Empty Seats
The seats of church leaders on the official reception stand were empty as fetish priests danced and poured a pagan spirit libation on the ground at a ceremony in Accra marking the Declaration of Independence on the Gold Coast in Africa.
The rite was an offering to the gods asking their blessing on the Duchess of Kent, Britain’s official representative at the celebrations. Leading the boycott were the Right Reverend Richard Roseveare, Anglican Bishop of Accra; the Reverend G. Thackray Eddy, Methodist Church, and the Reverend E. Max Dodu, moderator of the Presbyterian Church.
In a letter to the Accra Municipal Council requesting that the libation rite be dropped from the program of welcome, the church leaders pointed out that it included prayers addressed to gods in whose existence Christians do not believe.
The Accra Council, in refusing to drop the rite, said a service conducted solely by the Christian Church Council was to be held on the following day as part of the official program.
Bishop Roseveare clashed with Prime Minister Nkruman last year when he protested the government leader’s attendance at a pagan sacrifice following a state church service.
Invasion Aftermath
A missionary looks at Egypt from the inside:
Since the schools of Egypt were permitted to resume their activities, late in December, there has been a steady hum of serious “nose-to-the-grindstone” work … to make up lost time during the recent invasion.
A quick survey of the school situation reveals that all private English and French schools are now being run by the government. Apprehensive parents have been assured that standards will be maintained and that they need have no fears about continuing to send their children. In spite of these assurances, not a few have changed.…
Losses of French and English teachers in expropriated schools have caused some scrambling and scraping for qualified replacements. Foreign wives of Egyptian subjects, in some cases even British and French, have been urged to accept teaching posts.
Meanwhile, the weeding-out process continues. Although most subjects of enemy countries have by now been eliminated, a sprinkling remains.
The recently-promulgated law requiring the Egyptianization of all banks and companies has given rise to widespread concern in all foreign communities. It is felt that this law only adds to the growing list of reasons why foreign capital and business interests refuse to come into Egypt; or, in case they’re already in, will look for the earliest opportunity to pull out. As the head of one American company said recently, “If I were being invited today to put my five piasters into Egypt, my answer would be a flat ‘No.’ But since my five piasters are already here, I can only wait for an opportunity to get them out.” Another American company has already ordered the transfer from Egypt of its once bustling regional office in downtown Cairo.
Other causes for apprehension in business circles are traceable to the difficulty of obtaining foreign currency with which to carry on normal business. Scores of businesses are reported to be closing out. In the same week that the local press reported the huge rise in deposits at the National Bank with the comment that this was proof of public confidence and sound business activity, one businessman was heard to say, “Business? Yes, we’re doing lots of business, if by ‘business’ you mean selling. We’re selling all the time. Our bank account is growing larger, and our shelves emptier, because we can’t import replacement inventories. We’ll soon be out of business.”
What are the implications of all this? Government statements on the general state of economic affairs are uniformly reassuring. There appears to be no shortage of essentials.… Unemployment is on the increase, due to the heavy exodus of foreigners and the slow pace of business. Stocks of drugs and medicines on which many relied are now exhausted. The increased interference of government in private affairs (as in the case of the newly-required identity cards) is resented. The sky-rocketing price of corn puts new furrows in piasterconscious brows.
Some see in all this nothing more than the dislocations and inconveniences attendant upon Egypt’s move toward political neutrality.
Little Words About Big Need
“If God called his Holy Spirit out of the world, about 95 per cent of what we are doing would go on and we would brag about it.”
This blunt statement about church programs by Dr. Carl Bates of Amarillo, Texas, was coupled with an equally blunt question to ministers at the annual Baptist Statewide Conference on Evangelism in Columbia, S. C.: “What are you doing that you can’t get done unless the power of God falls on your ministry?”
He added:
“If we are to stop the terrible overflow of godlessness in our generation, it will only be as the Holy Spirit fills and empowers us. Our churches are full of members; our denomination is flooded with preachers who have never been touched with an all-consuming desire to be filled with the Spirit.
“Baptists are ready to do everything else but repent. They will go to conferences, cooperate and cooperate, tithe their income and adopt programs, but repentance is something else again.”
Dr. E. N. Patterson, Professor of Homiletics at New Orleans Baptist Seminary, said as a young preacher he was “timid” about telling all he felt on the freshness and exuberance of preaching with the Spirit’s unction.
“I know there is danger in superficiality,” he said, “but there is greater danger on the other side. I’m not afraid of the brand that goes with dependence on the Holy Spirit.”
Dr. J. D. Grey of New Orleans, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, urged Baptists to pray for Billy Graham’s New York Crusade, which begins May 15.
“You and I have an obligation to pray that God will come in miraculous power to do more for New York through Madison Square Garden than He did for London through Harringay,” he said. “We should feel toward that concentrated effort in New York as Paul felt when he wrote of his driving desire to preach the Gospel at Rome (the world center of his day).”
—T. M.
Others look with grave alarm on current trends and feel convinced that Egypt’s leaders are being advised or maneuvered into a situation in which their only recourse, without losing face, will he to align themselves with communist Russia. Such alarmists point to the flood of Red books and magazines which are now available everywhere; to the press, which never publishes comments or local news that is critical of Russia; to the enormous Russian Embassy staff, said to be the largest in this part of the world; to the hundreds of iron curtain citizens who are reputed to have come to Egypt in the capacity of engineers and technicians of various kinds; to the Russian Industrial Exhibition and the Russian Ballet which have enjoyed Cairo’s spotlight for several weeks; to the Red regime commodities which are now beginning to appear in certain shops.
It adds up to what? The average onlooker, trying to be impartial, is frankly non-plussed. The seriousness of the situation he knows and feels. The mutterings he may hear, if he has friends who are hold enough to speak. But even making allowances for the country’s rumor-making capacities, he can hardly believe that Soviet influence is anywhere near what the alarmists make it out to be. Then he remembers China, and Korea and Vietnam and reminds himself not to slide into any sort of complacency simply because he has such a distaste for any form of alarmism.
Result? He just goes on being nonplussed!
—W.A.M.
