Traditionally, there have been three major branches of Judaism: Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox. But a fourth is gaining momentum—Messianic Judaism.
Last month a young rabbi, formerly an Air Force chaplain, told a gathering of seventy at the University of Maryland how he had recently become a follower of Messiah Jesus, a “completed Jew.”
A few nights earlier sixty young Jews and a handful of parents met at “The Hidden Matzoh,” a large house in Philadelphia, to sing, pray, cultivate their Hebrew heritage, and testify about their newly kindled love for Jesus.
Both meetings were sponsored by the Young Hebrew Christian Alliance (YHCA), a group formed in 1965 and now thriving with hundreds of members.
This month the YHCA and other Hebrew Christian groups scheduled Hanukkah1Hanukkah is the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights December 12–20 commemorating restoration of the Temple after defilement by the Syrians in Maccabean times. The Eternal Light was lit in the Temple and burned for eight days. parties honoring Jesus as the Hanukkah Menorah, or Eternal Light, of the world. Non-Christian Jews are included on the guest lists; inevitably some profess Jesus as their personal Messiah.
“The Jewish holidays are teeming with the Gospel,” declares bearded chemist Joe Finkelstein, 30, Philadelphia YHCA leader. “Jesus fulfills them.”
But the observances are not merely an evangelistic device, he adds. They are a matter of cultural identity for many young Jews raised out of touch with their past and in a spiritual void, yet not wanting to be assimilated by the Gentile culture associated with the average church.
A rabbi in suburban Philadelphia noted in his synagogue newspaper that many Jewish young people were turning to Christ. He blamed it on “the vacuum of identity which exists in many Jewish homes today.” Young people are seeking spiritual answers, he wrote. As for the new Christians:
“These young people have accepted this belief with a fervor that cannot be reasoned away. The Jewish community has lost these young men and women. It is too late to bring them back. We must all share the blame. Let us all mourn them together.”
It is not enough to mourn, says Sidney I. Cole, 64, who was elected board chairman of the million-member Union of American Hebrew Congregations at the group’s biennial assembly last month. He intends to launch a “youth to youth” movement to get disaffected young people to return to Judaism. “If we can give young people a sense of identification with their religion, they must come back,” he affirmed.
Meanwhile, say observers, young people are glaringly absent from most synagogues. And most Hebrew schools major in Hebrew language and prayers, Finkelstein says, offering little if any Bible training.
Denominations and mission boards began years ago to launch outreach ministries to the world’s 14 million Jews, especially the 5.8 million who live in this country. There are between 100 and 150 local and national organizations of Hebrew Christians, estimates J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Evanston, Illinois. Most mainline denominations have now quietly closed their Jewish evangelism offices, but independent agencies continue to proliferate, and Jewish evangelism departments are still operated by Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
Styles are changing, reflecting the Jewish bent for activism. Evangelist Martin “Moise” Rosen of the American Board of Missions to the Jews (see March 26 issue, page 40) heads a growing San Francisco area group known as “Jews for Jesus.” Among other street witness activities, the group has been picketing and leafleting on weekend nights in front of the city’s topless clubs.
Rosen said he came up with the “Jews for Jesus” slogan after a San Francisco State student told him: “You are either a Jew or a Christian; you cannot be both.” Rosen and his band launched a vigorous outreach, peppering the campus with red stickers bearing the slogan. “That criticism isn’t made now,” he quips.
He and Steffi Geiser, 21, a Jewess now attending Simpson Bible College in San Francisco, have also produced mod tracts used widely by Jewish workers. Miss Geiser was caught up in the Jesus movement during a vacation visit to the West Coast. She returned home to New York to tell her family and friends about the Messiah. She faced a problem encountered by many of her peers:
“It was difficult trying to get them to understand that I was not a Gentile, that I was more Jewish than the atheist who left them earlier” (meaning herself).
Indeed, there is a serious semantic problem, say workers. The average Jew equates “Christian” with “Gentile.” His forebears have been persecuted by “Christians” bearing the “cross” symbol. A “convert” is one who leaves Judaism, virtually a traitor. “Church” is often associated with heathen temples and idol worship, complete with “graven images.” And “Christ” is a Greek word not linked to the Messiah concept in the Hebrew mind.
“God has shown me I should never wear a cross,” says Sandra Sheskin, YHCA secretary who works at the State Department. “Our people suffered under that symbol for thousands of years.”
To help break the communication barrier, evangelist Manny Brotman, 33, of Shalom International in Miami produces training materials (including “The Five Jewish Laws”) aimed at those who witness to Jews. He gives printed instructions on using “the right terminology.”
David Livingstone, 46, Old Testament scholar and director of Associates for Biblical Research in suburban Philadelphia, believes that evangelicals err in forcing church membership on new Christian Jews:
“We have made a horrible mistake in expecting Jewish converts to drop their Jewishness and enter a foreign, Reformation-shaped Protestant tradition that is far from what the early Jewish church was.”
Insurance executive Arthur DeMoss of suburban Philadelphia has led a number of Jewish businessmen to Christ. He says they are among the most responsive to his witness contacts but that he dismisses emphasis on their Jewishness and treats them “like anyone else.”
Rosen disagrees with Brotman and Livingstone about the need for Hebrew churches or Messianic synagogues. (There are only about a dozen Hebrew Christian congregations today—considerably less than the total twenty years ago.) But he agrees that provision should be made to keep cultural identity and fellowship intact.
At any rate a remarkable spiritual movement seems to be underway among Jews, especially the young. Joe and Debbie Finkelstein have provided temporary housing and spiritual guidance for six or seven new converts at a time for more than a year. Jewish observances often turn into packed-out Bible raps at their home (affectionately dubbed “Fink’s Zoo”), and many have found their Judaism “fulfilled” in Christ. Youths interviewed there last month spoke of their deliverance from drugs, free sex, the occult, and violence-prone radical politics.
In the meeting at The Hidden Matzoh a teen-ager named Miriam related how she turned from drugs and free sex to follow Jesus but was opposed by her parents. Her mother stood next and told of the long path that finally led to her own conversion to “Jeshua” (Hebrew for Jesus) at the DeMoss home, and how Miriam’s father and sister had meanwhile accepted Christ.
Between testimonies the group sang Hebrew melodies and Israeli folk tunes—with Jesus words. Music teacher Stewart Dauerman and 18-year-old Fay Glassberg are among those who have written popular Hebrew Christian songs.
Film producer Hal Sacks received Christ after shooting a Pat Boone television special, later led his mother to Christ during a Yom Kippur service in a synagogue.
The stirrings extend even to Israel. Shlomo Hizak, an Orthodox Jew and former bodyguard to leader David Ben Gurion, accepted Christ and is now an evangelist.
‘Most Unusual’: No Time For A Change
The college that advertises itself as the “world’s most unusual university” is doing a good job of living up to its claim. In recent months the scenario at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, has unfolded as follows:
News releases of the Internal Revenue Service dated July 10 and July 19, 1970, posed the first real threat to the university’s tax-exempt status. The IRS warned that BJU wasn’t complying with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it barred black students and maintained racial separation on the campus (see January 1, 1971, issue, page 39).
About September 8, 1971, it was evident that the tax-exempt status was about to be revoked and that previous deductibility of contributions allowed by the IRS was about to be withdrawn.
But also in September, BJU admitted a married Negro as a part-time student (see October 22 issue, page 42). He was an employee at the campus radio station, WMUU (stands for World’s Most Unusual University), also in hot water over racial matters.
The station’s license was temporarily held up after a civil-rights group charged that WMUU practiced discrimination in hiring. The station has been allowed to stay on the air and at last report had not heard from the Federal Communications Commission for several months.
Meanwhile, back in the classroom, the first Negro admitted in the forty-four-year history of BJU left the school after little more than a month (he had been allowed to take free of charge one three-hour course). His name, incidentally, was never released by the university.
BJU president Bob Jones III said he had no idea why the lone Negro had left. He also insisted there was no connection between the enrollment of this one black student and the major threats facing the university.
In mid-November BJU stared down still another gun barrel: possible termination of educational benefits from the Veterans Administration. That organization also warned that it may cut off money because of BJU’s anti-integration stand. According to October VA statistics, 208 veterans are enrolled there this semester. If each has one dependent, about $42,640 is paid out monthly to BJU vets (at an average of $205).
Jones and staff insist they’ll never back down and sign an open-admission policy. Jones claims his school is safe on both the IRS and VA issues and he says any further move to enroll married Negro students will not hinge on current disputes with federal agencies. (Married blacks aren’t being recruited.)
On November 17 BJU won the first round in its fight to preserve its tax exemption. United States district judge Charles E. Simons, Jr., ordered the IRS not to revoke—or even threaten to revoke—the Greenville institution’s exempt status. And the VA said it would delay action against the school.
Simons noted that the IRS intended not to raise additional tax revenues by revoking BJU’s exemption but rather to compel the school to adopt a nondiscriminatory admissions policy. “Whether or not the government will ultimately achieve this goal is not a question for the court to answer,” he said.
In view of substantial clashes of constitutional guarantees in the controversy, Simons declared that the outcome of the litigation should be considered only after a trial of its merits.
Jones contends that the IRS is threatening to go beyond authority granted it by Congress. Simons apparently feels sympathetic to that argument, for he said he might have taken a different view in his ruling if there were no uncertainty about the legality of the power of the IRS.
Explains Jones: “We have what we feel are biblical convictions for keeping the races separate. We have been able to maintain these convictions through the years by taking Orientals and Caucasians with the understanding that they may not date” (across race lines). He fears single blacks will want to date whites, and he asserts that BJU cannot condone this: “We feel this is not intended in God’s plan. How to help the black people and at the same time maintain our convictions is a problem we’ve not been able to solve.”
Jones claims there’s no prejudice or animosity toward non-whites at BJU. There are about 4,500 students on the 300-acre campus; 3,700 enrollees are at the university level. The school depends heavily on tax-deductible personal contributions. Judge Simons said that for one twenty-one-day period in September BJU took in cash gifts of $29,695.83.
The school would suffer irreparable harm if the ominous IRS cloud were to remain, the judge said. To Jones, the biggest problem isn’t taxes—it’s space. Lately there has been a move to limit enrollment so the school won’t grow too large. The campus is already becoming crowded.
“But many people are finding,” notes BJU’s shrewd head, “that the old reliable institutions are not as reliable anymore. So we can anticipate an increase in the demand for Bob Jones University because we won’t change.”
For a university to make that statement in the 1970s is most unusual indeed.
Home For Christmas?
Where have all the Children (of God) gone (see November 5 issue, page 38)? Home for Thanksgiving, for one thing. According to an announcement by COG leaders, young people in the radical Jesus movement offshoot were allowed—even urged—to go home for the holiday, at their own or their parents’ expense.
COG leaders said through a release that the Thanksgiving recess was given to offset bad publicity about the activities of the Children, especially that converts are hypnotized, brainwashed, and held in COG communes against their will. The gesture was also calculated “to show the world that they [the leaders] have faith in them [the Children],” according to a letter to parents from FREECOG, a Houston, Texas, organization dedicated to “saving” young people from the clutches of COG.
Young people from the various colonies did, in fact, return home over the Thanksgiving weekend. Some stayed. Most appeared to relate similar stories about the apparent “breakup” of COG. Children told their parents their colonies had broken away and taken on new names. Some of these are United Youth Association, New England Youth Association, and Vancouver Youth for Action. A sizable contingent from the Cragsmoor, New York, colony has surfaced in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, under a new name.
Spokesmen say dropping the name Children of God is a strategy move because of bad press heaped on the movement lately.
But it’s unlikely the COG gears have ground to a halt. Whether its adherents—by whatever name—get the Christmas holidays at home remains to be seen. For one thing, it will depend on how many went AWOL after Thanksgiving.
Christmas Is Everywhere
The universal observance of Christmas is depicted graphically in a new set of postage stamps commemorating the birth of Christ issued by the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the South Pacific.
The islands, part of the British Commonwealth, portray the Nativity as conceived by native artists. The flight of the Holy Family to Egypt is shown on the thirty-five-cent stamp as a family fleeing from one island to another by canoe.
Meanwhile, in the United States, in a greeting that appears as cold as the season to Christians, members of the Hummanist Society were exchanging “Happy Winter Solstice” cards.
GLENN D. EVERETT
Bishop’S Study: War No More
In their first statement on the Viet Nam conflict in three years, the American bishops of the Roman Catholic Church took a strong stand calling for a “speedy end to the war.” The resolution came at the close of the five-day meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) in Washington, D. C., last month (see earlier story, December 3 issue, page 42).
The measure—which generated the strongest debate of the conference—was approved by a vote of 158 to 36. The bishops declared that “at this point in history it seems clear to us that whatever good we hoped to achieve through continued involvement in this war is now outweighed by the destruction of human lives and moral values which it inflicts.”
The 1968 statement merely questioned whether the war could still be considered just.
An earlier draft of the new statement had urged immediate ceasefire by both U. S. air and ground forces and a unilateral withdrawal of U. S. forces from Viet Nam.
On the financial front, the bishops faced up to an $800,000 deficit and cut out requested operating expenses for the National Office of Black Catholics (NOBC), an agency created by the bishops in 1969 and allocated $150,000 last year. A $9.8 million budget for 1972 was approved. NOBC director Joseph Davis moaned that the decision to omit funds for his group “graphically illustrates the growing distance between Catholicism and black people in this country.”
In other action, the bishops squelched a proposal that would allow liturgical variations for special groups, such as retarded persons, small children, teenagers, and members of religious communities, mainly because of “insufficient guidelines.” It was the third time the prelates turned down requests for such special masses.
Updating a 1954 set of directives, the NCCB issued a forty-three-point instruction on medical and moral ethics for the nation’s 775 Catholic hospitals. The code still leaves unanswered some thorny problems of genetical engineering. The guidelines cover artificial insemination (donor insemination and insemination that is totally artificial are morally objectionable); transplants (“transplantation of organs from living donors is morally permissible when the anticipated benefit to the recipient is proportionate to the harm done to the donor, provided the loss of such organ or organs does not deprive the donor of life itself nor of the functional integrity of his body.… Vital organs … may not be removed until death has taken place”); sterilization (“permanent or temporary, for men or women, may not be used as a means of contraception”).
Coadjutor archbishop Leo C. Byrne of St. Paul-Minneapolis, conservatively progressive in stance, was elected NCCB vice-president for three years.
RUSSELL CHANDLER
Graham On ‘Superstar’
Promoters of a stage version of Jesus Christ Superstar sent mimeographed letters to Florida clergymen last month quoting a testimonial from Billy Graham that the evangelist said he never gave. The letters urged pastors to encourage attendance at productions in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Graham was quoted in the letter as saying that “this production is one of the greatest things to happen to organized religion ever, as far as presenting this important period of biblical history to youthful and adult Christians alike in a realistic and understanding manner.” The evangelist flatly denied ever making such a statement. He said Jesus Christ Superstar “borders on blasphemy and sacrilege. I have never endorsed this production nor do I urge young people to see it.”
Graham specifically objects to the omission of the Resurrection. But he conceded that “if the production causes religious discussion and causes young people to search their Bibles, to that extent it will be beneficial.”
Religion In Transit
Sixteen Colorado Springs-area Southern Baptist churches held an evangelistic crusade last month led by James Robison of Fort Worth. On the final night of the eight-day series, 3,000 jammed the municipal auditorium; in all, there were 813 decisions for Christ, including 573 first-time professions of faith.
The founding assembly of the National Council of Catholic Laity was held in Cincinnati last month; the new group is open to all Catholic organizations and individuals.
Southern Presbyterians in Arkansas have set up a special fund for abortions; several girls have already used it to fly to New York and California for abortions.
Episcopal bishop C. J. Kinsolving of New Mexico and Southwest Texas, and two New Mexico Episcopal parishes strongly disapprove of a national church grant of $5,000 to a Chicano group, the Black Berets. The two congregations cut off funds to church headquarters; they and Kinsolving object to a Beret statement, “We believe armed self-defense and struggle is the only way we can be free.” Said the bishop: “I don’t think this group fits the criteria of the church.”
Pro footballer-turned evangelist Bill Glass packed ’em into Huron (South Dakota) Arena for eight nights last month, climaxing with a crowd of 5,000. More than 250 went forward to receive Christ.
United Presbyterian community self-development program grants now exceed $1.6 million.
Subscription lists for motive, the controversy-pocked dying Methodist magazine, have been turned over to Liberation magazine in New York City.
Personalia
Country music star Johnny Cash is making a $250,000 (personally financed) TV film, In the Footsteps of Jesus, in Israel. His wife, June Carter Cash, is playing Mary Magdalene. Cash, who now belongs to an Assembly of God church in Nashville, says the script is based entirely on the Bible.
After heading Boston University School of Theology for twenty years, Dr. Walter G. Muelder will retire in June.
The National Committee of Religious Leaders for McGovern has been formed to boost South Dakota Democratic Senator George McGovern for the 1972 Presidential candidacy.
Representative Fred Schwengel (R.-Iowa) received a special religious-liberty citation from Americans United for Separation of Church and State for his leadership in defeating the government prayer amendment in the U. S. House.
When Erwin L. McDonald, editor of the Arkansas Baptist Newsmagazine, retires next March, he will become religion editor of the Arkansas Democrat, the state’s leading afternoon daily.
Nigerian biology professor Justin Obi was hanged in Monrovia, Liberia, last month for the murder of Episcopal bishop Dillard Brown and a diocesan business manager. Liberian president William Tolbert, a Christian, authorized the execution, saying to Obi, 65: “I love you and God loves you, but it is my duty as chief executive to sign your death warrant … in the interest of Liberian citizens and humanity.”
Two women deacons in the Diocese of Hong Kong will be the first of their sex ordained to the full priesthood within the worldwide Anglican Communion. They are Jane Hwang Hsien Yuen and Joyce Bennett.
The Reverend Raymond E. Brown, who recently called for a “serious re-examination” of the doctrine of the virgin birth, has been named the outstanding theologian of the year by the Catholic Theological Society of America.
Women marched through the streets of San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D. C., last month demanding the right to choose whether to abort a pregnancy. One stirring plea came from 16-year-old high-school student Sara Takashige, who told a crowd in San Francisco’s Civic Center: “We as high-school women demand free contraceptive devices that work all the time.”
World Scene
The Methodist Church of Chile has cautiously endorsed the Allende government for its apparent progress in implementing justice, liberation, and humanity for Chileans. The statement supports the socialist government’s nationalization of U. S. copper mines but expresses the hope that this will not disturb Chile-U. S. relations.
Scottish Episcopalians narrowly rejected a bold proposal that would have made their church a non-territorial synod within an enlarged Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), the national denomination. The vote count was 33 to 30.
Some 200 people attended the fiftieth anniversary seminar of the Apostolic Church of Pentecost at Banff, Alberta, last month. The 120-church fellowship is Calvinistic and Pentecostal in doctrine.
Despite increasing nationalism, a group of Koreans and former missionaries to that country have organized a United States branch of the Korea International Mission (KIM), a Korean missionary-sending agency formerly called the Korea Evangelical Inter-Mission Alliance.
A publications center for Lutheran churches in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay has been established in Buenos Aires by South American Lutherans. One project is the publication of a pocket-size hymnal of eighty new hymns and new liturgical orders.
Nearly half (47 per cent) of Britain’s married Roman Catholics use birth-control aids, according to a government survey just compiled.
Deaths
EARL L. HARRISON, 80, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, Washington, D. C., and president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Incorporated; in Washington, after a long illness.
ALEXANDER KAREV, 77, general secretary of the All-Union Council of Evangelic Christian Baptists, the only officially recognized Baptist church in the Soviet Union; leader of 500,000 Soviet Baptists for almost fifty years; in Moscow, of a circulatory disorder.
YEHUDA LEIB LEVIN, 76, chief rabbi of Moscow’s Central Synagogue and spiritual leader of the Jewish religious community there since 1957; in Moscow.
JOHN HOWARD PEW, 89, former president and chairman of the Sun Oil Company; member of the board of directors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY; in his Ardmore, Pennsylvania, home.
CARL H. STILLER, 61, general secretary-treasurer of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada since 1966; in Toronto after a long illness.
JESSE W. STITT, 67, pioneer in interreligious relations and quizmaster of “The Living Bible” radio show for eighteen years; in New York City.
