Simple, Sexy, and Sad
A correspondent on the West Coast took issue with me recently over my admission that in my leisure time I am “inclined to visit movie theaters.” I must confess that I am so inclined, and that I try to use the same kind of judgment he does when he watches television programs, or looks at the pictures in the newspapers, or chooses the ads in his magazines. He goes on to ask whether I have a sympathetic attitude toward “other modern relaxations” (which he does not name).
One of my other “modern relaxations” is to listen to music, sometimes catch-as-catch-can on the radio while I am driving and sometimes by careful choice on a record player. Thus I have come across the name of Rosemary Clooney and have listened to her sing. Sometimes she does better than she does at other times, and then again sometimes her choice of material is better than at other times.
When Time Magazine (another one of my modern relaxations) had Rosemary Clooney on the cover, they quoted her as saying, “Keep it simple, keep it sexy, keep it sad.” She thought this was the clue to her success.
I am not particularly concerned about Rosemary’s success, but I think there is something desperately true about those words in that order. If we keep life too simple—no big thinking or no big thoughts, no big reading in any big books, no big discussions on any big issues—that very simple-mindedness will push us toward the satisfactions of the senses. I think the sex emphasis of our day is probably response to the simple-mindedness of our general culture.
And it follows as the night the day that any life or any culture (take the Roman if you like) that falls over into sex will end up sad. Just for an exercise in analysis, watch this descent to disintegration. More times than you have noticed it will be simple, then sexy, then sad. “Sin when it is full-grown bringeth forth death.”
EUTYCHUS II
The Assassination
Your editorial entitled, “The Assassination of the President” (Dec. 6 issue), is generally commendable except for one glaring omission. You exhort Christians to pray for virtually all involved except those who probably need it most, namely, the accused assassin and his murderer, their families, and all those whose propagation of hate and violence provides the environment which makes such tragedies possible.
JOHN C. MODSCHIEDLER
Kirchliche Hochschule
Berlin, West Germany
• We regret the omission, but the editorial was written under a “stop the presses” situation immediately after the news came. The whole matter of the identity of the assassin was then obscure.—ED.
May I congratulate you upon the excellence of the editorial that appeared immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy?
MERRILL C. TENNEY
Dean, The Graduate Division
Wheaton College Wheaton, Ill.
Excellent editorial.…
HAROLD LINDSELL
Vice-President, Fuller Seminary
Pasadena, Calif.
Your editorial interests me greatly. I think it is well done and expresses my own feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the stricken family and earnest prayer that the heavenly, loving Father of us all will comfort and sustain as he alone can.
With your appraisal of President Kennedy I differ widely. His assassination has given a halo to his head and a glow to his person that has provided grounds for almost hero worship for many. When this halo and glow diminishes, as it will, and history can tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” my guess is that he, as a president, will take his place along with Franklin Pierce. John F. Kennedy was an attractive personality, a clever politician, a skilled rhetorician, with some fame as an author, but as a president, he was long on promises and short on performance. He made some serious mistakes, [the Bay of Pigs], an example.
JOHN R. MCFADDEN
La Jolla Methodist, La Jolla, Calif.
Pungent and Poignant
Frequently I have felt inclined to convey my appreciation and sense of gratitude to the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY for your outstanding ministry in communicating via the printed page the great concepts of the Christian message. However, after reading the pungent, poignant, and provocative essay by Professor David H. Wallace entitled, “The Mystery of the Incarnation” (Dec. 6 issue), I was motivated to write and express my appreciation, not only for this penetrating article, but a myriad of others which have stimulated my thinking.
DONALD D. BARNES
Kankakee Reformed Church, Kankakee, Ill.
With Professor Wallace, I agree that the Virgin Birth and Incarnation of Christ are basic in Christian doctrine. Yet, at the same time I can also agree with Luther scholar Roland Bainton who says of the Reformer, “The Virgin birth appeared to him a trivial miracle compared with the Virgin’s faith” (The Martin Luther Christmas Book, p. 12).
Much argumentation will continue to swirl about the various miracles surrounding the Christ. But to me, the greatest will always be the miracle of God working faith in me and in other believers.…
TED STEENBLOCK
St. Paul Lutheran, Mason, Tex.
Memorable Journey
I have never written a letter to an editor. Now I cannot refrain. My CHRISTIANITY TODAY came half an hour ago, and I have read and reread with pencil in hand “My Pilgrimage from Liberalism to Orthodoxy,” by Rachel H. King (Dec. 6 issue).
Her thought that the elemental issue is that “we are forced … to gamble … on the belief that Ultimate Reality is intrinsically righteous, or the denial of this” and the logic that stems from it to me is a most satisfying statement of the case.
What she said about liberal leaders’ being dishonest with their students and congregations as to where they really stand also has been in need of saying by a reputable scholar in a reputable publication.
LEROY DAVIS
First Baptist Church, Troy, Kan.
While very much interested in her journey to orthodoxy, I found myself amazed at her journey to omniscience. That she must have made such a journey seems illustrated by this statement: “I made some nice calculations and decided that if I fought against God I could hold out only two or three years, after which he would force a nervous breakdown without any sentimental hesitation.”
… How does she know she could “hold out only two or three years”? How does she know that God would “force a nervous breakdown”?… Am I to assume that God gets his way by forcing nervous breakdowns?
… She appears to know the “whats” and “whens” pretty well as regards God’s actions. I fear that it is this attitude that makes it difficult for some of us to make such a trip as hers, should we be so inclined.
J. HOLLAND VERNON
The Methodist Church, Laurel, Mont.
In so many ways this parallels my own pilgrimage although my academic background is the University of Denver and then two graduate degrees at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. Your publishing Dr. King’s superbly systematic statement of recovering her Christian faith is a great credit to your magazine. For this and for many other fine contributions to our life in Christ, I want to send my thanks.
VERN L. KLINGMAN
First Methodist, Billings, Mont.
Rachel H. King could have saved much time and space simply by writing only one of the sentences contained in her article: “I rightly began looking, not for scientific proofs of Christianity, but for a means of limiting science’s sphere of intellectual authority, in favor of that of the Bible.” Precisely! She found exactly what she hunted, since she went into her search just where she intended to come out. Or as Mark Twain once observed: “I have never known an honest seeker after truth; sooner or later everyone engaged in that quest finds what he is looking for and gives up the search”.…
This letter is prompted, however, by my complete agreement with one position stated by Miss King. She calls herself “orthodox,” and I identify myself as a liberal, as unreconstructed as John Dewey ever was. So, if I identify them correctly, do the vast majority of my fellow ministers within the liberal Protestant denominations consciously share the legacy of liberalism. At least most of them reject the crude, undisciplined literalism of an earlier day, and they are at least familiar with biblical criticism and other disciplines encountered in the theological seminaries. As a result, nearly all of them have to some extent accepted liberal conclusions.
They have not, however, except for a very few of them, clearly enunciated what they believe and what they deny. Many of them are guilty of what Walter Kaufman labeled “double speak,” by which he means that many of them go through the process of rethinking the meaning of the traditional words and phrases of historic Christian faith, often radically reconstituting them with meaning which negates Christian faith in its historic sense, but they do not bother to let this be known to their congregations. They use the phrases without indicating that they do not mean by them what the typical parishioner thinks they mean. This, of course, is blatant intellectual dishonesty. The crime is compounded, furthermore, because it is committed most often by those who speak most strongly in favor of intellectual honesty.…
One is continually amazed to hear ministers publicly avow what they deny privately. And if they offer the tired, shopworn excuse that the typical parishioner has not been exposed to the process of learning involved, then the reply is that it is high time that some ministers began the task of bringing their parishioners up to date with what is going on in the liberal Protestant seminaries, and in their own minds.…
One is also appalled to learn, repeatedly, that when I tell those who resent my liberalism that I represent, for good or ill, the overwhelming majority of Protestant ministers, most of them refuse to believe me. They haven’t the slightest idea what is currently being taught in the seminaries they support “for Jesus’ sake”.…
This dilemma of current liberal Protestantism is compounded, unfortunately, when one considers that many of the ministers who fall within the category I have briefly characterized here, simply do not realize that they have already rejected basic, historic Christianity.… When you point out to them that any good humanist would agree with them in their sermonizing, they do not comprehend what this assertion means. For humanism has been equated with Christian faith for so long that only relatively few persons in Protestant churches, and in the liberal Protestant ministry, can distinguish between the two.…
With all these necessary qualifications, however, one cannot escape the feeling that sometimes moral cowardice, and sometimes conscious intellectual dishonesty keeps many liberal Protestant ministers silent. This feeling can be stated more plainly and more strongly: Should the majority of liberal Protestant ministers ever decide to be intellectually honest with their congregations, the Lutheran Reformation would seem altogether mild by comparison. Protestant parishioners would, I am convinced, leave their churches wholesale.
Where, however, would these Protestants turn? The evangelicals are in no more attractive—or honest—position than the liberals. They, too, resort to phrases, clichés, and words which do not communicate, but only generate and confirm emotionalism.…
… Unless the liberal Protestant ministers begin the attempt to bring their parishioners up to date theologically, they will become so disillusioned with their ministers’ deliberate silence and conscious dishonesty they will turn from the churches. This turning, of course, already grown to large proportions in Great Britain and on the Continent, has already begun here, and will increase unless the churches can find something to offer besides the spiritual pap and humanism they have so long presented as Christian faith.…
No doubt much of what is said here constitutes a betrayal of the liberals—or would be so construed. Yet, whether one is correct or not, one cannot avoid the profound feeling that when we begin to demythologize, however necessary this process may be; that when we use the phrase “the resurrection of the body of Christ,” and mean by it the formation and development of the Church (and I still believe that, regardless of later interpretations, the early Christians meant this phrase literally); that when we reduce, or attempt to reduce, Christian faith to consist of some wholly subjective “kerygma”; and that, when we “spiritualize” the Second Coming of Christ, and perform many of the other intellectual contortions so multifarious in liberal Protestantism, we have abandoned Christian faith and substituted something radically different. And we ought to have both the intelligence to see what we have done and the courage to say so, unambiguously.
One experiences a wistfulness about all this, to be sure. There was a time, in one’s cumulative educational experience, when one felt that it was not only possible, but also necessary, radically to reshape what was meant by Christian faith. But one comes, reluctantly but logically, to see that Christian faith cannot be reshaped: it must either be accepted in its historic form or it must be rejected. And if, after taking what were once exciting and highly stimulating, and hopefully, incisive looks at liberalism, at neoorthodoxy, at Bultmannianism, at so-called “biblical theology,” it is impossible to accept any of these in place of the fundamentalism which itself has been rejected, then a wistfulness takes over; for one is lost in the most profound existentialist sense of that word.
Not many of us have either the time or the inclination to gerrymander a religious faith de novo. Paradoxically, many of us may soon be forced to resort to what we preach and proclaim, that is, faith in God instead of faith in our own particular brand of faith.…
JESSE J. ROBERSON
First Methodist, El Centro, Calif.
To Err Is Human …
In your Nov. 22 issue on page 7 you quote the Psalmist as saying in the King James Version, “I prevented the dawning of the morning,” in Psalm 119:11. It does not say so there but in the 147th verse of Psalm 119.
AMOS STOLL,
Everton, Ark.
To Forgive Devine
No doubt someone has discovered that the James 5:5 reference in Mr. Buerger’s testimony (p. 3, Nov. 22 issue) should be James 1:5.
I find many articles in your magazine helpful in my own Christian life and in dealing with students at a public institution.
CLARENCE RADIUS
Head of Electronic Engineering Dept.
California State Polytechnic College. San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Togetherness Better Financed
To your [editorial], “ ‘American Women’—The Federal Report” (Nov. 22 issue), I say—Phooey. How about an article on “non-working mothers who neglect their families by being in so many activities and on so many committees that they are practically never home.” I’m home when my children are—I know a lot of women who can’t say that.
As for working mothers being a national problem by creating unhappy homes and in turn juvenile delinquents—come now. Since when is the working mother a criterion for juvenile delinquency? Can’t you find anyone else to blame? The mothers I know who are working do so with a purpose and plan in mind. If wanting to help your child become a better citizen and have a higher education contributes to juvenile delinquency, then count me in.…
Oh yes, I do have an outside activity—my church. And I was active in PTA, scouts, Brownies and Cubs, clubs, etc., but that was pre-job. I like it better this way. I’m enjoying my family, and besides that, we have more money to do things together. Eighty-Four, Pa.
GRACE WILSON
Chronology Confused
“ ‘Do’ or ‘Done’!” still resounds in my ears (A Layman and his Faith, Nov. 22 issue). I have read and reread it. I have memorized the thoughts.
What a thrill to read … something like that when we are so constantly bombarded by the bombastics of humanism.
I labor in an area where the idea is constantly furthered that a man receives the grace of God after he does something good.…
HERBERT J. TESKE, JR.
Ascension Lutheran Church, Madison, Tenn.
Thanks very much.… Very well done!
BERNARD BOYD
Chairman of Department of Religion
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C.
Communist Behind Every Quote
The fifty-fifth page of your November 8 issue covered excerpts from several sources on the war in Vietnam. The impression created by these excerpts, most of which were highly colored or untrue, directly served the Communist cause, implementing their propaganda.
J. E. ARMSTRONG
Bakersfield, Calif.
Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.
I was shocked to read the statements by Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. (News, Nov. 8 issue) regarding the ministry of Billy Graham.
Allow me to say that I have traveled from coast to coast; from … Canada to the Gulf of Mexico in the ministry, and for three years very recently was in the Greenville (S. C.) area, and learned much from the area residents concerning Bob Jones.
I also have followed very closely the ministry of Billy Graham ever since his first Los Angeles crusade, in all of the reports of the various papers and journals; have read the commendations and the many criticisms. He is doing something that no other minister has been able to do since the days of Moody. Also allow me to say, that I have attended his crusades, and am personally acquainted with him and some of his co-workers. It appears that Billy Graham possesses a humility and consecration to God that few, yea very few ministers today possess.
The statements as printed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, as made by Dr. Bob Jones, indicate that he is not manifesting the characteristic of what he professes to be: a Christian gentleman. For his statements are neither Christian nor [those] of a gentleman. I am reminded of the severe rebuke that Jesus gave to his apostles when they told the “man over on the other side of the mountain to stop casting out devils, because he was not one of our group.” Had Billy Graham … graduated from Dr. Jones’s university without doubt he [Dr. Jones] would have been one of Billy’s most ardent admirers. This has been said over and again in the Greenville area. In reading all of the criticisms against Billy Graham and analyzing them, they reveal that these men, for the most part, have been outstanding evangelists and have “lost their crowd,” and their criticisms reveal their jealousies of Dr. Graham! But how any man, claiming to be a Christian, let alone a minister of the Gospel of love, can make such statements as made by Dr. Jones and still face a congregation and preach the love of God … well, little wonder Christians and ministers are making such little impact on the world.… “By this,” said Jesus, “shall the world know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
S. ELLSWORTH NOTHSTINE
Pauma Valley Community Church, Pauma Valley, Calif.
You … say that [Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.] has “few kind words” for Dr. Billy Graham. I believe that “kind words” for a Christian include rebuke for sin.…
JAMES WEBER
Ceiba, Puerto Rico
Research In-Depth
Mr. Orlo Strunk, Jr., states (“The Letter of Recommendation: Reliable or Not?,” Nov. 8 issue) that Philemon is the shortest book in the New Testament.
I find the following to be true:
ODIE GREGG
Hackleburg, Ala.
• Thanks to Reader Gregg for one of the most energetic corrections we have ever received. Inasmuch as the count was not decisive in determining the shortest book, we resorted to Nestle’s Greek Testament. The final verdict declares III John the winner, with 219 words as against 245 for II John.—ED.
I was interested in the article by Orlo Strunk, Jr.… The reason more ministers do not write anything but a vague letter is that colleges do not hold sacrosanct letters of this kind. Too many students have access to the files, in other words, and this information generally filters back “to whom it may concern.”
RICHARD D. ELDRIDGE
The Oak Grove Christian Church, Monticello, Ind.
