Page 6235 – Christianity Today (2024)

Several months ago Time magazine reported Arthur Lovejoy’s death at the age of eighty-nine. He had served as professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. Earlier in his career he had been asked to fill out a questionnaire on which one of the questions was: “Do you believe in God?” In reply to this question Lovejoy wrote thirty-three definitions with the implication: Which God? What meaning do you choose?

Those of us who study philosophy as well as theology know something about the quest that makes even questionnaires bristle with more questions. But those of us who also study the Word of God know as well that man can never be satisfied with speculative ideas of God. Pascal, the brilliant mathematician and thinker who came to feel the impact of divine revelation, cried out, “Not the God of the philosophers, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” The believer who willingly humbles himself before the Word has come to know the personal God in Jesus Christ. This does not mean that he has sold his reason short as Pascal never did. But it does imply that he has found, or rather, has been found by him who is the way, the truth, and the life. He believes in order that he may understand.

Emily Dickinson, perhaps with tongue in cheek, wrote:

Faith is a fine invention

For gentlemen who see,

But microscopes are prudent

In an emergency.

We who by God’s grace are believers do not minimize microscopes, nor telescopes, nor the searching mind of man. But we also refuse to accept the fallacy that faith is an invention. On the contrary, it is for us an experience and an understanding.

A Lost God

In the long history of man one can find at least three negative conceptions of God. They are: a lost God; a God who does not exist; a God who seems indifferent.

Among the children of men there is vast ignorance about God coupled with tragic indifference. He has become more or less a vague memory. Faded impressions of youth fade still more. There are silent reminders: the old family Bible, seldom if ever used; church buildings on many corners; an occasional baptism or wedding; ministers respected as pallbearers of a lost cause. But faith as an active force is rather dim.

How easily bright things can become tarnished, as every housewife knows! How readily near objects can be overlooked, their very proximity dulling the sense of wonder! Even when it comes to persons with whom we associate, we may be satisfied with appearance and never be concerned about the hidden reality. How carelessly precious articles can be broken! A teenager, dusting the parlor on a Saturday morning, shouts upstairs to her mother, “Mom, you remember that vase which has been in the family for generations? Well, this generation just dropped it.”

This generation may also have dropped that binding faith in God which meant so much decades ago. What is left might be a second-hand religion, a cheap imitation, an inherited “faith” with both the peace and the power drained from it. What is left might be even an institutionalized Christianity with little of personal effectiveness.

There comes to mind a sentence written in another connection: “The cutting edge of the pioneers is not always in their descendants.” There is a weakening of the strain, and that holds also in the field of religion. We have all seen Whistler’s painting of “Mother.” It is said of the artist that he was always kind to his mother, always courteous. He always drove her to church, and left her at the door. The meaning is as clear as the painting of the mother, clearer than the Mona Lisa’s smile.

A God Who Does Not Exist

For many God has been supplanted by man; revealed religion has given way to the religion of mankind, whatever that may be. Swinburne expressed it in the nineteenth century: “Glory to Man in the highest, for Man is the Master of things.” In Anya Seton’s novel Dragonwyck, Nicholas is coaching Miranda from Emerson’s essay on “Self-Reliance.” He reads, “As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Miranda is shocked and says, “What a dreadful thing to say. Doesn’t the man believe in God?” And Nicholas replies, “My dear child, no intelligent person believes in God. Only the immature and ignorant need a prop from without. There is no god but oneself.”

That sounds very much like John Steinbeck’s words spoken when he accepted the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature:

“Fearful and unprepared we have assumed lordship over the life and death of the whole world of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfection is at hand. Having taken God-like powers, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.”

When confronted with divine revelation, a flippant atheist might say, “I don’t believe in all that rubbish, so help me God.” However, all atheists and agnostics are not necessarily flippant. Some of them have fallen heir to the lostness of God. Some, confronted by rampant evil in the world; by the inhumanity of man to man, have given up to despair. In “The Petrified Forest” a character symbolic of those who feel that the world has been shot from under them says he belongs among the dead, stony stumps. In “Nightmare With Angels” Stephen Vincent Benet puts it this way:

You will not be saved by General Motors or the prefabricated house.

You will not be saved by dialectic materialism or the Lambeth Conference.

You will not be saved by Vitamin D or the expanding universe.

In fact, you will not be saved.

And Hemingway says, “There is no remedy for anything in life.” These strong despairers, clinging to the remnant of the will to live, echo and re-echo Bertrand Russell’s gloom.

The gloomy existentialists, enclosed in their own cellophane wrapper, cling to despair and to that self which must still live courageously though Death sits on the bedpost like the Raven and will not be blinked away. They continue to live and to write, finding in anxiety the spring to creativity. Others, still young and impressed by a certain kind of status-seeking, ally themselves with the cult of meaninglessness in the enchanting delirium of immaturity. For them painting, music, drama, poetry, fiction that present the maze with no Ariadne’s thread are The Thing. As the poet George Stefan has said, they want to be safe from “the indignity of being understood.”

It is no wonder that for many God has become a fashionable blur.

An Indifferent God

Isaiah, that impassioned evangelist of the Old Testament, speaks to those for whom God is lost or for whom He does not exist. His strong voice is directed especially at those who consider God as indifferent. In his book he says, “Surely thou art a God who hidest thyself.” However, the reference is not to the Almighty as an absentee landlord, but rather to the burden of the mystery that is in Him. That mystery He constantly reveals—though not all at once, lest our eyes be blinded and our minds give way. His self-disclosure is there in the prophecies and, more fully, in Jesus Christ.

There were those in Isaiah’s day who said (40:27), “My way is hid from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.” The plaintive cry is heard again and again in Job. We hear it today. God has forgotten us. Why? He does not know, or he does not care about, our predicament. He seems to show no interest in justice and mercy. It is human for man to cry, “Why?” It may be enlightening to listen again to that greatest cry of anguish from the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But beyond that question lies the answer made concrete in him who gave that cry. If God were indifferent, there would have been no Cross. That God is not indifferent Isaiah reveals with strong conviction.

The God Who Reveals Himself

Our God has disclosed himself, and he keeps on doing just that. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable.”

God has never left himself without witnesses. His revelation has always been there. Daily he is appealing to us. “Have you not heard me? Have you not listened to my Word, my prophets, my Christ?” “Thus saith the Lord” has whispered and thundered through the centuries.

Must we have a Gallup Poll to remind us of Him? Is it necessary that God spell out his name in the stars or in neon lights to impress the unbelieving? Even then some would not accept him, some would turn from him as they do from Echo and the latest moon shot.

Who is this God who cries out to man?

He is the Everlasting, the Lord, Jehovah. He is the Creator of the universe who put all things there where man is still scratching the surfaces. His understanding is infinite. Before it our minds are like feeble candles. He knows all things and is present everywhere. And he is the strong God not tired from all his creating, never wearying of his kind providence, never exhausted from his redemptive efforts.

Man can not fathom him, comprehend him. He can not chop him out of a tree trunk nor capture him in marble. He can not catch him up in a neat definition, nor confine him merely in the realm of ideas. He is not “the Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness” of Matthew Arnold, nor the Santa Claus-symbol God of Edward Scribner Ames, nor the ambiguous God of Walter Kaufmann, nor the relativistic God of Hartshorne. He is more than the philosophic Being-itself of Tillich.

The God who reveals himself through Isaiah and in his Word, who has recorded for us his holy history, the greatest story that has ever been told, is an active God. The Bible tells us of the Acts of God. There are many verbs in the Book, as there are in the Apostles’ Creed. Words of Horace Mann come to mind: “I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the Apostles, but I have heard a great deal about the Acts of the Apostles.” One can say that about the Bible itself. In it God is evident in action. Jesus said, according to the Gospel of John, “My Father is working still, and I am working.”

If some people are impressed by ideas, there are perhaps more who are impressed by action.

Listen to what Isaiah says about God’s activity. He gives power to those who faint; he strengthens the weary. Even the young become exhausted. They are subject to old age and decay. But regardless of age those who wait upon the Lord will find their strength renewed. For God will increase our powers. It is communion with him that exercises us. Waiting upon the Lord we are even given wings like those of the eagle. With Sidney Lanier we can sing: “I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies.” That is finding our place in the sun, and it is far more rewarding than groping our way into the caves of the meaningless, or following paths that lead to the wastelands of nihilism.

Our God who alone can save us from the cult of meaninglessness and from the deserts of our own making will also cause us to run and not be weary, to walk, which may not be quite so glamorous, but which nevertheless gives us purpose, direction, the sense of destination and destiny, and the final triumph.

All this our God has done for us, is willing to do for uncounted millions. Ideas have moved the world, and ideas about God can give illumination. But personal encounter with Him who is, who reveals, and who acts will change our pilgrimage and see us through. It is the only way that despair and anxiety can give way to light and life.

For it is revealed that we have a great and good God. And it is faith, which is more than the soul’s invincible surmise, that reaches out to him. He is very much alive. And his Son, whose valley was deeper than man can ever measure, has said, “Lo, I am alive forevermore.”

A traveler in India passing a temple heard drums and asked what the meaning might be. A native answered, “O, they are waking up the god, for it’s almost time for worship.” We do not have a God who needs to be aroused. We worship him so that he can awaken us. We who are Christians or nominally so should expose ourselves to the daily and perennial awakening. May it never be said of us:

They do it every Sunday,

They’ll be all right on Monday;

It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.”

His mercy and his faithfulness are great. He will not bruise the broken reed nor quench the smoking flax. But his judgment is also sure. It is because of him and his inescapable revelation that we are responsible creatures always living in decision.

The Internal Revenue Department notified a United States citizen that his 1959 charitable contributions of $4,559, rental loss of $1,217, and deduction of $1,200 for two dependents, all totaling $6,976, were disallowed in the absence of supporting evidence of entitlement. In fact, the department made an additional tax claim for $1,917. The rental loss had been claimed because the house involved had had no tenants for the year; yet the demand was made: “State full names of persons who occupy your property … and their relationship to you.”

The ominous overtone of this example is the bland assumption that all people are out to swindle the government whenever and wherever possible, that no one is to be trusted, and until and unless proved otherwise, everyone is to be regarded as an unscrupulous cheat, fraud, and liar.

My purpose here is not to argue that such an attitude is not justified. My purpose, rather, is to deplore the fact that it probably is. In the above case the people involved were able to prove their statements. More than this, they are the kind of people who would no more cheat the government than they would rob a church poor box; they would no more knowingly sign a false statement than they would pick a pocket.

There are many such high-principled people. Yet our society is so used to excusing the weaknesses and peccadilloes of its members that it finds it hard to believe the existence of a large group who will “swear to their own hurt and change not.” Modern literature, moving pictures, television, and radio recognize no such phenomenon. It is generally assumed that everyone today smokes, drinks, flirts, and attends co*cktail parties; that almost everyone gambles, cheats, is unfaithful in marriage, and takes every advantage of another’s mistakes. It is assumed that for most people the chief restraints to unsocial behavior are fear of losing reputation or social position, or fear of the law; they are generally held to believe that unswerving moral behavior in all circ*mstances under present conditions not only is outmoded, but also is an evidence of unrealistic thinking and soft-headedness—at any rate, such behavior is hardly possible in a highly competitive, sophisticated society. I maintain, nevertheless, that such people do exist, and what is more, exist in large numbers. That their presence has not been discovered and noted by current writers is strange indeed.

These unknown non-conformists of our society, besides being scrupulously honest on the financial level—a quality not too uncommon whatever its motivation may be—have other commendable traits as well.

Modern literature, as it mirrors our society, would have us believe that “every man has his price,” that the age of martyrdom for abstract principle or for religious or moral concepts ended with the apostles, or at latest with the sixteenth century. A martyr in the heroic mold of the gods, as in Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, or a more recent Hitler, steeped as he was in Wagner, might be comprehensible to the modern mind. But anyone who without promise of fame or fortune would die an obscure death purely for the sake of conviction is utterly incredible. The motives are suspect even of those who would confront danger for others at the risk of their own health and life. Expiating a crime? Doing penance for a sin? The world shakes its head in bewilderment or incredulity and resumes reading its sports page or the latest titillating scandal.

Vice Gets The Plaudits

Somerset Maugham’s Rain features the moral collapse of a foreign missionary and the triumph of a whor*, and makes the cold self-righteous missionary a typical representative of his group. Sinclair Lewis personifies gospel evangelists by his character Elmer Gantry, a religious charlatan who profits from his preaching and fornicates from his profits. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific draws the depressing conclusion that no principle or conviction is strong enough to hold a man to a course of rectitude in his private behavior. Hemingway, Lawrence, and others sound similar themes.

Such characters and episodes have been so blown up, publicized, dramatized, psychoanalyzed, and otherwise exploited that the public has come to accept them as the complete standard of human behavior. A non-conformist to this pattern is regarded not only as a queer person but also as a rara avis; if as a species he is not already as dead as the passenger pigeon, he is probably as near extinction as the whooping crane. Yet the species is not dead, but is very much alive and actively doing much of the world’s work. Where is it and how may it be identified?

We are often unaware of such a group because it functions quietly and unobtrusively in our midst; its members seldom make the headlines. Like Conan Doyle’s typical Englishman, they smile at breaking their necks but turn pale at breaking the law. They rarely see the divorce courts, maintaining the anachronistic and unconventional view that romantic love and happiness are to be found within the marriage relationship, and that matrimonial vows are a solemn pledge, not a mere ceremony to meet social and legal requirements. While they may be ambitious, they are not overly acquisitive; keeping up with the Joneses is not their idea of success. They are not hermits or recluses, however much their lack of recognition by modern writers and commentators might suggest the contrary. An unsophisticated, idealistic, and patriotic people, they are devoted to duty, dedicated to God, country, and neighbor. They put principle before expediency. They are quick to respond to a call for help and to contribute to worthy causes. With these motivations and viewpoints they find little time or need for the psychiatrist’s couch.

An Impressive Minority

I have not pictured something imaginary that could exist only in Utopia. I have pictured something very real—a minority group, yes, but one whose numbers are nevertheless impressive! They are best characterized, perhaps, as “men of good will.” They are what is right with America and the world. Imperfect though they may be, they nevertheless subscribe to a higher code for themselves and for society than do most of their contemporaries. Though non-conformist in this sense, they are interwoven with the warp and woof of society. They exert a profound and stabilizing influence seldom suspected by the pushing, status-seeking, pleasure-loving, headline-hunting, money-mad majority. Being non-conformist they are generally ignored by publicity media but are there to help when trouble comes. They furnish the missionaries to foreign lands and supply millions of dollars annually to support them. Schools, sanitation, public health measures, hospitals and clinics with physicians and nurses are provided—without government subsidies! Of these sacrifices and benefactions to society the public knows very little.

The people of whom I sing are those who subscribe to the Judeo-Christian ethic and are truly dedicated to its principles. I remember a conversation with a Korean dentist in Seoul shortly before the coup d’etat of 1961. “But, doctor,” I had said, “you must have some dedicated men in our National Assembly.” “Yes, doctor, we have many dedicated men,” he said wryly, “dedicated to themselves.”

In contrast, those of whom I sing observe the injunctions, “When thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men,” and “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”

While most persons in this group are religiously active, they represent no one particular church, synagogue, or other religious organization. Many who are not committed to any religious body are highly motivated and make notable contributions to the public welfare. Their personal lives may also be impeccable. Even so, they are following a traditional code of morality and conduct which if traced back will invariably be found to stem from the Bible. Such a code is frequently derived from Pilgrim or Puritan ancestors or tradition.

Has anyone today the temerity to commend the Puritan tradition after all the scorn that has been heaped upon it by popular writers of the past forty years? What about the witch hunters, the blue laws, the stern self-righteous moralists, the intolerance of our Puritan ancestors? What about the religious persecutions that caused Roger Williams to say he would rather live among the Christian savages (of Rhode Island) than among the savage Christians (of Massachusetts)?

No defense can be made of these perversions of Christianity. They are not in the teachings of Christianity, but in the practices and traditions of Christendom—and there is a world of difference. Much in Puritanism was wholesome and sound. A “New England conscience” was something to live by, to be relied upon, so that it could be said of a man that “his word is his bond.” Despite all the sneering of the professional debunkers, Puritanism in its best meaning survives today to the strengthening and stabilizing of American society and its institutions.

God’S Standards Are Forever

So the Judeo-Christian code is still with us, however battered and debilitated it may be. To many people the Bible is more than a talisman to bring good luck; it is the Living Word of the Living God, a guidebook for daily conduct. There must be a multitude of these non-conformists, since their Guidebook is still the best seller, with every new version an immediate sell-out. What would our world be like without this unique gyroscope to keep it balanced? Like Communist Russia, perhaps?

The growing sophistication of people as seen in their complacency and cynicism has greatly eroded this code in modern society. The reduction of spiritual values in present-day concepts of life has caused a deterioration in standards with a tendency to materialism as gross as that of Marx and Engel. Marxist philosophy rests upon a dialectic; it is established by examination and argument. But the gross sensuality and materialism of our society has arisen purely by default; it has no underlying or sustaining philosophy. Men have blundered into this slimy quagmire by failing to heed all warning signs. Crime, infidelity in marriage, divorce, delinquency—both adult and juvenile, sexual perversions, political chicanery, forgery, counterfeiting, gangsterism, subversive activities, treason, larceny, religious charlatanism, and all other anti-social behavior are the inevitable result when men have no code to live by, no guide for faith and practice.

There are people in the world today who refuse to sell their conscience, refuse to wink at sin, and refuse to compromise eternal principles of right and wrong. You may not be able to identify or recognize them on the street. They wear no flowing gowns, no peculiar garb. The sharp line of distinction is found in their private lives. They pray; they study the Bible, and teach it to their children. They attend weekly church or synagogue services and inculcate right principles in their meetings.

The Assault On Integrity

Those who hold high principles of personal conduct with or without religious motivation seem to be the special target for bitter attacks by popular writers, particularly in this century. Men of an earlier day like Dickens, Reade, Scott, and Irving were themselves religiously oriented and did not attack people in this regard. It remained for writers of the twentieth century to show their fangs, to tear and slash at common decency. Mencken unleashed his witty, vituperative scorn upon the “Bible Belt,” as he called the South, and made it appear a thing of shame. Shaw, Lewis, Maugham, Mencken, Lawrence, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others introduced what a Saturday Evening Post editor so well named the “Era of Sneer.” Other writers of less technical skill, observing their success, have imitated their offerings to the point where bookracks in the stores are groaning under loads of slime and indecency.

Why are lives of integrity, probity, and morality so often vilified? Why is depravity extolled? Could it be that many of these writers know nothing of what they so vehemently castigate? Are their own lives so corrupt that they must disparage anyone whose life witnesses against them? Maugham must have had to look long to find the prototype of his missionary, Davidson, since for every Davidson there are a hundred Livingstones. Lewis could have found a score of Moodys to refute his Gantry in moral sincerity and integrity.

I confess to a long-time yearning to see a novel based upon marital love and felicity, upon a happy home where God is honored, the children well-behaved, the mother proud of her brood, the husband successful in profession or business and social relationships; a novel without the hard and bitter repartee, the sordidness, the vulgarity and obscenity which have become so universally popular. A novel like this might come with such impact as to be a runaway best seller!

Over sixty years ago Charles M. Sheldon wrote a book in which the leading members of a community pledged to ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” whenever they faced a decision. In His Steps never became a Broadway hit, but it enjoyed a fantastic circulation and was translated into several foreign languages.

I fear, however, that our most popular writers haven’t the background for that kind of writing, and the non-conformist group I have delineated are too busy with their own world-improvement projects to make the attempt.

Must rottenness always prevail?

Do I hear you say you are growingly disillusioned about the organized Church itself, and it makes you wonder? You’d be abnormal if you didn’t feel this, and I predict you will feel it off and on all the rest of your days. There is plenty in the Church to make us feel that it would be hard even for God to make “these dry bones live.” A few mornings ago I was reading St. Luke 9:1–6, where He sends out the Twelve to work miracles and preach: I could not help feeling how very different from this is an Ecumenical Council in Rome, or a meeting of the House of Bishops in the Episcopal Church, or a Presbyterian General Assembly, or a session of the World Council of Churches. We smile at the disparity, and then go on our old ways; isn’t it about time we cried at the disparity, and began taking a different way? The Church “talks a good fight.” When you know that the entire Episcopal Church, one of the wealthiest of all per capita, sends out only 270 missionaries, you know that as a church we just don’t care very much whether the Gospel gets to “all the world.” The churches are full of people who give a silent, inactive assent to things the clergy have to articulate for them, but there is more plodding and going-along than either sacrifice or the power of the Holy Spirit. I do not so much fear that the Church will go backward into total ineffectiveness, and I can scarcely hope that, at this rate, it will go forward into anything bright and exciting and adequate for these times. I fear that it will just continue on its own self-centered way, keeping up its old institutions, more or less looking after its own people, but having nothing with which to grip the world’s imagination or to stir its heart. I go along with you if these are your misgivings. But instead of stirring discouragement in me, they stir a will to put my shoulder to the wheel all the more enthusiastically—for what the Church has been given to give to the world is what the world needs more than any other thing.

You may already be feeling the conflict between the ecclesiastical harness and a spiritual ministry, or the difficulty of reconciling what you have learned through a free-wheeling movement of the Spirit and what you find in the Church. You need prayer, quiet judgment, and great wisdom about these things. Not long ago I heard that a minister who is being greatly used by God, but who had long faced the conflict of spiritual power with ecclesiastical activity, decided he must make his choice: he threw off the machinery of the institution altogether. I sympathize with his anguish, and I think I understand what made him decide as he did. But I cannot agree with his solution. Whence come any authority whatever, the sacraments, continuity, perspective, corrective from other congregations? I know how hard it is to mix the evangelical fire and the Catholic continuity, but I think we must manage to do it, for each has its own validity. Can this be brought about from the outside? Does it not simply begin another separation?

Facing Up To The Parish

There are some who will be called to a non-parish ministry. They may be evangelists, educators, writers, retreat-house leaders. If such opportunities keep them in constant touch with people, whereas parish work involves all sorts of fruitless administration and some pastoral work that is a spiritual dead end, they had better think twice before they abandon such a ministry for an ordinary parish. Any man who chooses the ordinary parish ministry must do so upon the basis that he will do his best to release “the Spirit in the wheels.”

If you wrinkle your brow and ask me whether one can honestly carry all the administrative and other routines of a parish ministry and at the same time keep it shot through with spiritual power, I can say only that this has been my own aim in two parishes over nearly forty years. There are places where this difficult combination is being happily worked out. Take Robert Raines’s church or Claxton Monro’s church. Raines’s book New Life in the Church is a documentary proof of it. Monro believes that as we develop the witnessing layman, living out in the world the new life he finds in the Church, all the old and customary ways of the Church will come to life—sacraments, preaching, religious education, Bible study, social service, worship, and all. It looks almost as if the Church has built up a good system of wiring through the years: all it needs is to be hooked up with the Dynamo.

Factors In Awakening

I do not believe that any of the Church’s given “means of grace” take effect without (1) continuous awakening in individuals, and (2) continuous awakening in the Church. No one can say much that is convincing about awakening, nothing that compares to seeing it and being part of it at a local level. But there are always four factors, as it seems to me, in any genuine awakening:

1. Conversion: somewhere a decisive beginning to the Christian life.

2. Prayer: the new climate in which converted Christians live and grow.

3. Fellowship: the need to live and work and worship with other Christians.

4. Witness: by life and word making Christ and faith real to others.

These four factors are intimately bound up with one another, none of them standing alone, like the four sides of a box. They are all old and familiar ideas, but they become new and exciting experiences when the Holy Spirit lets us know them at firsthand and in the company of others. If we begin with these four factors, I believe we shall be led into richer and deeper experiences all the time. We ought to preach on these things, getting our people familiar with them, and familiar with them together, not just as separate topics.

Does some of this sound too much to you like some forms of the old evangelism? I hope not, because I think that awakening in our time must supersede old-fashioned evangelism, with its probable emotionalism, intellectual obscurantism, Puritanical rules, and frequent self-righteousness. I think also it must go much deeper than the merely sacerdotal kind of Catholicism, with so much stress on outward forms and often so little on a changed heart. I think it must understand, but not be too much bowled over by, the insights of the intellectuals and the academics who talk mostly to the few of their own kind. One has the feeling that God must have for us an awakening which includes the warm enthusiasm of the evangelicals, the genuine sacramentalism of a true Catholicism with its steady emphasis on forgiveness and grace, and the intellectual honesty and social passion without which many moderns (rightly, I think) will not listen to us, and which would give to the Holy Spirit a wider as well as a deeper channel through which to work through the Church of today.

Yet—I think I hear you saying—all this concerns mostly the outwardness of attitudes and conceptions. What of the true inwardness of awakening, whether personal, parochial, or general? There is only one source of this, and it is the Holy Spirit. For many in the churches, including clergy, the Holy Spirit is very vague. We have not really gotten up through Easter yet, let alone through Pentecost. We must seek and pray and go among Spirit-filled Christians until we find Him, and he becomes a Living Presence, close and powerful. My own deepening conviction is that he is the source of all spiritual power, and this is part of the very nature of God as we know him through Christ. When you feel a sudden surge of power and direction as you are speaking, or are given a fresh insight as you talk with someone, or a piece of truth is given you as you walk or drive your car, or you feel an accession of joy, or repentance, or love for somebody, these are not just chance uprushes of your subconscious: they are the Holy Spirit speaking to your needs. Trust him and welcome him and give him thanks and ask him for more! The gathering momentum at a conference where the leadership is not in the grip of a program but open to Him to act as he will, the unbelievable unity that is sometimes given, the freedom and joy and power, the transformed people who go back from such a conference different forever—these are the Holy Spirit’s own handiwork. Praise him and pray to him and listen always for his voice! When the old human concern and worry, often with physical concomitants in our bodies, gives way to “joy and peace in believing,” and we are truly free, even for a short time, it is not alone our compliance with some kind of impersonal “spiritual laws”: it is the Holy Spirit at work in our own hearts, lifting depression, forgiving sins, raising our spirits, giving us fresh grants of grace. The old mere mouthing of doctrinal truths and the old effort to live up to impossible moral standards give way to a liberty in the Spirit that is unlike anything we have known before. It is His doing, and marvelous in our eyes. This is a real force, different from any we may ever have known. It is the Holy Spirit.

One of his contemporary manifestations certainly seems to be the “speaking in tongues.” I do not believe that is the only way he works, and the experience has never come to me. Let us be careful about expressing doubt or scorn. St. Paul thought prophesying (i.e., witnessing) was more important, but he never forbade speaking in tongues. As I said, this experience has not thus far been mine; I think it may be given to us, or may not.

Give The Spirit Full Range

Let us not get hung up on this one possibly controversial experience of the Holy Spirit. Rather let us seek in our prayers and our experience, especially that in small groups, to move up to and through Pentecost, giving the Holy Spirit full range in our lives, including that of a full and free exposure of ourselves to what he is doing in and through people in our time. Our annual nod to him at Pentecost is almost blasphemous in its brevity and triviality. In him alone is our hope for awakening and new life in the churches everywhere, and thus for peace and brotherhood in the world. If he were allowed to draw together under the bracket of his wide arms all the people who look to God and believe in him for conversion, healing, answered prayer, and guidance, in a kind of free totalitarianism under his dictatorship, we should have the answer to personal disputes, business clashes, disunity among the churches, and war in the world. These sound very distant and unlikely, but they do not sound impossible to anyone who has had a genuine experience of Him. I beg you to search for him through study, and through prayers, and through fellowship (he always seems a little more at home in a company than in private), till he becomes a reality, indeed the Great Reality, he who enables us to believe truly in the Father and the Son, in our life and ministry. Many are praying that we may be entering into the very age of the Holy Spirit. We have not yet even begun to know that power which can be ours if we belong wholly to him.

The deepest question I think you are asking, however, is whether this can all become real to you, and stay real. And I tell you, I believe that it can. You will face days when you feel alone in the ministry, when you are defeated in some area and need a fresh repentance and forgiveness, when you seem to be getting nowhere and accomplishing little. Your sins and limitations will seem to outrun your victories and capacities. Yes, but remember the Gospel is “for sinners only.” The depth of our prayer will be measured in part by the depth of our recognized need, and our ability to help people by our capacity to understand what they are going through. We clergy do not call down from some finally achieved height to folk still wrestling with elementary need and “unfaith” (to use a word of Tillich’s making): we are right beside them in the struggle much of the time. But we know Him, and we believe in him, and we know that he is winning the battle in us and in the world which we ourselves seem often to lose. We are in the ministry, not to prove anything as of ourselves, but by every capacity within us to affirm that He is available and that he is sufficient.

So give to God and to people all that you have. Pour it out lavishly, while remembering Alexander Whyte’s great injunction: “Squander your life, but be careful of your health.” I hope that as you come near the close of your ministry you will be able to say what I often say, that if I had had a thousand lives, I should have spent them all just where I have spent the one life I did have. And I should like to close this book with the words the great Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno used to end his great book, The Tragic Sense of Life: “and may God deny you peace, but give you glory!”

At the center of the current debate over the matter of communicating the message of the Christian Evangel to our generation stands the figure of Rudolf Bultmann, formerly a professor at the University of Marburg.

Basic to Bultmann’s message is, of course, his thesis that the message of the New Testament is couched in mythological language. That is to say, he holds that the New Testament writers thought in terms of a world-view which is no longer intelligible to the minds of men. He takes exception, in behalf of Modern Man, to what he regards as an outdated cosmology which he holds to underlie the entire structure of the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation. He contends that these records are bound inextricably to a view of a three-layered universe, of a geocentric astronomy, and of a philosophy of history which is no longer meaningful to the man of today.

He proposes, in the light of this, that the New Testament is to be taken in its entirety. In actual practice he resorts to eliminating certain passages by the expedient of regarding them as interpolations. But his explicit intention is to leave the New Testament whole, and then to “interpret” it in its entire form in such a manner as to expose the basic truth which he feels to underlie its “mythological” elements. He has made a name for himself through his elaboration of the process of “demythologizing,” by which he proposes to peel away the layers of “myth” which overlay the “real” message of the New Testament writers.

The objectives of his method are as follows: first, to reinterpret the message of the Gospel in a manner which will eliminate thought-elements which are either unintelligible or objectionable to the modern mind; second, to restate the message of the New Testament in “existential” terms; and finally, to discover the manner in which the “Gospel” as he understands it may lead men into “authentic” existence.

The first of these objectives is to be achieved by means of the application of the canons of form-criticism. This is a sophisticated method, utilizing what Bultmann insists are reconstructive techniques. That is to say, he has professed to discover the steps by which “myths” are made, and then has applied them in reverse so as to discover what he believes the “facts” behind the narratives might have been. Now, those who have studied the process of “demythologization” with some measure of objectivity have come to the conclusion that the entire method rests upon an a priori assumption concerning the nature of the end product toward which the process moves.

The second of these objectives, the restatement of the Christian Evangel in “existential” terms, rests upon a mode of interpretation which makes use of a multiple understanding of truth and of history. That is to say, it assumes that empirical truth is one thing, while “truth” for the individual in encounter with God in “crisis” is another. The field of myth enters into this second phase; it does not attempt to state what man’s actual relation to his world is, but only what that relation is understood existentially to be.

Bultmann’s third objective, the exposition of the Gospel as a way to “authentic” existence, centers in the existentialist distinction between mere being-in-the-world on the one hand, and one’s existence as an accountable and responsible individual on the other. This sounds plausible enough on the surface. When we look a bit deeper, however, we note that Bultmann suggests that authentic existence is an ambiguous term, and that he is highly ambiguous about the possibility of achieving it.

Having noted what Bultmann evidently intends to say to our day, we turn to note some of the things which he may be saying to evangelicals by indirection. First and foremost, he does attempt to render the Christian “message” intelligible to the men and women of our day. It seems to many of us as if he were so preoccupied with the “modern mind” that it drives more important issues into secondary place. However, he provides perennial reminder that unless our message has relevance to the hearer, its proclamation will remain ineffective. The minister of God’s grace who will speak to his generation will do well to hear at least this from the message of Bultmann, however little of Bultmann’s actual techniques he may use.

Second, Bultmann would challenge us to be sensitive to the meaning of words. Certainly his lesson is taught in terms of inacceptable hyperboles and absurd exaggerations. Certainly his “existentialist” interpretations carry the analysis of language too far. At the same time, evangelicals will do well to cultivate a sensitivity of their own to verbalizations. They will likewise be well advised to recall that there are few “bare facts”—that is, that all fact-situations involve interpretation.

In addition to a sensitivity to relevance and to the meaning of words, evangelicals may learn from Bultmann regarding some of the aspects of what he calls authentic existence. Without assenting to the radically individualistic and idiosyncratic overtones of this term, one must recognize that Christians are not exempt from the danger of living upon mere tradition, upon mere “received” norms, upon the basis of a mere protective coloration of the social or religious group. There is a perennial need for emphasis upon personal existence, in terms of the overt acceptance of personal initiative and the frank assumption of personal responsibility.

Finally, Bultmann’s system shows once again that there is a genuine “either/or” attached to the Christian Gospel. It may assume a form quite different from what Bultmann would expect. For the evangelical, the question is: either a frank supernaturalism, grounded in revelation and centering in the Incarnation and the Atonement in Jesus Christ, or a humanism which ultimately denies the supernatural and throws man back upon the purely natural. The exposition of Bultmann’s thought by his disciples must make this alternative painfully clear to their teacher himself.

Between Springtime And Summer Storm

The Christian Ministry in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Wilfred Scopes (World Council of Churches, 1962, 264 pp., paper, $3.90), is reviewed by George Gay, vice-president, Seminario Bíblico Latinoamericano, San José, Costa Rica.

The Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches has sponsored surveys of theological education in the lands of the Younger Churches (India, Africa, the Middle East) and now in this book presents its report on Latin America. The late Bishop B. Foster Stockwell was chairman of the survey committee and its guiding genius until his sudden death three weeks after the completion of the trip.

The author dedicates the major portion of the book to statistical reports of all training institutions in every country of Latin America and the Caribbean. The most interesting part of the book, however, is the third section, in which the editor analyzes in summary fashion the problems facing the Latin American Church today. Dr. Scopes calls this period of church history “the springtime of the Evangelical movement in Latin America.” There is evidence of growth everywhere; there is great promise for the harvest; but, sad to say, all that blossoms in the springtime does not come to fruition. In fact, behind all that springtime beauty there are already discernible certain weaknesses that must be corrected before the summer storms break.

In order to advance the whole evangelical position in Latin America, the training given ministers must be improved in several important areas: (1) the responsibility of the seminaries and Bible schools to make the Bible’s message relevant in today’s world; (2) the raising of salaries for Latin American professors; (3) the sponsoring of indigenous theological literature; (4) the recruitment of Latin Americans for teaching positions; (5) the awakening of theological students to the reality of the world around them, especially in the expanding urban areas.

But improvement will not come by continuing the present trend to proliferation of small seminaries and Bible schools. Financial, academic, and spiritual factors should drive many of the present training schools to cooperative efforts. Dr. Scopes makes a strong plea for “union seminaries” employing a “hall system” in which each cooperating group would teach its own ecclesiology and, if necessary, provide a hostel for its own students.

The rapidity of the survey trip precluded a more profound analysis of the Latin American cultural atmosphere, but by and large the conclusions reached are sound ones. No executive of a mission or church working in Latin America can afford to be without this book.

Dr. Scopes practices what he preaches in his book. During a recent trip to Latin America (March and April, 1963) he was instrumental in the “birth” of two Associations of Theological Seminaries and Bible Schools, for Spanish America, something he had suggested on page 237!

GEORGE GAY

Master Of Dialogue

Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, by Paul Tillich (Columbia University Press, 1963, 97 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by William W. Paul, professor of philosophy, Central College, Pella, Iowa.

Within the brief compass of these Columbia University Bampton Lectures for 1962 the reader may find the answer to three questions: (1) What is Paul Tillich’s apologetic for approaching world religions? (2) Can there be a meaningful dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity? (3) What is Tillich’s estimate of the challenge currently presented to all religions by such “quasi-religions” as nationalism, Communism, and liberal humanism? Although no religion is here discussed in detail and although nothing new is revealed about Tillich’s own theology, the lectures do provide thought-provoking answers to the above questions.

In apologetics Tillich continues to prove that he is a master of theological dialogue, of a philosophy of encounter. Like an Origen attempting to frame a Christian Gnosticism to meet the challenge of alternative faiths Tillich has used his great mind throughout this century to interact with men as diverse as Barth and Bultmann and with philosophical movements as far apart as naturalism and existentialism. Now, in these lectures, Tillich advocates what might be called a “post-missionary” conversation with world religions such as Buddhism. He reasons that although in some parts of the world the masses are still open to direct missionary approach, the educated must be met by a “dialogical-personal” method. To achieve any success this technique requires a willingness by both parties to the discussion to (1) “acknowledge the value of the other’s religious conviction (as based ultimately on a revelatory experience),” (2) represent their own religious basis with conviction, (3) presuppose a common ground to their dialogue and conflicts, and (4) maintain an openness to criticism from the other party to the discussion (p. 62).

Now readers may well quarrel with Tillich’s own “religious basis” or with his broad interpretation of “revelatory experience” (and here he invites dialogue rather than simple negation), but it does seem to this reviewer that we live in the kind of world which increasingly calls for Christian witness by the type of personal dialogue just outlined. Teaching by monologue or stirring emotions by mass evangelism cannot take the place of an encounter between persons in which one party to the conversation has received new being in Christ Jesus and is anxious by God’s Spirit to have others share in that reality. It is unfortunate that in these lectures Tillich restricts his attention to a theory of encounter rather than stressing (as is certainly possible within his own Christian theology) the personal transforming reality of the Christ.

This lack is particularly noticeable in Chapter 3: “A Christian-Buddhist Conversation.” Here Tillich compares the concept of the kingdom of God with that of Nirvana, seeks a correlation between the Christian view of participation and love and the Buddhist ideas of identity and compassion, and reworks the well-known contrast between their historical and non-historical types of interpretation of history. But Christ is not mentioned. Instead Tillich appeals to his own “transpersonal” concept of God as “being itself” plus some elements from “Christian mysticism” to establish contact with the Buddhist understanding of “absolute nothingness.” Clearly, in this chapter the “conversation” is between an ontologically minded Tillich and perhaps a philosopher like the Japanese Buddhist Takeuchi, author of “Buddhism and Existentialism: The Dialogue between Oriental and Occidental Thought” (Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, Harper, 1959).

When Tillich does finally (Lecture 4) refer to Christ, it is His ontological rather than personal significance which is stressed. Christ symbolizes “the decisive self-manifestation in human history of the source and aim of all being,” and he achieved this as he “crucified the particular in himself for the sake of the universal” (pp. 79, 81). Such language is clearly consistent with the philosophical structure of Tillich’s theology, and he uses it to good advantage here. He sees in the Christ-event the basis from which Christianity must judge itself as a particular religion (cf. his “Protestant protest”) as well as a criterion for judging all other religions and the secular quasi-religions of our day. According to Tillich Christ did not come to establish a particular religion, although this happened historically, but to depict a religious attitude which both embraces and judges the various religious and secular spheres of life.

This thought leads Tillich to a logical but nonetheless startling conclusion. The day of attempting to make “converts” in the traditional sense must be replaced, says this master of dialogue, by a community of conversation in which each one will try to penetrate into the depth of his own religion while at the same time coming to see a “spiritual presence” in other religions and in the secularism which underlies Communism and nationalism. At this juncture it would seem that Tillich has been carried away by his desire to converse and has lost sight of the very Person who came not to condemn but that men might believe and be converted. Could it be that the author of these Columbia University lectures has failed to heed the second presupposition of his own apologetic: “to represent his own [a vital Christian?] religious basis with conviction”?

WILLIAM W. PAUL

Who Is The Greatest?

Why Christianity of All Religions?, by Hendrik Kraemer, translated by Hubert Hoskins (Westminster, 1962, 125 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Raymond B. Buker, Sr., professor of missions, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

Why Christianity of all religions? Hendrik Kraemer’s answer: “Because of Christ.” The title of this book is a subtle way of asking which of the great religions of the world is the greatest. As a follower of Christ, Dr. Kraemer categorically asserts that the religion with Christ as Lord is the greatest. Many of us who study the great religions of the world have long felt as Dr. Kraemer has written in this book. We have wanted someone with the stature of Dr. Kraemer to say it.

The first 75 pages set an excellent background for the definite answer. Dr. Kraemer reduces the proposition to the usual “likenesses in all religions” and then by careful analysis refutes this shallow attitude. An example of this is his disapproval of Arnold Toynbee’s conclusions in this area. It is in this section that Dr. Kraemer refers in scorn to “this loose talk about the love of God.”

The discussions concerning the other great religions show much empathy, but the ultimate greatness of Christ in comparison with any other is steadfastly emphasized.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ The Challenge of the World Religions, by Georg F. Vicedom (Fortress, $3.50). Author stirs the Church’s sense of mission because he believes that Christianity’s future will be decided as it confronts the religions of Asia.

★ The Church and Its Ministry, by David Belgum (Prentice-Hall, $6.60). A solid study of the ministry of the Church in the wide areas of its pastoral concerns.

★ Tradition in the Early Church, by R. P. C. Hanson (Westminster, $5.75). A careful study of the abundant literature comprising the tradition of the first three centuries. Author attributes more “inspiration” to some rejected letters than to some canonical books.

Dr. Kraemer reiterates again and again that Christianity is similar to other religions by reason of its inherent human weaknesses. One wonders if he has not developed an unnecessary dichotomy between Christ and Christianity. It is like saying that water is not water because there is impurity in it.

The masterful case for the Christian religion in this book will satisfy the devout neoorthodox. At the same time conservative evangelicals will find much that sets forth their conviction of the preeminence of Christ.

RAYMOND B. BUKER, SR.

Identified, But How?

Identification: Human and Divine, by Kenneth J. Foreman (John Knox, 1963, 160 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, associate professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Our share in the reality of redemption depends on our identification with persons from whom we are in other real senses quite distinct. I am not Adam and I never lived in Paradise; but I am identified with Adam in his fall. I am a servant and not the Lord; but I am identified with Christ in both his cross and his resurrection. Christian devotion and theology is full of vague speech about these identifications. But it is far easier to talk about them in a fuzzy and indefinite way than to put our finger on their actual meaning. And when we do talk about them specifically, we are divided in our judgments as to what makes for a valid and acceptable identification.

Theological types can be distinguished according to their explanations of how we are identified with Adam and Christ. Take Adam and me, for instance. Am I identified with Adam in the mind of God, with Adam counted as my representative, so that when Adam fell his guilt was ascribed by God to me? Or am I identified with Adam in some real and physical sense, so that when Adam fell I was actually involved in his sin? Here you have the federal and the realistic type of theology distinguished by the way in which this identification is understood. Or, take the Church and Christ, a classic example. Is the Church identified with Christ as an extension of his incarnation on earth, as some Catholics understand it—and is the Church, then, identical with Christ in a genuine sense? Or is the Church identified with Christ’s cause and ministry, and thus identified with him only in that both are involved in God’s program of action? Is this identification one of essential participation or one of association? These are only two areas in which identification is at the heart of our share in biblical reality.

Dr. Foreman’s book is a clear-headed effort to distinguish between valid and invalid ways of understanding our identifications. His method is to set up a scheme of the different ways in which we think of identification with persons in ordinary experience. Then, examining the many biblical areas of identification, he tries to get at the type of identification each one actually is. He wants us to make distinctions and insists that our language of identification in theology must conform to our language of identification in ordinary speech. If it does not, we will not be making sense to anybody, profound and pious though we may sound. His judgments as to what kinds of identification between God and us, God and Christ, Christ and us, us and the Church, and so on, are valid depends on his own theological insights. At times the reader will not agree. But the reader is led with a steady hand and sure touch through the linguistic maze that we have made of the language of identification. We must make distinctions. And Dr. Foreman helps the reader in that most successfully.

LEWIN B. SMEDES

Invaluable Survey

Protestant Missions in Latin America, A Statistical Survey, edited by Clyde W. Taylor and Wade T. Coggins (Evangelical Foreign Missions Association [1405 G St., N.W., Washington 5, D. C.], 1961, 340 pp. plus box of 31 maps, $13.50), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, vice-president and professor of missions, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

This work is probably the most complete statistical survey of missionary endeavor in Latin America to be published in thirty years. The Interpretive Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church was published in 1938. Since then the World Christian Handbook, published periodically by the World Dominion Press, has supplied some statistical information for world missionary endeavor.

This survey by Taylor and Coggins goes beyond anything done by the World Christian Handbook, although the authors acknowledge indebtedness to that work for some of the information. Apart from the bare statistical information, the thirty-one maps which form a part of this new work are invaluable to those interested in the location of mission stations and the penetration in depth by the number of boards laboring in a given area, and as a guide to unreached areas of Latin America.

The man-hours of labor which went into the work must have been great. One can only hope that some one will publish a similar survey for the other mission fields of the world.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Justice Within Love

The Justice of God in the Teaching of Jesus, by J. Arthur Baird (Westminster, 1963, 283 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The pastor with an interest in contemporary theological debate will find here a hurried but useful opening survey of the post-Bultmannian reaction. All but the opening chapter of this book, however, is given over to the theme which Dr. Baird, associate professor in the Department of Religion at Wooster, expounds with many a fresh turn. But the underlying motif is a familiar neoorthodox refrain: God’s justice and wrath must be taken “seriously,” but love is the deepest core of the divine nature. It is this denial of the equal ultimacy of justice and love in the nature of God that cancels out much of the merit of the work.

In tracing Jesus’ “theological inheritance,” Baird tells us that in the Old Testament love is God’s “essential nature,” and that when justice refers to God’s nature “the emphasis is on its meaning as love” (pp. 42 ff.). The fierceness of consuming wrath is always set within God’s love and graciousness (p. 62).

Jesus spiritualized hell (“a geography of hell … is not Christian”) (p. 227). The doctrine of eternal punishment is rejected (p. 230) for that of conditional immortality as more compatible with the author’s representations of God’s love and wrath (p. 234). While Jesus “viewed his death in one sense as the taking upon himself of the wrath of God” (p. 250), yet “an incarnational understanding of the atonement” as disclosing a Cross in the eternal nature of God best explains Jesus’ sufferings: he died not to appease God’s wrath toward sinners but to reveal God’s love (p. 251).

The author usually succeeds in making his meaning clear, however inadequate evangelically. But a closing paragraph is profoundly ambiguous: “One thing more must be said. Jesus must not be left on the cross.…” The author goes on to speak of resurrection in terms of “the vertical life of the Spirit” and “his abiding presence.” That sort of theological twist seems to make the “forty days” of “many infallible proofs” a pathetic illusion.

CARL F. H. HENRY

No Longer The Christ

Jesus and The Gospel, by Ernest Cadman Colwell (Oxford, 1963, 73 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Lorman Petersen, professor of New Testament, Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois.

When Ernest Colwell takes up his pen or mounts the lecture platform, most scholars read or listen. He has been president of Southern California School of Theology since 1957 and before that was president of the University of Chicago, dean of its Divinity School, and vice-president of Emory University.

This well-written little volume containing the Cole Lectures for 1962, delivered by Colwell at Vanderbilt University, hits hard at those who separate completely the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. He writes as a historian—and he is a capable one—rather than as a theologian. “These lectures,” he writes in the Preface, “are written by an historian who is a Christian, not a Biblical theologian.… I believe that God has been and is active in human history in making Himself known and apprehensible. I believe He does this through people’s words and deeds. Since this is true, the study of history will lead to a knowledge of God.… And finally, I believe that the decisive event in the revelation of God was Jesus of Nazareth.” This is saying much more than many New Testament scholars and theologians are saying today, and it sets the tone of the book. His objective, he says, is to “bring historian and theologian close to mutual understanding and to effective cooperation in the service of the Church.”

He opens the first lecture with a statement of his view of history. Both historian and theologian will be interested in his seven points about history, the fourth of which reads, “Historians believe that historical fact is objective fact” (p. 9). His view of history in this day of myth and symbol is something that has needed saying for some time. He emphasizes that it is not scholarly disgrace to believe that “Jesus said,” and that the faith of the early Christians stood or fell with the sober facts of a story. In stating these views he confesses that he has changed some of the opinions held in his “anti-theological youth.”

This reviewer felt “let down” while reading Chapter III, “The Revelation in Jesus.” The anticipation that the Jesus of history would be presented as God Incarnate was not fulfilled. Instead, Jesus only proclaims God as a humble Sovereign who does not climb down steps to reach the poor. Colwell reprimands those who today “make Jesus over in the image of their God,” just as the Gospel writers are supposed to have done. Jesus was a humble carpenter’s son, but his people wanted him to be a Messiah of divinity and glory. Similarly some today “require of him that at his return he come to us with the power and the glory with which he did not come to Israel” (p. 51). The chapter ends with this significant passage: “It is time to stop using the language of royalty for Jesus. Messiah was an inappropriate title in the days of his flesh; it is doubly inappropriate now. If by God’s kingship we mean that His mercy knew no limits, let’s call Him ‘The Merciful’ rather than ‘The Great King’” (p. 57). We are elated over Colwell’s significant criticism of the present-day dichotomy between faith and history—we only wish he had gone further, and stated that Jesus is not only a revelation of God but is himself God and Saviour.

The fourth lecture is splendid, almost devotional reading. Here Colwell exhibits his keen insight into modern Christian life. While he believes the words of Jesus do not comprise an economic blueprint for our day, he says that Jesus saw the nature of man with 20–20 vision. Jesus knew man can be seduced by money. “In our country,” says Colwell, “this is illustrated by the fact that the advertisers have triumphed over us.” Jesus pushed aside both asceticism and extreme wealth and speaks of the rich as handicapped in the race for the Kingdom. Yet Colwell believes the Gospel is more than the social gospel. “The Christian voice and action should vigorously support the realizable Utopias of our generation: the elimination of hunger, the elimination of disease, the elimination of ignorance, and the elimination of the low subsistence level that breeds all three. But after these victories, what? The triumph over covetousness, over materialism as the end of all human achievement—this will be the last victory. It is still to be won in Russia and China; still to be won in America” (p. 73).

Here is an insight which should cause all of us to pause and reflect, especially in the light of these words of Colwell: “In my county, there are half as many automobiles as people, even including babies. In other words, every person in Los Angeles county can ride in the front seat of an automobile at the same time. Four-door cars will soon be useless” (p. 71).

LORMAN PETERSEN

Crisis World-Around

Christianity and World Revolution, edited by Edwin H. Rian (Harper & Row, 1963, 237 pp., $4), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The modern thing about the modern world is that for the first time in history the whole world is undergoing revolution. Much of the old is going under, and many new and strange things are emerging. This constitutes a judgment and a challenge to every world view, Christianity included.

In this book sixteen men present as many lectures assessing the world situation in the light of the Christian faith, and probe this faith to find relevant truth for such a world-time as this.

Most of the lectures are competent and penetrating, meeting the intent of the editor. Some few are good, but could have been written long ago.

Originally given as lectures at Biblical Seminary in New York City, located near the United Nations Building, the essays deal with five major themes. Four essays analyze The Power Struggle; two, The Rapprochement Between Science and Religion; two, The Relation Of Psychiatry and Religion; two, Communication; four, World Christianity; and the last two search for A Theology For the Nuclear Age. Among the sixteen contributors are J. Pelikan, C. F. H. Henry, J. Haroutunian, L. Newbigin, E. Cailliet, A. Cordier, W. A. Nielsen, R. Howe, and R. Shaull.

This is a book any minister, and many laymen, could enjoy and read with considerable profit. It should indeed be read by anyone who doubts that the world is in universal revolution—and, strange thing, so many people can, and do, live in our time of worldwide crisis without being aware of it.

JAMES DAANE

A Fine Miscellany

Good News, by J. B. Phillips (Geoffrey Bles, 1963, 210 pp., 12s. 6d.; Macmillan, $2.95), is reviewed by Frank Colquhoun, Canon Residentiary and Precentor of Southwark Cathedral, London, England.

The subtitle of this book is “Thoughts of God and Man,” a phrase which is broad enough to cover almost anything and perhaps is intended to indicate that the book does not profess to deal with any one particular theme. It is in fact a miscellany, consisting of various articles, sermons, and broadcast talks not previously published in book form.

In an introductory chapter J. B. Phillips explains the meaning of the word “Gospel” and protests the way in which it is commonly distorted and debased. “In Christian circles we must see that what purports to be the Christian Gospel is always, and in the best sense, Good News,” he writes. “A great many people repudiate what has been put before them as the Christian Gospel: they have never been able to see how good is the true Good News.”

The major part of the book consists of short extracts from the New Testament (in the author’s own familiar translation) with appropriate comments and notes. These would serve admirably for daily devotional reading, and doubtless this was their original purpose. These readings are grouped under the headings The Purpose of God, Faith, Hope, and Love.

The latter part of the book deals with the Christian year and shows the relevance of the great festivals, from Christmas to Ascension Day, to the life of the ordinary Christian. These short articles are excellent examples of popular apologetics and reveal the author’s gift of expounding the profound mysteries of the Gospel in simple, down-to-earth language.

FRANK COLQUHOUN

Good Team

Interpreting Religion, by Donald Walhout (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 481 pp., $9), is reviewed by Arthur Holmes, associate professor and director of philosophy, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

This is a distinctively Christian textbook, written by the professor of philosophy and religion of Rockford College (Ill.), addressed to students who think seriously about religion. Its method is neither apologetic nor theological, but rather philosophical: “The analysis and interpretation of some of the intellectual questions” which arise (p. 1), as these are handled by contemporary writers who treat religion seriously and sympathetically. The work is organized into three parts: religion generally, theistic religion, and Christian thought. Topics range from traditional problems like faith and reason, religion and science, evil, the nature of man and the reality of God, to recent questions like religious language, and to theological matters like revelation and ecumenism.

Walhout’s stated position is that of a Protestant, conciliatory in matters of doctrinal difference. “… little purpose is served either by haphazard convictions coupled with gushy openness or by adamant convictions coupled with belligerent broadsides. To couple firm convictions with appreciative openness may be as difficult a thing as it is rare. But there is this possibility also: that the two obligations, as necessary supplements to each other, may each be strengthened by their very tension” (p. 442). These words, written of the Christian attitude to non-Christian religions, represent the author’s attitude throughout the book. His own loyalty to historic Christianity, conservatively interpreted, is apparent throughout. Yet he shows a discriminating appreciation of the contributions of writers like Niebuhr and Hordern.

The book combines source readings (approximately 60 per cent) with the author’s own text (40 per cent), an independent development of a continuous line of thought. With this composition, it has the advantages of both the traditional textbook and the anthology. Selections are drawn both from familiar writers, such as Otto, Gilson, Tillich, Brightman, and Hartshorne, and from those less frequently included, like John C. Bennett, C. S. Lewis, and Hendrik Kraemer. Evangelicalism is well represented by men like Clark, Carnell, Ramm, and Packer. It is encouraging to see a textbook with this perspective prepared with the competence of a man like Walhout, and produced by publishers like Prentice-Hall.

ARTHUR HOLMES

All In All: Good

The Divine Comforter, by J. Dwight Pentecost (Revell, 1963, 256 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Robert Preus, professor of systematic theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Professor Pentecost of Dallas Theological Seminary offers a sane, clear, biblical presentation of the work of the Holy Spirit. Such a study is particularly important today, when there is much perversion or ignoring of the work of the Holy Spirit among Christians. The author’s discussions of the Spirit as revealer of divine truth and of the activity of the Spirit in the Old Testament and prior to Pentecost are particularly well done. He also offers a valuable chapter showing that the baptism of the Spirit is something which has already taken place on Pentecost.

This reviewer, however, must voice his hearty dissent with the author’s interpretation of John 3:5, that Jesus here is speaking of something more than baptism. According to the Greek text, our Lord is not referring to two separate activities, a cleansing by water and another of the Holy Spirit. Rather, he is speaking of one act of rebirth through water and the Spirit (no definite article precedes either word). Those who believe in baptismal regeneration, that is, that the Spirit of God regenerates us through baptism, will part company with Professor Pentecost.

One might also wish that the author had said more about the Spirit’s activity in working faith in the individual and in bestowing faith as a gift of God (1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 2:8, 9).

All in all, however, this thorough study should increase the Christian’s appreciation of the manifold activity of the Spirit of God in his life; and this, I believe, is the principal aim of the book.

ROBERT PREUS

God Plus Three

History: Written and Lived, by Paul Weiss (Southern Illinois University Press, 1962, 245 pp., $5.85), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, chairman, Department of History, Waterloo Lutheran University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

The task of a philosopher of history is to bring man’s past experiences out of what William James once described as the essence of babyhood: “blooming, buzzing confusion.” Weiss, a professor of philosophy at Yale, believes that God must be posited in order for history to have meaning, for “only He is broad enough, persistent enough, powerful enough to endow the past with sufficient existence to enable it properly to be” (p. 222). However, the God of Weiss is by no means the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; rather, taking his cue from Aristotle, Lucretius, Scheler, and Whitehead, Weiss uses the term “God” to refer to “a being superior to anything in this space-time world, but which is not absolutely perfect, not necessarily the creator of any substances, not necessarily concerned with man’s salvation” (ibid.). Indeed, as we learn from the author’s other works, seven of which, together with the present volume, set out his general philosophy, Weiss’s “God” is but one of four ultimate, irreducible, mutually related modes or dimensions of being (the other three are Actuality, Ideality or Possibility, and Existence).

As W. N. Clarke well noted in his comments on Weiss’s Modes of Being, the Weissian system “leaves untouched the … fundamental and, for a metaphysician, unavoidable problem of the ultimate origin or source of existence and the ultimate principle of unity of this whole with its four irreducible modes” (Yale Review, Sept., 1958). Moreover, since Weiss regards systematic philosophy much as Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann regard systematic theology—as a circular enterprise in which epistemology grounds ontology and ontology grounds epistemology—his total system, to use Morris Weitz’s expression, lacks “testability” (Ethics, Oct., 1961).

As I have tried to show in my Shape of the Past, the meaning of history (which is, after all, a special case of the meaning of life) can be discovered only if man has in fact received an objectively reliable Revelation originating from outside the blooming, buzzing, confused human situation. Without the scriptural revelation of God in Jesus Christ, Professor Weiss is as much in the dark as to the meaning of the past as were his philosophical predecessors.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Book Briefs

The Coming Explosion in Latin America, by Gerald Clark (McKay, 1962, 436 pp., $6.75). Although he tends to underestimate the strength and cleverness of Communism in troubled Latin America, Clark brings a journalist’s sharp eye and graphic pen to play on the social ills there. Unless we find ways jointly to reduce poverty, illiteracy, political violence, and economic feudalism, says Clark, the hemisphere will explode. The need is urgent. Coordinator Teodoro Moscoso, of the Alliance for Progress, keeps a sign prominently displayed on his office wall: “Please be brief. We are 25 years late.” Major weakness: emphasis on political means for remedy to people’s ills, with no mention of Protestantism at all.

Church Growth in the High Andes, by Keith E. Hamilton (Lucknow [order from Institute of Church Growth, Northwest Christian College, Eugene, Oregon], 1962, 146 pp., $2). Growth of the evangelical churches of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.

A Lonely Minority, by Edward Wakin (Morrow, 1963, 178 pp., $4.50). The story of Egypt’s Copts—a minority, a church, a community; the present descendents of the race that ruled the Nile Valley 2,000 years ago, who consider themselves the “true Egyptians” and the “true Christians.”

The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict, by Hans Joachim Schoeps, translated by David E. Green (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 208 pp., $5). The basic conflict between Christianity and Judaism in both its earlier and later forms, presented from a Jewish viewpoint by a Jewish author.

The Necessary Conditions for a Free Society, edited by Felix Morley (Van Nostrand, 1963, 239 pp., $5.95). Papers delivered (and later revised) by thirteen men gathered in conference in Princeton, New Jersey, who discussed the prerequisites of a free society and raised the question whether political freedom derives ultimately from Jesus Christ.

Air Force Chaplains 1947–1960, by Daniel B. Jorgensen (Office, Chief of Air Force Chaplains, 1962, 432 pp., $3.50). The story of the development and activities of the Air Force chaplaincy during the period indicated. Inexpensively priced.

The Gospel in a Strange, New World, by Theodore O. Wedel (Westminster, 1963, 141 pp., $3.75). A very readable, often perceptive discussion of that problem currently of wide concern: communication.

Many Witnesses, One Lord, by William Barclay (Westminster, 1963, 128 pp., $2.50). On the thesis that there is no one standardized religious experience and no single interpretation of the Christian faith, the author shows what the Gospel meant to Paul, James, John, and others, and what their peculiar witness to the Gospel can mean for us.

The Church: Papal Teachings, selected by the Benedictine monks of Solesmes (Daughters of St. Paul [50 St. Paul’s Ave., Boston, Mass.], 1962, 928 pp., $9). Four hundred pronouncements chronologically arranged, beginning with Benedict XIV, 1740–58. Excellent for the student of Roman Catholic thought.

Paperbacks

Social Change in Latin America Today: Its Implications for United States Policy, by six authors (Vintage Books, 1960, 254 pp., $1.45). Essays prepared not by tourists, nor political observers, but by anthropologists and sociologists. They are therefore replete with valuable insights into the idiosyncracies of the Latin character and the problems of the Latin society. Not only required for would-be Hispanicists, but factful and readable as well.

South Wind Red: Our Hemispheric Crisis, by Philip A. Ray (Regnery, 1962, 242 pp., $2). A former undersecretary of commerce, after a five-month tour of Latin America, points out the alarming upsurge of Communism and offers an economic solution.

Mexico and the Caribbean and South America, by Lewis Hanke (Van Nostrand, 1959, 192 pp. each, $1.25 each). Volumes I and II of a series “Modern Latin America: Continent in Ferment,” by one of the nation’s top authorities on the area. With unfailing insight Hanke has culled and stated the most significant facts about each country. An extra bonus, filling half of each book, is the collection of essays and excerpts from other authors. An “A” to Dr. Hanke on every score. Best handbooks yet available.

The Latin American Churches and the Ecumenical Movement, by John A. Mackay (The Committee on Cooperation in Latin America [475 Riverside Drive, New York 27], 1963, 34 pp., $25). A distinguished ecumenist insists that to be truly ecumenical is to be strongly missionary and traces the development of the ecumenical idea in Latin American Protestantism.

WHERE IS EVE?—Producer Dino De Laurentiis has launched a search for an unknown girl to play the part of Eve in the forthcoming cinematic extravaganza, The Bible. “The role,” he notes, “calls for a new face and personality. It would be fatal to the part … to cast someone already known to the public or identifiable with other roles.” The Bible, from a script by playwright Christopher Fry, will be released in several sections, the first of which will be the Book of Genesis.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—The Association of Free Lutheran Congregations voted at its first annual conference in Fargo, North Dakota, to oppose what its president called a “back-to-Rome” movement among world Protestants. In his report, association President John Strand warned that “the fundamental difference between evangelical Protestantism and Catholicism is being forgotten, or, worse still, being ignored.”

Joint sessions are set for the American Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Convention, National Baptist Convention U. S. A., National Baptist Convention of America, Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, Northern American Baptist General Conference, and the Baptist Federation of Canada in Atlantic City, May 22–24, 1964.

The 14,000 member Evangelical Lutheran Synod, meeting at Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato, Minnesota, voted to withdraw from the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. The action resulted from a dispute with the 2.5 million-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the largest body in the conference.

Membership in Baptist church bodies of 115 countries now totals 25,198,025 (a gain of 888,487 over a year ago), according to a report by the Baptist World, official publication of the Baptist World Alliance. Most of the increases were registered in the United States.

The Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. has allocated $150,000 toward a million-dollar program to strengthen the only women’s college in the Middle East—Beirut College for Women.

MISCELLANY—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish religious leaders are sponsoring formation of a Boston Conference on Religion and Race to “mobilize … moral and spiritual forces” against discrimination. Named as chairman is Protestant Episcopal Bishop John M. Burgess.

The Anti-Defamation League charges that many elementary-school social studies textbooks are sectarian in tone and gloss over minority-group contributions to America’s development. The charges occur in a 65-page report based upon a three-year study of 120 textbooks used in the United States public school system.

The Northern Evangelical Church of Laos met in its first General Assembly since 1958, appointing seventeen pastors and Christian workers to responsibilities in six districts. Abnormal conditions have made it impossible to arrange such a meeting in recent years.

Moody Institute of Science announces the development of multi-lingual sound-tracks to accompany the showing of its “Sermons from Science” film series in its pavilion at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair. Each seat will have an earphone and selector switch, allowing the visitor to listen to the message in his own language.

Two Baptist churches have been reopened in Madrid—further indication of the easing of Spanish government restrictions on the nation’s small Protestant minority. The action brings to thirteen the number of Protestant churches reopened this year.

Twelve noted clergymen have published a full-page newspaper advertisem*nt, carried in The New York Times and The Washington Post, to protest what they described as denial of religious freedom in South Vietnam and to oppose U. S. aid to that nation’s current regime. Signatories included Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Bishop James A. Pike, Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one Buddhist and several Jewish leaders.

The National Assembly of the Somali Republic ratified an amendment to the nation’s constitution stating that “it shall not be permissible to spread or propagandize any religions other than the True Religion of Islam.” Mission leaders are cautiously hopeful that the action will not interfere with school and hospital work in the country.

PERSONALIA—Rabbi Leon I. Feuer elected president of the Central Conference of American (Reform) Rabbis.

Dr. Paul Goodwin, professor of evangelism at Missionary Baptist Seminary, elected president of the American Baptist Association.

The Rev. Roy C. Cook named to succeed Arthur B. Francis as president of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec.

The Rev. Harry Lennox elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Dr. M. Verne Oggel elected president of the 157th General Synod of the Reformed Church in America.

John E. Bevan resigned as registrar of Drew University to assume the position of minister of education at Church of the Good Shepherd, Areadia, California.

Dr. Harold W. Boyer elected to a ninth term as chairman of the policy-making General Ministerial Assembly of the Church of God.

Dr. W. Harry Jellema retired as professor of philosophy at Calvin College, where he has served for thirty-one years.

The Rev. Allan R. Brockway appointed new managing editor of Concern, semimonthly publication of the General Board of Christian Social Concerns of The Methodist Church.

Dr. Robert W. Spike appointed permanent executive director of the National Council of Churches’ new Commission on Religion and Race.

Dr. Donald F. Thomas named associate professor of pastoral theology and assistant to the president at California Baptist Theological Seminary.

Floyd Anderson, president of the Catholic Press Association, named director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Press Department and of the NCWC News Service.

Rear Admiral J. Floyd Dreith of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod appointed new chief of Navy chaplains.

D. Harley Fite, president of Carson-Newman College, named new president of the Southern Association of Baptist Colleges and Schools.

WORTH QUOTING—“The trouble with Christians today is that nobody wants to kill them anymore.”—Dr. J. Wallace Hamilton, minister of Pasadena Community Church (Methodist), St. Petersburg, Florida.

“If I can’t come through this case the same offensive, unlovable, bull-headed, defiant, aggressive slob that I was when I started it, then I’ll give up now. My own identity is more important to me. They can keep their gawd-damn prayers in the public schools, in public outhouses, in public H-bomb shelters and in public whor*-houses.”—Mrs. Madalyn Murray of Baltimore, the atheist whose case against public school devotions was sustained by the Supreme Court, in an interview to The Realist shortly before the court decision.

Deaths

THE REV. CHARLES HODGE CORBETT, 81, retired Presbyterian missionary to China and former editor of The Presbyterian Tribune; in Stow, Ohio.

DR. WILLIAM TOTH, 58, newly elected executive director of the Foundation for Reformation Research; in Columbus, Ohio.

MISS MABEL HEAD, 90, ecumenical leader who helped unite the Council for Women’s Home Missions, the Women’s Committee of the Foreign Mission Conference, and the National Council of Church Women into the United Council of Church Women; in Lakeland, Florida.

DAVID WYNBEEK, 49, religious historian, author, and advertising manager for Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Has the East-West struggle reached an unpalatable stalemate? Is it time to introduce a third party, an intermediary to break the deadlock?

In sweltering Rome, these questions gained surprising relevance this month—in fact and, curiously enough, in fiction.

The fact lay in what may have been, according to the American newspaper in Rome, “the biggest double feature here since Nero fiddled while the city burned”: the coronation of Pope Paul VI and the visit of President Kennedy.

The fiction lay in a new novel, The Shoes of the Fisherman, wherein a Ukrainian pope becomes the go-between for the United States president and the Soviet premier. The book was released just seven days after the death of Pope John XXIII and was an immediate U. S. best-seller. It was written, not by an alarmist bigot seeking to arouse anti-Catholic sentiment through fear of papal power, but by a veteran Vatican correspondent turned novelist. The author, Morris West, formerly of the London Daily Mail, previously wrote The Devil’s Advocate, which also was a sensation. West’s early years were spent as an apprentice of the Christian Brothers, an Australian teaching order.

Adding still more fuel for speculation was the audience with Paul VI, just four days before that of Kennedy, of the President’s 1960 election opponent, former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon and his family were on a vacation trip. They spent about half an hour with the Pope.

West’s novel will never come true altogether. Some of its lines border on the ludicrous. But it may well prove historic as an accurate portrayal of the spirit of the times, that is, a yearning for more normal world conditions.

Moreover, the elevation of Giovanni Battista Montini to “the chair of St. Peter” probably spells additional participation for the Vatican in world affairs. The Vatican has long been reputed to be a diplomatic listening post for the world, and Montini brings to it extensive experience in political affairs. He is widely recognized as a first-rate diplomat and served for years as Vatican secretary of state under Pope Pius XII. He has already indicated that he will follow up the conciliatory overtures made toward Moscow by John XXIII.

Beyond that, opportunities may indeed be forthcoming whereby the Vatican, as a morally prestigious and politically neutral force, assumes the role of international arbiter. Most distinct possibility of this would probably come in a grave crisis when button-pushing is imminent.

Several years ago, there was some feeling that the Afro-Asian neutralist bloc might emerge as the reconciling third party in world affairs. But these nations now appear to be content with promoting their own ends, sometimes even playing the two world powers against each other for rather narrow purposes.

It is obvious to informed observers that the timing of the papal audiences so near the coronation was coincidental. Kennedy’s schedule originally provided for a meeting with the late John XXIII at about the same time that, as it turned out, he saw Paul VI. The trip to Rome at one point was called off altogether, then reinstated. One important change in the President’s schedule was made following the announcement by the Vatican that the coronation would take place June 30. Kennedy was due in Rome that day. He spent it in Milan instead. The United States was represented at the coronation by a four-man delegation headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

THE CEREMONY

For the hundreds of thousands who milled about cobblestoned St. Peter’s Square on Sunday evening, June 30, the coronation of Pope Paul VI was a ceremony of elegance and finesse. But it was a wearisome spectacle, and it had touches of unscheduled humor.

Heat and humidity felled scores, including a costumed guard who was helped from the platform during recitation of the liturgy. Some brought jugs of cold beverages. Others had packages of dry ice which they pressed against their wrists and foreheads.

The ceremony began at twilight under a bright half moon. Prior to the opening procession a thirty-two-piece Palatine Guard band entertained the crowds with martial music.

But it was less than a wild ovation that greeted the pontiff, who was introduced with a blare of trumpets. Much of the crowd, perhaps reflecting traditional Italian apathy, seemed indifferent throughout the ceremony. Some knelt during the prayers, some read missals; but most gazed about, chattered, and joked.

The open-air ceremony had its lighter moments, as when the Pope’s voice cracked at several points during his chants. Even priests and nuns chuckled with candid good humor.

The new Pope’s speaking voice is resonant, but it has limited range.

Comparatively few people in St. Peter’s Square saw the actual coronation. So many attendants had gathered about the altar that the principals were obscured from view for all but the dignitaries on the platform and others who sat atop Bernini’s Colonnade. The masses standing in the square shared the big moment only via public-address system. There was scattered applause.

The Pope sat on a white silk throne against a red cushion. Behind the throne hung a 12-by-18-foot tapestry depicting Christ handing theologically controversial keys to Peter. From a balcony overhead was suspended a flag of equal size—the Pope’s personal coat of arms. On the altar were seven 3-foot candles which evening breezes extinguished repeatedly.

The nine-language homily of Paul VI echoed the “dialogue” appeal of Pope John XXIII toward other Christians and the modern world in general. The Italian portion said the Roman Catholic Church would be “respectful, understanding, patient, but cordially inviting” toward others.

Rumors circulating in Rome while John XXIII was still alive spoke of a possible summit meeting in Rome of the pontiff, Kennedy, and Khrushchev. But these were largely discounted. A trip to Rome by Khrushchev, however, is probably only a matter of time, if only as an effort to offset the Kennedy trip. The Soviet leader’s hastily conceived jaunt to East Berlin was widely interpreted as just such a maneuver.

Kennedy concluded his ten-day European tour on a spiritual note. In a speech at NATO headquarters in Naples he quoted some phrases uttered by Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini 115 years ago. Mazzini was described as having said at a mass meeting in Milan: “We are here … to build up the unity of the human family so that the day may come when it shall represent a single sheepfold with a single shepherd—the Spirit of God.”

Kennedy’s comment was that “the unity of the West can lead to the unity of East and West until the human family is truly a ‘single sheepfold’ under God.”

Earlier that day Kennedy had made his much-celebrated trip to the Vatican. As usual the Vatican laid on all its majestic pomp. Remarked one sweating newsman, “’Tis like a page out of Gilbert and Sullivan.”

The Palatine Guard band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” when Kennedy’s car pulled into the San Damasus courtyard. The President and his party, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, were escorted to an elevator which brought them up to the richly muraled Clementine Hall. This was as far as the 100-odd newsmen covering the event were allowed to go. The only exceptions were several “pool” reporters and photographers.

Kennedy, the United States’ first Catholic president, went on through a series of anterooms and was introduced to Paul VI at the threshold of the pontiff’s library. The President bowed but did not kiss the Pope’s ring as Catholics normally do.

Asked why Kennedy did not kiss the ring, Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger replied that he did not wish to discuss the matter publicly. Salinger said shortly afterward that a Roman Catholic monsignor was available to interpret, but he did not know whether the interpreter was actually in the room at the time or whether the audience was completely private. About fifteen minutes later Rusk was ushered into the private library, and subsequently other members of the White House staff entered. Kennedy was reported to have said to the Pope: “I hope to see you in the United States.”

The Pope was described as replying with a noncommittal gesture.

After the President left, the Pope greeted visiting newsmen in Clementine Hall. He was clad in a white robe, white skull cap, and red shoes. His first words were drowned out by the Palatine Guard band’s send-off for the President.

“You know what we discussed,” said the slightly-built Paul VI. “Above all, the peace of the world.” Kennedy’s next stop was at Pontifical North American College on Janiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican. He was greeted there by a kiss from his own long-time archbishop Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. Kennedy’s sister, Mrs. Stephen Smith, also was on hand. “Hi, Jean,” said Cushing. “My, you look good.”

He then shook hands with Kennedy and jokingly poked him in the chest.

For a moment, the President looked startled. Cushing put up his fists in a boxing pose, and they broke into laughter.

The President’s ten-day tour of Europe, climaxed by his visit to Italy, had an assortment of political and religious implications. Least affected, it seemed, were Italy’s handful of Protestants. They have been in a perpetual uphill struggle despite unfettered legal opportunity.

An American missionary in Italy says Protestants now have as much liberty there as they do in the United States. But asked about the evangelical witness in Milan, for example, he shook his head sadly.

Upon teeming Milan, Italy’s largest city and a focal point of industry, may hang the future of Free Europe. A third of its population is said to be nominally Communist. Kennedy’s visit there can undoubtedly be attributed in part to his desire to see a turnabout in favor of the West. Diplomatic observers are keeping a close eye on Italy’s newly named premier Giovanni Leone.

It is almost ironic that the new Pope should have come from Milan. Montini’s appointment there eight years ago is widely reported as having been a virtual banishment from Rome. He had been at odds with the Roman curia, it is said; hence the “deportation” to a difficult situation.¹Paul VI was crowned by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, reputed to have been one of his chief adversaries. He probably stopped short of stemming the tide but did gain a reputation as an amiable and popular prelate. He headed the list of non-cardinal “Papabile” following the death of Pope Pius XII. John XXIII made him cardinal, and the two were regarded as very close. John XXIII once referred to Montini as “the most eminent Hamlet of Milan.”

What kind of era will Paul VI usher in? Vatican observers are straining for clues. One even saw in the Pope’s new lightweight crown an apparent determination “to face the challenge of this anxious modern age.” Perhaps the safest generalization is that Paul VI will gear his program around the priority of peace in keeping with the growing world feeling that absence of hostilities is a desirable end in itself. The prospect that perhaps deserves the most attention is how he might try to implement the proposal made in John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris encyclical for a new global authority to guard the peace.

Cristo, si; Lenin, no!

Increased harassment and persecution of the Protestant church in Cuba has in no sense weakened its testimony or effectiveness, according to recent reports from Havana. Membership is below the 1958 level, stated one observer, but offerings have kept up. And a leader was quoted as saying, “The Christian church in general is better off than it was in 1958.”

This, despite the fact that Protestants are now subject to increasingly frequent and violent opposition, both official and quasi-official. The Rev. Moises Virelles, pastor of the Pedro Betancourt Methodist Church in Matanzas Province, was recently jailed on a Sunday and forced to cut sugar cane along with other “volunteer” workers. In the Sierra Maestra mountains the pastor of the Buey Arriba Church is reportedly in prison for undisclosed reasons.

A Protestant church of unidentified denomination in the suburbs of Havana was stoned by a rioting mob during a service near May Day (Labor Day in Latin America). The pastor and several members of the congregation were reported injured. And during a Sunday morning service in April, a group of militia was reported to have invaded the First Presbyterian Church of Matanzas and, pounding the floor of the sanctuary with their rifle butts, to have shouted, “Lenin, si; Cristo, no.” A mob surrounding the church used a car equipped with loudspeakers to repeat slogans of the revolution.

Methodists, whose membership is drawn more from the professional and middle classes, have been hardest hit by the “exodus.” The largest church has lost 200 members, and thirty-six Methodist pastors have left the island, stated a Christian informant in Havana.

Presbyterians reported that their church membership is down 1,000 from 1958, to 4,150, but that they are prospering economically. All schools, except seminaries, have been nationalized. There are approximately 1,200 Protestant churches and outlying missions in Cuba, with an aggregate membership of at least 60,000.

At The Front Door

It was a weary Billy Graham who took his wife for a stroll through Hyde Park the other evening.

“It’s the first walk I’ve had a chance to take in six weeks,” said Graham.

He was in London for a few days’ rest following a strenuous evangelistic tour of Germany and France. It had been his first series since a stomach ailment had canceled his projected Far Eastern crusade. Still not fully well, Graham complains of a tightening of the chest and throat when under fatigue.

After several weeks’ holiday in Scotland, he will fly directly to Los Angeles to participate in an evangelistic film for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association pavilion at the 1965 World’s Fair. In mid-August he begins his major crusade in Los Angeles, including five nights on nation-wide television. He will also speak at the annual dinner of the Motion Picture Relief Fund in Los Angeles, with Bob Hope as scheduled master of ceremonies.

After his thrust in Germany and France, Graham spent several hours in Geneva, where he addressed the consistory founded by Calvin. After an hour-long address he was plied with questions for two hours. World Council leaders, who took him to lunch, said they were impressed by French telecasts of his effort, the first major Protestant programming in that land. Graham plans to return to Paris in 1965.

In Nürnburg, an average of 17,000 attended Graham’s meetings nightly for five nights, and in addition 40,000 turned out for the Sunday rally.

In Stuttgart, 25,000 attended nightly for five evenings, and 40,000 turned out on a cold and rainy Sunday.

Decisions for Christ in Nürnburg and Stuttgart totalled 7,500.

Graham received generous television coverage on the German networks and had an unusually good press. “This time I felt I was going in the front door,” he said.

He also met with Chancellor Adenauer in his Bonn office for 52 minutes. Adenauer spoke of his “religious hobby of studying the evidences of the Resurrection.” “That’s the most crucial issue,” he added, “and I think it can be attested.”

In two years Graham is scheduled to hold crusades in Dortmund and Frankfurt, in what will be his fifth visit to Germany. His first meetings there were held in 1954.

West Germany’s danger, he thinks, lies in the fact that, having reached affluence through hard work, it will fail to sense that the nation’s next challenge is spiritual. But he sees a hopeful turn in the fact that both religious and political leaders are recognizing this peril, and in the fact that the Church in Germany is hospitable to evangelism.

Evangelism, Inc.

A new era of evangelism is dawning in Asia. Best evidence is formation of a fellowship of national evangelists from Asian nations who are convinced that “if Asia must be won to Christ, it must be won by the Asians themselves.”

The movement—begun in 1958, when the well-known Filipino evangelist Gregorio Tingson launched into full-time evangelism for all of Asia—has stirred Filipino evangelicals from various denominations to create an organization which would help support the new enterprise. They named it “Evangelism, Inc.” The new group is composed of a cross section of society and prominent church lay leaders who share the belief that Asian Christians must unite in a broad program of evangelism.

The new evangelistic zeal is not limited to local Filipino Christians. As news of the movement traveled to other Asian countries through the yearly missionary-evangelistic trips of Evangelist Tingson, evangelists from other Asian nations rallied to the enterprise. Evangelists Reiji Oyama of Japan, Ais Pormes and Eddy Ie of Indonesia, David Jacobsen of Australia, Muri Thompson of New Zealand, and others have collaborated with the cause. The dynamic of their combined efforts was especially demonstrated in the Philippines for several months previous to the Billy Graham Crusade there, during which time Asian evangelists from New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines staged city-wide evangelistic campaigns. The united effort prepared the way for the All-Philippines Billy Graham Crusade and itself reaped a large harvest of decisions for Christ.

Evangelism, Inc. serves as main promoter of the movement and has for its present program an annual sponsorship of united evangelistic campaigns in different countries of Asia.

Observers welcome the movement not only as a potent weapon for evangelism in Asia today but also as a vigorous buffer against the rising tide of Communism. With doors closing to missionaries from the West as fires of nationalistic fervor inflame governments against foreign influence, the new movement may well keep the doors of evangelism open.

Light From The Negev

Excavations begin this summer on an ancient Hyksos city, built by people critics once denied existed. The ancient city, lost for thirty-five centuries beneath the shifting sands of Israel’s Negev wasteland, is to be uncovered by an expedition of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies under the direction of R. A. Mitchell, with the aid of a $45,000 grant from the United States State Department.

Work in the area, on the site of Tell Nagila, actually began last summer when a previous expedition unexpectedly uncovered, directly beneath the surface, the ruins of the Hyksos city. This season scholars will uncover more of the houses, streets, and public buildings in which the patriarchs of ancient Israel might have lived, walked, and conducted business.

The scholarly world has expressed its hope that this expedition will illuminate some of the mysteries of the Hyksos age (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries B.C.), one of the most obscure periods of Middle Eastern history.

The Receiving End

Vowing to integrate the all-white Gwynn Oak Amusem*nt Park near Baltimore or “fill the jails,” hundreds of civil rights protagonists chose Independence Day for a walk-in demonstration which resulted in the arrests of 283 persons, including twelve prominent white and Negro clergymen. Among those arrested were Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; the Rev. Daniel Corigan, director of the Home Department of the National Council of Churches; Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., chaplain of Yale University; local Rabbi Morris Lieberman; and seven Roman Catholic priests from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It was the first time that so large a body of prominent clergymen of all three major faiths had participated together in a specifically directed protest against segregation.

Not everybody was impressed. Said James Price, joint owner and vice-president of the amusem*nt park, about the demonstrations: “It’s unfortunate. It’s analogous to my shooting crap, and when the police come, I begin to pray and say I was arrested for praying.”

Dr. Blake, one of those arrested in the demonstration, had earlier told his denomination that the Church must take vigorous action in the segregation crisis. Such action, he said, might mean “being on the receiving end of a fire hose.”

Pentecost South Of The Border

At a pastors’ conference in Colombia, South America, four missionary leaders lodged as roommates found that they had something else in common—all four had recently spoken in unknown tongues.

The previous week, at a similar conference in Chile, the great majority of the attending pastors were Pentecostals.

A recent evangelistic campaign sponsored by a Pentecostal church of fifty members attracted stand-up crowds of five to fifteen thousand, and concluded with the baptism of 1,500 “converts.”

Statistical studies by consultants of CHRISTIANITY TODAY revealed that one out of every three Protestants in Latin America is a Pentecostal. In Chile nearly 90 per cent are of Pentecostal persuasion. In many of the large cities of Middle and South America, Pentecostals outnumber other Protestants two to one. In every corner of the hemisphere, those that specially stress the Holy Spirit, that re-emphasize Pentecost, or that are newly open to the phenomena of faith-healing and glossolalia are growing in number.

Such reports prompted CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s search for facts and reasons for Pentecostal advance in Latin America. While most Pentecostal groups are not diligent about statistics (“There is no time, brother.… We have to preach, always preach!”), their remarkable growth has been well documented (see “Evangelical Surge,” page 5). Reasons for that growth were culled from observations submitted by a score of respected observers:

“The Pentecostal movement represents, in some sense, the only Christian movement with real indigenous roots here in Latin America.… Two main elements … deserve careful appraisal: fellowship and worship.… They have rediscovered—or rather they have been given by God—a basic dimension of Christian Church life which is present in the New Testament, but woefully absent in many of our churches.… God’s presence and gifts are looked for—not exclusively but basically and typically—in the fellowship of the believers, not in individualistic seclusion.…

“Worship is a time when something ‘happens,’ when God visits his people and makes himself manifest. In other words, worship is God’s own act rather than merely a human religious performance.… The believer participates with his whole being in worship. In most of our churches worship is exclusively ‘auditive’ and ‘intellectual’ (centered on the sermon with ‘preliminaries,’ as it is usually said). The Pentecostal community worships with its whole being—sings, shouts, dances.”

“The early disciples, represented by those who wrote the canonical Epistles, spoke little about Jesus’ teachings and much about him. They were moved to expound and interpret their experience in him.… The present-day Pentecostals are most interested in ‘an experience.’ That gives freshness and immediacy to their Christian life.

“They have a keen sense of witnessing.… Some of us are most interested in the results of witnessing, but they are interested in the witnessing itself. They preach on the street corners when no one listens. We would see no reason to do that unless we had an audience.…

“Each one has something to do. In Chilean Pentecostalism there is really a dictatorship by the pastor.… The pastor and his lieutenants have the brethren organized in disciplined groups and keep them busy.… According to Pentecostal practice, a man can confess Christ today and tomorrow be preaching on the street corner.… We should not imitate their form. The better features of their work are due not to form but to the vitality of an experience.”

“Because of a natural desire to defend our own correctness in doctrine, evangelicals tend to underplay the doctrine as a decisive factor in the growth of the Pentecostal movement.…

“Their secret ingredient is much work—continuous and enthusiastic, at the maximum of each individual’s ability, by the great majority of the members. As a whole, in comparison with all the other denominations, they pray more; they distribute more literature; they witness more; they hold more and larger and longer evangelistic campaigns; they hold more regular services; they have more preaching points; they have more pastors, women, and participants.”

“I feel that the main factor … is the experimental.… The expectancy of supernatural intervention is normal.… Whatever may be said pro and con about the Pentecostals’ theological position in regard to the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that a person who is taught that God desires to come to him and control him, even physically, and who is encouraged to seek God, and by heart-searching and yielding to Him, eliminate disobedience to His will until God can and does come and ‘possess’ his body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, is certainly likely to expect and receive more of God than those persons who have no such teaching or spiritual preparation.

“In the ‘baptism’ in the Holy Spirit this expectation is realized.… Essentially it brings to the individual a keen sense of the reality of the things of Christ: the special help of the Spirit in prayer, praise, and testimony, and an ‘unction’ of the spirit that leads, inspires, and teaches them.”

“Pentecostalism seems to be tailored to the Latin culture and makeup.… By and large we have attempted to carry North American culture southward and failed to take advantage of and utilize the Latin culture, temperament, and ‘free wheeling’ way of life. Many Pentecostal meetings go into excess, but we must admit that there is life, enthusiasm, and a sense of joy.”

They have been particularly adept at winning adherents from the lower strata of society. This was illustrated by a recent Mexico City survey comparing the social structure of Pentecostalism with that of other Protestant bodies (A = high, B = upper middle, C = lower middle, and D = lower class):

A&BCD

Pentecostals4%37%59%

Other Protestants11%57%32%

“The Pentecostal brethren … put in practice an incarnational theology.… When a theology of the laity is incarnate in this existential form, then the structures of the local church are very flexible, very elastic, and very adaptable. And precisely here is where we fail. Our terrible rigidness kills us.… And while we are this way, petrified, inventing tabus, the Pentecostal brethren are dynamic, they are adaptable, they function with more spontaneity than we.…

“There is great danger of disorder. But they win people.… The missionary message of the Bible is incarnate in their daily lives. While we spend our time inventing tickets or labels, the Pentecostals preach in season and out of season.… While we have made the Christian life into a theology, they have made a theology into life.…

“I don’t believe that I find in the Pentecostal brethren either the best method or the most correct interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.… But the Spirit of the Lord is using the candor, the rustic form, the ‘uncombed’ presentation of Christ. And what God has not done through us, he has done through them.… If indeed we represent the science, the method, the theology, they represent the spirit, the passion, the incarnation. The first is not worth much without the second.”

W.D.R

Convention Circuit

Grand Rapids—Repudiating cries of “Communistic” the Christian Reformed Church last month sent a report on nuclear warfare to its churches for study. The report of its Committee on Warfare acknowledged the validity of the traditional “just war,” whose purpose is to establish “peace upon the foundation of justice.” The committee expressed doubt, however, that a nuclear war could be waged for such an objective. Against the better-Red-than-dead criticism, the report declared that “if a general thermonuclear war is able to scorch the earth, … annihilate the human race or leave alive only a maimed and wounded fragment of it … then a general thermonuclear war lies outside the traditional concept of a ‘just war’ and must be judged impermissible, whatever the provocation.”

The report, accordingly, summoned the Church to enjoin the nations of the world “to scrap these weapons … without delay, under international surveillance.”

In its ten-day meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the synod within a matter of minutes authorized a two-million-dollar campaign to construct a new auditorium and gymnasium, but rejected plans to include a swimming pool.

With equal dispatch the delegates rejected an overture for total abstinence but issued a strong warning against the evils often associated with drinking. They adopted the following declaration and sent it to their churches: “In view of the alarming incidence of the liquor problem today, that … in our teaching and preaching in the home, church, and school, instruction be given concerning the dangers associated with the use of liquor, including that of social drinking.”

The Christian Reformed Church will host the Reformed Ecumenical Synod which will meet in Grand Rapids in August.

J.D.

Champaign, Illinois—In a strongly worded resolution condemning discrimination, delegates to the General Conference of the Church of the Brethren called on the denomination to “adopt aggressive policies for racial justice and integration” in all its churches, agencies, and institutions. The denomination’s more than 200,000 members include several hundred Negroes, all in integrated congregations.

Oklahoma City—A strongly worded resolution which castigated the Supreme Court as “eight men who have played into the hands of the worst enemy America has ever had” and condemned the recent court decision prohibiting prayer and Bible reading as devotional acts in public schools was passed here last month by delegates to the annual meeting of the American Baptist Association. The resolution noted that “America is great because the very governmental, educational and social superstructure is built upon the strong, eternal foundation of a firm belief in God, prayer and the Bible,” and called upon the Supreme Court “to take firm action for prayer and Bible reading—not against.”

In other action, the independent, missionary association of over 3,000 Baptist churches, many of which are in the South, took a stand opposing integration. Terming the fight for integration “morally wrong,” the delegates approved a memorandum to President Kennedy stating that “our sentiments are that the Negro should be afforded greater opportunities for achievement and encouraged to win respect for himself in public life” but that “integration of the races … should be resisted.”

Long Beach, California—Nearly 10,000 delegates jammed the new Arena and Municipal Auditorium last month for a joint meeting of the North American Christian Convention and the National Christian Education Convention on the theme “The Church Speaks in the Space Age.” Workshops and interest groups dealt with such topics as “Moving Adults to Study,” “Drama in the Church,” “Mass Communications,” and “Developing a Mission Program.”

Chicago—High on the docket of the 78th annual meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was the question of ecumenical relations. Was she or wasn’t she? Well, she was—partially. In a resolution passed by the 615 delegates of the 61,000-member body, approval was given to merger discussions with denominations of similar “theological orientation.” At the same time a policy of non-alignment with interchurch organizations was reaffirmed. “We do not now affiliate with any ecumenical organization of national or international scope,” the delegates stated.

Meeting earlier, ministers of the denomination had adopted a pastoral letter on racial prejudice. “God calls His children to justice, love and suffering,” the letter said. “We must either accept the consequences of doing what we feel God wants us to do or turn our backs upon that will and choose our own dangerous course.”

In other resolutions the ECCA approved a second year of “study in depth” of Christianity’s encounter with Communism and expressed concern that glossolalia and divine healing “be exercised in love for the edification and unifying of the body of Christ, not as a badge of individual spiritual attainment.…”

Winona Lake—The 702-member Ministerial Association of the Evangelical Free Church of America held the spot-light at the 79th annual conference of the EFCA last month as it passed key resolutions expressing regret on the Supreme Court decision on Bible reading and prayer in the public schools, supporting integration, and calling for “true Biblical unity” as the only valid foundation in the present ecumenical trends.

Resolved the ministers, “We express regret at the Supreme Court’s decision and deplore the present trend toward complete secularization of education, government and, indeed, all of American life.” The resolution was prefaced by a statement which supported the separation of church and state but rejected any interpretation of that principle which is so rigid as to prohibit reference to things religious in our schools and government.

On the race question the ministers of the Free Church declared, “We pledge ourselves anew to upholding the rights of all, regardless of color, registering our opposition to discrimination and supression, while at the same time opposing all attempts to deal with these difficult problems by violence.”

The statement of the ministerial association regarding the ecumenical movement stressed the necessity for a firm doctrinal base. “We shall continue to emphasize true Biblical unity, the unity of the ‘one body in Christ,’ entered only by the new birth, involving agreement on the great essentials, transcending all denominational lines, and at least partially answering the prayer of our Lord ‘that they all may be one.’”

Beaverton, Ontario—Disclosed in reports to the 42nd annual conference of the Associated Gospel Churches last month was a denominational expansion to a total of ninety-five churches with 7,000 members in eight provinces. The reports also indicated that per-capita giving averaged $253.

Toronto—Medicare was in the news again, this time in Canada where controversial measures last year spurred doctors in Saskatchewan province to suspend their services for twenty-three days. The context was the Church. Approving by resolution a national program of compulsory, prepaid, universal coverage against medical bills, the 89th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada affirmed that Medicare measures were in harmony with the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Every person … deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and is entitled to a decent standard of living and adequate medical care.… A national health service is one of the ways in which people can show their love for each other,” the report said.

Plunging even deeper into the political arena, the general assembly praised Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson for his efforts to re-negotiate Canada’s defense structure to one involving only conventional armaments and expressed hope for a speedy abolition of all nuclear weapons.

Related debate involved the alleged “rightest propaganda” which the Board of Evangelism and Social Action perceived to be entering Canada from the United States. Declared Lawson in a written report, right-wing propaganda “assumes” that any one working for peace “beyond the status quo must be a fellow-traveler with communism.” Because it is often linked to democracy and specifically Christian values, he said, such propaganda “appeals to many sincere Christians.”

In other significant action, the general assembly rejected a suggestion that it open merger talks with the United Church of Canada, formed in 1925 by merger of Canadian Methodists, Canadian Congregationalists, and 70 per cent of Canadian Presbyterians. Told by former moderator J. L. W. McLean that such action would be “unwise, dangerous and futile,” the conclave referred questions on the denomination’s status to presbyteries and to eventual reconsideration in 1964.

Montreal—A resolution affirming “unqualified belief in premarital chastity as an essential Christian virtue” and urging “all our ministers and people to be vigilant and courageous in their stand against all attacks on the moral strength of Canada” was adopted at the annual meeting of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. The resolution was occasioned by an article advocating “good, honest satisfying sex” for Canada’s teen-agers which was published in Maclean’s in May.

Theology And Science

Ever since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859, organized Christianity has been fighting a defensive and, in many cases, an uninformed battle against the so-called “inroads” of natural science. Denouncing the allegedly heretical findings of science in regard to biblical lore, Protestant spokesmen have, with few exceptions, retreated before the onslaughts of their more popular and apparently more weighty opponents. But no longer. In recent years the tide has changed, and influential thinkers are more and more acknowledging that science is the proper ally of theology and not its inescapable protagonist.

One manifestation of the new movement within the scientific fold is a body of evangelical Christians who call themselves the American Scientific Affiliation. Bringing to their organization a firm belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures and in the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ and contributing minds well versed in the physical and social sciences, these scholars now number in excess of 1,200. They have been meeting since 1941 to investigate the philosophy and findings of science as they relate to Christianity and to disseminate the results of their studies to the Christian and non-Christian worlds. Last month, in the most recent of such meetings, the ASA descended upon Asbury College in the blue-grass region of central Kentucky and for three days, in joint session with the younger Evangelical Theological Society (organized in 1949), presented a series of papers on the conference theme—“God’s World.”

It was not so much the details of the papers which captured the interest and imagination of the delegates (over fifty were in attendance) as it was the underlying issues with which they were involved. On the second day reaction was strongly divided over a paper on “The Spirit of Compromise” written by Dr. Henry M. Morris, head of the Civil Engineering department of Virginia Polytechnical Institute. In a statement certain to evoke protest the document had asserted that Christians must not compromise with science, that “compromise is a one-way street ending in a precipice.” Evoke protest it did. In comments following the presentation of the paper psychiatrist Dr. Donald F. Tweedie detected “a certain anti-intellectual bias,” and host for Asbury College Dr. Cecil B. Hamann termed the views “disturbing.”

A popular topic at ASA conventions is evolution, and the second day of the Kentucky conference was partially devoted to this theme. Confronting the general topic “A Critical Synopsis of the Literature on Creation and Evolution,” the morning and afternoon papers surveyed the fields of earth’s earliest origins and the alleged evolution of man in light of the biblical record.

One such paper was “The World as Described in the Bible,” by Dr. R. Laird Harris, head of the Old Testament department of Covenant College. Taking issue with Bultmann’s description of the biblical world view as involving a “three story universe,” Harris asserted that “I cannot agree that this cosmology is taught in the Bible.” The elements which go into such a picture—a solid dome for heaven, a flat earth, windows in heaven for admitting rain—never occur in one context. The biblical mythology as Bultmann conceives it, stated Harris, is attained only by abstracting these poetic references and joining them into an artificial picture of the biblical perspective.

Asbury Seminary’s distinguished professor of philosophy, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, addressed the conference on “The Influence of Philosophy,” presenting conceptual Greek thought as the highest achievement of the natural mind prior to and independent of the stimulus provided by the Christian Gospel. “Christ’s coming marked the moment for men’s minds to get in line,” he noted. The relationship between that Gospel and the pursuit of knowledge, particularly in science, is the “basic issue” which confronts us now.

A detached observer might well have wished that more of these trained in Christian theology had been present. The Evangelical Theological Society was poorly represented and, as a result, the task of criticizing science and its conclusions fell largely to the scientists themselves. Had well-trained theologians been present, the generally accepted thesis that God’s creation, like the written Word, adequately reflects his nature and the truth about reality might well have been challenged by a reassertion of the corruption of human nature through the Fall and the participation of creation in that corruption.

One paper attempted such a critique, although in a limited area, and the response to it by the delegates was ample evidence of its involvement with crucial issues. Approaching the general problem “The Christian and Mental Health,” Dr. Donald F. Tweedie of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, propounded the thesis that psychotherapy must not be opposed to the Christian faith nor merely work in conjunction with it, but must be so grounded in Christian principles and biblical presuppositions that it can correctly be termed Christian psychology.

“The distressing tensions in mental health research seem to be clustered around the lack of an adequate anthropology, an objective axiology, or value system, a distinct therapeutic direction, and a governing goal.… The Christian world and life view provides stability in each of the above problem areas and affords the Christian psychotherapist a base of great theoretical and practical advantage.”

Where do the ASA and ETS go from here? To this question two answers were proposed. First, suggested ASA president Dr. V. Elving Anderson in a letter to the convention delegates, the ASA and ETS must work together toward a “theology of research.” Here, it is hoped, the theologically trained delegates would have much to offer.

Second, much could be done to increase the impact of the ASA and ETS upon both the Christian and secular worlds. Many representatives expressed hope that this would be done through increased use of publications and through specifically directed research. “I feel that one of the great needs is for an avenue for distribution of the messages given at the annual meetings,” observed Dr. J. C. McPheeters, president emeritus of Asbury Seminary. Added Dr. R. Laird Harris: “The ASA should be first in showing the new ideas in science.… I would like to see our society publish and made capital of them.”

J.M.B.

Divergent Positions

Criticism of church-state relations in Israel has come from Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, editor of the Central Conference American Rabbis Journal. In an article critical of Israel’s policy with regard to marriage laws and the recent anti-missionary campaign, Gilbert draws attention to “the divergent positions assumed by Jews” in Israel and in the United States. Current Israeli laws do not recognize mixed or secular marriages, nor is the popular mind tolerant of Roman Catholic and Protestant missions. At the same time, asserts Gilbert, the situation in Israel is a challenge to the “cool neutrality toward religion that American Jews would welcome from our secular government.…”

In a promising move several days later Israel’s Education Ministry announced that Moslem and Christian religious education in state high schools serving Arab children will begin this fall.

Tracking The Churches

New churches reported by forty-five Protestant denominations for the three-year period 1958–60 numbered 4,408, an annual average of 1,469. Closings for the same denominations (with the exception of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) totaled 2,510, an annual average of 836. These statistics occur in a study titled New Churches, 1958–1960, which was conducted by the Bureau of Research of the National Council of Churches.

Other items of note: member bodies of the NCC opened new churches at a ratio of 1.9 to existing churches as compared to a ratio of 5.1 for non-member denominations. Contrary to popular belief, only 28 per cent of new congregations were established in the metropolitan suburbs; the greatest number are being constructed in the “central metropolitan cities, non-metropolitan larger towns and … in the rural countryside.”

Responding To The Court

Reaction to the Supreme Court ruling against devotional use of Bible reading and prayer in public schools ranged the gamut from consent to defiance last month in statements by secular and ecclesiastical leaders.

This time it was the states which were most vocal. Disclosing his contempt for the Washington pronouncement, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared that his state would “keep right on praying and reading the Bible in the public schools,” and officials of North and South Carolina advised that the ruling be ignored in their constituencies. “We do these things because we want to,” said North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford. “As I read the decision, this kind of thing is not forbidden by the Court and, indeed, it should not be.”

Similar in spirit was a ruling by Delaware’s Attorney General David F. Buckson. Acknowledging that the court decision invalidates the state laws requiring Bible reading and prayer in the Delaware public schools, Buckson asserted that devotional practices could be continued on a “voluntary” basis. Other state officials and educators confessed bewilderment at how prayers could be permitted when the laws requiring them were acknowledgedly void.

In California the court decision raised no problem. Since 1955 an opinion handed down by the state’s attorney general has banned the reading of the Bible in public schools for devotional purposes and the saying of prayers. In Montana, disclosed a state superintendent, only one public school in a rural area has maintained any kind of prayer devotions. And in Minnesota, according to a survey conducted in 1957, only 3 per cent of the state’s public schools engaged in devotional practices.

In states more directly concerned with the Supreme Court ruling, among them New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, official reaction ranged from “no comment” to a disclosure that the feasibility of a period of silent prayer or meditation is under study.

Ecclesiastical reaction was also diverse. In one of the strongest pro-decision statements, the National Council of Churches affirmed that the Court has “again fulfilled its function of settling peaceably disputes in the American community.” The pronouncement added that “neither the church nor the state should use the public school to compel acceptance of any creed or conformity to any specific religious practice.”

Kantzer, Smith To Trinity

To serve a wider constituency the Evangelical Free Church of America last week chose Dr. Kenneth S. Kantzer as dean of its Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (renamed from Trinity Theological Seminary), approved immediate construction of married students’ dormitories on its new seventy-nine-acre campus in Bannockburn, Illinois, and announced plans for major faculty enlargement. Former chairman of Wheaton College’s Division of Biblical Education and Apologetics, Kantzer succeeds Dr. G. Douglas Young, who remains as chairman of Old Testament and Near Eastern studies. Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, formerly of Fuller Seminary, becomes professor of English Bible. President H. Wilbert Norton summarizes the seminary’s theological thrust as “firmly oriented to the historic Christian fundamentals with a strong orientation to the inerrancy of the Scriptures.”

Smith Resigns At Fuller

Dr. Wilbur M. Smith resigned his faculty post at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he has served as professor of English Bible since the school’s founding in 1947. Administrative and faculty differences on the subject of the Bible’s inspiration have recently vexed the school and led earlier this year to the resignation as trustee of Edward L. Johnson, president of Financial Federation, the nation’s fourth-largest savings and loan holding company.

A Spanish-speaking mission field has been brought to our doorstep by the economic pressures of our generation. Although statistics are shaky and definitions uncertain, it seems safe to say that Spanish is now our country’s second language, and about five million Stateside residents, both foreign and domestic, can be claimed for the Latin American community. Of these, 2,316,671 were born in Latin America. Also resident in the United States are some 849,000 Puerto Rican-born citizens. And to the above must be added their American-born, Spanish-speaking children, plus 300,000 to 400,000 migratory workers, transients, “braceros,” and “wetbacks.”

Although they are to be found in every state of the nation, Latin Americans have arrived primarily across the Mexican border and through Miami and New York. In these areas they are concentrated. They range from the doctors and lawyers in exile from Castro’s Cuba to the Mexican laborers who “commute” into the United States each day to go to work.

These millions, more often than not, have come to our shores wide open to spiritual help and evangelism, having left behind their nominal religious traditions. They are ready—if not eager—for spiritual orientation “a la americana.” According to one poll, cited by John H. Burma of Duke University, about half the Puerto Ricans in New York said that they rarely, if ever, attended church any more. There is an undisputed tendency to allow the old religion to fall into disuse along with the old culture. Thus, while there are less than a dozen Roman Catholic churches ministering to the Spanish-speaking in New York (and more frequented by Spaniards than by Latin Americans!), there are an estimated 427 Protestant churches with Spanish-language services. Stateside Latin Americans definitely constitute a legitimate and fruitful mission field for the evangelical church in this land.

Miami, Florida

During the time that Fidel Castro has been in power in Cuba, up through January, approximately, of 1963, the United States has opened its doors to 205,000 Cuban exiles (15,000 of whom are parentless children). About 125,000 have settled in the greater Miami area and together with other Latin Americans make up a Miami Spanish-speaking colony of 250,000. One out of every four Miami residents is a Latin American. In one downtown store a proprietor with a sense of humor displayed a sign: “English Spoken Here”!

Roman Catholics have established a strong refugee-processing center, and some eight churches have substantial Spanish-speaking parishes in adjunct. There are eighteen Protestant refugee centers, all related to Church World Service. It is estimated that between thirty-five and forty churches minister to Latin Americans, many of them with Cuban-refugee associate pastors. Refugees are reported to be very open to the Gospel, and the percentage of evangelicals among the Cubans in Florida is much higher than that in Cuba itself. This same picture is reflected on a smaller scale in Tampa and in Key West.

Southwestern States

Although difficult to pinpoint statistically, the Latin American community in the Southwest is large and significant. About 40 per cent of the residents of New Mexico reportedly are Spanish-speaking. According to the 1960 census there were 1,735,992 Mexican-born residents in the United States. Most of these, plus their American-born children, live in the Southwest—half of them in Texas. To them must be added the other Latin Americans to be found in large numbers, particularly in California. The Spanish-speaking migrant labor force once ran over 400,000 per year, but last year’s “braceros” averaged nearer 87,000. Mechanization of cotton harvesting plus minimum-wage laws will undoubtedly continue to reduce imported farm labor.

Many denominations are carrying on extensive work both in established localities and among migrant workers. As might be expected, Southern Baptists are particularly active. But workers and facilities are everywhere most inadequate in number for the evangelistic opportunity. One writer on the subject, Jack E. Taylor, laments particularly the lack of attention given to the “braceros,” who have left their families in Mexico and have been proven not only to be wide open to the Gospel but also to be excellent missionaries to their own people when they return to their fatherland. In his book, God’s Messengers to Mexico’s Masses (Institute of Church Growth, Eugene, Oregon, 1962), Taylor analyzes the needs and distribution of the Mexican workers and suggests ways of capitalizing on the evangelistic opportunity.

New York City

One out of every six people in Manhattan is a Latin American, and as of 1960 there were 700,000 (about 8.4 per cent of the total population) resident in the five boroughs of New York. By 1970 it is estimated that the Puerto Rican population of New York will have risen to 13.5 per cent, and to 22 per cent in Manhattan.

The Protestant Council of New York reports that 427 churches carry on a ministry in Spanish. Many of these are “store-front” groups, but over 300 are stable churches. More than half of them (240) are of Pentecostal persuasion, and the Pentecostal communicant membership (18,482) is nearly 60 per cent of the total Protestant membership (32,159). The Protestant community is estimated at just under 100,000, comprising 13.6 per cent of New York’s Latin American population.

Although statistics have been cited for only three areas, there are colonies of Latin Americans in practically every state of the union. Their social needs are legion. The National Child Labor Committee has recommended “the establishment of day-care facilities for the children of working migrant mothers to keep the younger children out of the fields and to free the older school-age children from babysitting to attend school more regularly.” The unemployed need vocational training. City slums and migrant camps offer inadequate housing. The health problems of these new Americans clamor for attention.

But most of all, Latin American refugees and immigrants need a chance to know the transforming power of the Gospel. They have been found more open to it here than in their native countries, and they constitute an exciting challenge to the evangelical Christians of the United States.

W.D.R

Protestant missionary interest in Latin America reaches far back, to American colonial times. No less a figure than the great Boston preacher Cotton Mather, along with his seminary-trained friend and chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Samuel Sewall, tried to spark a Protestant missionary effort in Middle and South America. At that time the European powers were struggling with Spain for supremacy of the West Indies in the conflicts that led up to the War of the Spanish Succession. A brilliant linguist and prolific writer, Mather taught himself Spanish and authored the first American-printed book in that language. His purpose in writing it was to evangelize Latin America. In his Diary (January, 1699), Mather reports:

[As] the way for our communication with the Spanish Indies opens more and more I sett myself to learn the Spanish Language. The Lord wonderfully prospered mee in this Undertaking; a few leisure Minutes in the Evening of every Day in about a Fortnight, or three weeks time, so accomplish’d mee, I could write very good Spanish. Accordingly I compos’d a little Body of the Protestant Religion, in certain Articles, back’d with irresistible sentences of Scripture. This I turn’d into the Spanish Tongue; and am now printing it with a Design to send it by all the ways that I can into the several parts of South America … as not knowing whether the time of our Lord Jesus Christ to have glorious Churches in America bee not at hand (Harry Bernstein, Making An Inter-American Mind, 1961, pp. 6 ff.).

Apparently it was not yet the “time of our Lord” for the Gospel to penetrate the Southlands.

About five years after Mather’s little book had broken trail, Judge Sewall kept the large design alive by writing to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London, urging that

… it would be well if you could set on foot the printing of the Spanish Bible in a fair Octave, Ten Thousand Copies; and then you might attempt the bombing of Santa Domingo, the Havanna, Porto Rico, and Mexico itself. I would willingly give five pounds toward the charge of it.… Mr. Leigh commends the translation of Cipriano Valera, which I am the Owner of in Folio (ibid.).

A further attempt—patient, sincere, but unsuccessful—to convert the distinguished governor of Cartagena, Carlos Sucre y Borda, while he languished in a Boston jail after being captured by the British as a prisoner of war, concluded the missionary efforts of Mather and Sewall. Their life-long vision was frustrated. As Bernstein points out, “their religious design may have been premature, but more than anything it introduced Boston and New England to a historic reputation for interest in things Hispanic” (ibid.).

Although the Bible societies carried on some significant evangelism and colportage work during the early decades of independence and several missions entered the lists in the mid 1800s, it remained for the twentieth century to see the Gospel gain a real foothold in Latin America and for the last two decades to see missions reach the zenith of their impact. Up and down the continent the national church has now emerged in adult strength. It is a witnessing church (see “Evangelical Surge,” page 5). It is a Bible-centered church whose evangelical theology re-echoes Luther’s Reformation emphasis of “justification by faith.” It is a Pentecost-oriented church that seeks to honor the Holy Spirit (see News feature, page 29).

In an address at the University of Puerto Rico in the spring of 1962, historian Arnold J. Toynbee remarked: “Things are happening in Latin America today which, in my judgment, may have the same significance for history as the Renaissance of the Fifteenth Century.” To which Dr. John A. Mackay has added: “Things are happening among the Latin American Churches today which may have the same significance for Christ’s Church Universal and for the Ecumenical Movement at its truest and best, that the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century had through the rediscovery of the Bible and the Gospel of Christ.” Evangelical forces agree that they are unquestionably living in Latin America’s most challenging day—a day of change, of growth, and of opportunity. It is a day of unprecedented evangelistic outreach, when efforts like the Billy Graham crusades and the Evangelism-in-Depth movement enlist almost the total support of the evangelical community and enjoy a hospitable reception in virtually every country.

But what does this new day of opportunity hold for foreign missions and for foreign missionaries? To reassess their role in the current growth and program of Protestantism south of the border is one of the urgent imperatives of the times.

To arrive at some definite conclusions, CHRISTIANITY TODAY polled one hundred Latin American evangelical leaders—most of them pastors—on the general subject of “Foreign Missions and the National Church.” About a third of them responded. This is what they said:

Latin Americans are deeply grateful for the work of the foreign missionary societies. Have these societies made a significant impact? The almost unanimous reply was, emphatically yes! Missions made their biggest contribution, however, more than ten years ago. The majority of respondents feel that the presence of foreign missions is still desirable. But financial subsidies seem even more essential than the missionaries themselves. The majority feel that any prohibition of entrance of new missionaries into their country would pose no insurmountable problem.

There is some anti-missionary spirit on the part of national Christians, but not a great deal. Nearly half our informants say there is none. Frequently the mood merely reflects the anti-Yankee-ism of political leftists. Some reasons given for anti-missionary prejudice where it exists are: (1) different standards of living and the economic gap between missionaries and pastors; (2) “wasteful” spending of money on “superfluous” things; (3) superior attitudes on the part of missionaries, who “act like tourists” and expect the nationals to “do the work,” taking the best jobs, hanging onto the administrative positions, and forcing the adoption of their own ideas; (4) lack of adequate training, theological insights, creative thinking, and flexibility on the part of missionaries; (5) inability of missionaries to identify themselves with the Latins, failure to understand their attitudes, speaking Spanish or Portuguese poorly, performing thoughtless discourtesies, and in general holding themselves aloof and acting as if they were from a superior race. Most disturbing, not a few respondents accused many missionaries of (6) failing to do personal work and to carry on evangelistic witness, avoiding the tough assignments, and “managing a subsidy” rather than communicating a message.

The pastors stated that both missions and church bodies are facing up to some of these problems, but much more can and should be done. More church-mission consultations would help. The national church stands ready to assume greater partnership responsibility, but it still needs more leaders, adequately prepared, and financial help from overseas. The Church is trying to meet the challenge of local evangelism, but with the exception of the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Pentecostals in Argentina and Brazil, no significant foreign missionary effort is anywhere underway.

In summary, it is the conviction of the pastors polled that foreign missionary funds and personnel are still needed and perhaps will always be needed, if the right kind of foreign missionary can be provided. This is a big “if,” they emphasize; at present we are sending too few of the right kind.

The missionary movement which first welled up in the dedicated hearts of Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, and which by God’s grace has now swelled to a great tide of ongoing evangelistic expansion, has not yet begun to ebb. But unless evangelical missions are willing to reassess their methods and can provide missionaries who possess the qualities welcomed by the Latin American Church, they may very well find themselves pushed into the eddies and backwashes while the tide of church growth leaves them behind.

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Evangelical Coordinating Agency Needed For Spanish Work

Our sometimes over-organized Protestantism in the United States has failed to provide an adequate agency for the coordination of work among the many and varied colonies of Spanish-speaking peoples scattered across the country. Local organizations have done a great deal, particularly in New York City, greater Miami, and the Southwestern states. Denominational home missions have reached into many areas where migrant workers, “braceros,” or other Latin Americans live and work. The Spanish-American Committee of the National Council of Churches has met to discuss some common problems, but it has not yet published basic data, nor has it been able to draw all evangelical groups into consultation. The gaps are legion.

Perhaps this should not surprise us, since some of the related sociological problems perplex even the United States Bureau of Census. Classifications, whether by Spanish surname, language spoken, or place of foreign birth, fail to provide statistics about Hispanic Americans that suffice for every purpose.

These complications, however, merely highlight a situation which should not be allowed to continue. Working in consultation with the NCC’s Spanish-American Committee, some representative agency should convene an evangelical conference which would: (1) draw in all those who are engaged in evangelistic or social work in Spanish from every part of the United States; (2) produce the necessary sociological and statistical data for plotting a nation-wide strategy and program; and (3) serve to emphasize to each local church and Christian the evangelistic challenge represented by their Spanish-speaking neighbors. There are five million of them who need Christ.

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God’S Laws Cannot Be Flouted Without Ultimate Judgment

One can but wonder whether the Church has become so preoccupied with social and economic affairs that she has lost the ability to raise her voice in clear moral issues. Aside from a few feeble words of remonstrance and a censure directed towards the minister performing the marriage, the church courts of our land and the religious press in general have reacted lamely to the Rockefeller and Murphy divorces and the subsequent marriage.

Rockefeller’s discarding and divorcing of his wife of thirty-one years, the mother of their grown children, and Mrs. Murphy’s similar action towards her husband and four small children are a disgrace. Insofar as this has been taken without vigorous protest by our nation, it is a blot on us as a people.

Britain has been rocked by evidences of immorality in high places. But to many the chief concern has been possible security leaks, not the disclosure of moral turpitude. The prostitute in the Profumo case has now become a celebrity, with numerous offers from the stage, movies, and scandal magazines.

The sordid exchange of husbands and wives in Hollywood and the escapades of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have become sins of our nation, exploited by the producers of Cleopatra and by dozens of magazines which pander to such things.

America has unquestionably lost the grace to blush and stand up in righteous indignation to repudiate such behavior, and in so doing stands subject to the just judgment of a righteous God.

Nothing which falls short of renewed convictions on the rightness and wrongness of things, convictions proceeding from the Judeo-Christian heritage, can stem a tide which otherwise means national peril and ultimate judgment.

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Protestant Prayers And Roman Crowns

No doubt more prayers were said in Protestant pulpits for Pope Paul VI than for any other pontiff since the Reformation. Encouraged by a friendlier climate, Protestants could only wish Paul VI well, and pray God’s blessing upon him. This inclination to bless chokes up in most Protestants’ throats, however, as they think of a minister of Christ being exalted, crowned, and carried about on a portable throne. The thought of a man of God with a high triple crown on his head and men prostrate at his feet grates on a Protestant’s sense of the Christian ministry. Heeding an earlier Paul, Protestants regard their ministers “worthy of double honor,” yet hardly expect them to forge and parade symbols of clerical power and glory. Crowns are for Christians—as for Christ—by the hand of God, when life is done. Most Protestants quite understand that ecclesiastic who reminded an enthroned Paul VI on parade that the glory of the world passes as did the burning flax in his hand.

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Magazine Interest Soars; Plans Include Format Change

This issue devoted to the spiritual situation in Latin America is another in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s annual series on the Protestant world scene. To implement the project dependably, we asked the Rev. W. Dayton Roberts of Latin America Mission to join our Washington staff for a month. The issue also includes News Editor David E. Kucharsky’s special reports from Europe on Pope Paul VI’s coronation and President Kennedy’s audience with the new pope.

This summer our staff again includes James Boice, former editor of the Princeton Seminarian. Recent recipient of Princeton’s $1000 fellowship in New Testament, he will be heading abroad in the fall for doctoral studies.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s next issue will appear in a delightful new format. Our readers will find the change refreshing. And we, in turn, are delighted with our circulation department’s report that paid subscriptions have doubled in the last three years.

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Vatican Policy And U. S. Policy: Some Fear Possible Correlation

As President Kennedy visited Pope Paul, there were those who raised questions concerning possible correlation of policies of the two huge bodies represented. Uneasy over certain reports, some raised the question of possible influence of papal encyclicals on American policy. Concerning the President’s new peace offensive, Newsweek had said he “seemed to be taking a cue from Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris.” In his papal visit, said The New York Times, Kennedy was almost certain to raise the issue of Vatican efforts to reach practical accommodation with Communist governments.

The Times noted Washington’s pleasure at such efforts and at Vatican moves to align the church with “socially progressive elements.” Times columnist Arthur Krock noted that Mater et Magistra has been interpreted by some as a papal sanction of the AFL-CIO opposition to “right-to-work” laws. And some foresee papal influence indirectly brought to bear upon the American racial problem. Any Vatican-White House policy correlation beyond coincidence will sound an alarm in this nation.

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Quality Of Church Membership As Measured By Twice-Born Persons

To ask any mere mortal how many born-again believers there are in the United States might well amount to addressing “the wrong throne.” But at intervals one reader or another has put the question to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and we have ventured in turn to ask several men of good judgment and active ecclesiastical life to estimate the number of such persons within their own particular denominations or churches. The replies, it was felt, might be of value for evangelism as such, and for appraising the American religious scene as a whole.

Thirty-four men replied. Each one without exception noted the difficulty of answering such a question; about 40 per cent either expressed unwillingness to do so or considered themselves unqualified. One minister remarked: “It is grossly presumptuous for anyone to venture such an estimate.” He felt, moreover, that to publish any such kind of estimate would be detrimental to the magazine. Another respondent, however, believed that some judgments in this area are permissible on the basis of Matthew 7:20, which says: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Certainly whatever right there may be to voice such a judgment is limited to those who are specifically entrusted with the spiritual welfare of souls. The province of a servant of Christ is to minister to those who do not profess Christ; it is also his province to minister to those who profess but do not possess Christ. Jesus did not hesitate to say: “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me” (Matt. 15:8). Ought not Christ’s ministers to be aware of such ones in their congregations? Noted one Christian leader in his letter: “There is not enough effort to make sure (as much as is humanly possible) that those who profess faith really have it.”

One minister said: “There is no way I can possibly establish what is known only to God.” A Southern Baptist seminary professor gave way to a bit of humor. “Regarding my estimate of the percentage of Southern Baptists who are twice-born,” he wrote, “100 per cent is about as close as I could come (though it might be higher).”

Every earnest minister, whatever his denomination, would like to think 100 per cent is correct. Certain problems, however, make this rather unlikely. For one thing, churches vary in their requirements concerning the substance of a vocal profession of faith prior to church membership. For instance, one denomination requires “satisfactory evidence of regeneration, belief in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and in the vicarious atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ …” whereas another merely asks, “Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord …? Do you receive and profess the Christian faith as contained in the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ …?”

Said a seminary professor: “I would assume there are many people who have been born again who are theologically confused and hold views which are not easily identified as evangelical.” Theological orthodoxy is not necessarily a guarantee of salvation, either. “It is quite conceivable,” observed a national church official, “that a number that are theologically sound may not be born again.”

It was Jesus himself who said in Matthew 2:20, 21: “… by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” In other words, it is the evidence and quality of fruitfulness that differentiates among the professed followers of Christ. The same emphasis occurs in Titus 1:16. According to one prominent United Presbyterian minister, in most congregations one-third of the members are heavy givers, one-third occasional givers, and one-third give nothing at all to the various phases of the church’s program of Kingdom work.

There is the problem, too, of church records and of inactive members. In one large city 20 per cent of the official church membership was comprised of people who had moved away but had not transferred their letters. Elsewhere a Baptist church of 2,600 finally dropped from the rolls 600 for whom addresses had been lacking for ten years.

A number of those we queried did, indeed, venture to furnish some statistics. These figures were based admittedly on “human judgment” and showed a wide disparity. Of 650,000 members in the American Baptist Association, one leader estimated 80 per cent, another 90 per cent, to be truly regenerate. Of the 1,600,000 in the American Baptist Convention, 50 per cent was one answer, 65 per cent another. Of the 75,000 in the Baptist General Conference, 66 per cent was the figure cited, and of the 300,000 Conservative Baptists, 50 to 66 per cent. A spokesman for the 70,000 Christian and Missionary Alliance judged almost 100 per cent to be born again. Of the 2,500,000 Missouri Synod Lutherans one estimate was 33 per cent, another 35 to 50 per cent, a third 80 per cent. Fifty per cent was cited for the 900,000 Southern Presbyterians; 80 per cent for the 230,000 in the Reformed Church in America; and 75 per cent for the 8,000 in the Reformed Episcopal Church. Of the ten million Southern Baptists (of whom 25 per cent are non-resident)—estimates of 70, 75, and 90 per cent were given.

Several replies reminded us that Elijah’s estimate that he was the only remaining true believer on earth turned out to be grossly in error. Actually there were 7,000 believers. Others reminded us that wheat and tares look very similar. There are those, too, as described in Matthew 7:22, whose outward profession of faith and works belies their inner evil state. To judge in these matters is precarious indeed and always open to error. “I am constantly amazed,” revealed one pastor, “to find that people whom I have regarded as indifferent, have turned out in their own quiet way with very strong Christian convictions.”

It is difficult, in view of ecclesiastical variations of procedure and of individual differences in evidences of discipleship, to estimate the number of regenerate believers in the United States. This is clear, however—active concern for a sound and thriving Body of Christ is not only scripturally enjoined, but even required of those who shepherd the flock. And this is our joy in the midst of this sometimes darksome task: “The Lord knoweth them that are his.”

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Christians should be at the forefront in demonstrating love and understanding and in trying to solve the racial tensions which can eventuate in the breakdown of law and order and still greater acts of aggravation and violence.

The situation is so electric with emotional reaction that the voices of moderation on both sides of the issue are being drowned out by the louder voices of “rights” without reference to the realities of the situation or the only way whereby they can ever be solved.

In September, 1956, the writer participated in a symposium on race relations sponsored by Life magazine. Near its conclusion we presented the following statement, which won a strong measure of approval and was later incorporated into a report of this meeting (Life, Oct. 1, 1956):

“1. Christians should recognize that there is no biblical or legal justification for segregation. Segregation, as enjoined in the Old Testament, had to do with religious separation while the New Testament lends no comfort to the idea of racial segregation within the Christian Church. For these reasons it can be safely affirmed that segregation of the races enforced by law is both un-Christian and un-American.

“2. It can be demonstrated with equal logic that forced integration of the races is sociologically impracticable and at the same time such forced alignments violate the right of personal choice.

“3. The Christian concept of race may be expressed in the following way:

a. God makes no distinction among men; all are alike the objects of his love, mercy and proffered redemptive work.

b. For this reason, all Christians are brothers in Christ, regardless of race and color.

c. The inescapable corollary of these truths is that Church membership should be open to all without discrimination or restriction.

“4. In the light of the basically Christian affirmations the church should implement them as follows:

a. All churches should be open to attendance and membership without reference to race or color.

b. Recognize that in so doing, in most areas and under normal conditions this will not result in an integrated church, for various races will prefer separate churches for social, economic, educational and other reasons.

c. But, this opening of the doors of the churches will break down the man-made and sinful barrier which stems from prejudice, and recognize the unquestioned Christian principle of man’s uniform need of God’s redemptive work in Christ, a need and a salvation which knows no distinction of race or color.

“5. To aid in an honest and just solution of this problem on every level, the Church should frankly recognize that racial differences, implying neither inferiority nor superiority in God’s sight, are nevertheless actual differences which usually express themselves in social preferences and alignments which are a matter of personal choice, not related to either pride or prejudice. Because of this and because no Christian principle is involved, the Church should neither foster nor force, in the name of Christianity, a social integration which is neither desired nor desirable.

“6. The Church should concentrate greater energy on condemning those sinful attitudes of mind where hate, prejudice and indifference continue to foster injustice and discrimination.

“7. The problem of the public schools constitutes a dilemma in many areas which both the Church and the courts of the land should recognize and admit. Because these schools are tax-supported, they are in name and in fact ‘public’ schools.

“At the same time, because the ratio of the races varies in different localities the problem also varies from the simple in some areas to the apparently insoluble at the present time in others. Those who live where only 10 or 15 per cent of the population is of a minority race have no serious problem. Where the ratio is reversed the issue is one of the greatest magnitude and those who have to deal with it deserve the sympathetic concern and understanding of others.

“It must be recognized by both Church and State that at this time, and under present conditions, the problem involves social, moral, hygienic, educational and other factors which admit no immediate or easy solution, and the phrase, ‘with all due haste,’ must be interpreted on the one hand as requiring an honest effort to solve the problem, and on the other by the leniency and consideration which existing conditions demand.

“8. Finally, the Church has a grave responsibility in this issue; a responsibility to proclaim love, tolerance and justice to all as basic Christian virtues, to be accepted in theory and practiced in fact.

“Basic to this concept is the urgent necessity of removing all barriers to spiritual fellowship in Christ, without at the same time trying to force un-natural social relationships.

“The Church has the responsibility of recognizing that more than spiritual issues are involved. While freely admitting full spiritual and legal rights to all, there are at the same time, social implications and considerations which involve the matter of personal choice, over which the Church has no jurisdiction and into which it should not intrude in the name of Christianity.”

We believe the above principles are still generally valid. That the situation has now gotten out of hand we all know. One reason is that many church leaders have themselves become confused and now defend, even participate in, civil rioting.

We are convinced that public places should be desegregated, thereby removing humiliation of and discrimination against a segment of our population. But we seriously question mob demonstrations as the right method to accomplish this end. Other people also have “civil rights.”

Our chief concern is the effect of these demonstrations on the young people involved, both Negro and white. Many white boys and girls, often encouraged by their parents, have participated in counter-demonstrations involving insults and violence. At the same time many Negro young people are being led into a psychological blind alley—the philosophy that “rights” can and should be secured by mob action. All of this is having a traumatic effect on a generation already showing little respect for law.

Furthermore, we have yet to see mention of those policemen in both the South and the North who have shown amazing restraint in efforts to maintain order.

We seriously question that “Christian” leadership which participates in demonstrations against the law (be that law just or unjust) and in so doing compounds the problem for all concerned.

We must take care lest under the guise of “civil rights” for one race, or religious freedom for atheists, a form of legalized tyranny is imposed on our country by a minority. Where civil rioting is used to get rid of unjust laws, the end can be oppression.