Dear Sacred Sailors:
Remember the old-fashioned revival meeting? It was an exciting affair held in a big tent with sawdust aisles. People sat on hard benches solidly placed or terra firma as they listened to impassioned preaching by a fiery evangelist. But now a new strategy is in motion. Sponsored by Christian Herald magazine, it’s called a “New Fashioned Revival at Sea.”
When the blizzards hit in January, people at sea with problems and 455 clams in their wallets (for passage payment) will board the S.S. “Atlantic” for a seven-day Caribbean revival cruise. This “Revival at Sea,” claims Christian Herald, “will mean personal renewal for every traveler.” And considering their grandiose plans, who can doubt it?
Saints and sinners will sail to exotic ports with such biblical names as St. Thomas and San Juan. They will be stimulated, inspired, and educated, says the magazine, “by a faculty of concerned Christian laymen, pastors, writers, educators, musicians, and missionaries—all part of what’s happening in these turbulent times.” Although it will undoubtedly be a cruise without booze, an expert on board will lecture on the “disease” of alcoholism. Musical fare will range from country style (Stuart Hamblen) to gospel pop (Mrs. Buckner Fanning). Timely topics will be discussed by a galaxy of literary lights that includes author-attorney William (Dissenter in a Great Society) Stringfellow, missionary-novelist Elisabeth (No Graven Image) Elliot, and journalist Pete (as told to) Martin. Does it not cheer your heart to know that there still are courageous people of faith willing to leave home shores to face turbulent new happenings on the high seas under the torrid Caribbean sun in the dead of winter?
I can only speculate about possible new-fashioned revivalistic procedures. When the “invitation” is given, will first-class passengers be urged to come forward on the promenade deck while tourist-class people are asked to walk the plank? Will native skinny-dippers be encouraged to swim out to the ship to dive for old copies of the Christian Herald? Will stowaways bereft of cash but sorely in need of revival be thrown to the sharks or stashed in the brig?
As these nautical revivalists embark from Florida, we will wish them bon voyage. I’d like to go along. But someone has to stay home and “let the lower lights be burning.”
Your ancient mariner,
EUTYCHUS III
FORCE OR FARCE
When the Church becomes a political force she automatically becomes a spiritual farce. I appreciated your article, “A Challenge to Ecumenical Politicians” (Sept. 15).
MERRILL C. SKAUG
Victor, Mont.
NO WORLD GOVERNMENT
Professor Latourette (Sept. 1) attempts to connect the Reformation with the United Nations in a most loose manner: “We must quickly note that democracy, the Red Cross, and the United Nations have been largely secularized.…” The statement gives one the idea that these systems and organizations were once something they are not now. Democracy is not built on Reformation or biblical principles. Democracy is rule by mob or majority; the Bible concept is one of law and order. Although I am not sure of the Red Cross, I am positive the United Nations … was not, is not, nor ever will be Christian. It is a potential world government, and Reformation principles will not support the concept of world government.
FRANK SISTI
Saratoga, Calif.
ABOUT THAT NEW COLLEGE
I have read with great interest Dr. William Fitch’s “interpretative report” concerning the opening of Richmond College in Toronto this fall (“Christian Campus Report: 1967,” Sept. 1).
As a Canadian preacher’s son whose father was forced conscientiously to withdraw from a Canadian Christian university forty years ago because of its departure from the faith, I have grown up conscious of the need for an evangelical Christian liberal-arts college in Canada.…
I speak … for hundreds of evangelicals, not only in the Toronto area but across the nation, for whom the emergence of Richmond College, far from placing us on “the horns of a dilemma,” has produced profound praise to God for answered prayer.
KENNETH CAMPBELL
President
Campbell-Reese
Evangelical Association
Milton, Ontario
HAPPY ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY
I have long desired to write to commend you for the growing maturity so often evidenced in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… I believe you have moved from a negativistic approach to one that is positively conservative, but also willing to listen to other viewpoints. The ability to listen to another side of the story is a mature ability.
CLIFFORD J. JANSSEN
Metamora, Ill.
Thank you for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It has brought me to an awareness that in our position as conservative evangelicals we are not alone. In its lines I find a fellowship with Christians of different denominations but the oneness in Christ.
W. L. KAMBULOW
Montreal, Ont.
I appreciate your skillful management of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Each issue has helped me in various ways since my seminary days.
DONALD H. ROLFS
First Methodist Church
Port Norris, N. J.
TAKING AND GIVING
“They are Taking My Church Away from Me,” by Harold H. Lytle (Aug. 18), is the best description of the Presbyterian Church we have read for some time. As a matter of fact, it takes our thoughts back to that date some years ago when we “saw the light” and realized The Establishment of that church hierarchy has everything so well controlled the layman really has no opportunity to be of service to his Lord there.
MR. AND MRS. CARL A. MILLER
Anaheim, Calif.
Do you think it would be wrong for a minister, who spent the greater part of his life as a layman, to bare his soul once in a while even at the expense of the layman?
The article of layman Lytle about those awful clergymen taking his nice little church away makes me ill. (Notice the use of the vague “they,” which connotes the “conspiracy mentality” so much the vogue these days.… Could this really be T.H.E.Y., a branch of T.H.R.U.S.H.?)
We are constantly being made aware in print that the greatest problem confronting the Church today is not a “they conspiracy” but plain old theological ignorance, an almost complete avoidance of the Scriptures as the living Word of God (living as over against a dead record of past events), and a practical version of the God-is-dead theology which denies the continual leading of the Holy Spirit promised in John 16:12–15—“He will guide you into all the truth.”
I am tired of being told that the Church has no concern with life except maybe drinking and cursing. I’m tired of being told to “stick to religion,” whatever that is, and leave to the laymen the running of the world of industry, labor, politics, economics, international relations, and everything else important. I must be content with “the Church,” keeping its nose clean, keeping it absolutely neutral in all matters, oiling the wheels of the program which winds up an end unto itself. In other words, keep the Church out of everything which makes any difference in the real life of men.
Now this final blow: The one place I can speak left open to me is the presbytery, the courts of the Church. The only place where this isolated, mealy-mouthed, homily-spouting, ineffective visionary is allowed to exercise his thwarted abilities is now under attack. If this is the Church being taken away from the layman, his little building blocks and Dr. Seuss books, then let him have it.
There. I said it, and I am glad.
THOMAS B. BAGNAL, JR.
Mt. Airy, N.C.
While I may not agree theologically with Mr. Lytle, I know from experience what he is talking about and sincerely admire his honesty and forthrightness in expressing himself on this vital issue.
ERNEST BELLINGHAM
St. Helens, Ore.
MONEY FOR THE CHURCH
“Passing the Plate to Washington” (Aug. 18) has just come to my attention. This matter has distressed some of us for quite some time, and we are in your debt for presenting the problem so clearly.
I have wondered if it would be possible to write into law a plan whereby much of the health, education, and welfare of our country, now in government hands, would be turned over to churches.
An example of how this might work is as follows:
(1) A liberalization of the income-tax laws so that individuals (and possibly corporations) would be allowed to give somewhat more to their church than they now are able to do, without missing income-tax deduction; (2) a calculation of a percentage or a maximum figure that a person could give through his church, toward the aforementioned fields; and (3) a corresponding decrease in the individual’s income tax. Of course there would be some big problems, but I suspect they could be worked out with the help of a “good” bill with built-in safeguards.
Some of the advantages: (1) It would divorce the church from government, (2) it would delete a measure of politics from health, education, and welfare, (3) it would enable the church to regain vital ground in this field which has been lost to the state, and (4) it would at least provide the opportunity to get religion into the classroom.
GORDON L. LYLE
DeKalb, Miss.
One of the grants in question … was awarded to me in order to permit me to investigate some problems of host-parasite interrelationships. First of all the grant was awarded to me as principal investigator and not to Seattle Pacific College. The only governmental stipulations concerning Seattle Pacific College are that they will administer the disbursement of the funds according to their “own best accounting practices” and agree to abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title 45, section 80.1).
While my research is not as spectacular as Baylor’s artificial-heart research, it is certainly hoped that it may benefit mankind at some point.… One ultimate goal will be to learn of mechanisms concerning the host’s physiological effects on the parasite, which could lead to immunity-production studies of human and domestic parasites, such as malaria and schistosomes. The other phase of the research deals with studies of amphibian metamorphosis itself; which, as has been known for years, is a remarkable example of cellular differentiation. Cancer is an abnormal form of cellular differentiation; therefore any information, however seemingly remote, about this process should be in the public interest.
GORDON W. MARTIN
Department of Zoology
Seattle Pacific College
Seattle, Wash.
A MATTER OF REPRESENTATION
Your report (“A Representative Seminary,” News, Aug. 18) is absolutely inadequate and consequently is a misrepresentation of the position held by North Park Seminary professors and students. It states: “A committee found no faculty members now believe that ‘the Bible as originally given is the Word of God.…’ ”
The Evangelical Covenant Church of America states in its constitution, “The Covenant Church believes in the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, as the Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.” The committee report referred to in your article was careful to point out that views of Scripture held in the Seminary by both professors and students are held within the context of our common commitment to the Bible as the Word of God.
MILTON B. ENGEBRETSON
President
The Evangelical Covenant Church of America,
Chicago, Ill.
What was said by the reporting committee was, “… is not now represented on the biblical faculty of North Park Theological Seminary.” It was not a sweeping designation of the entire seminary faculty but only the biblical field in the seminary!
EARL D. SWANSON
Prairie Lake Evangelical Covenant Church
Chetek, Wis.
• The church press release quoted in the news report said, “No one currently on the seminary faculty holds to the view that ‘the Bible as originally given is the Word of God, can always be trusted, and is reliable in its statements of fact, history, science, chronology, and in all points of theology and ethics.’ ”—ED.
REPLY FROM THE LEFT
I wish to respond to J. Edgar Hoover’s article on the New Left (Aug. 18) as a born-again Christian, a seminary student, and an active participant in the New Left. Obviously, Mr. Hoover doesn’t understand the movement.… He certainly didn’t describe my position.…
But in many ways, he is very perceptive. We do consider American society to be “corrupt, evil and malignant.” … We are morally outraged when we see the burning of villages in Viet Nam, the suppression of the Negro in America, and the depersonalization of our society.
Mr. Hoover is most perceptive, however, when he sees the New Left as a threat to the values he holds dear.… We are devoted to a change in the basic structure of our society, change that Mr. Hoover would find to be very threatening.
This, however, does not mean we reject Judaic-Christian values. Instead, I see the New Left to be within the prophetic tradition, calling our nation to repentance. We have a profound understanding of the meaning of sin (very much different than the optimistic liberals). We are crying for justice and love in a world of hate and fear. We are pointing to the sanctity of the individual within community, searching for a lost koinonia.…
Rather than a threat, I find the New Left a sign of hope. Here is a generation that is not silent or without a cause.… I realize that most of them are not Christian, for they have rejected the hypocrisy they see in our churches. They are painfully aware that too often the Church (including evangelicals) has been willing to follow the dictums of society rather than ask the agonizing question of what the Lordship of Christ means in our troubled world.…
For me to say that Christ is Lord means that I must reject many of the values of our society. I find that my involvement in the protest movement is one way I can witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christ for me is more important than Americanism.
ART GISH
Oak, Brook, Ill.
What an amazing thing that in this year 1967, after nearly 2,000 years of civilization and so-called Christianity, we are faced with such a situation as that of the Hippies.… Man may be clever; he has, we know, accomplished many wonderful things undreamed of … but to what end? Hippies, drug addicts, violence, racial hatred, and a world rotting away with disease, with all hospitals and mental homes full. What a picture! I sympathize with the young people of today.… Many see the insincerity of our civilization.
We need to return to the One who said “I am the Way,” and to teach the Gospel of true love, which fulfills the law of God.
DOROTHY ABRAHAM
Victoria, British Columbia
