For many years, propagandists in the Soviet Union reveled in the notion that only ignorant peasants were attracted to Christianity. They were convinced that thinking people had fully accepted the Communist principle limiting reality to scientific and material data. No fine mind, they claimed, would take seriously what Christian people regarded as things of the Spirit.
Now the picture is changing, and the popularizers of Kremlin ideology are being robbed of their argument that all the intellectual elite are anti-religious. A number of Soviet citizens whose names have been household words in cultural circles have been converted to Christianity in recent years and are defending the church. Leading artists and writers have been baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church and have publicly demanded an end to the severe controls on religious activity.
After a spiritual turnabout, artist Yuri Titov began doing paintings intended to show the conflict between good and evil, and between religion and atheism. A recent article in the Scotsman by Janice Broun quoted Titov as saying, “Our forgetfulness of the truth revealed to us by the Holy Scriptures has brought the modern world to the brink of catastrophe. With few exceptions, modern art produces a world of superficial sensation, forgetful of its spiritual first principles. This not only hinders man’s spiritual formation, but even leads to the necrosis and destruction of the soul of modern man.”
Soviet authorities are understandably anxious over the espousal of biblical standards by influential figures. They see some anti-Communist premises built into the new outlook; they also fear a link-up with long-simmering nationalistic feelings among Ukrainians and other non-Russian Soviet peoples. So some intellectuals have been jailed, while others have been sent off to mental institutions and their works destroyed. Some are still free but are watched closely.
The authorities continue to have problems among the rank-and-file, where dissent has been more common. A particular source of embarrassment this past spring was an incident at the American embassy in Moscow. Nineteen persons rushed the Soviet guards in an attempt to present a petition for religious liberty to U. S. officials. The guards seized four of the group, but the other fifteen managed to get in. They stayed overnight and reportedly received safe conduct back to Siberia.
According to one source the group, which included five children, left some documents at the embassy. A request sent to the embassy for a copy of the material was not immediately acknowledged. The incident happened only days before President Nixon visited Moscow.
Nixon’s visit and particularly his attendance at a Sunday service in the Moscow Baptist church indelibly impressed Christians in the Soviet Union. It also affected the Nixons. The President said afterwards: “Pat and I were both deeply moved by the service we attended during the Moscow visit. An occasion like that can’t help but remind you that whatever the language, whatever the country, messages of faith and peace make themselves heard.”
Repaying in a sense the Nixon visit, pastors Zhidkov and Bichkov visited Washington earlier this month and got a VIP tour of the White House. The two—with two other Soviet Baptists—were in the United States following the Baptist World Alliance meeting in Jamaica. The Russians were reportedly delighted to see pictures of Nixon at their church hanging on White House walls. Bichkov also spent time mixing with a Carl McIntire demonstration in Philadelphia. McIntire was protesting the Russian visit, and Bichkov was photographing McIntire.
To counteract developments favorable to Christian growth, the Soviet government has been trying to exploit the split between Protestants in registered churches and those who regard the recognized congregations as too subservient to the authorities. A recent article in a Soviet periodical described in great detail how representatives of North American religious groups purportedly paid off dissident informers.
Getting information to the West about churches in Communist lands is a continuing challenge. Soviet officials frown on contacts between newsmen and dissidents, and government-authorized releases are badly biased.
The monthly newsletter Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, published in New York, continues to be a reliable and accurate source. Published for ten years through the National Council of Churches, it is being continued through a newly incorporated agency, the Research Center for Religion and Human Rights in Closed Societies. Starr West Jones, senior editor of Guideposts magazine, is president of the Research Center, and Paul B. Anderson is honorary chairman. Blahoslav Hruby and Dr. Anderson founded the newsletter. Dr. Hruby is now executive director of the Research Center and edits the newsletter.
New Baptist Fire In Europe
Baptists in West Germany and Romania report a thriving Christian witness. But in Italy, mixing politics with the Gospel is proving deadly.
“Is Communism a valid expression of Christian faith in action?” “Yes!” seemed to be the answer of the majority of the 170 delegates to the meeting of the Italian Baptist Union of Evangelical Churches, reports an observer. With church interest dwindling and interest in the social gospel rising, tensions ran high as long-smoldering differences over Christian witness erupted into conflagration.
Southern Baptist missionaries serving in Italy have long been concerned over what field director John Merritt termed “a growing political flavor” characterizing the testimony of many Italian Baptist churches. Merritt minced no words explaining to the delegates why relations between the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board (FMB) and the Italian churches were so strained. “In the last few years,” Merritt observed, “there has been a tendency to adopt the ‘political-social response’ as the one and only valid expression of the Christian faith and to involve the churches and the Union itself in ‘class struggle’ and in political involvement.”
American missionaries in Italy traditionally have remained neutral in political issues and instead have dedicated themselves to preaching the Word of God to Italian masses. They believe that the “proletarian, anti-imperialistic social gospel” proclaimed by many Italian Baptists is responsible for decreasing conversions and baptisms. Only fifty-eight of 126 Italian communities have pastors and property, and buildings financed by U. S. Christians to train Italian youth for gospel outreach are either unused or used for non-religious purposes.
After more than 100 years of missionary endeavor, the FMB has seen only a few of its fifty-eight churches become financially autonomous, though affluence in Italy is at an all time high. With this in mind, FMB missionaries decided that this year’s assembly was the place to raise the social-gospel issue.
Merritt and his vocal minority of Italian delegates debated the political question and pointed out that a proposed new constitution (another touchy issue) permitted property to be “directed by an executive committee of which the majority would not be elected by the Italian Baptists.” They also noted that “the proposed constitution does not even require that the members of the committee be Christians.”
Under threat of withdrawal of financial aid from the United States, the minority mustered an overwhelming majority and rejected the constitutional proposal. Protestant leftist weekly Nuovi Tempi, which is subsidized by the Baptist Union, accused the FMB of “blackmailing” Italian churches.
The Union’s northern brother, the 24,000-member Baptist Union of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), also reports a slight decline in membership. But at its recent triennial conference other bulletins were optimistic. Baptist publication businesses are flourishing and student interest in the church is rising.
And to the east of Italy, the Baptist Union of Romania, which last month held its first national conference in seven years, with 1,400 participants, issued glowing reports. The conference building, First Baptist Church, Bucharest, seated only 500, and the remainder of delegates stood in aisles, doorways, and windows from three-and-one-half to five hours at a stretch (at one session overflow delegates stood in a downpour for that long).
The conference reported over 4,000 registered baptisms in the past year, with perhaps twice that many unregistered. Since World War II the Romanian Baptist Church, now claiming 120,000 registered members, has grown more rapidly than any other East European church. As in East Germany, interest and participation among young people is high, even though in Romania youth programs are outlawed.
Further bulletins indicate renewed spiritual interest throughout Europe. An evangelism conference with fourteen participating Baptist unions met to study the “new awakening evident in many ears” and to devise strategy to keep the spiritual—not political—fires burning.
Moving Religion Market
Putting their best publications forward, backward, and sometimes sideways, more than 165 exhibitors competed bookend to bookend for the attention of nearly 1,200 dealers at the twenty-third annual convention of the Christian Booksellers Association, held in Cincinnati July 30–August 3.
With no end in sight to the making of many books, there’s one solid reason why Christian books are coming off the presses at record rates: they sell. CBA executive vice-president John Bass said Christian bookstores report a 19.2 per cent increase in sales, “almost higher than any other retail business.” “Even in Seattle, a depressed area, bookstores experienced a 30 per cent increase in business,” Bass said.
While there’s profit in prophecy (The Late Great Planet Earth still tops the Religious Best Sellers List), there’s also cash in charisma. Two books by a former Army chaplain, Merlin R. Carothers (Prison to Praise and Power in Praise) rank third and fourth on the coveted list of best-selling paperbacks.
Dan Malachuk, president of Logos International in Plainfield, New Jersey, Carothers’s publisher, said his firm had a 2,000 per cent sales increase in the past four years. Logos got its start with Nicky Cruz’s runaway best-seller, Run, Baby, Run. “The secret of our success is that Jesus is the chairman of the board,” Malachuk testifies.
But few publishers, including Malachuk, were content to leave everything to the Board Chairman. Authors of best-sellers were present to autograph copies of their books. Francis Schaeffer did double duty, putting in time at the booths of both Tyndale House and Inter-Varsity Publishers. Bernard Palmer, author of children’s books and numerous adult novels, plugged his books at the Moody Press booth. Merlin Carothers signed for Logos, International. Cathedral of Tomorrow TV minister Rex Humbard, one of the luncheon speakers, promoted his Revell-published books, Miracles in My Life and The Third Dimension. Ethel Waters, singer, author (To Me It’s Wonderful), and another luncheon speaker, talked as if selling books were a song, while Baroness Maria A. von Trapp, author of Maria, autographed the real story behind The Sound of Music.
The mammoth first-floor auditorium of the city’s Convention and Exposition Center was covered with creative displays designed to sell not only books and Bibles but also cassettes, records, badges, bumper stickers, and posters. One new bookstore-owner from the West Coast said he sells enough posters to pay the store rent. The Christian booksellers also reported many Roman Catholics are visiting their stores to buy books and teaching materials.
The Bell Library
A library for Montreat-Anderson College named in honor of L. Nelson Bell, executive editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, was dedicated last month. The ceremony was held on his seventy-eighth birthday, July 30.
The building can handle 60,000 volumes and 450 periodicals, and can seat 278 readers. A plaque reads: “In honor of L. Nelson Bell, missionary, surgeon, editor, author, churchman, ambassador for Christ, moderator of the General Assembly 1972, a man of integrity, a man of compassion, a man of prayer.”
Montreat-Anderson College is a Presbyterian school located in the picturesque mountains east of Asheville, North Carolina.
A CBA convention is more than a gigantic book fair, however. It is a combination of revival, reunion, and rap session, with morning devotions and numerous workshops.
CBA is a worldwide organization with membership from thirty-one countries, and a large contingent from Australia and New Zealand came to Cincinnati. “The religion market is moving ahead,” Bass concluded.
JAMES L. ADAMS
Mile-High Conference Draws 73 Writers
Seventy-three aspiring and seasoned writers gathered at Forest Home conference grounds “one mile nearer heaven” in the San Bernardino Mountains last month for the first California School of Christian Writing sponsored by Decision magazine. The affair is expected to become an annual one, patterned after the popular schools the Billy Graham organization has been holding for ten summers in Minneapolis.
Decision editor and school “principal” Sherwood Wirt told the students that three weeks before she died in 1963, Dr. Henrietta Mears of Forest Home and Hollywood First Presbyterian Church fame had written him of her dream that a school of Christian writing be held at the conference lodge on the shores of Lake Mears.
Closing banquet keynoter W. Stanley Mooneyham, president of World Vision International, challenged the writers to “stretch our minds with a world view so that we will have the capacity to respond to … the needs of a gutty world in the best of times and the worst of times.… Stimulate our courage so that we will dare to respond.”
Wirt revealed two vacancies in his Decision staff: Mavis Sanders, editorial associate for the past six years, and Assistant Editor Carey Moore are leaving.
RUSSELL CHANDLER
The Danger Of Diary-Keeping
A post-mortem excommunication of a deacon of the Sacred College of Cardinals, Eugenio Tisserant, may be evolving in the Vatican. It would be a clamorous and unprecedented move to list with Martin Luther and other priestly deviates an illustrious cardinal who faithfully served the church of Rome for sixty-three years and rose to one of the highest offices of the Curia. But according to the Milan weekly L’Europeo, such a move is afoot.
Portions of the Tisserant memoirs appeared last month in the prestigious Italian weekly Panorama, sustaining the Paris Match story on the alleged assassination of Pope Pius XI (see July 7 issue, page 37) and reproducing Tisserant’s diary entries about the conclave that elected John XXIII. In spite of John’s declaration, “We who have been elected unanimously …,” Tisserant’s diary reveals that he was elected with only thirty-six of fifty-two ballots.
Vatican correspondent Stefano De Andreis believes there is fear in the Curia that should Tisserant’s memoirs be fully published “they could reveal facts that the Holy See has enveloped in a wall of silence, more to save murky and discreditable situations, than to serve the interests of the Church.” The controversial cardinal was a man of character who hated diplomacy, half-truths, and compromise. As a cardinal for thirty-six years and librarian and archivist of the Roman church for ten, he had complete access to the facts. Therefore it’s not without reason that Vatican circles are worried about his memoirs.
Some canon-law experts state categorically that there is no need to excommunicate Tisserant, since from the moment in 1958 when he privately recorded the conclave results he had been excommunicated ipso iure. The 1945 church constitution demands total secrecy concerning the conclave and requires that all ballots, records, and private notes be burned. Cardinals take solemn oath to “keep as an inviolable and absolute secret all things, part and parcel, appertaining to the election of the new pope … under the penalty of excommunication … ‘latae sententiae’ ” (i.e., without further declaration of the fact that one has been excommunicated).
In light of the Tisserant affair, Pope Paul’s revelation on the ninth anniversary of his coronation that he is keeping a personal diary gives rise to a question: If a cardinal of the Curia can be posthumously excommunicated for keeping a diary, what about the successor to the keys of St. Peter?
ROYAL L. PECK
Pregnant Issue
The ordination of Mrs. Shirley Carter Lee, second woman ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, was rescinded for “conduct unbecoming a minister of the gospel” after public disclosure that she was three months pregnant when she married a former Roman Catholic priest last May (see July 7 issue, page 40). Mrs. Lee requested her removal under pressure from the pastor and deacons of her home church, Kathwood Baptist in Columbia, South Carolina. They had originally supported her ordination.
Disclosure of her pregnancy came in a newspaper feature in which her husband, W. Pringle Lee, was quoted as saying: “We don’t apologize for it. It’s something we did as two consenting adults.” P. Edward Rickenbacker, pastor of her church, said he didn’t know of the pregnancy when he married the couple.
Mrs. Lee, who also resigned her position as chaplain at two South Carolina prisons, charged that the church was forcing her out because it was not ready to accept ordained women rather than because of her actions.
‘Bangladesh Brigade’
Workers from various church agencies and organizations constructed or repaired more than 25,000 homes in war-torn Bangladesh before the monsoon season began this summer. Sixteen students from Wheaton College, working with Dr. Viggo Olsen of the Medical Assistance Program (MAP), formed a “Bangladesh brigade” and built 10,000 thatch-bamboo homes to replace those destroyed in last year’s civil war.
Other church organizations including the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation completed another 15,000 and have a goal of 40,000 homes.
Besides home-building, the churches are involved in agricultural assistance, medical supply, and industrial assistance. The World Council expects to spend $13 million in its Bangladesh Ecumenical Relief and Rehabilitation Services.
The now complete Wheaton-MAP project is expected to house 100,000, approximately ten persons per home, according to Dr. Olsen. MAP is toying with the idea of restarting the program because other colleges are asking if they can join.
Religion In Transit
An agency of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. (Southern), has proposed a study of interracial and intercultural dating and marriage. It also suggested that better world human relations might come from Christians’ marrying across such lines.
A federal court of appeals in New Orleans ruled that the firing of a Seventh-day Adventist employee for his refusal to work Friday nights constituted “unlawful discriminatory employment practice.” The Bendix Corporation says it may appeal to the Supreme Court, which in 1970 turned a deaf ear to an Adventist in a similar case.
A comprehensive survey of Detroit area residents shows, among other things, that fewer people regularly attend church than fifteen years ago. The number who never attend rose from 10 to 17 per cent, but the proportion who said they do not believe in God dropped from 4 to 2 per cent. Those believing they have the right to question what the church teaches rose from 68 to 81 per cent. And more people today believe society is cold and impersonal.
Contrary to initial reports, churches and church schools damaged by Hurricane Agnes are eligible for disaster loans from the U. S. Small Business Administration.
The forty-three-year-old Central California Register, publication of the diocese of Fresno, died last month—a victim, said its managing editor, of “agribusiness interests” that strangled the weekly’s advertising income in reaction to its stand with farm labor unionizer Cesar Chavez.
A proposed world headquarters of Maharishi International University may be located in western North Carolina, confirm spokesmen for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the former physicist who turned monk and began teaching meditation to such famous students as the Beatles and Mia Farrow. If so, the Maharishi would become one of Billy Graham’s neighbors.
Southern Baptists will go on the air soon with one-minute “spot” announcements explaining the Jewish high holy days and showing Jesus as their fulfillment.
Plans are under way for changing Ontario’s Waterloo Lutheran University from a church-related to a provincially supported university. The Lutheran Church in America (Eastern Canada Synod) reluctantly approved the plans; the only remaining question is how much the government will pay for the church’s sixty-year investment.
The Mennonite Church has called a nation-wide “prayer for peace” for September 10–16. The pray-in will encompass international leaders and such hot spots as Ireland, Viet Nam, and the Middle East.
Conservative Jews will soon have a new prayer book in contemporary prose and poetry to give Jewish liturgy a modern dimension.
Personalia
A former Roman Catholic nun, Joanne E. Pierce, is one of two women recently allowed entry into the FBI’s agenttraining program. The two are the first women in the force.
Canon Albert J. du Bois, Jr., 66, will retire as executive director of the American Church Union, a conservative Anglo-Catholic organization within the Episcopal Church.
Martin J. Neeb, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana, since its founding in 1954, has retired.
William D. Sisterson will become the first full-time executive secretary of the American Scientific Affiliation, a national organization of evangelicals working in the scientific disciplines.
Evangelical writer Edward H. Pitts was named to the new position of executive vice president of Laubach Literacy, an extension of the work of the late Frank C. Laubach which has, for over forty years, resulted in basic education of an estimated 60 million adults in 103 countries and 312 languages.
Professor James P. Martin of Union Seminary in Virginia, will take over as principal of the Vancouver School of Theology, formed recently by a merger of Anglican and United Church of Canada seminaries and located on the University of British Columbia campus. Regent College, an evangelical graduate center, is affiliated with the theological school. Martin is a former Inter-Varsity staffer.
Navy chaplain Richard G. Hutcheson, 50, of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in charge of Atlantic fleet chaplains. Chief of Chaplains Francis L. Garrett is the only other chaplain holding that rank.
Baptist pastor John Bird of suburban London will head the evangelism department of the Evangelical Alliance, comprising more than 700 churches throughout Great Britain. A nationwide outreach is scheduled for 1974 or 1975.
National Association of Evangelicals world relief head Everett S. Graffam was given Korea’s Civil Merit Medal for his commission’s work in reclamation of land.
The Reverend Wayne Saffen has been installed as pastor of a unified Lutheran church in Manteca, California, believed to be the first congregation in the nation uniting Missouri Synod and LCA Lutherans. The two national bodies have not yet established pulpit and altar fellowship because of Missouri’s reluctance.
The new president of the National Fellowship of Indian Workers is Homer Noley, a United Methodist executive.
The venerable, stroke-stricken E. Stanley Jones is still holding forth. He recently keynoted the World Ashram Congress in Jerusalem (he founded the Ashram movement forty years ago). Jones lashed out at a social gospel lacking social concern. “I do not want either; I want a totally new person in Christ,” he declared.
World Scene
Czechoslovakia, now in the midst of a religion crackdown, is the site chosen for publication of Bible portions by the United Bible Societies. The Scriptures will be exported to Sierra Leone following publication in Prague.
The University Christian Movement, South Africa’s last interracial student group, disbanded because of lost church support and government pressure.
German evangelical scholar Helmut Saake is seeking government approval and partial funding of his proposed International Theological University at Wiesbaden; present state-supported faculties of theology fail to satisfy Germany’s evangelicals.
The proposed union between South-West Africa’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church and the non-white United Evangelical Lutheran Church is off for now. The congregations reportedly feel the step is premature.
The Orthodox Church of Greece is opposing government plans to permit automatic divorce after a seven-year separation. Bishops, who must approve court-granted decrees, are already chafing at existing legislation allowing divorce for cause and are bracing for a major church-state hassle. Meantime, the government wants to subject prospective priests to a political loyalty test, on grounds the state-paid priests are civil servants.
The World Council of Churches’ relief unit wants churches to raise $17.5 million for aid, including $2.5 million for the Sudan and $300,000 for medical supplies for North Viet Nam.
Chile’s socialist government has no intention of taking steps against the Church, Bishop Helmut Frenz of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile told West German news reporters.
