While anti-war demonstrators burned the American flag and waved the Viet Cong one at such places as the Justice Department and the grounds of the U. S. Capitol last month, a cadre of America’s choice military men were making a stout defense of what they believe is right about the nation.
During the forty-sixth national convention of the Military Chaplains Association, the chaplains clearly were for God, flag, and country—usually in that order.
Earlier, a letter to the magazine of the MCA (which seeks to represent America’s 10,000 or so active and reserve chaplains), the Military Chaplain, was addressed to the Militant Chaplain. The letter came from Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, largest of the church-related peace organizations that regularly protest in Washington, D. C.
The typographical error may not have been too wide of the mark, judging from religious fervor evident at the chaplains’ Washington meeting.
Most of the several hundred military chaplains of all faiths who met during the finale of the Mayday protest were disturbed by what was going on outside. These chaplains knew—more than most of the protesters—that the war in Southeast Asia is dehumanizing. But they obviously didn’t feel America had gone as far down the drain as the demonstrators claimed.
“Contrary to what some of our citizens, including some politicians, are trying to project, America is not a warlike nation,” boomed the MCA’s executive director, Karl B. Justus. “But in two short centuries we have often been called on to defend our freedoms, as well as the freedoms of others who wish to remain free. As peace-loving people the choices have often been difficult, but millions of Americans have never failed to rise to the defense of freedom—and the blood and supreme sacrifice of countless Americans attest to this. We want freedoms for all, but all who want freedoms must be willing to share equal responsibilities. Freedom is not free.…”
Last year, Justus, who is editor of the Military Chaplain, led a bombastic campaign through an editorial entitled “Tell It to Hanoi.” Sparked partially by the hard-hitting editorial, many reserve and retired MCA members across the country stimulated their churches to raise a concerted appeal about the prisoner-of-war situation.
This year the MCA passed a resolution addressed to Hanoi and points north, President Nixon, Congress, and anyone else who might pay it heed:
“Whereas there are now more than 1,700 Americans held prisoner of war or missing in Southeast Asia, some of them for more than seven years: Be it resolved that the MCA … persists in witness and work, prayers and petitions, on their behalf and that of their families.” The resolution then enlarged, saying that the MCA’s concern “embraces all engaged in or victims of war throughout the world, wars which we earnestly hope will be soon resolved with justice for all.”
The action called upon all the high signatory powers to comply with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, particularly for repatriation of the seriously sick, wounded, or incapacitated, the humane treatment of all retained, and information about and fuller communication with all prisoners.
Justus tried to make it clear that despite their dual military-ecclesiastical role, the chaplains are not warmongers. “I am sure that every one of us here, in our military ministry, is dedicated first and foremost to peace, but the trouble with some of our citizens who want peace at any price is that their minds are like concrete—thoroughly mixed and permanently set.”
The convention, chaired by Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, chaplain of the U. S. Senate and a strong supporter of the Truman Doctrine of containing Communism, came at a time when the chaplaincy is under strong attack, particularly by the New Left and by many in the peace movement.
A writer said in the Christian Century recently that “the chaplain is part of a dehumanizing process in the military” and is a front man prohibited from giving any religious indoctrination.
This made Justus fighting mad. “The chaplain and the military chaplaincy are performing an indispensable ministry, and neither can ever be adequately replaced by any proposed civilianization of the chaplaincy,” he said. “They [civilians] can’t identify.”
Fortunately, it would seem, the paths of Justus and protest leaders Abbie Hoffman and Rennie Davis never crossed during the Mayday demonstrations.
Someone surely would have had to call a chaplain.
It Rained On Mcintire’S Victory Parade
Radio preacher-politician Carl McIntire blamed the weather and “fear of hippies” for the poor turnout at his prowar “March for Victory” in Washington last month.
The skies were indeed overcast as McIntire strode down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of a mixed multitude that included hard hats, Ku Klux Klansmen, John Birch Society leafleteers, students from Christian schools, “Free Calley” petitionists, and church members who seemed to believe that a military victory in South Viet Nam is a necessary tenet of fundamentalist faith.
And dozens of long-haired leftovers from anti-war demonstrations earlier did drop by to listen to McIntire and others at the rally on the Washington Monument grounds. But, except for two arrested in a hassle with hard hats, they were peaceful. Many, in fact, seemed more interested in having rally supporters answer questions about God and the Bible than in arguing politics.
McIntire had told the press he expected “many more than the hippies had” at the April 24 war protest, which drew about 200,000. But despite weeks of passionate appeals to the readers of his 135,000-circulation Christian Beacon and to listeners of his daily broadcasts over more than one hundred stations, relatively few showed up. Police estimated 14,000. CHRISTIANITY TODAY, however, counted only 5,200 marchers—slightly higher than a Washington Post body count—plus several hundred who went directly to the rally location.
Fewer than two dozen Shelton College students were in the march, lending credence to press reports of the student body’s growing disenchantment with Shelton’s president. (Reliable sources say that only 10 per cent of the school’s faculty and students plan to be around when the school reopens in the fall at McIntire’s Florida headquarters. See May 7 issue, page 36.)
Rinus What’S-His-Name
Israel doesn’t exist, according to the Arab countries. One consequence of these political blinders is that Israel doesn’t appear on a map of the Near East used in Arabic schools. Rivers suddenly stop, streets end—and the void begins.
Dutch theologian H. Mulder at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut discovered some other side-effects of the non-Israel mentality. He failed to receive a certain issue of a Dutch theological monthly. The Lebanon post-office had rejected it, he later learned, because it was devoted to Israel.
The observing professor chuckled over still another find: the caption under a picture of the Dutch soccer team Feyenoord, which won the world cup last year. All players were fully listed except one, Rinus Israel, a full-blooded Amsterdammer.
He was simply “Mr. Rinus.”
JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN
Some marchers had mixed feelings. One member of the Miami-based “Agape” singing group said: “I dig Jesus, man, not this politics trip. Sure, I want us to win in Viet Nam, but right now it’s more important for us to turn this country to God.” Several young marchers discarded “Peace by Victory” placards and joined an ancient man with a long beard in a sort of counterprotest near the speaker’s platform. The man held up a huge sign that quoted: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord,” and “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.”
McIntire meanwhile appealed to President Nixon to “wield the sword” to win the war and put down Communism in Southeast Asia. Among those addressing the crowd were congressmen John Rarick (D.-La.), a Liberty Lobbyist, and John Schmitz (R.-Calif.), a Birchite. Telephone calls of support from Alabama governor George Wallace and Georgia lieutenant governor Lester Maddox were channeled through the loudspeakers, but a call from South Vietnamese vice-president Nguyen Cao Ky didn’t get through. The State Department allegedly prevented Ky from addressing a similar rally last October.
The event ended ingloriously as McIntire delivered a stinging rebuke of Nixon’s military withdrawal policies. The heavens opened in a drenching downpour, driving most of the crowd out of earshot.
In another development, McIntire asked the American Council of Christian Churches to settle its suit against him out of court. He offered to leave the ACCC alone in exchange for the title to the ACCC’s International Christian Relief Commission, a major source of funds for McIntire projects (see May 7 issue, page 36). An informant said the ACCC will accept.
EDWARD E. PLOWMAN
New Bible Versions Break Language Barriers
Now the French have their own “today’s version” of the New Testament. The first copies were handed out on April 27 to an illustrious company of French professors and Paris preachers.
This already seems to have become the year of popular Bible translations. The immensely popular Today’s English Version, Good News for Modern Man (28 million copies have been sold worldwide), went into its third printing in an improved text this month.
The Spanish version, a revision of the Latin American Popular Version that sold more than two million copies, went to press in Madrid. And the same type of translation was published in Germany.
The Paris ceremony, sponsored by the French Bible Society, was held in the Grand Palais. A splendid exhibition of Yugoslav art included some of the most beautiful handwritten illustrated Bibles from the eleventh century. VIPs on hand included seven speakers and some Americans: George Clark, publisher of the French edition of Decision magazine; Laton Holmgren, American Bible Society general secretary; David Barnes, director of the European Bible Institute; and George Winston of the new Evangelical Seminary of Vaux.
Speaker François Refoule, a Roman Catholic priest, said: “First, the Bible societies broke through the financial barrier by producing Bibles everybody could pay for. Then they broke through the language barrier by translating the Bible into hundreds of languages. And now they are breaking through the cultural barrier by producing Bibles in the language of the common man.”
The first reaction to this translation was rather good. But some in Bible society circles agreed the book will be far more important for Africa than for Europe. In Africa there already are at least three times as many French-speaking Protestants as in Europe. Most of them have difficulty with the French of the Louis II-period translation. Some Bible societies in Europe contemplate fund drives for a concerted push of this new version in Africa.
The new book costs just over a dollar in France, Switzerland, and Belgium. Bible societies plan to subsidize half the cost in Africa.
Meanwhile, two new Bible translations, approved for both Protestants and Catholics, have gone to press for the people of Thailand, Religious News Service reported. Publication of the Old Testament in Thai completes a translation project started in 1954. The New Testament was issued in 1967. The new versions of the two testaments are the first complete revision of the Scripture in the native language since 1896.
A Popular Version of the New Testament—comparable to the English Good News for Modern Man—has also been completed for early printing and distribution. The translations were initiated by the Thailand Bible House; Catholics joined the project in 1967.
A motivating factor for the Popular Version is to make the New Testament more easily understood by the Buddhist population of Thailand, said to be 97 per cent of the country’s total. The American Bible Society sparked the idea; translation work has been coordinated by the United Bible Societies.
JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN
Missionary Mandate At Home And Abroad
The world must now pay the price of man’s “importunate sacrifices at the grisly altar of Mammon,” says a report presented last month to the Assembly of Evangelicals in London. Commissioned by the Evangelical Alliance in 1968, the 173 pages of findings stoutly face up to crucial issues in a world overflowing, inequitable, urban, revolutionary, and post-colonial (“only the Portuguese and … Russian empires remain”).
The report’s references to race, which it describes as the “accidental” factor, are surprisingly brief. But the assembly resolved later that another commission should promptly tackle that problem.
While the report expresses fear that “the uniqueness of the gospel and its redemptive emphasis may be diluted in pursuit of numerical strength,” it also warns evangelical separatists that “pettiness and bigotry, caused often through disagreements on points of minor doctrinal importance, have made a strange caricature of the Body of Christ.” Other criticisms: Western prejudice has often been exported with missionaries. An Indian complained that his people were now divided into denominations instead of tribes. Many Rhodesian students were convinced that Christianity was a white man’s invention to ensure the perpetual thralldom of Africans. Not bosses but fellow workers were needed in the younger churches.
The report cites also the problem posed when some governments (it gave Indonesia as an example) deal only with WCC-related groups in negotiating the entry of Christian workers.
In presenting the report, commission chairman Morgan Derham said he hoped it would provide a better appreciation of the great size and complexity of the missionary task. Anyone who reads it will agree that it does.
The assembly also welcomed a thorough and thoughtful 126-page report on evangelical strategy in the new towns, into which more than half a million people have gone in the past twenty-five years.
The permissive society was faithfully—if startlingly—thumped by the young headmaster of a girls’ school. If present trends continue, he said, by the time his own three small daughters are between thirteen and eighteen he might expect one to be on mainline drugs, one to have an abortion, and the other to have venereal disease. The assembly agreed that a commission should examine how best to present Christian standards and guidance to schools and parents.
The assembly’s much depleted numbers reflect the withdrawal of more rigid free churchmen (now associated with the British Evangelical Council) and the not unrelated waning of interest among prominent Anglican evangelicals. As one delegate obliquely hinted during the major debate, there is still a tidy work of reconciliation to be done at home.
J. D. DOUGLAS
Testing Tongues
A scientific study of glossolalia concludes that utterances of people tested did not have the characteristics regarded as essential to human language. And in a tape experiment, tongues-speakers were found to disagree on the meaning of what the others said.
The federally financed study showed no appreciable gap between the mental health of active devout churchgoers who speak in tongues and those who don’t. The most significant variable was described as the tendency of tongues-speakers “to be more submissive, suggestible, and dependent in the presence of authority figures.”1In somewhat of a contrasting finding, the researchers “noted the lack of modesty that was often present in the people who practiced glossolalia.” They were also said to “feel better about themselves” than non-glossolalists. A report on the study added, however, that “it is generally not the speaking in tongues that brings the great feelings of euphoria that these people experience; rather, it is the submission to the authority of the leader.”
A forty-eight-page typewritten summary of the study findings was released. A more detailed analysis will appear in a forthcoming book.
The research project was initiated in 1965 at the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, by Dr. John P. Kildahl and Dr. Paul A. Qualben. Kildahl is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who directs the pastoral psychology program at New York Theological Seminary. Qualben is a psychiatrist. Both are also Lutheran ministers.
The study was of limited scope and relied almost entirely on empirical data. No attempt was apparently made to assess sociological impacts of tongues-speaking or to weigh theological factors.
Money for the research was provided by the Behavioral Sciences Research Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. The findings were based largely upon tests and interviews conducted with twenty-six people who spoke in tongues and thirteen who did not. All belonged to “mainline Protestant congregations,” not Pentecostal churches.
Linguist William Samarin, a former Hartford Seminary Foundation professor, helped in the inquiry (see November 24, 1967, issue, page 39). He stated that where certain prominent tongues-speakers had visited, whole groups of glossolalists would speak in his style of speech. “So again,” the report declared, “the leader was important not only in inducement of the experience, but also in the way in which it was carried out.”
The report added that several persons who had stopped speaking in tongues were inadvertently interviewed in the study and it was found “that the crucial factor in stopping the practice was a ‘falling out’ with the authority figure who had introduced them to glossolalia.”
The researchers stated flatly that the ability to yield ego control in the presence of the authority figure is indispensable to speaking in tongues, and that this ability is the same general trait found in people who can be hypnotized.
The report listed features that linguistic experts say characterize human language and argued that recordings of people speaking in tongues did not display enough of these features to warrant the conclusion that the utterances were any kind of human language, known or unknown, living or dead. They said the utterances did possess “phonological structure” and tongues-speakers were observed talking “fluently.”
The report said “there was no similarity in the interpretation of the various ‘interpreters.’ One interpreter said the tongues-speaker was praying for the health of his children; another interpreter would report the same speech to be an expression of gratitude to God for a recently successful church fund-raising effort. The most common interpretations were general statements that the speaker was thanking and praising God for many blessings.”
DAVID E. KUCHARSKY
British Union In Sight
A merger between the Congregational Union of England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England seemed probable after the annual assemblies voted on the issue last month. With each body requiring a 75 per cent majority in favor, the Congregationalists achieved 89, the Presbyterians 79.
The scheme must now be ratified at congregational level. The projected new body, to be named the United Reformed Church, will have a membership of just under 250,000.
Catholic Editor Fired
Robert G. Hoyt, Catholic layman and founder of the controversial National Catholic Reporter, has been fired as editor of that magazine. The action came on the heels of a drawn-out conflict between him and the Reporter’s publication board.
The magazine has long engendered criticism for its outspokenness on matters of Catholic dogma and organization. Designed “to serve a new generation of Catholics”—to use the founder’s words—the Reporter provided a forum for those in favor of abortion, birth control, a redefinition of papal authority, a married priesthood, and even neo-pentecostalism. “All our basic beliefs have been questioned,” lamented publisher Donald J. Thorman. He said he has not decided whether to seek a new editor.
Only five years after the Reporter was founded, circulation rose to a peak of 95,000. In 1971, two years later, it had dropped to 50,000. To make matters worse, Hoyt, 49, along with seventy-five other church figures, was arrested a month ago during an anti-war demonstration near the White House. Some observers think that incident prompted Hoyt’s firing.
“They wanted me to resign presumably to avoid unpleasantness and let me save face. But I chose to be fired because a resignation would not have reflected my real feelings,” Hoyt explained.
Frank Brennan, president of the publishing board, said the board “wanted to improve declining circulation by bringing back many of those who have left us and who have a strong commitment to the church.”
JAMES S. TINNEY
Self-Help For Kohos
A unique vocational-training center for the Koho-speaking Montagnards was dedicated last month just outside Dalat, Viet Nam. The tribesmen previously have had to rely on the Vietnamese for skilled labor.
A large industrial-arts building to handle 200 students is completed. Carpentry, mechanics, metal, sewing, and home-economics skills are taught, and courses in barbering, shoe repair, tailoring, and storekeeping will be added soon. Four dorms are expected to be finished this year.
A prime goal of the center is to improve the economic and domestic life of the Koho community. The project has been sponsored jointly by the National Church of Viet Nam, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and the National Association of Evangelicals’ World Relief Commission. Planners hope that within three years the final stage will be achieved: self-support through employee production of goods and services.
DAVID F. HARTZFELD
Vice Has Grip On Market
In a period when many industries have suffered declining profits, cigarettes and beer remain two of the most profitable products for companies to make.
Profits after taxes for the eight largest cigarette and cigar manufacturers amounted to a 14.2 per cent return on stockholders’ invested capital in 1969, the Federal Trade Commission said, compared with 13.9 per cent the year before. After-tax profits of the twelve largest brewing companies were 12.8 per cent in 1969 compared with 12.5 per cent in 1968.
Manufacture of distilled liquor is not quite so profitable because of the large stocks of aging whiskey carried in inventory, but profits of the twelve largest distilleries increased to 7.9 per cent on invested capital in 1969 compared with 7.6 per cent in 1968.
Drug and medicine manufacture remained by far the most profitable industry in America with after-tax profits of 19.9 per cent in 1969, an increase of .4 per cent from 1968. Ranking behind it were office machines, air conditioners and pumps, and cigarettes.
GLENN EVERETT
Religion In Transit
Major parochaid bills have been defeated and can be considered dead this year in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, and Michigan, according to Americans United. Parochaid has passed in Maryland and Georgia (tuition vouchers), Vermont (parochial-school aid by local school districts), and Minnesota (state income-tax rebates and tuition grants). Still pending at mid-month were Illinois, New York, Texas, Wisconsin, Delaware, California, and Oklahoma.
An estimated $6 million was collected by tens of thousands of young people in 160 cities who walked hundreds of thousands of miles on the May 8–9 weekend to raise funds to combat hunger and help the poor. American Lutheran clergyman David Brown, who heads the sponsoring American Freedom From Hunger Foundation, said church youth groups played a key role.
As a result of a suit against alleged compulsory attendance at chapel services in U. S. military academies, the Air Force Academy has issued a new ruling permitting all cadets to attend churches of their choice instead of chapel. Annapolis middies have an additional option: attend a study group on ethics or morals taught by staff.
The Cesar Chavez-run United Farm Workers Organizing Committee received about $81,000 of $586,000 in grants from the U. S. Roman Catholic Church’s Campaign for Human Development launched last November.
The National Office of Black Catholics—which said last November it wouldn’t take “one penny” of $150,000 offered by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (the NOBC had asked $659,000) accepted the money after all last month.
The United Methodist Church will have made available $35 million between 1968 and the end of 1971 for minority group empowerment and self-determination.
The evangelical United Methodist group, Forum for Scriptural Christianity, has appealed through three theologically conservative spokesmen to the denominational curriculum planners for more educational material for “Wesleyan evangelicals.”
Planners of the All-Mennonite Consultation on Evangelism, Probe ’72, slated for next spring, are having to rethink their site selection. Some of the brethren who embrace simple life styles have objected to the plush quarters of Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel, one of the city’s few hostelries with hall facilities for 2,000 people.
To show concern for peace and reconciliation, students from Eastern Mennonite College and high school in Harrisonburg, Virginia, trekked to Washington, D. C., for a weekend to clean up the Mayday encampment site of antiwar radicals in West Potomac Park.
Berkeley (California) Free Church pastor Dick York announced that “an intimidating group of motorcycle toughs with a penchant for fistfights” had forced the hippie church to close down, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Number Three, by Ken Anderson Films, was named the best movie of the year by the National Evangelical Film Foundation of Glenside, Pennsylvania. For the first time the foundation gave a “Christian Oscar Award” to a Catholic group: the Medical Mission Sisters for their folk album called “Seasons.”
Personalia
National Religious Broadcasters president Eugene R. Bertermann has been named executive director of the Far East Broadcasting Company and is stationed at the organization’s Whittier, California, headquarters.
Evangelical editor and freelance writer Phil Landrum of Carol Stream, Illinois, has been chosen the new editor of the Christian Teacher, a periodical associated with the National Association of Christian Schools.
Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R.-Ore.) was scheduled to be the main speaker at this month’s graduation ceremonies at Princeton Seminary.
Former BBC journalist Derek Tipler has bought a second-hand caravan and joined a band of gypsy musicians, and says he’s going to spend the rest of his life on the road translating the Bible into the gypsy language Romanes. Tipler, 41, a Welshman of gypsy descent, speaks four languages in addition to several dialects of Romanes and knows Hebrew and Greek.
The Reverend Tom Harpur, professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, a well-known seminary of the Anglican Church in Canada, has resigned to become religion editor of the Toronto Daily Star.
Dr. David L. Stitt, president of Austin (Presbyterian) Seminary in Texas since 1945, has resigned to become associate pastor of Houston’s First Presbyterian Church, second largest in the Southern Presbyterian denomination.
Episcopalians of Washington, D. C., elected the black canon of Washington Cathedral as their suffragan bishop last month. John T. Walker, 50, is the third bishop of his race now serving a domestic Episcopal diocese.
The thickset, bearded United Church of Christ clergyman who is paid to organize Marxist-Christian dialogue on the Stanford University campus may lose his job. The United Ministry in Higher Education, a Protestant combine in northern California that funds Joseph Hardegree, 35, is recommending a $7,000 amputation for Stanford’s United Campus Christian Ministry next year.
World Scene
Jewish evangelist Morris Cerullo will lead a four-day evangelistic crusade in Pusan this August; half a million Koreans are expected.
The Christian Democrats, Chile’s largest political party, have declared qualified support of President Salvatore Allende’s Socialist government “in everything that contributes to the national interest.” Eighty Catholic priests there also pledged support for Allende. Meanwhile, Religious News Service reported indications of “an upswing in ecumenism throughout Chile.”
In an apostolic letter issued last month Pope Paul VI called on Christians to become actively involved in social and political problems. He urged that Christian ideals be applied in tackling them. Urbanization is one of the worst modern problems, he said.
A shock report on drug abuse in Ireland reveals that drug addiction has increased eightfold in an eighteen-month period.
