thinking. The true dogmatician guards against intellectualism by remembering that genuine faith in Christ is not merely a given amount of cognition; it is, rather, knowledge or a fiducia cordis that grasps Christ and his salvation. Engendered by the Holy Spirit, genuine faith means the new birth of a new creature in Christ—a metamorphosis, as St. Paul says in Romans 12:2.

To think and speak dogmatically may, of course, encourage an endless multiplication of dogmas and doctrines unless one confines thinking and speaking within the limits set by the Divine Word. The true dogmatician will insist that only what is clearly laid down in Scripture as a rule of faith or life is rightly dogma or doctrine. Moreover, as long as “dogmatism” has warrant in the Word, the dogmatician is in no sense encroaching upon God’s prerogative. Perfect and complete apprehension of truth is not ours this side of eternity. God nevertheless invites and expects his followers to practice proper dogmatical thinking for the edification of souls and for the glory of his holy name.—Dr. HENRY HAMANN, Former President, Concordia Seminary, Adelaide, Australia.

Recalling his preaching mission at a well-known secular university, a prominent evangelist recently commented in private conversation about the shocking p*rnography displayed in dormitory rooms, and the widespread sex immorality confessed by students. “I sent my daughter to——College,” lamented another evangelical leader, “and now I’m told that all the social decencies I have insisted on are prudish!” Remarked a New York lawyer: “If you send your daughter to——, you must expect her to come home holding a cigarette in one hand, a co*cktail in the other, and strutting a cynical attitude toward our American ideals.”

When education professedly dedicated to truth is indifferent to moral purity it becomes but an enterprise of sophistry and sham. By whatever disciplines and standards it upholds, every school implies approval or disapproval of a given way of life.

Christian institutions, too, would belie their heritage and purpose were they not interested in preserving scriptural standards of conduct as well as of doctrine. A church constituency has a right, therefore, to look to a Christian campus for higher social mores. Among church-related institutions the issue in debate is not whether but rather which criteria best reflect evangelical sanctification. Is the evangelical safeguard against the immorality prevalent in secular circles a campus code that stipulates “no card-playing, no smoking, no movies, no dancing, no drinking”? Some schools feel that annual student subscription to these regulations is as essential for protecting evangelical vitality as is annual faculty subscription to a doctrinal platform.

Sometimes, however, an almost anti-intellectual approach to Christian education lurks in the shadow of this separationist emphasis. When the genuineness of evangelical higher education is discussed, the first test of Christian fidelity becomes an institution’s published checklist of “don’ts.” While devotion may be formally pledged to integrating thought and life within Christion perspectives, the “code” tends to outweigh these concerns, and hence displaces them as the hallmark of Christian education.

The customary fundamentalist restrictions are, of course, no guarantee of pure doctrine; many of the unorthodox cults reverence even more stringent codes of conduct. But even where orthodox theology prevails—as in the early days of Harvard under Increase Mather—puritanical prohibitions and rigid controls may breed student resentment and may nourish doctrinal revolt as well. It is always difficult to show, of course, that students—and graduates—“go wrong” only because of certain restrictions, and that a similar outcome would not have followed under contrary conditions. Perhaps it is just as risky, however, to credit only “the campus code” for the moral uprightness of students and alumni.

Too often it is forgotten that the evangelical academic task fulfills its first area of responsibility through an earnest exposition of a Christian world-life view. By launching the whole content of the curriculum into this orbit, Christian scholarship will relate life’s claims and experiences totally to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Nor does evangelical education attain its fullest sphere of achievement while the indifference of secular to Christian education remains unchallenged by competent evangelical literature in many fields of learning. Evangelical scholars are too often content merely with raising up isolated pockets of resistance. Even here, in some areas, they fail to dispute the entrenched biases effectively. However much smokelessness and dancelessness may predominate on campus, evangelical education has not seriously pursued its primary task until the academic community grapples with higher issues than the mere repudiation of wide reaches of the cultural setting.

The real risk in the usual fundamentalist articulation of campus regulations is fourfold:

1. Interest in abiding revealed moral principles and precepts becomes secondary in the scramble to equate biblical ethics with specified avoidance of contemporary practices. Ironically enough, many fundamentalists fall into much the same error in this regard as most liberals. By concentrating on particular programs—the liberals in social ethics, the fundamentalists in personal ethics—both groups fail to center ethical concern in divinely revealed imperatives.

2. Reference of right-and-wrong conduct simply to a legalistic code of negations minimizes individual spiritual decision and blunts the development of the “good conscience.” Sometimes we hear that college students today are so immature, and by nature such confirmed legalists, that codes are necessary. As one evangelical educator has said: “One can tell them earnestly all the reasons for or against a given practice, and the next question still remains, ‘Well, can we do it or can’t we?’ Conscientious students expect a list of regulations. Maintenance of a simple set of rules obviates endless discussion and quibbling.” Another evangelical leader asks: “Who should set standards in the home—parents or children? In a college, administration and faculty, or students?” But this line of justification fails to indicate how such codes really help students overcome ethical immaturity. In a statement on student standards a leading college puts the matter this way: “Entering … necessitates signing a pledge to abide by the College regulations. Once such a pledge is signed, personal integrity dictates the only course.”

3. Forthwith to equate “the separated life” with avoidances is to devalue the biblical virtues such as love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, self-control, and so on. After all, the essence of Christian personal ethics lies in the exercise of positive virtues, not in the mere avoidance of evils. Abstention, unfortunately, is sometimes combined with a carping lovelessness and pride, so that the minister who smokes, for example, may be automatically shunned as “the devil’s henchman.” The avoidance of certain social practices need not, of course, produce a negative mind-set. And while many evangelical schools enforce their own “rules,” they avoid pronouncements like “for a Christian these practices are wrong.” The major problem is still that of mislocating the primary criteria of Christian morality in what is outward rather than inward. Christian living at its highest is not something achieved through a simple boycotting of the world of culture. God’s people ought to identify the life of sanctification primarily in terms of biblical criteria, rather than by requiring particularities of Christian behavior for which no direct biblical mandate exists. “I am fed up with the fundamentalist’s confusion of taboos with a separated life,” writes the head of an evangelical academy. “I wish that we could put taboos in their proper place and realize that separation means separation from such things as malice, gossip, selfishness, pride, and the like.” The biblical emphasis falls rather on loving of God with the whole heart, and neighbor as oneself; it underscores daily self-denial in the interest of Christ-likeness. New Testament morality, indeed, is not without its “negatives”; they speak, however, from the shadows of the Ten Commandments which devout love fulfills: “Let him that stole steal no more.… Speak evil of no man.… Thou shalt not bear false witness.” The mainspring of New Testament ethics is the lordship of Christ, transforming the believer’s life by the Holy Spirit.

4. To elevate culturally-relative rules of conduct to a place of fixed absolutes is to distort moral values. This mistake is the peril of insisting that loyalty to a revealed Bible and to the fundamentalist code are one and the same package. Such exaggeration invites inevitable revision of rules on the basis of enlarging experience, and encourages the possibility of personal disillusionment and ethical instability. Probably not a single rule of Christian moral conduct not specifically taught in Scripture is universally recognized among believers as valid and binding. An atmosphere of external restraint, which legislates decisions for young people in advance, and dictates rather than develops their attitudes, throws them into confusion when they face new cultural phenomena (like television). The challenge of dedicated discrimination provides a far sounder preparation for assessing individual and group responsibilities.

Nonetheless a place must be found for specific standards on a college campus—provided, however, that the philosophy of conduct is properly elaborated. Because mid-century moral ignorance and deterioration have penetrated everywhere, college students today are ethically less mature than in previous generations. As a result, statements of bare principles without some particularized applications leave immature students confused in the face of specific situations; many reach for a guidance, therefore, that moderates between paternalism and liberty. A church, more often than not, best guides its members by “counsel” rather than a code of particulars; a student body, however, usually settles back to the lowest common denominator of campus conduct. Some uniform criteria would seem to be quite essential, therefore, to preserve, let alone encourage, a spiritual and ethical tone. “I am personally persuaded,” writes the dean of an evangelical divinity school, “that original sin makes standards on campus just as necessary as motor vehicle laws on the statute books of the states.” Chapel attendance, perhaps, ought to rank above all other requirements.

Drinking and smoking are now more easily condemned than other practices because medical opinion confirms their detrimental effects on the body. Indeed, the lack of social conscience is such today that the evangelical community stands increasingly alone in protesting the matter of liquor. Instead of merely promoting a bias against drinking and smoking as “sinful,” the Christian college is especially obliged, it would seem, scientifically to demonstrate to its students the effect of alcohol and nicotine on the body. In regard to movies, some evangelical colleges ban all theater attendance but allow discretion of conscience in watching television. But, notes a prominent administrator, “I would rather pick a good movie now and then, such as War and Peace, The Old Man and the Sea, or The Mountain, than waste my time with TV.” To forego all motion pictures because many are considered harmful is as unrealistic as to forego the reading of books, even good ones, because many books are wicked. Should the evangelical community perhaps encourage the production of films like The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur?

It is possible, we feel, to overcome the liabilities of a code if, as a projection of Christian conscience at a given time in history, it serves to protest specific cultural evils (sexual interpretation of the dance, liquor traffic, disrespect for the body implicit in smoking in view of medical research, and so on). The decision to protest by total negation ought to be optional and personal. On a voluntary community basis the college family may indeed venture total negation. It ought not thereby to imply superiority over other Christians, however, who withstand the cultural milieu in some other way than by asserting a total incompatibility between Christian witness and social context. The latter may still preserve the principle that the demands of the Christian life are basically inward, and require active participation in godly virtue, and the active reclamation for Christ of all the lost spheres of culture.

Some educators consider the signing of “a code of conduct” pledges a mechanical and upscriptural procedure; its main service, they feel, is to provide the dean’s office with a convenient device for student expulsion in the event of habitual infraction. On the other hand, some administrators who rely for campus conformity on “a strong spiritual emphasis”—involving required attendance not only at daily chapel and Sunday services but also at midweek prayer and stated evangelistic meetings—as an automatic device for “staying with the rules,” sometimes seem merely to substitute one form of external pressure for another. One educator thinks a possible solution might be to provide students with a guidebook that incorporates a suggested way of life embracing both positive and negative elements. These would have the force not of legal but of moral sanction.

America’s need for a Christian university has been discussed from time to time. In such a venture the courageous shaping of ethical claims on campus will be a prime responsibility. Evangelical youth needs and wants the perspective of a high morality that issues not from the regulations of men but from sustained devotion to the eternal commandments of God.

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A Growing Ten-Year-Old And A Caution For The Future

One of the biggest ten-year-olds you will find anywhere is the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which is celebrating its birthday by pressing for a new budget of $7 billion plus. How the strapping child has “growed” is indicated by recalling its first-year budget of $1.9 billion, which has since nearly tripled to a soaring $5.4 billion. Over the same period personnel has more than doubled—from 34,000 to 80,000. Nine out of every ten workers in the nation have a direct connection with the department under the Social Security program. After former secretary Abraham Ribicoff resigned last year in order to run for the Senate, he declared that the secretary “wears 20 different hats a day, runs 110 separate programs and is responsible for 75 separate budget items, and the list is growing all the time.”

Department officials face continuing charges that they are bent on promotion of a cradle-to-the-grave welfare state. They are forever climbing Capitol Hill to explain and defend department operations and legislative requests. HEW growth is accompanied by rapid transfer of wants to needs in the minds of the citizens. And more and more the federal government is looked to for the satisfaction of these “needs.”

This is not to say that HEW does not perform many fine services. But it is to express concern over the drift to paternalism reflected in its operations. It is to raise the question of whether much of this government service is to fill a vacuum left by the Church. And it is to express a hope that the citizenry will not barter away political freedoms because of personal insecurities. Let the Church more faithfully and zealously point the citizens to the ultimate paternalism which is also productive of ultimate freedom. It is found in the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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A Little Something About ‘Something For Nothing’

Americans are inching toward acceptance of revenue-raising gambling. While many states have legalized racetrack gambling, the legislature of New Hampshire has now passed a bill to permit a state-operated racetrack lottery. The estimated $4 million to be obtained is nobly designated for educational purposes. This will appeal to those interested in education. It will also appeal to those who have the gambling instinct to get something for nothing—and to those psychologically sick people who gamble to lose.

In contrast to a straight lottery in which the winner is determined by the drawing of a number or by a number which regularly appears, as a stock market index, in a racetrack lottery drawn numbers are placed on horses, the winning horses determining the winners. The New Hampshire proposal will therefore also appeal to racetrack interests—and to the liquor interests—since tickets for the lottery will be sold only at racetracks and government-controlled liquor stores.

Unless anti-gambling interests move swiftly, the swelling tide to raise state revenue through legalized gambling in various forms will not be stemmed. Unfortunately Protestant clergymen known for their shoulder-to-shoulder opposition to gambling will get little help from their Roman Catholic colleagues who condemn gambling only when it is done in excess. There are fortunately many non-churched Americans who intuitively, and because of attendant evils, oppose gambling. The cause is not hopeless if opponents of gambling will arise and close ranks.

Indeed, New Hampshire’s near neighbor, Maine, has just provided grounds for hope. Its House of Representatives has rejected a bill calling for a semi-annual state lottery, something religious leaders had vigorously opposed at legislative hearings. The measure had urged sale of three-dollar lottery tickets, with half the proceeds earmarked for educational purposes. (Note the pattern.)

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation”? Many a saddened Republican will tell you it just isn’t so. But let the saying now represent a noble, non-partisan hope.

Let New Hampshire and other states as well look northward for inspiration, if that is what is needed for the people of a state to shoulder forthrightly the costs of governing themselves and educating their young. Are we worthy of the name “democracy”? Indeed, are we worthy to be called parents? Apparently the burden of proof is still upon us.

Surely many recognize that the morals of a society are not enhanced when a state caters to the weaknesses of its citizens in order to find an “easy way” to meet its financial obligations.

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A Load Lifted But A Nagging Doubt

Dr. J. Irwin Miller, lay president of the National Council of Churches, is one businessman fearless enough to address 2,000 Christian educators on the subject of Christian education. This he did in St. Louis in connection with the annual meeting of the NCC’s Division of Christian Education.

He criticized those Christians who would restrict Christian thought to a limited set of beliefs, then set forth some limitations of his own. Christian education must aim to help man “find his own answers” to the nature and purpose of God, and not try to “indoctrinate” him, Miller said. Well and good, as long as man seeks to make God’s answers his own. But the NCC leader went on to assert, according to Religious News Service, that church education must be based on the “scriptural” assumption “that every man has the gift from God to discern truth,” and therefore must “remind rather than inform.”

The lay president is obviously not a champion of the tabula rasa school of epistemology, and this does not worry us. But what is worrisome, unless he is making a disguised plea for the ontological argument, is the logic that says possession of the gift of discernment of truth (if this were so) is equivalent to possession of the truth itself to the extent that only a reminder is necessary. The Christian educators present must have been relieved to be let off so easily.

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Protestant Problem: Doctrinal Disintegration

If the problems of the modern Church are due in part to external pressures, they are due also to internal confusion. With the emergence of liberalism and the resurgence of Roman Catholicism, the present century has witnessed a doctrinal disintegration that has weakened the life and work of the Protestant denominations and blunted their impact on the world. While no one desires a restoration of heresy hunting or a restriction of reasonable liberty in biblical and confessional interpretation, the riotous growth of private opinion, the disregard for established conviction, and the general dogmatic indifferentism and relativism of many circles, can be viewed only with serious misgivings.

As a recent article on the Anglican articles has shown (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 15 issue, p. 18), the mere mention of a confession will give rise to surprise at the very suggestion, to evasion by a purely local reference, to the most far-fetched of reinterpretations, or to a direct refusal of acknowledgment. Indeed, the absurd idea is sometimes expressed that confessional allegiance denotes ignorance or even denominational disloyalty. Is it any wonder that neither the intellectual nor the plain man is impressed by the discordant and disheartened cacophony which passes for the modern theological and evangelistic message of the Church today?

Naturally we do not suggest that everything taught by the fathers was infallibly correct in all particulars. We do suggest, however, that the pastors, evangelists, and theologians of a church show elementary loyalty to a constituted position until there is authorized reformation under the apostolic norm. We do suggest that those who fashion the message and work of their churches according to what is right in their own eyes desist from their irresponsible activity. We do suggest that those whose trumpets do not have a certain sound withdraw from the public conflict of the Word until they can blow the common note, or until the false note is duly corrected.

A distracted world cannot be helped by evasiveness or self-opinionatedness. It demands men of integrity, of conviction, and of faithfulness to their inner and outer calling. Scripture itself warns us that judgment begins at the house of God. A heavy price may well be exacted, not merely in external futility and internal disintegration, but in the divine displeasure, if there is not the prompt and salutary self-scrutiny which discrepancies between nominal and actual profession so obviously demand.

END

Much is being said about making the Gospel relevant to the present world situation, particularly so that it will appeal to college and university students. One is led to infer that New Testament Christianity is so far removed from the atomic age that a new gospel must be devised, one which speaks to current needs and problems as the “obsolete” concept of God and man can never do.

One of the most frequently mentioned opinions is that students must be confronted with a Christianity geared to human need.

Furthermore, living in this scientific age we must have a gospel which “appeals to” the restless and seeking students of today.

The implication that the biblical revelation is neither adequate nor relevant for a sophisticated and technically alert new generation needs careful analysis. Should a philosophy of the Christian faith be based on this false premise, the end result can be disastrous.

Probably there should be established first of all a realization that the foundation of Christianity rests in a new and personal relationship with God through his Son. Without this there is no such thing as Christianity. Furthermore, a gospel which centers on secondary matters before the primary one is settled is itself a blind alley.

To be specific: we all recognize that we live in a world of turmoil, one in which injustice and need are found everywhere. But imagine the complete elimination of injustice, hunger, sickness, and suffering without reference to the needs of the human soul, and what have you? Humanism, not Christianity.

Christ put this difference in clear perspective when he said, “For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

It is a disturbing fact that much which passes for “Christianity” today is humanism, not Christianity, for it is geared solely to secular and material need and not to the needs of the soul.

Furthermore, it is so much easier to challenge young people to mount the white charger of reformation than to confront them with the deep, sobering need which is theirs for personal redemption.

While it is true that if students sense in Christians a lack of concern for the suffering and needy, they can well turn away in disgust and disillusionment, still it is our observation that those most concerned about the proclamation of the good news are the very ones who maintain services for human need and carry these to the ends of the earth even as they preach Christ and him crucified.

The relevance of the Gospel centers in God’s provision for man’s greatest need. Nor has this need changed with the splitting of the atom or the conquest of a fraction of space.

Let any student stop and think of those basic problems with which he finds himself confronted. Is he no longer tempted to lie and cheat? Is impurity of thought and action no problem—does lust recede as science advances? Or, has the moral code of Christ been superseded by a new concept of inter-personal relationships between the sexes?

Does the “restless and seeking student” of 1963 find himself freed from those appalling claims of nature: “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”?

Are these wonderful young people being confronted with the claims of God and his Christ on their personal allegiance and devotion?

It is easy to let the change, scientific advances, and general sophistication of our age blind us to the spiritual need which confronts every man.

Relevant? What could be more relevant than a Gospel which confronts us first of all with our own sinfulness and our need of the redemption which is in Christ?

This can, of course, be rationalized away. The fact of sin can be minimized. The offense of sin to a holy God can be ignored. The need of personal cleansing and salvation can be shrugged off in a concept of man which claims he is already redeemed—he just does not know it.

The righteous judgment of God can be brushed aside as we look only at one facet of his Being.

Human injustice and misery and need can so overwhelm us that we go out to change inter-personal relationships without reference to man-God relationships.

Probably most disturbing of all, we might work to eliminate the corporate sins of society, to bring about a world of peace, justice, and plenty—only to find that the desired Utopia is a hell on earth because God and his Christ have been ignored or given some secondary place.

As much as we might like it otherwise, the corporate sins of society must be solved at the personal level or they will never be solved.

Young people need to be confronted with a Gospel which places man and God in their right perspective. Thousands may be enlisted to go out and make this a better world in which to live, but only those taught and led by the Holy Spirit can approach the task as God requires.

The magnitude of that which God has done for man at the personal level needs to be stressed. In fact, unless the significance and implications of the Son’s coming into the world—his death and resurrection, his Kingship and Lordship—are made plain, young people have been cheated out of the Gospel message, and in its stead “another gospel” has been foisted upon them.

Of course we live in a needy world. On every hand there is injustice, inhumanity, hunger, squalor, sickness—misery of every kind. And the Christian is obligated to go out and feed, heal, and comfort in every way possible. But never forget—the human race has also a soul-sickness, sin, an estrangement from God; the cup of cold water in one hand must be accompanied by the Gospel of God’s redeeming love in the other.

Yes, young people need to be challenged with a “relevant” Gospel, but the Gospel of the first century is just as relevant in the twentieth as it ever was.

We all need to be aware of confusing and misleading the students of today. Deep in their hearts there is spiritual hunger and need. They must be confronted by the One who has come to meet that need. Not for nought did the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews say: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein” (Heb. 13:8, 9).

The problem is not that young people shall be challenged by a gospel which appeals to their sense of world need. Rather, they must be confronted with their own personal need of Christ.

Only then have they been challenged by a relevant Gospel.

THE ART OF PREACHING AS AN ACT OF WORSHIP

No sermon, however homiletically artistic, is ever complete if considered solely as an individual effort by the preacher. It is the congregational context, as well as the sermonic content, that must be taken into account.

Immediately we are hard against an issue that is increasingly to the fore in wide areas of Protestantism: shall we revive liturgy in order to enrich worship? This is not the place to explore the ramifications of the debate. It is the place, however, to point out—and to protest against—a false antithesis. Granted that in evangelical Protestantism, particularly of the “free church” variety, the tendency has been to misconstrue and undervalue those forms of congregational prayer and praise which precede the sermon. In this distorted perspective we look upon these exercises and offerings as “preliminaries.” The word should be an offense to us. The abandonment of its absurdity cannot be too swift.

But now an opposite peril threatens. Protestants, we are told, have become a sermon-tasting breed who, whether fascinated by a pulpit star or bored by a hack, are strangers to the art, the beauty, the dignity, the sacramental mysticism, of “worship.” On the whole, those who exalt ritual denigrate preaching. Whether by accident or design, it is generally and obviously true that the heavily liturgical service is the service of the ten-to-twelve-minute sermon.

Again, the numerous facts and facets of the current discussion are beyond the range of our purpose. The extremists in both camps can ill afford to be unteachable. But again what one does deplore is the fallacy of thinking of the sermon as something apart from worship. It is implied—and occasionally declared—that in the liturgy God is acting, while in the preaching it is man.

This is dangerously opaque thinking, the corrective answer to which is a series of insights which one ventures to describe as follows:

1. Preaching is a redemptive event. “True preaching,” says Dr. Donald G. Miller in Fire In Thy Mouth, “is an extension of the Incarnation into the contemporary moment, the transfiguration of the Cross and the Resurrection from ancient facts of a remote past into living realities of the present.” What we have in authentic preaching is not a repetition of Calvary (since that is unrepeatable) but a contemporizing of it. The Holy Scriptures having dependably recorded it, the Holy Spirit now dynamically reveals it; and in the preacher, if he be the man of God he should be, both the record and the revelation find a claiming voice. This makes the sermon vastly more than something said: it is something done. It is the saving, healing, strengthening God in action through his servant. To separate this from a church’s worship experience is perilous nonsense.

2. Preaching, moreover, is actually a congregational function. In an essay on “Preaching As Worship” P. T. Forsythe makes the observation that “true preaching presupposes a Church, and not merely a public.” Reading this, my own mind leaped back to Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. The account of it begins with the revealing statement, “But Peter, standing up with the eleven, said.…” The proclamation of the Gospel to an unbelieving “public” was made in the context of a believing “Church.”

Furthermore, on any right reading of the situation it will be seen that in Peter’s preaching that day the Church was preaching. A New Testament sermon, far from being a parade of the opinions of a man with a clerical title, is the congregation witnessing to its faith—both for its own edification and for the persuasion of those who are without faith. It is the congregation “hearing its one hope,” not with “an empty wonder” but with illuminated adoration, not “sadly contented with a show of things” but discontented with anything through which the eternal is failing to show.

To say that such preaching does not have in it the dimension of worship is to be under a strange illusion.

3. Preaching, we should not hesitate to say, has a sacramental character. Not sacerdotal, mind you, but sacramental! The sermon is not a communication of grace in which the transmission is guaranteed by the mechanics of the investiture in which the preacher was given the insignia of his office. On the other hand, the sermon is indeed the visible and audible sign of the grace that is given when, to borrow the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “the word preached” is “mixed with faith” on the part of those who hear. The pulpit should be seen as a sign of the grace of God standing within the divinely created community of faith—the Church.

4. A further insight is this: preaching is an oblation. It is an offering of prayer. The preacher’s? Yes. And the congregation’s too. A sermon not steeped in prayer is unworthy of the name. It is an offering of the intellect. Read Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14, on the relation between prophesying and intelligibility. It is an offering of the volition. First the preacher’s and then the congregation’s. A sermon is, in Forsythe’s unforgettable phrase, “the organized Hallelujah” of the Church, joyously confessing its faith in the Gospel, obediently submitting to its claims.

If such offering is not worship, then nothing is!

PAUL S. REES

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20; read vv. 1–21.)

This British sermon begins with a well-known case from life. At a critical stage in the recent World War Sir Samuel Hoare went to Spain on a special mission. There by skill and tact he kept France from coming out directly on the side of the enemy. From this example the interpreter draws four lessons. As an ambassador for King Jesus the Christian:

I. Represents His Ruler in an Alien Land. There his official residence belongs to the country to which he himself belongs. Are you really an ambassador of Christ? Is your home an embassy of heaven? Is this church, as far as you can make it, a “colony of heaven”?

II. Enjoys Direct Access to the Ruler He Represents. The ambassador’s mail-bag is ever inviolate. The Christian has even more immediate access to his Ruler through prayer. To keep from being “denationalized,” the ambassador has to keep in constant touch with his King. Is this true of you?

III. Serves on a Special Mission for Christ. “Be ye reconciled to God.” What a task! What a task! Have you felt the critical character and all the responsibility of your mission as an ambassador of reconciliation? Also, have you studied the minds of people outside the Church? Do you know the craft of personal evangelism? Do you know how to plead the case of your crucified Lord, the Reconciler?

IV. Some Day Is Relieved of His Post. His task well done, the ambassador hears the call to come home. There he receives the thanks of Christ as King, and then takes his place near the throne. However sudden the call, may it find us gladly fulfilling our ambassadorial duties. Meanwhile the ambassador is waiting to be called home, there to see the smile of his King. Will it be like that with you some day as an ambassador of King Jesus?—From Can I Know God and Other Sermons (Abingdon Press, 1960).

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

W. E. SANGSTER: An Ambassador of Christ; PAUL S. REES: The Service of Silence; BRYANT M. KIRKLAND: Praying When Prayer Seems Dead; HENRY GEORGE HARTNER: The Gospel of Ascension Day; and DR. BLACKWOOD’SA Psalm that Luther Loved.

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still (Ps. 4:4).

Other translations prefer the word “silence.” For our noise-dumb age could anything be more timely? A silence pregnant with God makes you feel that even one audible word would be sacrilege. What then is the service of these quiet yet creative interludes in the life of God’s child? Think of such silence as:

I. An Aid to Memory. When we are still, the past comes back to haunt, perhaps to humble, or to make us happy. In the psalm when David is quiet his memory goes to work. He looks back on troubles at the time seemingly unbearable, but troubles that have left him a bigger man, with a richer soul and a finer faith. Yes, silence is the setting in which memory has its best chance, and does its noblest work.

II. A Response to Mystery. Before any mystery, “Stand in awe, and sin not.” Among the mysteries consider the holiness of God. Do we stand in awe of his holiness? “As he who has called you is holy,” cries Peter, “so be ye holy in all matters of conduct.” There is a hushed response that should be evoked by the unsullied holiness that our poor eyes behold in God. This response is a part of worship, of penitence, of sensitive discipleship. In the presence of such mysteries how useful to be silent! When no other response is ready, “in silence reflect.”

III. A Form of Ministry, not least to ourselves. Without some such concern against evil, and protest against it, something is missing from our moral fiber. Silence is even more a form of service to others. In another sometimes a hurt is too deep for words; it calls for loving silence. Often I have gone to a funeral parlor, or to a home, to face a friend to whom grief has just come. My first ministry there has been with no smoothly turned sentences, no glib and conventional condolence. No, just a clasp of my hand and whatever of Christ’s tender care I could convey with my eyes. When a heart is throbbing with its most acute anguish it is not speech that is needed, but our Lord’s healing silence.

IV. A Symbol of Mystery. When Christ hung upon the cross, how did he reply to cruel taunts? With a silence so noble and noteworthy that the centuries reckon with it as sublime. Like the Saviour we too can not escape occasions when the noblest weapon of moral dignity is silence.

Silence! Let no one think it useless! Give it a larger and a more meaningful place in your soul. Whatever you do, don’t treat Christ with such carelessness and flippancy that he can return you nothing but his awful and dooming silence. His silence to you can be terribly fatal. Your silence to him may be tremendously fruitful.—From Evangelical Sermons of Our Day, ed. by A. W. Blackwood (Manhasset, N. Y.: Channel Press, 1959).

For this thing [the thorn in the flesh] I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me (2 Cor. 12:8; read vv. 1–11).

What a confused world this would be if God answered all our prayers affirmatively! For this reason the Scriptures teach what to do when a prayer seems dead. Paul had his thorn in the flesh. For its removal he prayed three times. But God said No, lest the Apostle become conceited, forgetting that this is God’s world. He may refuse a prayer because he has better things to give than we dare to ask. So let us turn into modern language these lessons about the conditions of prayer.

I. Clarify What You Seek. “Watch out when you pray! Are you ready to receive what you really cry for in your unconscious? When you pray for peace, are you prepared for the costs of peace? When you pray for brotherhood, are you able to stand the involvement of brotherhood?” Your prayer is not what you say but what you think in your subconscious mind. When Elizabeth Barrett was with her father he prayed: “O God, make Elizabeth well.” But she did not get well. Robert Browning won her heart, and took her to Italy as his wife. There he prayed: “O God, make Elizabeth well.” She was healed. The father’s prayer was obscured by the desire to keep his daughter at home. Browning’s prayer was the devoted identification of a husband with his wife.

II. Clear Up Your Human Relations. Before we speak our prayers we need to clarify our human relationships. With those who stand out at odds against us we may first need to make restitution and receive forgiveness. With a married man the way to start praying effectively for his wife and children is to love them more tenderly. For a young married man with a mother-in-law critical about his lack of money, the way to start praying for her is to show her clearly that he loves her. What woman with wrinkles on her face wants to remain bitter?

III. Cooperate with God. Your prayer may be denied so that God can give you some greater blessing. Paul said, “I will glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may come upon me.” Like Naaman the leper, instead of seeking to do something great, accept the little deed that God desires. Like Samuel in the night, when he heard the voice of God and thought it the voice of a man, learn to know the voice of God. Like Tagore, the Christian philosopher of India, learn to say: “I thank Thee, God, for Thy hard refusals, which have been my salvation.”—Pastor, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, N. Y.

Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven (Acts 1:11; read vv. 1–11).

Ascension Day brings into the songs of the Church Militant the final note of victory. Ever since then the Church has kept looking up, and will do so until He comes again, as come he will. Meanwhile the Church should sing: “Glory, glory to our King!” The Ascension Gospel is:

I. Glorious in Direction. Twice our text says: “up into heaven.” In the light of Ascension Day our prayers ascend in the assurance of God’s love. By faith we now have up there the One who lives to intercede for us, the One exalted far above all earthly things, able to govern his Church and finally lead her to glory forever. “Glory, glory to our King!”

II. Glorious in Meaning. For our King this was Coronation Day. At the end of his earthly sojourn it was fitting that he should return to heaven in triumph. For those who now walk the way of the Cross and with all their heart believe that no one cometh to the Father but by Him, the ascension of Christ has built a free bridge to heaven. The Ascension is the crowning finale of all his words and works for our salvation. Here is the final and complete assurance that God the Father has accepted the work of his Son for the redemption of men from the guilt and punishment of all their sins. Glory to our King!

III. Glorious in Hope. For believers here on earth the highest blessings of the Ascension may be in the realm of hope. Hope is the keynote of our text. The idea of our Lord’s return was not new. But in view of the Ascension the message of the angels brought to believers a new impetus both to work and to wait for the Saviour’s second coming. Time for the winning of souls is limited. God wants all believers to be filled with the sort of energy reflected in the words of his Son: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day, for the night cometh, when no man can work.”

We call this our hope, and “we are saved by hope.” Hope here means faith as it concerns the future. To be of lasting worth one’s hope must have a sure foundation.

If any man says: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” that man has a blessed hope. It rests on the everlasting Rock of Ages, Christ and his unchanging Word.—From The Concordia Pulpit for 1962 (St. Louis: Concordia Press, 1962).

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? (Ps. 2:1; read vv. 1–12).

“The Second Psalm is one of the best. I love that psalm with all my heart. It strikes and flashes valiantly among kings, princes, counsellors.” Why did Luther the Reformer so love this difficult psalm? What does it mean to common folk now? Note the dramatic element, with different speakers, here shown in parentheses.

I. The Rebellion against God (The Psalmist, vv.1–3). A favorite Old Testament idea of God as King, and of sin as rebellion against him. A. The Folly of Rebelling against God. B. The Conspiracy against God. C. The Defiance of God. In history with Toynbee study such nations, notably Russia now.

II. The Laughter in Heaven (The Psalmist, on behalf of God, 4, 5). A. The Irony of God. B. The Anger of God. Here we behold “the dark line in God’s face.” When the powers of earth set themselves to defy their Maker, He knows, he cares, he shows righteous indignation. If he did not, how could we continue to bow down and adore him as the Holy One? Is this the grandmotherly God of some American pulpits today?

III. The Kingship of Christ (God as King, 6–9). Here is no Absentee Monarch, sitting on a distant star, indifferent to the woes of earth’s suffering saints. A. The Kingship of His Son. B. The Dominion of this King.—What a vision of World Missions! C. The Judgment on God’s Foes.

On an ocean liner a Scottish divine and one of our past statesmen were discussing our country and her corrupt cities. The minister: “What does America need?” “America needs an Emperor!” “You a distinguished American leader, highly honored at home and abroad! Do you confess that your Government is a failure?” “Sir, America needs an Emperor, and his name is Christ!” So does the world. Our earth has an Emperor, but alas, countless hosts still rebel.

IV. The Call for Submission (The Psalmist, 10–12). A. The Voice of Wisdom. B. The Fear of the Lord. C. The Call for Submission. “Kiss his feet with trembling” (Moffatt), or else make ready to receive his judgment.

After such a heart-searching message from God, the hearer longs to cry out: “What can I do, right here and now?” My brother, dedicate yourself anew to God, as Luther did before the Reformation. Then let the Lord guide in Christian warfare, according to the spirit of the psalm that Luther loved.—(After a prayer of dedication, have the people sing: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”)

The Last Gasp

The finest journal in its field is the Journal of the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors—professional, contemporary, lively, and instructive. All the more impressive, therefore, is the table of contents for the January issue. I wonder if the titles even need comment:

“The Role of the Counselor in Sex Behavior and Standards.”

“College Youth and Sexual Confusion.”

“Premarital Sex Norms in America and Scandinavia.”

“The Variety and Meaning of Premarital Heterosexual Experiences for the College Student.”

“Premarital Pregnancies and Their Outcome.”

“Sex and the College Student: A Bibliography of New Findings and Insights.”

From what I can find out, this table of contents is the result of pressures among deans of women that their journal give them help in what has become a very serious problem on every college campus. We have passed through an era when we were just a little pleased with ourselves because we could speak freely on matters of sex. We are entering an era when we shall, perhaps, begin to discuss this subject with a note of desperation. Sometimes we dig up more snakes than we can kill; and as against the wisdom of our forebearers, we will have turned loose in the name of freedom what shall now destroy us by license.

I don’t know who Stevie Smith is, but he surely got off a good one once: “I was much farther out than you thought and not waving but drowning.”

In this “far out” day of ours, things may not be quite as gay as they look.

EUTYCHUS II

Tribunal In Jerusalem

It is gratifying to see your publication take such a sympathetic and well-informed interest in the position of the Hebrew Christian in Israel. For some strange reason the evangelical press of this country has thus far paid scant attention to this matter which is of profound significance to the mutual relationship between Christians and Jews. The recent decision of the Jerusalem Supreme Court in my humble opinion surpasses in historical significance anything that has happened since the emergence of the State of Israel. The article by Dr. Jocz, “A Test of Tolerance” (Mar. 29 issue), was superb.

VICTOR BUKSBAZEN

General Secy.

The Friends of Israel

Philadelphia, Pa.

The words of Jesus (Matt. 12:30) testify against Father Daniel’s right to be an Israeli citizen.… How can a priest (or a Christian minister) accept and preach the guilt of Jews and be a good Jewish citizen? How, Doctor Jocz?

Milwaukee, Wisc.

The American Council for Judaism also has misgivings about this case, but offers a different set of reasons.… We felt that the Brother Daniel case was part of a series of incidents in the State of Israel which purposely aim to link Jews outside of Israel with the policies and actions of that State itself. The Law of Return is based on the Zionist theory that every Jew, no matter in which country he is a citizen, has automatic nationality rights in the State of Israel. This claim is made on the basis of common religion shared by Jews the world over. The Council denies that there is a “Jewish” nationality (which Zionism advances). We therefore reject any claim on the part of the Israeli judicial, executive, or legislative branches to represent or speak for Americans of Jewish faith.

Ex. Dir.

American Council for Judaism

New York, N. Y.

Soviet Churchmen And Ncc

To some readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, particularly those who have followed the comments of Fulton Lewis, Jr. and Dr. Carl McIntire on the recent visit of Soviet clergymen to this country, your account (“Soviet Church Leaders Visit America,” Mar. 29 issue) may seem a bit on the “Mister Milquetoast” order, and the same judgment might be passed on the statement of the Denver Association of Evangelicals as you report it, though that statement does indeed point a finger of scorn at the preposterous claim that these men actually represent Christian believers or true Christian churches.

But I always try to find things to commend and I want you to know that I am truly delighted that you quoted Nikodim in his reference to the 32 Siberian “refugees” as “fanatics.” Surely no reader can fail to question, what kind of a Christian is a man who, claiming to be the beneficiary of a rule of freedom of religion, excuses persecution of other Christians on the ground that they are “fanatics”?

American Council President of Christian Laymen

Madison, Wisc.

Why do the NCC spokesmen blame McIntire? He did not invite the Soviet churchmen to the United States. I am quite familiar with Dr. McIntire’s part in the visit. In many ways I thoroughly disapprove of his work but in this phase I feel that he is doing something that needs to be done.

Dr. McIntire will probably not be able to convince NCC officialdom of anything. Sometimes I am convinced that church officials are more arrogant than any others. Where Dr. McIntire helps is to undercut support for the NCC at the grassroots. I used to be proud of the fact that the congregations of which I had charge made yearly contributions to the support of NCC and WCC. However, since about 1955 I have not requested such contributions of any congregation. It didn’t take Dr. McIntire to convince me, but I give him credit for letting people know how poorly we have been led by the “ruling oligarchy” of the two organizations.

Incidentally, the “ruling oligarchy” of the NCC and WCC is quite comparable to similar groups that get control of departments of the National Council of my own Episcopal Church. A few years ago when I was in charge (under the Bishop of Honolulu) of the Taiwan Mission of our church I tangled with leaders of our Overseas Department over their “playing footsie with the Reds” policies. I really cooked my goose. The officials remain or retire with great honor. Only those who call to question their policies suffer. We “underlings” are supposed to take the same attitude as the soldiers in the “Light Brigade.” Those who “play footsie” with the Communists are always right. Those who call to question such policies are always wrong.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Anaconda, Mont.

Your reporting on the Russians now visiting under the auspices of the NCC was about the most objective view I’ve seen. It will therefore be criticized probably by both sides on this issue.

One comment by a man identified as an “NCC aide” said, “It’s the most reprehensible thing McIntire has ever done. He’s playing with human lives and he may end up with blood on his hands.”

The curious thing about this statement is that it gives the impression that some of these Russians may be in danger from the Soviet government when they get back home because of either real or alleged statements made in this country.

If this is what the aide implies, it appears that, like it or not, he is in substantial agreement with Dr. McIntire, who claims that the clergy is under control of the secret police and terror is still being used today.

Finally, if this is so, why is the NCC so intent on building a united front and trying to sell American Christians on peaceful coexistence?

Miami, Fla.

Luther And James

I would like to make the following comment on Dr. J. Oliver Buswell’s reference to Martin Luther (Eutychus, Mar. 29 issue): Luther, like some other men of the Reformation period, doubted whether the Epistle of James rightly should belong to the New Testament canon. His so-called free utterances on this epistle [thus] have nothing to do with the infallibility of the Scriptures.

A number of able scholars, among them W. Walther, in his Erbe der Reformation, have proved that Luther believed in the verbal inspiration. Again and again he declared the canonical books on the Bible to be inerrant. I only would refer to the evidence given by Francis Pieper in his Christian Dogmatics, part I, pp. 276 ff.

As is well known, Luther’s doubts concerning the canonicity of the Epistle of James were not shared by later Lutheran theologians.

Faith Theological Seminary

Elkins Park, Pa.

Jesus And Paul

Such articles as “Paul on the Birth of Jesus” (Mar. 15 issue) play directly into the hands of the enemies of my Lord and of his program. Completely ignoring Paul (in Rom. 8:29) “in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren,” Dr. Robinson distorts the writings of Paul to make it appear that Paul teaches a Jesus who embodied God because of a unique birth. Such a unique birth is not God’s way of getting himself embodied in human kind.

Eugene, Ore.

Enclosed is an additional word … to strengthen the case I sought to make:

One ought to visualize Paul in the context of his life situation in order to understand his references to the birth of Jesus. Galatians 1:18, 19 may be paraphrased thus: Three years after my conversion I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter for the purpose of inquiring into the things of Jesus Christ. I stayed with him for some fifteen days, including in my historical investigations conferences with James the brother of the Lord.

According to the Muratorium Fragment and the Lukan Prologue, acting on Paul’s authority, Luke his companion and physician with the careful research of a “legal expert” prepared the “authentic knowledge” of the Christian origins as Paul’s defence before his Excellency, Judge Theophilus (Fragment of Muratori, cited J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius, pp. 144, 145; Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1; J. Knox, The New Testament, 1963, p. 19).

Thus the Apostle Paul would not have been ignorant of the miracles of the Incarnation, and his epistolary references to the birth of Jesus are best interpreted as written on the basis of his acceptance of an account given by James and recorded later by Luke.

Columbia Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

Secularistic Religion

Mr. Stanley Lowell objects to having all accredited American schools (independent as well as state) receive their proportionate share of educational taxes (Eutychus, Mar. 1 issue). One reason he gives is: “I myself am a Protestant minister but would object to paying taxes for Mr. Vanden Berg’s school [a Christian one].” May I say that it may come as a shock to Mr. Lowell (to use his own terms), but there are also “any number of American citizens who do not care to pay taxes for the particular kind” of secularistic, God-ignoring religion of Mr. Lowell’s state schools. It is just because our country is not a monolithic structure of God-less, “neutral” secularism but rather a pluralism that Citizens for Educational Freedom advocate that taxes which are taken from all should not be given exclusively to one type of religious schools, namely, the state schools, but to all schools without regard to race, color or creed.

A fair solution to the problem would be a system modeled after the recently-instituted N. Y. Scholar Incentive Program or the N. Y. Regents Scholarships or the G.I. Bill of Rights. Under these laws educational taxes are given to students to use in any accredited college of their choice.… Each segment of the American pluralistic society pays for its own type of education.… This proposed aid-to-the-student plan would also solve the insoluble dilemma of whether Bible reading, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, and similar religious exercises or instruction should be included or abolished in the state schools.…

Instructor in Systematic Theology

Westminster Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Yes, There Is

I have been preaching for 50 years, and in all that time I’ve never seen such a beautiful and magnificent piece of writing as “Jesus and His Kingdom” by James Hyslop (Mar. 1 issue).… I’ll treasure this article for my remaining days for it will add sparkle to my last sermons. Is there a way of letting Hyslop know how he lifted a veteran’s spirits?

Herrin, Ill.

The article … is brilliant for a layman.…

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Pittsburgh, Pa.

The Unspecified Specified

The “ancient saying (source unspecified)” heading the article “British Ecumenism: Anglican-Methodist Merger?” (News, Mar. 15 issue) is from the Mishnah, Tractate Pirke Abot-M. Abot 2.21. See R. Travers Herford, ed., Pirke Aboth: The Tractate ‘Fathers’ from the Mishnah (New York, 1945), p. 62.

Prof. of Judaic Studies

Drew University

Madison, N. J.

• The saying, appended to the Anglican-Methodist merger plan released in February: “It is not given to thee to finish the task but neither art thou free to desist therefrom.”—ED.

Nose Of A Camel

In the March 1 issue you editorialize on the question “Is the Supreme Court on Trial?” … The Supreme Court is not on trial, believe me; the Church and the home are on trial! If our youth are not taught to pray and to read their Bibles at home and in the Church, their being forced to do so in school might even be repulsive to them.

Let’s examine our Christian institutions instead of secular institutions. Our refusal to do so will leave the legal doors ajar for the camel of Romanism to inch its way inside.

The Manasseh Cutler Church

Hamilton, Mass.

Four In A Row

My personal thanks to George Christian Anderson for his timely, “Who Is Ministering to Ministers?” and to you for the entire January 18 issue.

The “desire to preserve the church’s reputation” reaches lamentable proportions in some of our smaller evangelical denominations where ministers outnumber the churches. I am acquainted with a church situation where four pastors in succession had either very unpleasant or violent pastoral terminations with the church, resulting in unpleasant estrangements from the church apparently for the rest of their lives.…

Chaplain

Nebraska Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home

Grand Island, Neb.

Dignity Of The Body

It would be heartening to see the churches catch up with government researchers in areas of physical, social, and spiritual concern. Churches that once identified the cause of Christianity with abstinence or temperance are hardly complimented by the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous is a basically secular movement, or by the fact that in many communities the agencies now promoting break-the-smoking-habit seminars are non-religious. If the churches want to get into social action, they have a wide open field right in the areas of alcoholism and cigarette addiction.—Editorial, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 15, 1963.

Six months ago that kind of editorial comment would have made me feel uncomfortable and more than somewhat ashamed. Why? For the simple reason that, while recognizing the incontrovertible truth of it, I could have done nothing about it, in view of the fact that I myself was a tobacco addict. Approving the theory intellectually, I could have done nothing about it in practice because I was bound by the very chains which it seems quite imperative to break.

Mind you, I should have strenuously denied my addiction to the weed. For thirty years, off and on, I had been a confirmed cigarette smoker, regarding it as a pleasant habit which could be defended on many grounds. (Hadn’t Spurgeon himself enjoyed his cigar? And in any case wasn’t this one of those questions of personal ethics upon which no general law could be formulated? You know the arguments.)

I confess that I was badly shaken by the publication exactly a year ago of the Royal College of Physicians’ report “Smoking and Health.” Shaken, you understand, not by the scientifically proved connection between smoking and lung cancer in so far as it affected myself. Most smokers have an infinite capacity for rationalizing, and obscuring the medical facts in a cloud of smoke. We all think, in other words, that we’ll be one of those who escape. But what about those who don’t escape? What about the young people just beginning to smoke? If the medical facts are true—and what sane and unbiased man can dispute them?—what about the moral responsibility of the minister to show the right kind of example?

All this might have remained in the realm of academic theological discussion if I hadn’t been put on the spot by the medical authorities themselves. I was approached to see whether I would be prepared to take some active part in the first experimental anti-smoking clinic in Scotland and to provide, if possible, a group of volunteers from my own Congregation for the clinic. This was a challenge which could not be avoided; and indeed I was glad of it, for it compelled me to look straight at a problem round whose edges I had skirted for years.

The upshot was that I began with a little group of ten people four months ago. At first we met every week. We all knew one another intimately as members of the same Church. We had expert medical advice on hand through the doctor in charge of us. And we set out with considerable trepidation on what we knew would be a rough and uphill road.

We used the well-worn methods of group dynamics in our meeting, sharing—in frank and honest discussion—our problems, experiences, and victories, such as they were. It was soon obvious to us that for the Christian there are certain strong reasons for not smoking. We all found a kind of profound relief in being able to acknowledge these after years of self-delusion.

First, there are the medical facts. They are too well-known to need repetition. It would seem that the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer (to say nothing of chronic bronchitis and heart disease) has been firmly and irrefutably established. If we believe that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost it is surely wrong to subject it to this kind of damage, denying its dignity.

Second, there are the economic facts. In Scotland it costs something like the equivalent of 250 dollars a year to smoke twenty cigarettes a day. If every smoker who is a Church member gave that amount of money to the work of the Lord, the Scottish Kirk would at least have all its financial problems solved—whatever others remained. Very few of us in the Clinic were giving as much to the cause of the Kingdom as we were blowing away in clouds of smoke.

Third, and not to bandy words about, there is the plain fact that we were all drug addicts. Most of us in the clinic were heavy smokers. Of course, as I’ve said, we would have been reluctant to classify ourselves as addicts. We would probably have called ourselves “controlled smokers”—you know the kind of thing: “I could give it up easily if I wanted to.” Like Mark Twain we might have said it was easy to stop smoking; we had done it hundreds of times. Below the indispensable self-deception, we were a bunch of very uneasy Christians—realizing as we did, in moments of illumination, that our addiction was no less an addiction though its immediate results are not as deadly nor as obvious as drink or drugs. Here was an idol that had to be dealt with.

One thing we agreed about at our first meeting—that it was absolutely imperative to stop smoking completely and at once rather than attempt to cut it down gradually. So the experiment began.

Four months later there are certain things that can be reported. The original group has grown from ten to over thirty, demonstrating that there are a great many people desperately anxious to break the tobacco habit and who are waiting for help and encouragement. This provides a major opportunity for the Church.

Success there has been. About 90 per cent of the group have given up smoking completely; a few have cut it down to almost nothing; one or two have fallen by the wayside and retired from the battle.

It is still too early to make any kind of final estimate. Those of us who know the subtle power of the tobacco habit would hesitate to say that we are cured. I haven’t, at the time of writing, smoked a cigarette for four months; and I trust that this will be a permanent victory. But the furthest I would go at the moment is to say that I haven’t smoked today. One or two of our group have had to fight the problem of alcoholism, and they agree that it was easier to stop drinking after their conversion than it has been to stop smoking. Let no man who has never been a smoker sit in judgment on those who have been through this particular abyss.

What can be said without any shadow of doubt is that this Anti-Smoking Clinic has been perhaps the most exciting experience of Christian community in my ministry. For many years, in the course of my parochial work, I have been concerned with the creation of small groups or cells of lay people who understand their call to the apostolate, and who are prepared to submit themselves to the discipline of prayer, study, and fellowship, thus becoming trained and equipped for the task of witness. I have been fortunate, in two Parishes, to see something of the power of these lay groups in action and to learn something about the fellowship of the Spirit—the koinonia—which we ought to have in our Churches. But I have never experienced such a depth and reality of koinonia as we have in our “Smokeless Union.”

How to account for this? Surely it is not difficult. The basic and necessary conditions of true koinonia—from the human point of view—are present: a sense of our absolute helplessness and our total dependence upon the grace of God. We share a common need—our bondage to a habit which must be broken; and we share a common conviction—the knowledge that by ourselves we cannot break the habit. We know precisely what Paul meant in Romans 7; and we have come to know also in quite a new way what it means to cry exultantly: “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“If the churches want to get into social action, they have a wide field right in the areas of alcoholism and cigarette addiction.” Do not for one minute doubt the truth of that. And if there is any minister reading this who, like myself, knows the power of the tobacco habit and the greater power of the Risen Christ, I would cordially advise you to form a Smokeless Union in your Church—with you as a founder-member.

St. George’s-Tron

Glasgow, Scotland

WARREN WIERSBE¹Warren Wiersbe is Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Covington, Kentucky. He served four years with Youth for Christ International, part of that time as Editor of YFC Magazine. He has written often on teen-age problems. His most recent book is A Guidebook for Teens, published by Moody Press.

If Christ’s pastoral commission to Peter were rephrased in terms of today’s population explosion, it would exhort the pastor to register the new babies, provide for the children, keep the teen-agers from turning into juvenile delinquents, counsel the newlyweds, encourage the middle-aged, and do something constructive for the senior citizens. Besides all this, he would have the care of the church!

Most of these assignments the average pastor accepts with faith and courage, except the one relating to the youth. He feels that the babies are no problem; he gets along well with children; the newlyweds and middle-aged appreciate his services and respect his office; the senior saints are happy for any attention. But many pastors shake their heads and look upon teen-agers as problems, not as people.

The Root Of The Problem

The first factor which contributes to the average pastor’s dilemma with his youth is his own general attitude toward teen-agers. If he is honest, he may have to confess that he is resentful of his church’s youth because they do not seem to respect him, because they pose problems he cannot easily solve. In other words, while children and adults give the pastor an opportunity to succeed, a group of teen-agers often poses a threat to his ministerial miracle-working, simply because he does not know what to do with them. More than one adolescent psychologist has suggested that the root of adult-teen difficulty is the adult’s resentment of his own “lost youth” and of the teen-ager’s obvious vitality and carefree attitude. We “hate ourselves” for growing old, but we “take it out” on the young people instead.

The first step toward a mature pastoral ministry with our young people, then, would be a genuine acceptance of them—faults and all—in the spirit of Christian love. Teen-agers detect insincerity; nothing less than true Christian love will win their allegiance.

The growing pressure brought against the pastor—“do something about the teen-age problem”—is another factor. A minister cannot read a newspaper or magazine without being told that the churches and the homes are to blame for the delinquency situation. Occasionally some honest orator will admit that the problem is not quite that simple, but popular journalism is usually victorious. The pastor feels a stab in his conscience every time he reads a teen-age crime report.

A third factor is the increased interdenominational youth activity across the nation. While most of these ministries try to cooperate with the local church, competition seems to result inevitably as the young people compare the church’s program with the latest city-wide or nation-wide conference.

Can the pastor who feels these pressures daily escape frustration? Yes—if he will only realize that a satisfying ministry with his church’s youth can be his. The pastor need not become a “youth expert” (whatever that is) or spend his evenings building a file of jokes. Just by being himself and by following a few basic principles, he can pastor these teen-agers into a fuller development of their Christian faith.

Trouble-Making Teens

The muddied waters are beginning to clear when the pastor can see that the teen-agers who give him the most trouble do not even exist! They are imaginary:

The Historical Teen. This youth shows up whenever you find yourself saying, “Now, back when I was a young person.…” The fact of the matter is, times have changed since you were a teen-ager, although you may not like to admit it. Few young men drove cars when you were in high school, but an automobile is a status symbol today, and it means more to a teen-ager than Father can ever know. When we find ourselves comparing today’s adolescents with those of our own generation, we are bound to run into problems. Keep “The Historical Teen” in the pages of your diary; he’s a trouble-maker in the church.

The Statistical Teen. Several wealthy firms make their money by interviewing young people and selling their reports to the public. They will tell you what kind of music teens enjoy, what they want for Christmas, how many books they read a year. But of the three kinds of lies—white lies, black lies, and statistics—“statistics” is the first. “Mr. Average Teen-Ager” does not exist. The figures you study in the latest survey will seldom apply to the youth in your church. You cannot work with a statistic, so devote yourself to understanding and helping the teen-agers you actually know.

The Commercial Teen. This is the mental image you have of “A Modern Teen-ager.” It is made up of many things: newspaper reports, movie ads, TV personalities, your own youthful years, and so forth. The American public pictures the American teen as a handsome youth with a crew cut, a hot rod, a warm smile, and a harem of girlfriends. He too does not exist.

The Ideal Teen. A man must have ideals or he will drift into failure, but an ideal must be balanced by reality. Every pastor’s “Ideal Teen-Ager” would be different, but in each case the pastor must admit the image is impractical. Every teen-ager is an individual, and each one’s progress must be measured on his own scale of abilities and opportunities.

The pastor who wants to help young people must accept and work with the teen-agers he has, seeking to understand them better, and must not be detoured into fretting over young people who do not exist in life.

Taking Teens Seriously

A good pastor must understand that every teen-ager faces three important hurdles on the road to his maturity—self-understanding (What am I like?), self-development (What can I do?), and self-esteem (What am I worth?). The young person will use his “teen crowd” for the moral and emotional support he needs in reaching these goals. As a result, the understanding pastor will not criticize his young people for their “group complex” and their desire to enjoy the crowd. (If it is the wrong kind of crowd, the pastor will want to step in and change things, not denounce them.) The wise pastor will perceive “going steady” as another device to gain self-understanding, self-development, and self-esteem.

Teen-agers need a pastor who reads his Bible with them in mind. After all, Joseph was a teen-ager when he was sold into Egypt, David was a teen-ager when he killed Goliath, Daniel was in his early teens when he was taken to Babylon. And what of Samuel, Josiah, Jeremiah, Timothy, and even Mary, the mother of our Lord, who was certainly in her teens when she wed Joseph! This does not mean that every sermon should be only for youth, but it does mean that the youth should be considered in every sermon.

The pastor who takes teen-age problems as seriously as the teen-agers do is going to win them. He will never say, “Well, this is a typical teen-age problem, and you’ll grow out of it.” The problems of every age group are usually “typical,” but this does not relieve the pain nor solve the problem! The sympathetic pastor will listen with his heart, help the teen-ager face himself honestly, and carefully lead him into an understanding of the basic principles governing the Christian life.

Finally, the pastor will avoid treating the young person as a means to an end. “We missed you in church last Sunday. If you had been here, we would have had fifty teen-agers!” Is this why you wanted him in church, so he could help the annual report? No teen-ager (and no adult, for that matter) wants to be treated like a number in an IBM machine; he wants to be accepted as a person, the way God accepts him.

The Challenge To The Church

Teen-agers drop out of church when their faith ceases to be relevant to daily living and when Bible study becomes a burden rather than an exciting adventure. When the pulpit criticizes them for “being worldly” but fails to offer them a satisfying social life, young people drift away from the house of God. When they see glaring inconsistencies in the lives of the adults (particularly their parents), they lose confidence in the Christian faith and go searching for a substitute. When the traditional “canned youth programs” no longer challenge them, no longer face their problems nor meet their needs, they turn elsewhere for help.

Sympathetic sponsors and teachers, well-prepared programs, increased opportunities for service in the church, at least two “dress-up” events each year, a youth library, emphasizing Christian growth and careers, and an open door to the pastor’s study—these ingredients will help attract and hold young people. A pastor who makes the Bible live and who shows he loves young people by including them in his messages will make the recipe complete.

There are several ways in which a pastor can get to understand his church’s youth. He can spend time with them in their informal get-togethers. It is not a matter of finding time, but making time. Remind yourself that your church is always one generation short of extinction, and you will have no problem making time for the intermediate picnic or the graduation reception. Read a good youth magazine each month. It would help to glance at the local high school paper, too. You can read one in ten minutes and come up with a dozen topics of conversation for the next time you meet one of your youthful members.

Above all, pray personally for your young people. Bearing them up at the throne of grace will tie them to your heart, and your awakened interest will reveal itself in your conversation and your sermons. Pray for their career choices, and your sermons will become more practical. Pray about their future mates and homes, and your counseling will take on added meaning. The joyful result will be a pastor who looks at his young people and sees, not heart-breaking problems, but heaven-sent potentials for the glory of God.

END

The crisis situation in our church colleges grows not from financial problems, limited and inadequate plant facilities, the severe difficulty of recruiting and retaining faculty personnel capable of distinguished teaching, not from the struggle to maintain full accreditation, not from the need for a dynamic program of salesmanship and public relations. These and many other problems are very real in our church colleges and must be met with every possible effort at solution. But the most theatening condition involves none of these. The basic problem, rather, is expressed by what an executive secretary of a large philanthropic corporation said recently: “If the church colleges would dare to be loyal to the basic purpose of their existence they would lack neither students nor finance.” In elaborating he made it clear that the “basic purpose” of the church-related college is not education per se, but education modified by the qualifying adjective “Christian.”

Wherever it serves, the Church’s success or effectiveness depends on the quality of its leadership. This is true in the church college, for here the Church is at work in education. Obviously college administrators do not consciously try to bypass the reason for the church college’s existence, nor do they purpose to treat lightly the serious responsibility of vigorously promoting the Christian faith on campus. The crisis that prevails, rather—and it is one which makes the difference between state-sponsored and church-sponsored education—has developed because college leaders have become absorbed in promoting education apart from any Christian emphasis. They neglect the modifying Christian factor in education. In some instances such neglect may be due to ineffective Christian leadership by the administration. More often this critical state has developed because administrators are too busy with other things to make the college’s impact on student life positively and vigorously Christian.

When the directors of a business corporation select a president, they choose someone whose fitness for the job is closely related to their product. He must know how to produce the company’s commodity. In Christian education the charter of a church college defines that school’s business. The charter usually states in specific words that the incorporated college of the Church is to educate not only people, but Christian people. This is paramount in fulfilling the basic purpose of the church college. In selecting a president, then, the trustees of a church college must write high on the list of qualifications for a president the ability and dedication to train not only graduates but Christian graduates. In principle the Christian college cannot justify its existence apart from thorough loyalty to the responsibility of producing educated Christians. When degrees are conferred and diplomas awarded on graduation day, the church college proves loyal to its charter and justifies its existence not only by qualifying each graduate to receive an academic degree but also by bringing him to the time of graduation as a committed Christian. Becoming a committed Christian is a vital part of the educative process in the program of the church college.

Because of this special function of the church college, the president’s foremost responsibility is wise and vigorous promotion of the Christian faith on campus. He cannot delegate this responsibility. Certainly he must enlist the service of many others in discharging this major duty of his office, but the president himself must stand in the forefront of this endeavor. To the long list of what is expected of any college president, this one of promoting the Christian faith among faculty and student body is added to the duties of the church-college president. He must have a warm heart toward God and a passionate concern for the spiritual development of his students. Students must receive a lasting impression of the president’s earnest solicitude for their Christian growth. More than is usually acknowledged, it is the president who sets the Christian tone on campus. What he is in his own life and what he does in his role as religious leader profoundly influence both faculty and students. Furthermore, the president who fully supports the “basic purpose” of existence of the church college jealously guards a sound Christian emphasis in establishing school policies and campus activities. Nothing is permitted to overshadow the claims of the Christian faith. Such a president recognizes that a weak and inadequate academic program is inconsistent with sound Christian principles. To allow low standards of scholarship, poor teaching in the classroom, deficient laboratory and library facilities, is to disqualify the church college from performing its proper Christian role. Academic responsibility goes hand in hand with Christian responsibility. One supplements and supports the other. The church-college president has strong and balanced convictions concerning the correlation of academic and Christian phases of education. But one conviction distinguishes him from presidents of secular schools: his insistence on academic excellence never lessens his sense of responsibility for vigorously promoting the Christian faith.

The decline of effective Christian emphasis in church colleges today is tragic both because of the grave condition of a secularized society and because of the impotence of a confused Church. American society makes a god of material values, and the Church with its declining spiritual power is unprepared to evangelize the people. Not since the founding of our nation has there been such stubborn resistance to Christ as the Lord of Life. In many respects church colleges have a strategic opportunity to prepare and to supply proper and special leadership for America in this time of crisis. Will these colleges perceive what they can do to awaken people to the right and eternal values? Will these colleges undertake a revival of personal, experimental religion on their campuses that prepares students for dedicated citizenship and spiritual leadership?—Dr. CONWAY BOATMAN, President Emeritus, Union College, Barbourville, Kentucky.

THE CRITICAL CONFLICT—Too few students see the real, critical conflict between the assumptions of Christianity and those of secularism. Many students must have their faith severely disturbed before it becomes worth very much.—Dr. R. K. MEINERS, Assistant Professor of English, Arizona State University.

ROLE OF THE COLLEGE—If it is true that the home and church no longer effectively found the young in basic Christian teachings about God, the world, and man, … the college, in its intellectual functions, may have a unique responsibility.—Dr. TUNIS ROMEIN, Professor of Philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina.

I can find no better expression of our mission than a very old-fashioned one: we are to confront the student with the Gospel. This task remains as long as the university requires for graduation courses in the cycle of the mollusk, but not in the life of Jesus; as long as its students (our students) are exposed to what was said and assumed in first-century Rome but not to what was said and assumed in first-century Jerusalem; as long as the philosophy department imparts the teachings of Kant and Hegel in ignorance of or opposition to those of Christ and Hosea.

Narrowly construed, what we are talking about now is Christian education. It is naive to assume and unfair to expect that the student will permanently worship what he has not carefully explored. The student wants and needs to know how the Christian faith got that way, whether its critics are right, whether its advocates are wrong, or whether (as he suspects is more likely the case) the truth is less neat and more stubborn than either his pastor or his professor has said.

The serious attempt to answer such questions (or, if necessary, to raise them in the first place) brings us into direct confrontation with faculty.

Knowledge Plus Morality

A part of our task with teachers is to give the lie to the “heresy that knowledge is moral” (Gerald Kennedy, The Lion and the Lamb, p. 14). “To emphasize information alone is to clap with one hand” (A. W. Goshay, “What is the Message?,” Saturday Review, Feb. 13, 1960, p. 35). Whitehead observed that “a merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.” He might have added that a merely well-informed man is dangerous, too. “It all depends upon who has the knowledge and what he does with it” (A. N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education [Mentor Books], p. 43). Knowledge as such is not moral. It is morally neutral. This is not popular doctrine with the scientific naturalists and humanists. It will be anathematized as dogma; it will be resisted as unjustified restraint on academic liberty. But it must be stated and restated in every conceivably commendable way if we are to take seriously our mission of faculty confrontation.

Nature Of Ultimate Reality

Assuming that we are talking about the teacher who is resistant to the claims of Christianity, it is also safe to assume that he will not be especially interested in discussing the issue in theological categories, or even able to do so. I have found that such confrontation can therefore best take place in terms of what I might call a man’s primal assertion. Prior to all experiences is the question, “What shall I take to be real?” Here the Christian and the non-Christian or even the anti-Christian can join hands. This is a question in which each of them, each of us, is really involved. There is no getting out of it, whether I think or do not think, whether I think as a scientist or as a theologian, whether I like it or not. The scientist who has no other commitment for security than his science is manacled by blind faith. The religionist who resists and rejects the facts and even insights which science can contribute to his life is also blindly committed to blindness. But when a man can accept both without resenting either; when he can search out the one without distorting the other; when he can ask the question, “What shall I take to be real?,” and commit himself irrevocably to the answer—then he can be confident that the result will be both scientifically respectable and spiritually real.

Need Of The True Religion

Again, our mission involves a responsible confrontation of the university as a whole: student and faculty and staff. Whatever the nature of the University of Eden before the Fall, the contemporary academy is sorely afflicted with itself. It is gravely stricken with wounds of its own stabbing. I am suggesting very literally that the university needs to be saved. This cannot be accomplished, mind you, by saying it just this way. It cannot be brought about by a “wiser than thou” attitude. It will never be seen by a Church which is not willing to learn as well as teach. But it will arise out of a relation of critical friendliness, interpreting to the university the mind of the Church about the mind of Christ, although in penitent recognition that this is a mind which we neither fully understand nor perfectly embody.

Religion is being taught within the curriculum of some universities which make great claims of church-state virginity. I mean religion in the formal, systematic, historic sense of the word. Such teaching is often sprayed over with a magic paint called “Modern Philosophy and …” or “The Sociology of Religion.” That, supposedly, makes it invisible. But one coat won’t cover. It escapes me why this is believed to be more palatable or less sectarian simply because the teacher’s biases are those of a logical positivist rather than those of an orthodox Wesleyan or of a Roman Jesuit. In any case, it is happening, and I for one think it time we start employing a little holy boldness—and even a little unholy boldness, if this is necessary—in saying so.

If we do not, if we decline to declare the utter unneutrality of it, if we refuse to see—and to help the university to see—that some kind of religion, open or covert, is necessarily taught, we get the curious anomaly of an English literature teacher’s trying to deal with Milton without dealing with the cluster of Christian truth on the basis of which Milton wrote. You do not get Milton that way. What you get is Milton minus his faith plus the teacher’s ignorance.

A Liberating Fellowship

Again, let me suggest that the campus church’s mission requires it to speak to the larger Church of which it is a part. This is an important form of finger-pointing which, if we are not careful, can become an innocuous form of thumb-sucking. It involves interpreting the university to the Church beyond the university, combatting the pious anti-intellectualism that glories in its ignorance and has plenty to glory in.

I choose my words now carefully as well as, I hope, charitably. I speak as one who occupied a university pulpit for nearly five years before only recently coming within the orbit of what we call The Wesley Foundation. It saddens me to have to report that the breed of ecclesiastical cat known inaccurately as the student worker is the most insecure and frustrated clergyman in our church. Sometimes this is his own fault. But oftener, I suspect, it points to Methodism’s refusal (is she alone in this?) to take its campus men seriously and its unwillingness to heed the (sometimes) unpleasant things he has to say. He listens, as to an ancient gramophone, to the worn-out question about when he is coming back into the ministry. His friends treat him as a kind of male Virgin Mary upon whose head at ordination the bishop laid but one hand—and that lightly.

Faced with such a mission as here outlined, the campus church may be forgiven for reacting as the defendant did when he heard the bailiff announce the “Case of John Smith vs. the People of the United States.” “My God,” he breathed, “what a majority.” The only thing that will prevent such despair is the reverent recognition that the Church, like the individual, is justified by faith. It may well surprise us that God has chosen us, of all people, for this, of all tasks, to be fulfilled in these, of all circ*mstances.

What I covet for the Church I love is that she become an enlightened, liberating, and persuasive fellowship: enlightened about the facts of our tradition; liberating the lives of our people for joyful worship and service; persuading those who are not yet a part of us that here is a people who love one another in God and who, because they do, welcome all of every age or station to become the recipients of God’s grace and the instruments of his love.

I say it may well astound us that God has chosen us for this. But he has. So we must. Let us then, as Wesley said, unite the two so long disjoin’d: knowledge and vital piety.

END

Preacher in the Red

ELIXIR OF THE NORTHERN GODS

WHILE SERVING as interim pastor, I had occasion to spend a great deal of time counseling a widow who was undergoing severe spiritual trials. With prayer, I sought to minister the “strong consolation” of the Word.

At the close of each session, she would insist that I accompany her to the kitchen for a cup of steaming coffee. For me, being a Swede, that was reward enough! I would gratefully sip the “elixir of the northern gods” while her young son sat in a corner and eyed me with questioning probe.

One Saturday afternoon, some time later, the wife of the present pastor of that church telephoned. The preacher had collapsed with a fever due to a mysterious attack of something or other. Could I please supply the next day?

The congregation seemed somewhat surprised to see me without prior warning. But none was more taken back than my young friend of the kitchen. As I mounted the platform, he squirmed in his seat, gave his mother’s arm a hard pull, and cried out in a voice audible in every corner of the sanctuary, “Hey, mommy, look! That ain’t the preacher! That’s the fellow who came and drank up all your coffee!”—The Rev. EDWIN RAYMOND ANDERSON, Hartford, Connecticut.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Address letters to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

The future of private and church-related colleges is a matter of serious and ever-growing debate. For some observers the mounting competition of public education and the inroads of government spell inevitable disaster to the philosophy and hence the existence of these often small and struggling schools. Others are more optimistic; they refuse to surrender the sustaining factors of dedication to mission and reliance upon Providence. In either case, no one doubts the need for constant self-evaluation, and for courage to make those administrative and curricular changes demanded by the peculiar nature and requirements of the present age.

Ten-year studies done with the assistance of the Ford Fund for the Advancement of Education under the leadership of Sidney Tickton have enabled many small Christian colleges to make important assessments of their programs. Many have been encouraged to put their futures under rational control as effectively as does a modern business corporation, while still utilizing the asset of a mighty faith in God. Such evangelical educators are the people who know and operate upon the corrective principle that “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Other studies have been undertaken by Christian colleges which indicate the need to change to a twelve-month year and to shift the curricular emphasis from the lecture to learning. Such colleges will not need to use the obituary notices already prepared for them by some pessimists.

Evangelical colleges must deal realistically with three factors, for these are their dimensions of operation:

1. Their raison d’être depends upon the place they give to the Bible with its redemptive message and timeless meaning for human existence. Proper understanding of the Bible must be a core matter for the curriculum, a frame of reference for the exploding areas of knowledge in our time, and a clue to the highest integrity in a student’s intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. In such a climate the Bible becomes not just a numbered course but a lifetime resource of spiritual wisdom. Its perspectives enable the student to see man and his world in the light of God’s intention.

2. The evangelical college must deal with the academic and cultural realities. This aspect of Christian higher education has been sometimes unnecessarily suspect. The key components are students, faculty, library, and the learning situation. We must be clear about our assumptions. We must ask the question: “Whom are we educating and for what purpose?” The American academic scene has been described as “that odd mixture of status hunger, voodoo, tradition, lust, stereotyped dissipation, love, solid achievement and plain good fun, sometimes called ‘college life’” (Saturday Evening Post, March 7, 1959, p. 44).

Evangelical colleges can give a sound preprofessional education if they avoid proliferation of majors and the superficiality of fashionable and transient survey courses. They can produce men and women who serve their divine Lord and humanity with a competence equal to or surpassing that of their non-Christian counterparts. They can provide that good orientation in the social graces which enables the graduate to laugh and to lift his life above the miasmic fogs of self-indulgence and neurotic guilts and anxieties. They can produce a breed of God-fearing men who will save the nation from rising tides of governmentism.

3. Evangelical colleges as corporations are not exempt from economic realities. Their expense items must be scrutinized, and a conscious effort must be directed toward the best utilization of facilities and personnel. The long summer vacation belonged to a no-longer-existent rural economy. Capital assets must have maximum returns in terms of their function. Teachers and administration must make room for more and more new teaching techniques. Faculty salaries must be adjusted to cancel the need for a second job. How can a part-time faculty provide a first-class education? The traditional peaks of campus activity on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings must give way to academic weeks of five and one-half days that utilize time and space from eight in the morning until nine in the evening when necessary. Adult education, too, must not be a barren territory in the evangelical life of America.

On the income side, church constituencies must awaken to their responsibilities as never before. Church-related colleges need college-related churches. Students usually provide only half the instructional income and do nothing for capital programs; their churches, moreover, do not know that they should subsidize them. Private support from individuals, foundations, and corporations is on the increase, but the question of federal aid must be carefully evaluated. While there are helpful scholarship and loan programs without controls, federal grants carry the possibility of compromising separation of church and state.

In a New England regional meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges, Dr. Frank H. Sparks said that “the tripod of freedom” consists of free government, free enterprise, and free education. The evangelicals have a large responsibility to ensure that income sources do not carry compromises of freedom into their programs. Many evangelical Christians are totally ignorant of their opportunity under the generous tax provisions for the support of colleges. Annuities, trusts, property and business transfers, wills, bequests, and gifts out of income are to the advantage of the donor as well as the college. Many Christians die intestate who could have directed their assets to the glory of God in Christian higher education.

The present college-age population (18–21 years of age) of over ten million will increase to 14.2 million in 1970, and to almost 17 million in 1980. It is estimated that the 1960 levels of college enrollment will double by 1970. Evangelical colleges will feel this impact no less than other American colleges. Churches and denominations should be thinking about how to advance the cause of church-related institutions, how to utilize teaching opportunities and chaplains’ services on non-Christian campuses, and how to develop a strong evangelical university. The questions of a clear biblical philosophy of higher education, of better utilization of facilities and personnel, and of adequate financing should be an active concern of the best evangelical theologians, educators, and business executives today if the future in higher education is to be exploited for Christ. In the national interest and in the interest of the Church we need a clear articulation of direction on the basic issues common to all evangelicals. We need a rebirth of fidelity to God’s Word and the impact of the living Christ on our campuses.

The mission and cost of Christian and evangelical higher and theological education must be clearly seen by people, pastors, and professors. Our task is not easy as we face the crucial problems raised and compounded by the rapidity of technological change. We are preparing a new generation whose witness and leadership will reach its point of highest contribution in A.D. 2000 in a world entirely different in its technological dimensions from the one we know today.

The human heart will still hunger for God and for fellowship and for a transcendent purpose. These benefits are the special trust of God’s children who know the power of Christ to make men new for man’s new day. We can and we must produce first-rate leadership for Christ and his church by first-hand praying and first-class education.

END

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND MODERN DESPAIR

THE FACTS OF LIFE—A pilot survey on attitudes to marriage among students at the University of London reveals that, of 200 couples who answered questionnaires, 70 were living together. Of these, about half looked upon their relationship as a short-term affair, while the other 35 intended to get married as soon as they left the university.—Evening Standard, London.

RECOVERY OF MORALS—A recovery of conscience on campus can come by no way of piling on or tightening up the rules, any more than by taking the rules away, for the rules only touch the outer person.… A Christian answer to the problem of the education of the conscience lies in the practice of the presence of God, through the inner discipline of prayer and worship, which turns the self away from the crowd and from the self to the divine. It is a biblical theme that we come back to, by the long way around: morality is the fruit of the vision of God.—WALDO BEACH, Conscience on Campus.

FACING THE ULTIMATE—Most students who take nursing seriously go through some period when they are acutely aware of their own inability to meet situations; for example, to give support to parents of a dying child. A weird conference or “grave prognosis” is included as part of the curriculum in most schools. The fact is stressed that the student must decide what she believes to be the meaning of life and death before she can function adequately in such situations. It seems that Christian instructors have a special opportunity in this area.—JANE SHREWSBURY, Instructor, Children’s Hospital, Pittsburgh.

THE BASIC PROBLEMS—The best secular brains—be they scientists, statesmen, or philosophers—have not been able to answer the basic problems of life and death.… The Christian must be ready to point out that God through Jesus Christ is the only ultimate answer.—Dr. ARTHUR SCHULERT, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University.