A fortnightly report of developments in religion
The 100-member Central Committee of the World Council of Churches met at Cité Universitaire, Paris, August 7–17, under the chairmanship of Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the Lutheran Church in America. Two Roman Catholic priests were on hand as observers. Two East German members of the committee were absent because their government would not grant travel permits. The committee was primarily concerned with implementing decisions of the New Delhi assembly. Their theme for the Paris meeting: “The Finality of Jesus Christ in an Age of Universal History.”
Referring to an invitation to send observers to the Second Vatican Council, Dr. Fry said: “This is the first time in history that observers from so many confessions are invited to follow the proceedings of a council of the Roman Catholic Church.”
Dr. A. A. Fulton of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland advised the committee that membership in the WCC has been vigorously attacked in some quarters of his church. “If the council decides to send observers to the Vatican Council,” he pointed out, “it might make the work of those of us who contend for membership harder.”
The committee accepted the Vatican invitation nevertheless and appointed Dr. Lukas Vischer, 35-vear-old member of the WCC Geneva staff as one of two observers. The other will be named later. The committee stressed that the observers will have no authority to speak officially on behalf of the WCC but allowed that they may give “informal explanations of the purposes and actions of the World Council.”
Another highlight of the committee meeting was the approval for WCC membership of seven more church groups—including five from the Soviet Union (see adjoining box).
General Secretary W. A. Visser’t Hooft called for “genuine dialogue” between Protestant and Roman Catholic churches as the next step toward Christian unity. German Bishop Hans Lilje asked about the character of the “dialogue.” Dr. Visser’t Hooft replied that this would depend on the decisions of the Vatican Council in the realm of interchurch relations including such matters as religious liberty, mixed marriages, and the deeper theological issue of the nature of the Church.
The General Secreary also said: “There is in many of our churches a sense of defeatism about their task in the world. So often the world lives and thinks and talks as if there were no Church in existence. And the gulf between the intellectual and ideological forces shaping our civilization and the thought and witness of the Church seems to be growing wider all the time.”
Actions Of The Central Committee
Seven more church groups were approved for membership in the World Council of Churches by its policy-making Central Committee in Paris this month. The action gave the WCC a total of 201 member churches.
The new churches include five from the Soviet Union: the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (with 500,000 members), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia (350,000), the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of the USSR (545,000), the Georgian Orthodox Church (with 100 churches), and the Armenian Apostolic Church with headquarters in Etchmiadzin (4,500,000, including 1,400,000 living outside the USSR).
Also added were the Armenian Apostolic Church—Catholicate of Cilicia (498,000) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa—South-East Region (75,587).
A report to the committee told of preparations for a major world conference on faith and order to be held in Montreal, July 12–26, 1963. A spokesman said the WCC will insure that evangelicals from non-member churches will be represented despite the feeling that “the intransigence or misrepresentation in some of these quarters may discourage us into thinking that these are completely barren pastures for the practice of ecumenism.
Addressing the assembly on its theme, British Congregationalist Dr. John Marsh likened man to a satellite in orbit, separate from the planet from which he has been launched, vet fulfilling his function only as he remains in proper orbital relation to his launching base. “The world of creatures,” he said, “has been ‘set in orbit’ by the Creator, given a life of its own, and yet must live always as an ‘orbital life’ related at depth to God. The duties of the Christian community, then, are to respect the integrity of the secular, and so to accept responsibility for it and within it, knowing that whatever the course of history proves to be, God is complicit in it, and that its outcome is already assured.”
Dr. Marsh denied that “conversion” means leaving one religion that has no truth for one that has nothing but truth.
Speaking on the same subject, the Rev. T. Paul Verghese, priest of the Syrian Orthodox Church, new associate secretary of the WCC and former private secretary to Ethiopian Emporer Haile Selassie, said: “The charge of ‘Fellow-travelling,’ of being a ‘Com-symp’ (Communist sympathizer), is a frightening and tyrannical force in many parts of the world today, disrupting community both at a world-wide and at national and domestic levels. The Christian faith should be able to deliver us from our bondage to this tyranny. Christ was and is the Master Fellow-traveller and we cannot afford to be less. He was and is the ‘all-symp,’ and we have to share in his universal sympathy. The WCC itself is hamstrung in its approach to Christians in the socialist countries by fear of being tarred and lampooned as ‘com-symps.’ Neither can we afford to neglect one-fourth of humanity in our human community by keeping People’s China out of the United Nations.”
Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, director of the council’s Division of World Mission and Evangelism, addressed a series of searching questions to the committee. Why is the missionary advance of the Church so slow? Why are the missionary forces of the Church apparently so immobile, so completely exhausted by the effort to remain where they are? Why is it that missionaries sent out by the churches which belong to the WCC are a decreasing proportion of the total force? Why is it that missionary has become a “bad word” in many Christian circles? Why is it that among the best and most devoted young people in our churches one hears it said, “Anything, anywhere, as long as it is not a missionary”?
Bishop Newbigin, veteran missionary to India, acknowledged that there had been too much reluctance to admit that the era of history in which modern missions achieved its great triumph was ended. He added that there were still some people who are “surprised when one speaks of the missionary responsibility of African Christians for the unconverted pagans of Europe.”
He quoted the divisional statement which said that “half the world is hungry, and we are learning to share our bread.… There is a hunger from which no part of the world is free, and there is no bread that can satisfy that hunger except Jesus Christ.”
J. D. D.
The Word In Helsinki
Arriving several weeks prior to the opening session of last month’s Communist-sponsored World Youth Festival in Helsinki, a 25-man Pocket Testament League deputation began preparations which were to culminate in the distribution of over 100,000 copies of the gospel of John and in the proclamation of the Christian message in over 20 languages. By the end of the conference, it was apparent that the PTL had achieved a greater success in attaining its goals than the members of the Communist party had in theirs. The Communists had boasted that two million young people would be turned to communism as a result of the week-long jamboree.
By all reports, the free world in Finland had turned a cool and sometimes hostile face to the eighth world congress of the Communist youth. During the first four days, noisy street demonstrations diminished the spirit of the meetings. More than 50 of the festival delegates defected to the West before the congress ended, and many others returned home disillusioned. Throughout it all, members of the PTL task force continued to distribute gospels to the delegates. Nearly 90,000 went to Finnish-speaking peoples. Over 10,000 scriptures were distributed in other languages. Observed team member Larry McGuill, “I am convinced that we have been used of God in distributing his Word, which has become a deterrent factor in the forward movement of the Communist philosophy.”
The Christian witness was present in less structured occurrences as well. At a Communist-sponsored seminar on “The Problems of Peace and National Independence,” a young Harvard graduate and a member of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, took the floor to rebut a charge that American missionaries were used to foster the “colonial aims” of the United States. Replied Fred Notehelfer, whose parents are presently missionaries in Japan, “The United States has had a long history of separation of Church and State.”
In a later statement, Notehelfer told the press that the “American position has been very poorly represented at the festival thus far, if at all.” He believed that the directors of the festival had devised procedures which made it “very difficult” for defenders of the United States to speak.
PTL members discovered that a “very difficult” situation was often outright and physical hostility in respect to the distribution of the Gospel. Nevertheless, concluded Baptist minister Dr. Charles W. Anderson, “multitudes have heard the true message of lasting peace through the blood of Calvary’s Cross.”
Remarked one Finnish woman as the PTL embarked, “You have taught us how to meet people with the Gospel face to face. Please pray that we shall rise to the opportunities that are presented to us here in our own city during these days.”
Shared Time Test
The first planned trial of “shared time” education begins this fall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, where Roman Catholic high schools will send students to a new public technical school on a part-time basis.
Dr. Carl F. Reuss, director of research and social action of the American Lutheran Church, predicted this month that the Supreme Court prayer ruling will lead to growing support for the “shared time” plan.
A comprehensive analysis of the concept by Louis Cassels, UPI religion writer, appeared in the August 28 issue of Look. “So far,” says Cassels, “no one has questioned the desirability of the goals or the constitutionality of the approach. The argument has centered around the practicality of the plan.”
Under shared time, pupils may attend religious schools for some courses and public school for others.
[See also, “Will Clergy Back ‘shared Time’ School Plan?,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 30, 1962.]
Singing On The Mountain
On Tuesday the crowds began arriving. By Saturday night 10,000 were camped on the slopes of North Carolina’s 5964-foot Grandfather Mountain. By Sunday afternoon, when evangelist Billy Graham arrived, some 75,000 had crowded to the site of the 38th annual “Singing on the Mountain,” joining in on the old revival hymns and waiting expectantly to hear the sermon. Because of a 50-mile long traffic tie-up, thousands of others had been kept away.
The event was one of Graham’s rare appearances in his home state, and it was characterized by a proclamation of the same Gospel which the evangelist has preached throughout the world. When the sermon had ended and the evangelist had asked the listeners to give themselves to God, hundreds responded with uplifted hands.
An observer might well have altered Goldsmith’s phrase to say, “And those who came to sing, remained to pray.”
Starting At The Bite
The following report was prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Arthur H. Matthews of The Presbyterian Journal:
“One day the great state universities may be ringed with residential colleges like this.”
That’s the dream of the Rev. W. Jack Lewis, founder-director of the controversial Christian Faith and Life Community of Austin, Texas. The community is made up of University of Texas students who live and study together under a code which is getting wide attention as the “Austin Experiment” and showing signs of having great influence on denominational and interdenominational work at campuses throughout America. It begins its tenth year this fall on the heels of serious internal strife which split the ranks.
Growing pains notwithstanding, the community is still very much in business on a miniature campus of its own adjacent to the grounds of the University of Texas. Physical facilities embrace nearly a square block. Officials say the community has $100,000 equity in some $356,000 worth of property. The budget for the coming year, however, will force cutbacks in the program. The overall figure is expected to be $93,000 or about $15,000 less than in 1961–62.
Far more serious is the personnel toll. Eight of 13 theologically-trained staff members pulled away at the end of the 1961–62 session, led by Joseph W. Mathews, who was program director. The entire faction won employment at the Evanston Ecumenical Institute, recently linked with the Church Federation of Greater Chicago. Mathews will serve as dean of the institute.
The split was attributed to a “problem of communications” among staff members.
The Austin Experiment is expected to attract only about 50 students to reside in the community’s “college house” this year, compared with 100 last year.
But while the Austin experimenters are retrenching and taking stock, their ideas will be used in 50 or more colleges and universities across the nation.
Campus ministers and student workers of all denominations have been beating a path to Austin for the past several years, and “almost all the campus ministers who have been here have picked up part of the program,” according to the Rev. Robert R. Bryant, chairman of the community’s collegium (teaching staff). Officials of the experiment said their patterns have been used in such universities as Brown, Penn State, Emory, Iowa, Duke, Wisconsin and Georgia. In other places, the student programs will follow the Austin plan for the first time this September.
Influence of the community will not be limited to those campuses where a program has followed the Austin pattern. Staff members are in great demand as speakers. Ideas on theological study and worship from the community are showing up increasingly in the literature and programs of several denominations.
What’s unique about the community? Mr. Lewis said the plan grew out of his frustration as a Presbyterian campus minister at the University of Texas in the post-World War II days. He went to Europe and observed the evangelical academies and came back with the idea of a “residential college” architecturally similar to the Cambridge-Oxford residential colleges. He started the community “for the recovery of the ministry of the laity toward the continuing renewal of the church in her mission to the world.”
Participants in the community have agreed to covenant together to participate in certain worship services and some ten hours of group study a week—in addition to regular university studies. “Life together” in the community-operated dormitories and dining hall are a part of the regimen. The community is “ecumenical” in that the participants come from any and all churches or from no church at all.
There is no church connection. A self-perpetuating board gets operating funds from foundations and individuals primarily. Some sympathetic persons have seen that their church budgets included $200 or $300 per year for Austin. Last year the United Church of Christ Board of Homeland Ministries and the American Lutheran Church’s Luther League each gave $1,000. For five years, beginning in 1956, the Danforth Foundation of St. Louis contributed $15,000 annually. (The same foundation has also sent three seminary interns to Austin.)
Does the community, hailed in a forthcoming book as a norm for U.S. Protestant campus work, have a theology?
“We do not begin with a concern for a formulated doctrine,” Mr. Bryant explained. He said the community’s method of theological education is to “start at the point where the bite comes on the life of the individual.” Asked for the community’s position on the Bible, Mr. Bryant replied that “the statement of what is scripture is not crucial to our times.”
The chairman of the collegium protested that “to put into cryptic statements” what the community believes and teaches “is to reduce it falsely.” Mr. Lewis added that the community’s theology is “not philosophical existentialism, but experimental.”
What do the community’s students study? Mr. Bryant said they utilize writings of “the Church fathers—Luther, Calvin, Knox, Schleiermacher and Rauschenbusch—as well as the modern thinkers.” Emphasized among the “modern thinkers” are such writers as Kirkegaard, Tillich, Bultmann and the Niebuhrs.
Persons joining the community’s staff are not “tied to any particular formulation” of doctrine but are “familiar with or involved in the theologizing of our times,” according to Mr. Bryant. “They are also thoroughly and unequivocally a part of the Church,” he added.
“The Church” for which the community considers itself a pioneering and research agency is “made up of all denominations.” And while liturgies of several denominations are used, much of the worship material is original. Examples are the singing of the Apostles’ Creed to the tune of “Colonel Bogey March” and the Lord’s Prayer to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda.”
Not only does Mr. Lewis expect his pattern to be adopted or adapted by many university ministries, but his backers also hope it will have an impact on the lay programs of the churches. Laymen attending weekend sessions often go home to “covenant together” with other laymen and/or their pastors to be a “core” of lay theologians working for the “renewal” of their congregations.
Princeton Seminary President James I. McCord, a member of the community’s national advisory council, suggested about a year ago that the term “experiment” could no longer be properly applied. Staff members agree that the institution is firmly established, but they maintain that their work will continue to be experimental.
A lengthy report adopted by the Presbytery of Northeast Texas (Presbyterian U.S.) at the height of a recent furor over the community noted that while the community is experimental, “it is experiment in one direction primarily.” And, the presbytery report continued, “Christian existentialism” best describes the “fundamental stance of the theologizing of the community.”
The Sabbatarians
Solomon Island fuzzy wuzzies, Amazon River boatmen, and 1,300 delegates from 100 other countries moved with energy and color into San Francisco last month for the Seventh-day Adventists’ 49th World Conference. Their stated mission in the West Coast’s most exotic city was “to review the past four years, elect a staff of the general conference, and lay plans for the next four years.”
Sabbath services saw some 29,000 persons pour into the Cow Palace and adjoining halls, and regular conference sessions left standing room only in the Civic Auditorium.
As expected, America’s 335,000 SDA members were urged to fight blue laws. R. R. Hegstad, the denomination’s world religious liberty secretary, asked the convention, “When a man is forced by law to rest on a day other than that which he regards as the Sabbath, how can the exercise of his religion be called free?” Hegstad reminded cheering delegates, “It was to escape their neighbor’s religion that our forefathers came to America.”
Seventh-day Adventists are the only Protestant denomination operating with one unified organizational and financial structure in 196 countries. Known for financial soundness and close-knit organizational efficiency, the church is divided into 13 divisions, each comprising union conferences which in turn are composed of local conferences. Theodore Carcich of Lincoln, Nebraska, was elected president of the North American Division.
Conference speakers repeatedly noted phenomenal growth, far-flung advance in all parts of the world, and plans for the future “broader than any of the past.” Statistics of recent expansion lent substance to the dreams and credibility to their fulfillment. The four years since the last world conference were reported to be the church’s most successful missionary period: It was reported that 355,436 converts were brought into the membership of the church through baptism—a number roughly equivalent to the total membership of the North American Division, the church’s largest. The South American Division reported 42,385 new members from 1958 to 1961 and compared this to the 52 years it took to obtain the first 42,000.
Today there are 1,307,892 Seventh-day Adventists in 196 countries, and an estimated 563,617 in Sabbath schools preparing for baptism.
Sabbath school membership in Korea soared from 18,426 in 1958 to 72,019 in 1961. C. P. Sorensen, president of the Far Eastern Division, told the conference that “it was largely the result of Vacation Bible School evangelism, followed by branch Sabbath School evangelism.”
SDAs operate 4,821 schools and colleges, two universities, 108 hospitals, 111 clinics, 42 publishing houses, publish 293 periodicals and religious literature in 228 languages.
Observers are frequently baffled by Adventism’s bristling energy and rapid growth. Adventists themselves speak frequently of “miracles” wrought through them by God, and of the urgency “to finish the work” so that Christ may soon return. Their restless drive and sustained dedication reflects their conviction that they are within the Christian community a distinct people with a distinct calling and task. Unlike traditional Christians—whom they acknowledge as such—they believe themselves especially chosen of God to bring “God’s last word” in the present crisis of the world’s end-time. Although conscious of no diminution of the New Testament’s understanding of eschatology, they derive their sense of calling and of existence in the world’s end-time more from a nineteenth-century event—Christ’s cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, to which they trace their historical origin—than to the teaching of the end and the nearness of Christ’s return as set forth in the New Testament’s explanation of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.
The distinctive faith that they are a special people by special divine election for a special task of gospel proclamation at a special time in history not only accounts for the distinctive SDA spiritual outlook and sense of calling. It also accounts for a fostered disinterest in any possible union or ecumenical affiliation with their Christian brethren. Explicitly committed to proselyting, and eager to have other Christians join them, they are predisposed by religious conviction against joining with others.
Referring to Adventists as “God’s last men in the world” and as “the last men of God,” Francis D. Nichol, editor of the church’s official weekly Review and Herald asked in a Sabbath evening conference sermon, “How could we, in good faith, become a part of any other all-inclusive movement? We can be true to the logic of our beliefs only as we stand alone.”
In protest against the segregation practices of some of its schools, 1,000 Adventist Negroes met on a Sunday in the jack Tar Hotel under the leadership of Negro Dr. Frank W. Hale, Jr. During the protest session, the General Conferences elected Negro Frank L. Peterson as a vice president of its powerful World General Council, the fourth Negro currently holding an elective position in the church world headquarters. A request of the protesting group for a hearing at the world conference was denied by Reuben R. Figuhr, who was re-elected conference president, as was the demand that desegregation in all Adventist schools be enforced by the church’s highest authoritative council. Figuhr contended that North American segregation was a local problem and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the General Conference with its world scope.
Figuhr also expressed regret for the “misguided” efforts of the Protestants, contending that resolution of an admitted problem must be resolved progressively and within the church, and not abruptly by authoritative enforcement compelled by an external pressure group. Top officials of the church admitted the existence of the problem in some areas and pledged new efforts to bring SDA practice into harmony with its convictions.
Pap smears and cholesterol tests were given to volunteering conferees by medical research workers from Loma Linda University, an SDA school. Adventists have an unusual religious interest in health and diet. Because they avoid smoking, tea and coffee, and eat little or no meat, they present unusual opportunities for medical research into the diseases of heart and cancer.
J. D.
Mennonites En Masse
Under the watchful eye of Queen Elizabeth, whose 15-foot portrait illuminated the front wall of the hockey arena, Mennonites enjoyed their largest and most representative Glaubenskonferenz. Nearly 10,000 of them spent the first seven days of August in the twin Ontario towns of Kitchener and Waterloo for the seventh World Mennonite Conference. The ecclesiastical inferiority complex associated with Mennonites was passé. For at least this once, the Anabaptists’ children in the faith appeared a strong Christian force.
Chief business was adoption of an 800-word “message” to Mennonite congregations of the world, calling upon them “to repentance and a genuine renewal of faith and life, so that our confession that Jesus is Lord may be made real and effective.” The call took its cue from the theme of the non-legislative conference, “The Lordship of Christ.”
Conference highlight was a soft-spoken rebuke of Mennonite factionalism and a plea for mutual respect and stimulation by ailing Dean Harold S. Bender of Goshen College Biblical Seminary. Bender, president of the World Conference, is recuperating after being stricken with cancer. His conference appearances were limited to week-end sessions.
Bender stressed that his appeal for cooperation was not to be construed as groundwork for a super-church. He remarked that he has been accused of being an “Old Mennonite ecumaniac.”
“But I love Mennonites,” he said, “and if that’s a sin, then I stand convicted.”
Bender also prepared the keynote address of the conference. It was delivered for him by Dr. Erland Waltner, conference vice president. The address was one of a series given on various aspects of the Lordship of Christ by key? Mennonite churchmen.
Selection of Kitchener as world conference site was based largely on the fact that it embraces one of the world’s largest concentrations of Mennonites. Most are of the German variety (Kitchener has more people of German descent than any other city in Canada), but several varieties of Mennonites have churches in the vicinity. Sessions held in the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium attracted capacity crowds, which in itself made the 100,000 residents of Kitchener and Waterloo sit up and take notice. Direct impact of the conference was felt as far away as Toronto, 73 miles to the east, where newspapers carried daily accounts of the proceedings. The mass media outreach was enhanced by an efficient press room operated by Maynard Shelly, editor of The Mennonite, official organ of the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Virtually every variation of the Anabaptist tradition was represented at Kitchener, with the notable exception of the Amish, whose disdain for even a very loose organization persists.
Mennonites from Communist lands had been invited, but none appeared. Peter J. Dyck, European director of the Mennonite Central Committee, reported that an estimated 45,000 Mennonites in Russia are settled primarily in the southeasterly part of the country near the Chinese border. Because their religion is not recognized by the government, they must worship with Baptists or meet secretly in private homes.
“Though there are clear signs of a spiritual awakening,” Dyck said, “many ethnic Mennonites are not interested in church life and some are militant atheists and Communists.”
The world Mennonite membership now stands at more than 400,000 (not including 200,000 children), with over half of this total in North America. Virtually all Mennonites are pacifists of one kind or another.1* The Rev. Nelson Litwiller, missionary to Uruguay and president of a Mennonite seminary in Montevideo, publicized a satirical prayer for inhabitants of fallout shelters: They believe in a strong separation of church and state. For the most part they have favored plain dress, and many men still wear collarless coats. Only a few bearded men were on hand at Kitchener, but about half the women appeared with “prayer veils”—white mesh head covers. By contrast, a number of the younger women came with ear rings, makeup and spike heels.
The Rev. Vincent Harding, Mennonite Negro minister who was recently jailed in Albany, Georgia, for his part in an anti-segregation demonstration, charged that the brotherhood is not doing enough to fight racial discrimination.
Theologically, the Mennonites are largely numbered among the evangelicals in the Arminian camp. Nineteenth-century liberalism, however, swept up a number of Mennonite theologians (one Mennonite observer asserts that some drifted almost to Unitarianism). The liberal impact was greatest upon the Mennonites of Holland, but it did not last. Today the leading Dutch Mennonites are known to espouse Barthian views.
Mennonites are often thought of as a rural people and very separatist. Yet they have a strong cultural interaction, particularly in education and art. Percentage-wise, Mennonites are well-educated; earned doctorates abound among church leaders to an extent which matches or surpasses that of larger denominations. Mennonite artists are also a distinguished lot, and their works are exhibited in no fewer than 19 major U. S. museums. A representative art exhibit was a feature of the Kitchener conference.
The happy fellowship and avoidance of controversy at Kitchener will doubtless have a wholesome long-range effect upon the Mennonite brotherhood. But no one seemed willing to predict immediate merger talks among the separated groups, of which there are more than a dozen in North America. The largest of these are the Mennonite Church (“Old Mennonite”) with nearly 80,000 members, the General Conference Mennonite Church with 55,000, and the Mennonite Brethren Church with 26,000.
Though Mennonites are sensitive about their differences, cooperative efforts enjoy considerable scope (missions, publishing, relief work, education).
The General Conference Mennonite Church convened its own 36th triennial meeting in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, immediately following the Kitchener conference. Some 700 delegates were on hand. They approved artificial birth control as not an “evil,” but condemned abortion as a “sin” and divorce as “contrary to the will of God.”
The views were expressed in a policy statement on “The Christian Family.” To prevent broken marriages, the statement called for “courses of instruction for young people on courtship and marriage provided through the church fellowship.” Concerning mixed marriages, the statement said that religious convictions should be strong ties between husbands and wives. “Young people need to take this into careful consideration even in courtship and especially before considering engagement to anyone of a different religious background.”
Delegates also voted to write President Kennedy “to emphasize their church’s stand against nuclear testing.”
Most important issue to come before the Bethlehem conference was a nine-point statement on the authority of the Scriptures prepared by a study commission. The statement referred to the Scriptures as “an adequate, authentic, and sufficient vehicle of divine revelation” and as “the witness to the revelatory events of God in Christ.” After three days of discussion the statement was adopted by a vote of 1434 to 72. An explanatory supplement prepared by the commission said the term “inerrancy is often interpreted as to mean different things to different people. It is wise, therefore, to stay with biblical terminology …”
Keswick 1962
“Oh dear,” sighed the vacationing matron as she strode into the dining-room of a lakeside hotel. “It’s such a relief to get back to some peace after visiting Keswick with all those convention people about.” She spoke too soon, for just then a man seated with six ladies said a loud grace which killed conversation and embarrassed neighboring diners. The convention, like its 86 predecessors, had for a week taken over the little Lake District town. Sacred cow to some, a kind of cult to others, England’s Keswick convention brings together each year 7,000 people in search of practical holiness.
Naturally it arouses criticism, some of it justified. “The Keswick message?” echoed an Air Force chaplain, “there’s no such thing—or there ought not to be. It’s either the Christian message or it’s not!” The predilection for intensely devotional hymns made one Church of Scotland minister long for the sound of a metrical psalm or one of the great Trinitarian hymns. Fragments of gospel hymns drifted out of open windows. One house party was singing “Let me come closer to Thee, Lord Jesus,” probably unaware that this great Keswick favorite had been written by a monk who believed that our Lord was in the Sacrament on the altar. Down by the lake a large group was lustily rendering one of those odious evangelical medleys which seem to consist of snatches of hymns and choruses strung together haphazardly.
Near the big tent a somewhat ragged gentleman reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet passed with slow dignity, holding aloft a placard bearing the simple inscription “YHWH.” At the corner a gospel van festooned with texts roared through a stop sign.
The main meetings, relayed by radio and land lines to more than 90 points of the United Kingdom, were conducted in the most reverent spirit, and the impression was given that here indeed were people who had come to do business with the living God. Other impressions included the wisdom of the I.V.F. camp commandant in organizing an amateur concert with never a hymn-book in sight … the courage of a former Spanish Roman Catholic priest and his moving testimony … surprise and dismay at seeing the vast numbers of different religious societies … the new speaker who departed a little from tradition and gave a powerful and refreshingly different message from the Old Testament … most of all, the enormous task of organization efficiently and unobtrusively carried out.
The story was told of how F. B. Meyer gave such a searching address on one occasion that the town’s Post Office ran out of postal orders, so great was the run on them to settle unpaid debts. The convention now has its own Post Office.
J. D. D.
The Unequal Yoke
A British Member of Parliament has put a question to the Home Secretary in the House of Commons about the granting of a visa to James Taylor, wealthy New York businessman who makes frequent visits to Britain as the international leader of one section of the “Close” or “Exclusive” Brethren. Another M.P. has forwarded to the Home Secretary a petition signed by 1,000 people in a small Scottish town, asking for a public inquiry into the activities of the Close Brethren in Scotland and their effect on family life. The three men who presented it claimed that the sect had broken up their home lives. One of them is a Baptist, but his wife and daughter have joined the Close Brethren and have left his house to live a few yards away with his wife’s parents. Two weeks ago he attended a meeting of the Brethren and was allowed to speak to his wife for ten minutes.
An unsigned letter which appeared in the August issue of The Harvester, but which was completely untypical of that evangelical publication, says at one point: “What fellowship can light have with darkness? It is time a halt was called and assembly principles restated. What do we stand for? Are we not those to whom God has given the light? Have we not the truth? The one doctrine above all others that needs to be taught and emphasized today is that of separation.”
The enforcement of this policy has been made in striking ways since Mr. Taylor succeeded his father as leader. The mailed fist became apparent two years ago when a dispute seriously disrupted the fishing communities along the Moray Firth in northeast Scotland. A pooled price scheme, devised to ensure a fair deal for all engaged in the herring industry, was repudiated by fishermen associated with the Exclusive Brethren because St. Paul said, and a latter-day apostle of their own movement from America had underlined it, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” Brethren, who owned about half of the 80 boats sailing out of Peterhead, would no longer eat their meals at the same table as “nonbelievers.” Separate mealtimes did not always provide a practicable solution, and one account tells how righteousness was fulfilled by sawing a table down the middle so that it was technically two tables, though the halves were never parted. One Brethren adherent who had operated a boat with his brother for several years, withdrew himself and his crew. His brother, unable to find a crew, offered to sell out to him, but the other, who did not hold a skipper’s ticket, was unable to accept. The result was that the boat was no use to either.
Information about the sect is hard to come by, but its comprehensive list of prohibitions includes trade unions, cosmetics, tobacco, school uniforms, paid clergy, women’s haircuts, TV, radio (except aboard their fishing vessels), voting, military service, wedding toasts, and “mixed” marriages. A recent decree says that liquor must be on the tables during meals, as a sign that members of the sect have the will power not to touch it. Found in all occupations and classes, they will not discuss their activities with those outside the assembly, and no data are available for estimating their numerical strength.
In past months some glaring publicity has come their way. A press report told of a 21-year-old who committed suicide after his parents were ordered by the Exclusive Brethren to have no social contact with him; he was not even allowed to eat with the family. Another 19-year-old traveled from Glasgow to Edinburgh where 4,000 members of the Close Brethren were being addressed by Mr. Taylor. Guards at the door turned him away because he had no pass, and his father was brought from the meeting to urge his son to “turn from your path of sin.” The sin in question was evidently the boy’s determination to meet the man who, he said, had caused his family to treat him as a stranger. A 73-year-old man reportedly had been compelled by the Exclusive Brethren to leave his wife after 37 years of happy married life. The distraught woman has been told that she is a sinner and that the home is “leprous.” In southwest Scotland her doctor warmly supported a woman’s plea that the local town council allocate a separate house for herself and her two sons, because the father’s association with the sect made their existence “a living hell.” Some 200 miles away another woman testified how family life had suddenly changed after her husband joined the group. She was quoted as saying: “The sect have tightened up some of their rules recently after word came from America. The leader is a Mr. Taylor and I often think I would like to meet this man to tell him that he is ruining our marriage. My husband attended a meeting in Aberdeen recently and when he came home he told me that he could no longer eat at the same table as nonbelievers … He has told my eldest boy that when he is 12 he will have to join the Brethren or eat at another time.… Another young man was ordered out of the family home, and when they meet now in the course of everyday business the father is as coldly polite as he would be to any casual acquaintance. Under the new regime many members of the sect have withdrawn from business and professional associations, and some have even declined to accept the university degree for which their academic success has qualified them.
One minister who has had some dealings with members of the group unclerically described their attitude thus:
We are the chosen few,
All others will be damned;
There is no place up there for you,
We can’t have heaven crammed.
It should be made clear that the particular conduct listed above reflects the policy of only one party of Exclusive Brethren. It is much to be regretted that undiscerning or malicious individuals have gone so far as to identify such attitudes even with the Open Brethren, a body which freely cooperates with evangelicals of other traditions (giving notable support in the Graham crusades at Harringay and Glasgow), and generally enriches the Christian life and witness of Britain to an extent out of all proportion to their comparatively modest numbers.
J. D. D.
