The Urgency Of Doing Justice
Marxism and Radical Religion: Essays Toward a Revolutionary Humanism, edited by John C. Raines and Thomas Dean (Temple University, 1970, 176 pp., $8.50), The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact, by W. Fred Graham (John Knox, 1971, 254 pp., $7.95), and Reformation or Revolution: A Study of Modern Society in the Light of Reformational and Scriptural Pluralism, by E. L. Hebden Taylor (Craig, 1970, 632 pp., $12.50), are reviewed by C. T. McIntire, assistant professor of history, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Ontario.
We are coming to realize, slowly, that “the Christian life” involves more than personal piety and belief, manifested in devotions, church attendance, and evangelism. The questions are pressing: Doesn’t our “life” include everything we do? Isn’t our commitment to Christ supposed to shape everything we do? What, then, is the inner relation of Christian faith to our life in the social order?
The three books here reviewed offer some answers. Strikingly, all three reject individualism; they also reject Marxist-Leninism. They all insist that one’s view of man will shape his perception of the social order and his task in it. All quite clearly urge acting on the principles discussed and not merely appreciating them intellectually.
Marxism and Radical Religion differs from the other two on the key point, however. As its subtitle suggests, revolutionary humanism, rather than biblical Christianity, is its hope. The volume is a collection of eight essays, each by a different author, presented during a two-day conference on “Marxism, Religion, and the Liberal Tradition” held at Temple University in 1969. The authors make up a Who’s Who of the noteworthy spokesmen for new directions in Marxism and in ecumenical Christianity: Herbert Marcuse, leading neo-Marxist philosopher; Jan M. Lochman, successor to Josef L. Hromadka among Czechoslovakian Christian supporters of the Communist revolution there in 1948; Richard Shaull, prominent Christian revolutionary who is on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary; John C. Bennett, the dean of Christian liberalism; Paul M. Van Buren, well known for his work on “secular theology.”
Marcuse’s contribution, the lead essay, is sketchy but suggestive, and sets up the categories for much of what follows. Both the liberal democratic tradition of the Western world and the Marxist-Leninist tradition of Communism, he argues, have resulted in rigid establishments that today impede the achievement of an authentically liberated man in a liberated society. Nearly all the other authors agree, especially Lochman and Shaull.
For Marcuse, and the others, the earnest search is on for the key to something really new. The truly free society, writes Marcuse, “can never be a mere by-product of new institutions and relationships, no matter how basic.” It can be achieved only through “a new type of man, a different type of human being, with new needs, capable of finding a qualitatively different way of life, and of constructing a qualitatively different environment.” All the contributors who speak to this issue agree.
The new kind of man is best portrayed, Marcuse believes, in the early writings of Marx, especially The Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, antedating the rigid scientism of Das Capital. He is the “all-around individual” who “fulfills the potentialities of the human species” with his “mental faculties” and “his senses, in his sensibility and sensitivity,” who is “physiologically incapable of tolerating an ugly, noisy, and polluted universe.”
That early Marx is the definitive revelation is argued by John C. Raines, an editor of the volume, in his essay “From Passive to Active man.” Early Marx, says Raines, was the first one to free man totally from the notion Raines mistakenly finds common to paganism and Christianity, that man is “a passive imitator of some higher transcendent order or orderer.” On the contrary, for Marx, man creates himself, man is active toward himself and nature, man holds the human world as his own responsibility and risk.
The whole matter is summarized by a pungent quotation from Marx in the front of the book: “To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself.” Therein lies the key to the subtitle, revolutionary humanism, as well as to the major disappointment of the book.
The curious thing about the volume, a kind of Marxist-Christian dialogue, is that the initiative in supplying the critique of society’s ills as well as the solution emanates from secularly spirited sources. The confessionally Christian writers seem to do with revolutionary humanism what Shaull laments Christians have done for the last century. The church follows after and provides a “sacral validation” for the way opened by secular thinkers. Thereby Christianity discredits itself as an original transforming power.
The concluding essays by Van Buren and Thomas Dean, the co-editor, underscore the problem further. Van Buren testifies that he is one of those who are partially alienated from the Christian tradition. Judged by the criterion of man, he affirms, Christianity has a bad record, especially on the point of making man subservient to God. He, apparently, is one of those nurtured in Christianity who no longer believe there is a God who acts in the world now or has acted in the past. Van Buren “wants to affirm man and not God.” The secular humanist self-awareness underlying radical movements bent on changing our society will increasingly be shared by Christians of Van Buren’s sensitivity.
To this point, especially, Dean responds that Van Buren’s is the best qualified “theology” to dialogue with Marxist humanism, but clearly “the dependent rather than the creative partner.” Dean concludes that Christians who seek their nourishment for the transformation of society from secular sources, including Marx, are of little original help. What is needed, he believes, is to get beyond thinking that is “theistic” or “antitheistic” and “clear the ground for a new secular faith for this post-religious world” in which we find ourselves in the twentieth century.
The two other volumes propose a fundamental alternative to the first: rather than settle Christianity in with revolutionary humanism inspired by young Marx, and thereby both emasculate Christianity and evangelize for a secular faith, W. Fred Graham and E. L. Hebden Taylor urge that Christians and non-Christians alike find the hope they seek in a recovery of the biblical message of man as the image-bearer of God, transformingly remade in Christ.
Both authors would agree with Marcuse that a new type of man is needed who can shape a qualitatively different way of life in the social order. That man, in Taylor’s vision, is one of the new people of God, the ecclesia, who are the new mankind, already, because of Christ, experiencing healing, the wholeness of life, in a world pained by brokenness. Revolutionary humanism, he would argue, is a secular reflection of the new man in Christ, but without the transforming power of God, and hence illusory, a dead end.
Graham and Taylor complement each other very nicely. The Constructive Revolutionary is mainly historical, examining John Calvin’s social and economic thought and practice in sixteenth-century Geneva. Taylor’s work, with its misleading title, is Christian social and economic philosophy, drawing largely upon the Calvinist tradition, especially the new Calvinist movement in the Netherlands and elsewhere associated with Abraham Kuyper and his successor in philosophy Herman Dooyeweerd. Both books are not simply academic treatments but calls to a change of ways among Christians.
Graham, an associate professor of religion at Michigan State University, presents a revisionist study arguing that Calvin should not be treated simply as theologian, or worse, as the propagator of some austere doctrine of depravity and one who somehow had a hand in burning Servetus. Graham, whose education includes studies in theology and a doctorate in history, ranges through voluminous sources, especially Calvin’s sermons and commentaries and Genevan archives. He examines a wide range of Genevan social issues and institutions, including refugee treatment, the cost of living, working conditions and wages, labor relations, hospitals, schools, family life, the state and the churches.
The emerging picture is quite unlike the old stereotype of Calvin’s Geneva as a rigid moralistic theocracy. Instead Graham shows us a man and a historical movement that sought to implement the Gospel of Christ in every dimension of Genevan life. Calvin in no way limited the Christian dynamic to church and inner personal life. For him, Christian faith was to transform a whole way of life in society. The question, Does the Gospel relate to the social order?, never arose; the Calvinists simply tried to live out Christian social principles naturally.
According to Graham, Calvin was animated by a constant concern that “what one does must be of benefit to the whole church and the community of mankind.” Men, whether officials in government, owners of goods, masters in business, teachers in school, fathers in the family, were never to take their authority as absolute; it was always to be restrained and limited under the Master, who is Christ. All things were God’s, held in trust by men to use for the common good and the glory of God. The state should be judged by whether it does justice, especially toward those in real need—the poor, the weak, the afflicted. Writes Graham, “For Calvin it was the treatment of the weak in society that really determined the value of a political regime.” In all things the rule of love, of mutual care and cooperation, is to govern.
Graham is critical of Calvin on many counts, especially his Christology, but argues that his failings should be judged in the context of the sixteenth century, and of his overriding concern to practice love of neighbor and justice.
In a disarming passage, Graham remarks that he “would insist that Calvin’s social and economic teachings were clearly just as important to Calvin himself, and might just as well be used as the yardstick of Calvinist orthodoxy.”
Taylor’s tour de force measures up to that yardstick quite well. Taylor, an Anglican with a master’s from Cambridge University, produces a study unusual among evangelicals in the English-speaking world. He wants the new people of God to minister, in Christ’s name, the healing power of the Gospel to social and economic brokenness. Such healing, or shalom, he maintains, is integral to the full meaning of redemption.
Take the problem of the degradation of work (chapters 2, 10). Secularism has rendered work a “job” or a “function” or a “statistic.” Both Adam Smith and Marx reduced man to his economic life. The rule of technique and pragmatism atomized and depersonalized the factory. Christian socio-economic action, by business executives, labor officials, consumers, could minister healing by restoring meaning to work as vocation, the calling by which men serve God and their fellow men in the production and distribution of goods from the wealth of the earth.
Taylor does not limit the relevance of the Gospel to the “moral” aspects of the social order; rather he addresses the Good News to issues intrinsic to the central and characterizing matters of social and economic life: the nature of business enterprise, relations between management and labor, wage determination, working conditions, automation and mechanization, labor unions, the state’s relation to industry, the nature of property, the place of profits, and much more. He rejects the contention that Christianity should add something to the already secularly formed social matters; instead he insists that, in biblical perspective, there are no independent aspects of life that may be considered a priori secular. There is only social life informed by the Christian message of shalom or by some other religious dynamic, be it a secular humanist faith such as that called for by Thomas Dean or something else.
In this sense, Taylor can conclude that, aware of our sin, “as Christ’s Body in the world we are to struggle for nothing less than the redemption and reformation of society as a whole.”
The heart of Taylor’s Christian social philosophy is his exposition of “societal pluralism.” This, he posits, is a Protestant Christian principle. In lengthy, somewhat uneven chapters, he contrasts this principle critically with Communist collectivism, which makes the state omnicompetent; with liberal democratic individualism, which atomizes society into individual particles; and with Roman Catholic subsidiarity, with which he has some sympathy, but which he believes subsumes the social order under the dogmatic and moral teachings of the church institution. Taylor’s perspective does not fit the usual conservative-liberal spectrum of American social and political thinking.
“Societal pluralism” receives each social relationship as distinct from, yet interdependent and coordinate with, all others. Family, marriage, state, church, industry, social clubs, art associations—each has its own characterizing norms, he argues, rooted in the creation order. Men never create de novo any social relationship; rather, they give cultural shape, out of their religious dynamic, to creationally given norms that define one social structure from another. For example, Taylor shows, there are various kinds of states today—liberal democratic, Roman Catholic, Communist, Islamic—yet all are in the societal category of states and not of families, or social clubs. In the idea of societal pluralism, whatever we may think of some of his many particular suggestions on implementing it, Taylor offers a significant insight that a few other political theorists—Robert A. Nisbet, Robert A. Dahl, Jacques Ellul, Bernard Zylstra—have recently discussed.
The import of Taylor’s exposition is that Christians, not simply as single persons but as the community of the saints, are mandated to do the good works of the Gospel within the variety of institutions of the social order.
This seems markedly superior to the concrete proposals that appear in Marxism and Radical Religion: Richard Shaull’s small, withdrawing, and undifferentiated “paradigmatic communities,” John C. Bennett’s relatively ordinary notion of reform in liberal democracy, and Lochman’s defense of the assumptions of a socialist society.
There’s heady reading in these three volumes, but biblically enlivened Christians must get to it, discerning the spirits. It should impel us to change our ways when those who look to revolutionary humanism for the new type of man have seen so little evidence of Christ’s transforming redemption in the way Christians have lived in the social order. These books, especially those by Graham and Taylor, can help us get on with the task in society of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.
Black Churchmen Speak Out
Quest for a Black Theology, edited by James J. Gardiner and J. Deotis Roberts, Sr. (Pilgrim, 1971, 111 pp., $5.95), Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology, by J. Deotis Roberts (Westminster, 1971, 205 pp., paperback, $3.50), The Jesus Bag, by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs (McGraw Hill, 1971. 295 pp., $6.95), Marriage in Black and White, by Joseph R. Washington, Jr. (Beacon, 1970. 358 pp., $7.50), and For Blacks Only: Black Strategies for Change in America, by Sterling Tucker (Eerdmans, 1971, 211 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by James S. Tinney, who teaches black studies at a high school in Kansas City, Missouri.
Although all these books were written by black Americans, most of whom are churchmen, they have different aims and viewpoints.
The first two books add to the growing literature in black theology. Quest for a Black Theology represents a very wide cross section of churchmen. Twc of them, Preston N. Williams and Joseph A. Johnson, Jr., are co-chairmen of the Theological Commission of the National Committee of Black Churchmen. They rely so heavily on formal statements of their group—as well as on run-of-the-mill exposition of theological liberalism—that one would probably do better to read these committee documents instead. No new insights are put forth.
Somewhat in contrast, in another article in this collection Albert B. Cleage gives a compact summary of his book The Black Messiah; this excellent statement of his “religion of Black Power” contains all the meat of the book, minus its redundancy.
The main contribution of Quest for a Black Theology, however, is the essay by Walter L. Yates, a black professor at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. Perhaps because this is his first appearance in book print, he inundates the reader with a wide assortment of facts relating the history of Christianity in Africa to the current Afro-American religious scene. Of particular interest is his explanation for Christianity’s demise in Africa (“the false identification of Christianity with the purpose of empire”) despite early and widespread success.
The second book, Roberts’s Liberation and Reconciliation, tries to offer a “black theology” but degenerates into a tirade against other black theologians, particularly Cleage and Cone, and fails to develop a positive theology of its own. Roberts is, however, the first of the old-line civil-rights generation to attempt to relate to the new scene of blackness, at least among non-evangelical theologians. But he falls back to older, less controversial positions in the end anyway (witness his opposition to both segregation and nationalism, whether imposed or voluntary, and his idolization of King—a figure he is psychologically unable to move beyond).
The third book, Grier and Cobbs’ The Jesus Bag, fall into the category of black psychology, the newest discipline in black studies. It is not as impressive as the same authors’ previous volume, Black Rage. The Jesus Bag is too general and offers no startling conclusions in social psychiatry (both authors are black psychiatrists). A third of its pages are taken up with an unannotated bibliography. Furthermore, the title is deceptive: only one chapter deals with religion per se.
The two final volumes are well worth reading. Washington’s Marriage in Black and White considers black folk religion (it reverses the disdainful view of folk Christianity he expressed in a previous book, Black Religion), black consciousness, and interracial marriage. Washington summons the aid of social scientists, historians, and theologians and also draws upon denominational statements and folklore to give the reader an exhaustive treatment of the subject. Without dismissing reasoned opposition to black-white marriages (“the term ‘intermarriage’ is negatively loaded,” he says), he makes a strong case for such marriages. What he says gives credence to the view of certain other black writers—James Baldwin and Eldridge Cleaver, for example—that white fears of sexual relations between their women and black men is the root cause of racism.
Far and away the best of the quintet is the final volume, For Blacks Only, by Sterling Tucker, executive director of the Washington, D. C., Urban League. Despite its title, it is must reading for whites as well as blacks, for it is the most realistic, practical, and reasoned exposition of the black revolution to date. It is hard to find another book that includes a black approach to the youth movement, women’s liberation, the ecological movement, educational reform, and political objectives. Tucker competently weaves a strategy that involves all these and more. No simplistic answers are offered.
No one else has so aptly defined “responsible militant.” Whites will be relieved at a few of Tucker’s suggestions, but angered by his reasons for them; black revolutionists will like his tentative approval of a programmed violence-of-sorts but will sulk at his appraisal of radical rhetoric and sneer at his suave style. Although it makes no specific mention of religion, this book is probably more Christian than any other social appraisal yet published.
Most of these books touch, at least indirectly, on certain concerns now prominent among both races and of particular interest to the evangelical—the psychological aspects of the black experience, sexual-marital implications, violence, and black theology in the black church.
Grier and Cobbs join the increasing number of professionals who distrust intelligence tests as reliable measurements of young black minds. “The capacity of young black children to learn suffers because they are so occupied with the demands of survival,” say these authors. They also decry the fact that most psychological illnesses of blacks are attributed to poverty rather than to more personal factors. Tucker goes further. “We do not steal because we are poor,” he says, and to accept this kind of non-responsibility for actions “is an erosion of our dignity.”
Both books also see black rage as “appropriate, life-preserving and sustaining,” to use Grier and Cobbs’s words. “It is psychological dishonesty to tell the Negro he should love white people,” Bayard Rustin once said; Tucker explores this idea thoroughly, adding a corollary dimension: “We don’t need to love him and we don’t need to hate him either. He who hates is as dependent on his object as he who loves. What is needed is detachment.”
Interestingly, Tucker also discusses the psychological motivations of many whites who work on the black scene. Not able to identify fully with blacks, they are “more interested in a gratifying emotional and dramatic involvement.” They need to feel the pain of being black as well as the guilt of being white. For this reason, more whites were active in the emotional confrontations of the early civil-rights movement than now. But, he adds, “whites can serve black interests, and in many cases they are psychologically freer to do so than black leaders.”
Roberts fails to “find a healthy reason for interracial marriage,” noting that society rejects both the couple and their children. But Washington counters that black and white marrieds are “healthy people in a sick society.” What he desires is not a loss of racial identity through mass intermarriages but a change in the way society views such unions.
That the other authors of these books and essays pass over the issue of black and white marriages could suggest the importance blacks in general give to the matter. Or perhaps they are simply more interested in goals and problems nearer at hand. But Washington feels that “if we could be honest in regard to marriage in Black and White, the other problems between Blacks and Whites would fall into place.”
What should be the response of blacks to violence, whether subtle or overt, suffered at the hands of whites? Roberts says that non-violence on the part of blacks is not a theological necessity but “may be justified if programmed and measured.” Tucker cannot condone violence; “yet in the end,” he says, “blacks cannot fight according to the rules because they are designed for whites to win.” And Cleage says that “turn the other cheek” applies only to situations within the brotherhood, that is, to blacks dealing with other blacks.
All this mirrors a pacing change in attitudes among black church leaders regarding violence. Even the more moderate Roberts and Tucker have traveled far down the road from non-resistance. Only Grier and Cobbs, who might be expected to approve violence as a legitimate form of “black rage,” speak cautiously regarding force; passivity, they say, is a form of rebellion in itself, with the goal survival.
The status of Jews among these writers bears special mention, since some persons have raised the issue of anti-Semitism among blacks. Certainly, few besides Cleage identify Afro-Americans as Jews. But Grier and Cobbs are definitely pro-Jewish. They accuse all (including some blacks) who oppose a contemporary black-Jew coalition of having the same motives as “Wallaceites.” Only Washington castigates the Jews (they especially are opposed to inter-marriages of all kinds); yet even he admits that Jews are involved in a large proportion of black-white marriages.
Roberts rejects Cleage as a Christian theologian and asserts that whites “should not repent for worshipping Christ in their own image.” Yates also disagrees with Cleage’s practice of using the Old Testament as a basis for black theology: it “gave the New England settlers the concepts of their being the chosen people … the God of warfare … and sanction for seizing land from the Indians to make room for the New Israel.”
All in all, these authors make a heavy case for uniting the Church and the black revolution, while admitting that theology may need to be restructured in the process. In most cases, however, it is their own previous theologies that are up for remodeling.
From A Lacerated Heart
Jesus and Israel, by Jules Isaac (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, 405 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
First published in 1948, Jesus and Israel is a passionate and moving plea for “the necessary correction of Christian teaching on the Jews.” Jules Isaac, an eminent French historian, began this book in 1943 while hiding from the Germans. As he was writing it his wife and daughter were killed by the Nazis, “killed simply because their name was Isaac.” As the author himself describes his book, “it is the cry of an outraged conscience, of a lacerated heart.” Passionate though it may be, the work is entirely free of rancor.
In dealing with the New Testament texts that have been used to damn the Jews as deicides, Isaac proposes no hypotheses about what the texts should have said but argues with cogency for the explicit recognition of the Jewish background of Jesus and the early discples—especially in the teaching of children. (Until its revision in 1967, a Catholic catechism that has been used in France since 1939 nowhere stated explicitly that Jesus and his disciples were Jews.)
As Isaac points out, the word Jews occurs only half a dozen times in each of the Synoptic Gospels, but seventy-one times in John. Since in John the term is often used of Jesus’ enemies, without any further qualification, readers are in danger of generalizing the notion that all “the Jews” were opposed to Jesus. Isaac argues that even the total acceptance of the New Testament tradition as it stands “does not give anyone the right to conclude that Israel is guilty of the crime, that the Jewish people are fully responsible for it, nor to state it on every occasion to the Christian people, nor to teach it to children in the catechism.”
Isaac originally drew upon French Catholic sources for most of his examples of offensive generalizations in which “the Jews” are presented as the murderers of Christ. This new English translation includes a few examples of defamatory statements about the Jews taken from American publications.
Isaac’s book made a great impact upon European Catholics. Until 1959 the Catholic liturgy contained a prayer, “Let us also pray for the perfidious Jews.” In 1965 the Vatican Council belatedly declared:. “Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”
At the end of the book Isaac lists eighteen practical suggestions for how Christians can guard against teaching the New Testament in such a way that they unwittingly foster anti-Semitism. This is a book that should have been translated into English earlier. Now that it is available it should be read by pastors, by Christian teachers, and especially by those who write Sunday-school materials.
Newly Published
Conflict and Conscience, by Mark O. Hatfield (Word, 172 pp., $4.95). Collection of speeches and writings of an evangelical whose vocation requires him constantly to relate his faith to the social issues of our time.
The Puritan Hope: A Study in Renewal and the Interpretation of Prophecy, by Jain H. Murray (Puritan, 301 pp., $4.50). A significant study of the eschatology of those Puritans who expected many revivals before Christ came to usher in the eternal state. Includes the biblical bases and practical results of this view, with laments on its eclipse.
Does the Bible Really Work?, by David A. Hubbard (Word, 75 pp., $2.95). Excellent radio messages on such topics as the purpose, inspiration, authority, and power of the Bible.
Death and Rebirth of a Marriage, by Alan and Margaret Havard (Tyndale, 1970, 102 pp., paperback, $1.45). A husband and wife tell their versions of the break-up and final reconciliation of their marriage, and how their lives and marriage have been changed by Christ.
The Thessalonian Epistles, by D. Edmond Hiebert (Moody, 383 pp., $6.95). A major commentary similar to Moody’s recent ones on Daniel and on Revelation (by John Walvoord) and on Ezekiel (by Charles Feinberg).
The Christian and Social Concern, by Clifford V. Anderson (Harvest, 166 pp., paperback, $1.95). A Bethel Seminary professor writes on war, poverty, race, politics, and sex. A good introduction.
Will Man Survive? Prophecy You Can Understand, by J. Dwight Pentecost (Moody, 208 pp., $4.95). Survey of God’s future program by a Dallas Seminary professor. He wisely says: “We have a responsibility to live today as though the Lord might come before we go to bed, but to plan for tomorrow as though He couldn’t come for a hundred years.”
In Bluebeard’s Castle, by George Steiner (Yale, 141 pp., $5.95). Western man, says the author, is driven like Bluebeard’s wife to unlock all doors in search of truth—and stands on the brink of cultural disaster.
The Family That Makes It, by Ken Anderson et al. (Victor, 192 pp., paperback, $1.25). Good advice from some evangelical experts in the field.
The New Testament Logia on Divorce: A Study of their Interpretation from Erasmus to Milton, by V. Norskov Olsen (Tübingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 161 pp., DM 36, cloth, DM 30, paperback). An important contribution by an Adventist theologian. Demonstrates, among other things, how difficult it is to be truly objective in interpreting the Bible.
The Stirring Giant, edited by Bob E. Patterson (Word, 312 pp., $7.95). Brief excerpts arranged topically from about 100 books and a score of periodical articles appearing over the past two decades dealing with the vague but important concept of “church renewal.” Excellent as an overview and as a stimulus for further reading and action.
The Heart of the Yale Lectures, by Batsell Barrett Baxter (Baker, 332 pp., $3.95). Summary, with many quotations, of what the famous Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale from 1871 to 1944 had to say on the techniques of preaching. First published in 1947.
Breath of Life, by Patricia St. John (Norfolk Press, London, 238 pp., $4). A thrilling narrative of fifty years of church growth among Anglicans in Burundi, Rwanda, and southwest Uganda.
Form Criticism of the Old Testament, by Gene M. Tucker and Literary Criticism of the Old Testament, by Norman Habel (Fortress, paperbacks, 84 pp. and $2.50 each). Introductory textbooks to some currently dominant methods of academic Bible study.
A Creative Minority: The Church in a New Age, by Richard E. Koenig (Augsburg, 123 pp., paperback, $2.50). An introduction to the need for renewal by one who, if not strictly evangelical, is at least sympathetic.
The One and the Many, by Rousas John Rushdoony (Craig, 388 pp., $6.50). A historical study of philosophical speculation on the relation of the group and the individual since earliest times. Presents Cornelius Van Til’s view as the correct one.
Soul of the Black Preacher, by Joseph A. Johnson, Jr. (United Church, 173 pp., $4.95). Uninspiring, uncontroversial sermons from the presiding bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Single and Satisfied, by Audrey Lee (Tyndale, 136 pp., paperback, $1.45). An informative book written by a single missionary. She gives insight into missionary life and the problems most single women face on the field. Her answers to these problems could be of benefit to any woman, regardless of marital status.
Sin, by G. C. Berkouwer (Eerdmans, 599 pp., $9.95). The long-awaited English edition of the eleventh volume in the planned eighteen-volume “Studies in Dogmatics.” The author is perhaps the foremost contemporary evangelical theologian.
God … Where Are You? by Mickie Rogers and Marjie Thompson (Regal, 109 pp., $2.95). What began as “God commercials” on FM radio station KBIQ grew into a full-time ministry, the “People Who Care” telephone ministry, a challenging, unusual service for people who need God.
The Dispersion of the People of God: The Covenant Basis of Matthew 28:18–20 Against the Background of Jewish, Pre-Christian Proselyting and Diaspora, and the Apostleship of Jesus Christ, by Richard R. De Ridder (Baker, 239 pp., paperback, $4.95). An important technical study in the theology of missions.
This Morning With God, three volumes, edited by Carol Adeney (Inter Varsity, 120 pp., paperback, $1.50 each). Daily Bible-study guide including thought-provoking questions that stimulate the reader to learn the Bible on his own and relate biblical events to similar present-day situations.
Theory of Catechetics, by Hubert Halbfas (Herder and Herder, 211 pp., $6.95). A tillichian approach to religious education.
Faith Seeks Understanding: A Christian Approach to Knowledge, by Arthur F. Holmes (Eerdmans, 175 pp., paperback, $2.95). A solid discussion of the nature of metaphysical thinking and religious commitment by a noted evangelical philosopher.
Knox Church Toronto, by William Fitch (William Fitch, 190 pp. $5.95). The story of a 150-year-old evangelical congregation set in the context of Canadian history.
The Right, the Good, and the Happy, by Bernard L. Ramm (Word, 188 pp., $5.95). An introductory guide to Christian ethics. Discusses both general principles and specific applications to abortion, business, drugs, organ transplants, war, and a dozen other matters.
A History of Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, by Eric W. Hayden (Pilgrim, 163 pp., $3.95). A former pastor tells the story to the present of the congregation once served by Spurgeon.
Church Leader in the Cities: William Augustus Muhlenberg, by Alvin W. Skardon (Pennsylvania, 343 pp., $15). First-class biography of a leading nineteenth-century Episcopal clergyman of Philadelphia and New York.
Revolution and the Christian Faith, by Vernon C. Grounds (Lippincott, 240 pp., $4.95). An important book by the president of Conservative Baptist Seminary in Denver. Interacts with the arguments of those advocating revolutionary social change. Calls for a true Christian radicalism that is shaped by the New Testament.
History and Christianity, by John Warwick Montgomery (Inter Varsity, 110 pp., paperback, $1.25). A good apologetic for the historical reliability of the Gospels, especially regarding their testimony to Christ.
The Cross and the Scalpel, by James Hefley (Word, 158 pp., $4.95). An interesting survey of several medical missionaries from different lands.
I Was an Algerian Preacher, by W. N. Heggoy (Vantage, 92 pp., $3.50). Tells of the proclamation of the Gospel in our times in one of the hardest of lands; it focuses on a national, Said Abouadaou.
Christ the Hope of the Future, by Warren F. Groff (Eerdmans, 145 pp., paperback, $2.45). A rather complex interaction with recent speculative theology. Limited in interest.
Isaiah and Wisdom, by J. William Whedbee (Abingdon, 172 pp., $5.95). A doctoral dissertation on the complex relation of Isaiah, a representative prophet, to the wisdom tradition. Revises earlier scholarly judgments.
Imputed Rights, by Robert V. Andelson (Georgia, 153 pp., $6). A conservative approach to the ground and nature of human rights by a philosophy professor.
God’s Lively People, by Mark Gibbs and T. Ralph Morton (Westminster, 212 pp., paperback, $2.65). The authors of God’s Frozen People have become more optimistic about the future of the Church and theology; now laymen are more lively.
Your Fig Leaf Is Slipping!, by Paul H. Shetz (Creation, 200 pp., $4.95). Everyone has something to hide in this age of phoniness. Through 200 tedious pages the author tries to uncover what people spend so much time trying to hide.
God’s Plan, Man’s Need, Our Mission, by G. Christian Weiss (Back to the Bible, 172 pp., paperback, $.75), and The Divine Intent, by Homer Duncan (Missionary Crusader, 105 pp., paperback). Designed to stir up interest in missions.
