IN MY MERRY OLDSMOBILE
After church each Sunday I have to maneuver my car around the gleaming late-model sedans in the church parking lot. On my way home I pass the Wood-ville Primitive Baptist Church. Parked outside are older-model vehicles with pickup trucks and station wagons predominating.
This situation was brought into even sharper focus by a conversation with a carpenter friend. When he found out that I needed the services of a plumber he said, “Oh, you need a plumber? I know a good one. He’s a member of our church.”
As it turned out, just about every trade is represented in the congregation of his church, but few professions are. The opposite is true of my church.
This difference is not news to anyone. Numerous treatises have been written analyzing the sociological factors involved in denominationalism.
I even knew one clergyman who seemed to find some merit in the situation. The caste system that seems to obtain between denominations, he pointed out, is the result of the Protestant recognition of the church as the communion of the saints.
In the Roman Catholic Church, he asserted, the church derives from the priesthood, and each believer more or less celebrates the communion between himself and God, eliminating social involvement. It’s this social involvement that naturally causes people to divide along lines of income and education.
May be But I can’t help feeling that my faith as a white-collar worker is somewhat impoverished by lack of contact with Christians who have a different social setting and different problems.
When the charismatic movement began to move into the “establishment” churches, it did break down some of the more artificial distinctions between Christian communions. However, even it has left the real divisions intact. Upper-middle-class Episcopal Pentecostals fellowship with upper-middle-class Presbyterian or Roman Catholic Pentecostals—not with poor black Pentecostals.
We might have hoped a movement that began in the black churches and moved through the poorer white churches into the more affluent ones would bring black and white, poor and affluent, together. But it doesn’t seem to have happened that way.
In other words, we might have hoped they would do better than we did.
Apparently these cross-cultural relationships don’t just happen, even with Christians; they require work. Perhaps a starting point would be to stop some Sunday at the church with the pickup trucks.
CHEERS FOR IRRELEVANCE
Hats off to Kenneth Hamilton (“The Irrelevance of Relevance,” March 31)! He certainly destroyed the fetish of “relevance” and echoed many of my own sentiments. The most “relevant” thing any minister can ever do is to faithfully expound the abiding Word of God.
Associate Professor of Semitics and Old Testament
Dallas Theological Seminary
Dallas, Tex.
100 PER CENT
The article by Paul Szto entitled “The Chinese Communist Mind” (April 14) is the finest thing I have ever read on the subject, and I have to agree with him 100 per cent that “non-Chinese Christians and Chinese Christians outside China should unite in a Christian united front to map out a sound and consistent missionary strategy for reopening China to the preaching of the Gospel” … Thank you for printing the article.
General Director
Overseas Crusades, Inc.
Palo Alto, Calif.
The article left me less than satisfied. He made a noble effort in an attempt to write a historical survey of the development of Chinese Communism, and he made some enlightening observations. However, I don’t feel that he has really interacted with the Chinese Communist mind. I am especially disappointed by the last two paragraphs, which are only empty rhetorics. They appeal to the emotions, but not sound reasoning.
I speak as one who has experienced life in Communist China. I don’t feel that he has grappled with the real mind of a Chinese Communist, especially in the area of religious attitudes. I hope that in the near future, you will have some articles that really reveal the gutlevel feelings of a Chinese Communist. After all, we can not begin to think about how to reach them unless we know how they really think.
Pasadena, Calif.
THE PROPER FOCUS
I am a regular reader of your periodical; it is one of the organs that keep me abreast of contemporary thought, monographs, and reference books—evaluated from an orthodox, evangelical perspective. This service is of value to me in teaching religious literature and reference work in a “humanities reference” course.
As I glanced through the May 12 issue to see if any articles interested me, George M. Marsden’s “Evangelical Social Concern—Dusting Off the Heritage” struck a responsive chord.… Last year I served on a ministerial selection committee in a United Presbyterian church in Illinois. We were seeking a man, described as director of lay ministries, whose responsibilities would include both working with a day-care program for mentally retarded children, advising a service project for the senior citizens, and also the encouragement of Bible-study and prayer groups, evangelistic outreach by visiting in the community, and organizing special retreats for spiritual growth and fellowship. The point was to try to get the people in the church who focused on either activism or pietism to see the full-orbed scope of the Gospel. We had a very difficult time finding a candidate.… The committee seemed surprised, though it need not have been, that the one recent seminary graduate who appeared most capable of relating the two areas was a graduate of an interdenominational theological school with Reformed leanings. In short, both aspects of the Christian faith and practice are essential. But we need ministers who can encourage their charges in both piety and social concern and who can show them that each requires the other.
Assistant Professor
The University of Texas
Austin
I would have been so pleased if Marsden [had] mentioned the early history of the YMCA. There are many of us in the YMCA who are prayerfully trying to keep the social and evangelical Gospel in proper perspective.
Executive Director
YMCA of Metropolitan Washington
Gaithersburg, Md.
SIGNIFICANT OMISSION
I have appreciated your series, “A Bibliography For Christians.” However, in the recent article by James R. Moore, your writer has omitted a significant book on the counterculture scene. It is written by Dr. Robert A. Evans and is entitled Belief and the Counter Culture (Westminster, 1971). I simply pass this on because serious students of the counterculture movement should not miss this book.
Thank you for your efforts in doing an intelligent analysis of the counterculture phenomenon.
First Presbyterian Church
Tulsa, Okla.
I am surprised by James Moore’s limitation upon the mysterious power of God and his ongoing revelation. In an attempt to discredit a non-churchly religion, he is likely to miss the possibility of God’s revelation from the pen of a modern prophet. To close the “canon” of inspired literature on God’s action in the lives of persons is naïve and short-sighted. Not to mention putting God into some kind of historical response.
Persons committed to biblical Christianity know their foundation. They do not attempt to downplay its importance nor its inspiration. Biblical Christianity gives us the only possibility for understanding our faith. Therefore, I say “right on” to the writer who attempts to interpret our historic faith in light of our experience. For me, it gives me real hope and insight into our biblical Word.
Campus Minister
McPherson College
McPherson, Kans.
A METHOD FOR UNITY
Most interesting to read in “Where Paths Converge” (Current Religious Thought, April 28) that after all these centuries some Roman Catholics are taking a look at “the real Luther.” How? Not by accepting what some council or interpreter said about him but by reading what Luther himself wrote.
What would result if Protestants and Catholics alike used this method on the Bible? Letting it speak for itself minus creeds, dogma, manmade traditions, and so on, just might bring about the unity Christ prayed for.
Klagenfurt, Austria
WHAT ABOUT BANKRUPTCY?
Your good sense in staying out of the argument raised by the Reader’s Digest articles of October and November concerning the World Council of Churches has been commendable. The editors of the Digest have acknowledged in writing that they printed errors, and have published one article by J. Irwin Miller in reply.… However, your comment on Mr. Miller’s reply brought in at the end of your editorial of May 12 on “The Church’s Distinctive” itself needs correction.… Your editorial states that “the World Council consistently refuses to speak out against injustice, when to do so would entail a major ecumenical risk.” The facts are quite to the contrary. In 1950, the Central Committee of the council spoke in such clear criticism of the North Korean attack upon South Korea that one of its presidents—of China—resigned in protest. In 1968, the officers of the World Council of Churches issued a statement so critical of the military intervention in Czechoslovakia by Communist nations that the statement was severely criticized in Russia. You further state “that the World Council of Churches calls for ‘social action’ only where it will not jeopardize inclusivist goals.” Again, the facts do not support the charge. The World Council spoke so clearly on the evils of apartheid in South Africa that the three Dutch Reformed churches of that republic withdrew from membership in the World Council of Churches.… Much of the most effective work done by the World Council for religious liberty in Communist countries is that kind of work which would be weakened if it were given publicity. The decisive question is not whether the council protects itself from criticism, but whether it serves the cause of religious liberty in those countries. We believe that it does.
Your further charge of “the ecumenical movement’s theological bankruptcy” is understandable only if you believe that “theological disagreement” equals “theological bankruptcy.” Any person tempted to take your charge seriously ought to read the January, 1972, issue of the International Review of Mission—to take just one of many possible illustrations. That study of some of the theological issues related to the meaning of “Salvation Today” reflects a theological vitality for which every Christian ought to be grateful.
President, U. S. A.
World Council of Churches
New York, New York
• We agree with the recommendation to read the January (LXI:241) IRM. In it, as in so many other WCC publications, one will find theologically bankrupt opinions. For example, consider these statements by the dean of one of North America’s “leading” theological faculties: “Saving my soul does not interest me as a man in 1972” (p. 48), and, “The idea of a Second Coming of Jesus as Lord Christ and Royal Judge is wholly unbelievable except as a myth that may not wisely conserve a truth that is worth conserving” (p. 50).—ED.
MISPRINTED ALLEGIANCE?
In your editorial “Plain Talk on Viet Nam” (May 26), was “… especially Christians, should stand by the President, even if they think his policy is mistaken” a misprint? While I am all for supporting our nation’s leaders in every way possible, I am unable to accept a blind obedience such as you advocate. Instead of, as you say, “Every Christian should pray that what is being done will lead to peace and justice,” would it not be better to pray that we will do that which will lead to peace and justice?
(MRS.) MARIE K. WIENS
Hillsboro, Kans.
