The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt may be headed for its most serious doctrinal controversy since the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., when the church fathers from Alexandria walked out amid differences over interpretation of the two natures of Christ. As a result of Chalcedon, the Egyptians separated themselves from Constantinople and Rome, a cleavage that exists to this day. The current clash, however, is an internal one, and it involves the doctrine of justification by faith, the place of the church and tradition, the shape of renewal, and powerful personalities. It has spilled into the pages of the nation’s leading newspaper, Al-Ahram, and it threatens to embroil increasingly agitated Protestant bystanders.
After one establishment writer published in an official Coptic organ a series of articles attacking what seemed like the Protestant evangelical position on justification by faith, a committee of aroused Protestant leaders visited him. He sheepishly insisted that he had aimed not at the Protestants but at the other side in the Coptic Orthodox controversy.
The “other side” is led by priest Zacharia Botros, 44, and the leader of the majority opposition is none other than the church’s patriarch himself, Pope Shenouda III. Both are gifted preachers and Bible teachers, and both command large personal followings (see April 7 issue, page 58).
Botros, known throughout Egypt as Father Zacharia, says that through study of the Bible he came into a deeper relationship with Christ a few years ago. Also, he says, he has experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in his ministry, and a number of people have been healed physically and emotionally as a result. He has spoken in tongues, but it was a private experience, he explains, and he does not promote it in his meetings. He believes that the church has strayed from its original mooring on Scripture, that it has elevated good works and church tradition to the same level as grace and faith in the doctrine of salvation.
Father Zacharia came to the pastoral staff of Saint Mark’s Church in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis several years ago from a northern parish where Shenouda, then a bishop, was his superior. Even then, Shenouda found reason to reprimand him for his theological beliefs, according to one source, and he suspended the priest from his pulpit. The “punishment,” however, freed Zacharia for further Bible study and itinerant preaching throughout Egypt.
At St. Mark’s, a Thursday night Bible study led by Zacharia was soon attracting more than 3,000, many of them students and young adults. An emerging core of leaders engaged in evangelistic and publishing activities, opened new churches, and became involved in social ministries.
Among those who have professed faith in Christ and been baptized under Zacharia’s ministry are an estimated 200 former Muslims, according to Zacharia’s associates. Some are being cared for in community houses associated with the renewal movement. Zacharia’s critics have cited the Muslim conversions in their opposition to him. The Copts nominally represent only about 10 per cent of Egypt’s 40 million population, and militants in the overwhelming Muslim majority want to make Egypt a Muslim state. This would result in outright repression of the Orthodox and Protestants alike, say observers. So far, the moderate Muslims have been holding the line against the radicals, but the Christian leaders don’t want anyone in their own camp to rock the boat. They say they are already victims of discrimination, and a confrontation with Muslims would only make matters worse.
In early March, Shenouda summoned Zacharia and his leaders to the cathedral in Cairo and laid down guidelines for belief and practice. Then he clamped a ban on all their outside preaching and publishing until after Orthodox Easter, an injunction that Zacharia agreed to obey as he “waited on the Lord.” Finally, in mid-May, the pope ordered an end to the Thursday night meetings. The large hall in Heliopolis was barred shut, and police were posted in front to handle the crowd. Hundreds of people drove to the cathedral in protest and demanded to see Shenouda, but he turned them away and suggested that he might meet with a small delegation.
Shenouda appointed an eloquent preacher from Upper Egypt to serve at St. Mark’s with the apparent aim of taking over the Thursday night sessions. The official church weekly, edited by Shenouda, heavily publicized the new man’s appointment. Many of Zacharia’s followers—who range far beyond Cairo—wrote open letters of protest to Al-Ahram, which published some—along with letters endorsing Shenouda’s action. Several of the latter were signed by bishops and Shenouda’s fellow clergymen.
There were rumors last month that Zacharia would be placed on trial and drummed out of the church, but there was no official confirmation. If that happens, a major schism may take place. It may also set back Orthodox-Protestant relations many years.
Advice To Graduates
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young urged the graduating class of the University of Maryland’s Eastern Shore campus last month to “get a Bible” and read a chapter a day. “It won’t hurt you at all,” he said in his commencement address, “and it will give you more illumination and purpose of life. It’s better to invest $15 in a Bible now than $25 an hour for a psychiatrist later.”
Young is a United Church of Christ clergyman.
Weighing the Votes
If there is a possibility that an attempt to remove a bottleneck will instead destroy the entire bottle, is the attempt worth the risk? That, in effect, was the question faced last month by commissioners (delegates) to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) General Assembly in Shreveport, Louisiana.
At the risk of further fracturing the denomination, which underwent schism in 1973, the PCUS assembly voted 206 to 198 to try to clear a constitutional obstacle that has often been blamed for the failure of merger plans and doctrinal proposals. The church’s top governing body sent to its presbyteries (district governing bodies) a constitutional amendment that would alter the method of counting their votes in the future.
Currently, three-fourths of the presbyteries must vote approval of any merger or confessional change before an assembly can declare it to be the law of the denomination. The more than one-fourth of the presbyteries that have blocked some of the plans of recent denominational leaders have often been the small ones, and their votes counted as much as those of the larger districts. The proposed amendment would “weight” the votes of presbyteries according to their size in balloting on future issues, thereby giving the larger (and usually more liberal) districts more of a voice.
Against the advice of some of its elder statesmen, the assembly directed that the amendment could be added to the constitution if approved by a simple majority (instead of three-fourths) of the presbyteries. Former moderator R. Matthew Lynn, who was serving as chairman of an advisory committee on constitutional matters, insisted that a three-fourths vote would be necessary to adopt it. J. McDowell Richards, another former moderator and retired president of Columbia Seminary, warned that the vote could be a “watershed” in the denomination, but commissioners turned a deaf ear. Instead, they followed the recommendation of committee chairman Robert B. Smith of Midland, Texas, who asked, “How long will the great majority which has been manipulated by a small handful be willing to remain in slavery?”
To some observers the action of the Shreveport assembly paralleled the 1969 version, held in Mobile, Alabama. At that meeting, when Lynn served as moderator, the assembly directed that only a simple majority of the presbyteries could approve a constitutional amendment which would make possible the union of PCUS and United Presbyterian prebyteries—even though the denomination had not voted for union at the national level. Opponents called that action “back-door merger.”
The 1969 meeting also took initiatives toward confessional change and merger discussions with the United Presbyterians. The combination of events resulting from the Mobile decisions led some of the PCUS conservatives to leave the denomination and form what is now the Presbyterian Church in America.
A number of influential evangelicals who stayed in the PCUS reasoned that because of the three-fourths rule it had not formally departed from its doctrine or polity.
A draft plan for union with the United Presbyterians was presented at this year’s assembly, but it was sent to the presbyteries for study, not for a vote. If the vote-counting plan passes it will probably be forwarded to the district governing bodies for action next year, observers predict.
Smith, the committee chairman who presented the new voting plan, is a member of the PCUS half of the committee on union with the United Presbyterian Church. Symbolizing the younger generation of denominational leaders, he found himself arguing against Lynn, his predecessor in the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church, Midland, Texas.
Another Texas leader of the denomination made a place in history at Shreveport when she was named the first woman moderator of the PCUS assembly. Sara Bernice Moseley, 60, of Sherman, was elected by a vote of 246 to 152 over a Mobile pastor, John Crowell. Mrs. Moseley has held a variety of offices in the church, including that of moderator of Covenant Presbytery in Northeast Texas. That district body voted just last month to merge with its United Presbyterian counterpart.
On another issue related to merger the assembly voted that even though a minister is not in a union presbytery he can be a member of two denominations if he is working for a program sponsored by both.
Giving
Charitable giving in the United States in 1977 rose to $35.2 billion, and $16.54 billion (47 per cent) of it—the biggest chunk—went to religion, reports Giving USA, a publication of the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel. Next came health and hospitals ($4.76 billion) and education ($4.66 billion).
Pressing Upward
Awards were handed out at last month’s annual meeting in Atlanta of the Religion Newswriters Association—the people who report religion as staffers with the secular press. Jeanne Pugh of the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) received the James O. Supple Award for excellence in reporting. The Harold Schachern Award went to Virginia Culver of the Denver Post for her weekly supplement on religion, judged to be the best newspaper religion section in the country. Ron Lee of the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri was given the Louis Cassels Award for excellence in reporting religion for papers with 50,000 or less circulation. The awards are named for pioneer members of the organization who have died.
Marjorie Hyer of the Washington Post was elected president, succeeding religion editor William A. Reed of the Nashville Tennessean.
