A coast-to-coast cheer greeted CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S plea for evangelicals to “get together.” From leaders in many branches of American Protestantism came hearty support. An unusually heavy volume of mail came into our offices in response to the June 9 editorial proposal (see letters, page 15). Many ministers and laymen favor some immediate action to establish a dramatic new dimension of unity among Bible-believing Christians. Their overwhelming sentiment was that somewhere between the predominantly liberal National Council of Churches and the reactionary rightist American Council of Christian Churches there is urgent need for a dynamic evangelical fellowship that will enable an estimated 45 million conservative Protestants to advance their common spiritual goals.
Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy said the plea for evangelicals to discover “agreement on the essentials of Christianity” and to find “the organizational form for general cooperation” was “excellent and very much needed.”
Dr. Thomas B. McDormand, president of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, called for extensive evangelical conversations and stressed the importance of keeping evangelistic strategy, as fully as theological fidelity, in the forefront of concern.
Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention referred to the Executive Committee for study a proposal by Dr. Alistair Walker and Dr. J. D. Grey for transdenominational evangelical cooperation. Evangelist John Haggai of the “Key to Life” broadcast said that Dr. Jess Moody, in a speech to 6,000 Southern Baptist pastors, had “trumpeted publicly”—in his plea for evangelical ecumenism—what hundreds of ministers have been whispering for fifteen years. Haggai added that if Southern Baptists follow this lead the SBC could be “the first major denomination to implement and translate the Berlin [World Congress on Evangelism] flames into global evangelistic conflagration.”
Commenting on CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S editorial urging evangelical unity, Newsweek magazine sagely reported that “liberal Protestants bent on forming their own united church” could be a decisive factor in provoking a “grand alliance” of evangelicals.
Already, however, there has been some misunderstanding of what evangelical unity means. The weekly Capital Baptist, representing a District of Columbia convention, wondered whether such a move by Southern Baptists would not bring them closer to the smaller sects and farther away from the mainstream of Protestantism.
Actually, any broad manifestation of evangelical unity will invariably draw its greatest strength from evangelicals in large denominations—those that are aligned with the conciliar movement as well as those that are not. Surveys have shown repeatedly that large segments of the rank and file of many of the great denominations are theologically conservative. Most laymen are passively indifferent to the ecumenical movement. And tomorrow’s generation shows little more inclination toward theological inclusivism than today’s.
Our editorial specifically said that the call for evangelical cooperation did not envision an organizational counterpart or competitor of the conciliar movement. Yet the promotion of evangelical distinctives surely would conflict with certain conciliar aims. In some areas, however, evangelicals and conciliarists might have similar objectives. Evangelical unity cannot be built negatively on the basis of either separation or the complaints of disgruntled former “ecumaniacs.” It must be positive.
The potential for evangelical cooperation is numerically staggering. The National Council of Churches lists 42,000,000 persons in its member churches. Nearly 3,000,000 of these are in the Eastern Orthodox and Polish National Catholic Churches, so that the council’s Protestant representation is about 39,000,000. But Protestants in the United States now number over 69,000,000. Most of those unaligned with the NCC are theologically conservative, while at least one-third of the NCC constituency is also considered conservative. The total number of evangelicals, in fact, is estimated at more than 45,000,000: 13,000,000 in the NCC; 2,500,000 in the National Association of Evangelicals; 1,000,000 in the ACCC; and 29.000,000 unaligned. This means that if evangelicals ever band together, they will outnumber the present NCC constituency. At most the non-evangelical wing of Protestants in the NCC totals 26,000,000.
Looking ahead, it is clear that the key to success is first-rate leadership that will arouse and involve today’s Christian youth. Otherwise, the cooperative effort will be geared to older ideas and interests and will be obsolete before it comes of age.
It is not too early to ask what the specific purposes of creating an evangelical witness would be. For what reasons ought evangelicals to get together, and on what common basis?
Surely a key objective will be to coordinate evangelistic and missionary effort more effectively. The Berlin congress last fall made very clear the wide-openness of evangelicals to work hand-in-hand to fulfill the Great Commission. For some highly individualistic evangelicals, this was a significant change of stance. National congresses are already being planned in several countries.
But we must go beyond evangelism and missions. Evangelism, however worthy, is not the only mission of the Church, nor is it the only reason for evangelical rapprochement. Evangelicals will benefit greatly by getting together for prayer, for worship, for interchange of ideas, and for fellowship. Many evangelicals are culturally and ecclesiastically lonely, and they need the vigorous support of, and the opportunity of sharing with, others of “like precious faith.” Evangelicals working together can test new ideas, develop a needed sense of community, and show the world more clearly than ever before what they believe in and what steps they intend to take to implement their visions.
Equally significant is the prospect that evangelical unity would lead to involvement in depth in service, in addition to gospel proclamation; but this may be the hardest goal to achieve. Evangelicals ought to be making a far greater impact in communications, in the arts, in the inner city, in the small towns and rural areas, and among minority groups. What needs to be done cannot be done in isolation, and thousands of keen-minded and eager young evangelicals await blueprints for action from an aroused and arousing leadership.
Suspicious of liberal theology and of many of the intellectual and social commitments of the National of Council of Churches’ leaders, evangelicals have often repudiated ecumenical involvement and concerns entirely. Little effort has been made to develop the leadership that could explore with courtesy and tact wider cooperation among conservatively oriented churches and denominations. Now this may be changing.
Undoubtedly a compelling reason why evangelicals must cooperate is that the Holy Spirit works most mightily where believers are gathered together in one accord. There were no party labels on the lapels of the believers at Pentecost. There were no tribal axes to grind when the Paraclete came down in power. There were diversities of gifts and understanding; yet the original churchmen took their stand together upon the great facts of the Christian revelation and proclaimed them boldly to a needy and alienated world. They inscribed their convictions on this kind of a doctrinal charter, and so must we.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY invites its readers to respond with their reactions and urges evangelicals everywhere to suggest specific steps that should be taken today to move from vision to reality, from idea to concrete accomplishment.
Today evangelicals are united in an overriding allegiance to Christ and to the Christian revelation. They receive the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the unique and authoritative revelation of the mind and purposes of God. They confess the full deity of Christ, together with his humanity, and regard his sacrificial death as the only and absolute atonement for sin. They believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ and the hope it offers believers. They maintain the need for personal conversion and spiritual growth. They acknowledge the supernatural presence of Christ in the Church through the convicting and instructing work of the Holy Spirit. The look for the final consummation of all things through the power of an omnipotent and ever-reigning God. To realize the apostolic pattern in this century, they need only recognize their unity in Christ and link hands across denominational lines for their attainment of spiritual goals.
A cooperative body of evangelicals could be the means through which God will decisively demonstrate his truth, love, and power in our age.
Next Year In The New Jerusalem?
Although the ongoing debate in the United Nations will hardly reflect the fact, the crisis in the Middle East surges far beyond the boundaries of the secular. For Jews and for Christians, even if not for Arabs, Israel’s fight to maintain her identity as a nation and to achieve full recognition from her Arab neighbors has deep religious dimensions. When the implementation of the historic Balfour Declaration launched the state of Israel in 1948, few could overlook the religious significance of the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. Similar considerations color the present conflict, particularly Jewish occupation of the old city of Jerusalem and the conquest of the territory west of the Jordan River.
By secular standards Israel’s right to occupy the western half of Palestine and the legitimacy of her subsequent conquests are contestable. True, the existence of Israel rests on international actions extending over a period of twenty years, and the belligerent acts and attitudes of the Arab states, particularly Egypt, provide substantial justification for Israel’s military action. But there is also the reality of the Arab presence in Palestine since the seventh century. And many argue that an absence of 2,000 years has nullified the Jewish territorial claims.
From the Arab perspective this is a powerful argument, but ultimately secular history is controlled by divine history. The purpose of God must not be overlooked. Christians and Jews both recognize a supernatural dimension to this struggle. The Old Testament teaches that God has given the land of Palestine to the Jews forever, but the New Testament teaches that he is keeping the Jews in the world so that they may participate as a nation in the events connected with Jesus Christ’s return. For centuries the Jews have looked forward to full possession of their land with the rallying cry, “Next year in Jerusalem,” and now that wish is realized. Christians remember that divine history marches toward the New Jerusalem and raise their cry, “Even so come, Lord Jesus.”
What is happening to Christian beliefs on the secular campus?
A coed pensively taking an essay-type final examination at a large Eastern university gave what she thought the professor wanted in reply to a question on Milton. Then she added a paragraph of personal opinion. As one steeped in sociology, she said, she discounted Milton’s notion of evil; to her, evil was merely a product of ignorance and poverty. But, she hastened to concede, Milton nonetheless made evil “frightfully believable.”
Her comments raise the question whether evangelical Christianity is creatively confronting the campus ferment. This question recently occupied two dozen Christian scholars and campus-oriented evangelical workers at Airlie House conference center. In the quiet seclusion of a refurbished plantation nestled in the picturesque hunt country of northern Virginia, participants in the consultation reviewed problems of Christian faith and life on university campuses and sought new ideas for better short-and long-range witness.
Why do so many apparently devout Christian young people lose the dynamic of evangelical faith when they go off to school? What can Christians do in the home, in the church, and on campus to prevent this? How can scholars present Christian beliefs more effectively at the intellectual level? How can the new-morality and LSD crowd be reached for Christ? Should evangelicals strive for bigger and better Christian schools, or should they encourage instead the infiltration and evangelization of secular campuses?
As participants pondered these and other related questions, most agreed that because of today’s pluralistic stress on “objectivity” on secular campuses, there is less overt hostility to Christianity than there was a generation ago. They also felt, however, that though opportunities abound, there is less of a “Christian presence” on campus; there are fewer believers contending for the faith in ways that command attention.
A young physics professor from the University of British Columbia, Dr. C. P. S. Taylor, declared that it is now “easier than in times past to hold one’s evangelical faith with adequate intellectual integrity.” Dr. Taylor, a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford and an Anglican, hailed the recent “advances in knowledge in archaeology, the philosophy of science and of logic, communications, and biblical studies.”
“Since I work on a secular campus and live in a secular city,” he said, “I may well be biased, but I think they are good places for the Christian to be.” He went on to say that “on the secular campus nothing is sacrosanct, thus everything may be discussed and questioned. I grant that some ‘isms,’ though not Christianity, may be sacred on some campuses, but surely, then, Christians will help the secular university live up to its ideal if they actively engage in discussion as Christians and examine critically the presuppositions of other philosophical systems.
“It is a great advantage not to have the administration tied to some institutional expression of Christianity. One frequent obstacle to serious consideration of Christian faith is the fact that what we present as a challenge to personal commitment seems to others so often to have been forced upon people by those in positions of power for their own ends, with the result that they cannot believe there is more to Christianity, or that they have observed its perversion and not its true character.”
Dr. Taylor said that while helping recently in a student mission he ran into objections in connection with: the problem of evil; the character of God; sin; the past behavior and present attitude of the Christian Church; the empirical basis of the Christian faith; hell and damnation; Christian teachings on sex; science and evolution’s disposing of the need for God; freedom, justice, and love. As sources for the objections he cited these:
• Ignorance of Christian teaching (“pre-evangelism will become increasingly important”).
• Misconceptions of Christianity traceable to faulty Christian teaching.
• Unexamined presuppositions—perhaps the most overlooked fact is that all starting points for reasoning are based on faith.
• Use of faulty “models” in seeking understanding, such as the “blueprint” and “machine” notions of the creation process (“both completely static concepts”).
• Apparent reluctance to say that sometimes there is no ready answer but that Christians are not afraid to face issues.
• “… The content of the Christian faith itself.… While one may be able to show the coherence of the facts of the faith, one cannot answer the question, ‘Why should it be this way?’ ”
Several participants argued strongly that the loss of faith that seems so common among college students really took place back in elementary and secondary schools. They said they have seen countless young people come to the campus conditioned by the mass media and ill-oriented in home and church, easy prey to the moral and ideological crossfire of college life. The problem is serious enough that Dr. John Alexander, general director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, urged a proliferation of good Christian grade schools. He said he would much prefer this to the present evangelical practice of pouring great resources into higher education. Dr. Alexander also suggested that “instead of adding more Christian professors to faculties of more Christian colleges, it might be wiser to amalgamate our Christian colleges into a smaller number of better schools and simultaneously make available for secular faculties a larger number of Christian academicians.”
Dr. Alexander got plenty of well-meaning reaction to that point. But his suggestion did raise the question of what role remains for Christian colleges if they perpetuate academic isolation, let alone abandon biblical distinctives.
The plight of the evangelical student was underscored in the results of a poll taken by one of the larger American independent evangelical denominations. The survey showed that 80 percent of that denomination’s young people are bypassing Christian colleges in favor of secular campuses. The really staggering figure, however, was that 50 percent of those now studying at secular schools said they planned to disaffiliate themselves from the denomination.
In a different but equally important area, the consultation considered the widespread reluctance of Christian scholars to interact with opposing ideologies within their disciplines. Some evangelical scholars are deeply concerned that the development of ethical standards for new situations brought on by developing technology and therapy is being left to secularists. Unfortunately, some devout and highly trained believers still feel that Christian principles have little or no bearing on their specialties.
The long-talked-about “conflict” between science and Scripture may be subsiding, but here and there significant points of tension remain. Evangelical scholars in the humanities occasionally fired away at scientism during the consultation. The scientists countered by saying that such objections are more often than not spawned by popular misconceptions of science.
The consultation was arranged by CHRISTIANITY TODAY and financed by Lilly Endowment. In coming months CHRISTIANITY TODAY will share with its readers the fruits of the papers and discussions.
Changing The Pace
When the pacesetting and influential “Faith and Life” curriculum appeared in 1947, it was extravagantly damned and extravagantly praised. One influential Presbyterian declared publicly that he would sooner send his children to a pesthouse than to a church that employed it, while those defending the new program hailed it as the best thing to happen to Christian education since the Sunday school. Perhaps both were wrong. But in any event, the curriculum continued to gain in influence while the basic positions, though somewhat softened, remained unchanged. “Faith and Life” has been adopted by the great majority of United Presbyterian churches, and its general philosophy of education has been incorporated by numerous other denominations in corresponding publications.
Now, however, a significant shift has come. At Portland, at the 179th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., denominational representatives spoke openly of the failures of the “Faith and Life” curriculum and recommended to delegates “a new venture” in religious education.
“The traditional strategy of Protestant Christian education has been to reach children in church and home and to assume that when these children grew up they would be mature Christians,” Union Theological Seminary Professor C. Ellis Nelson told the assembly. “This strategy failed because as the children grew up, they did not follow the teaching.” The denomination’s new approach will stress the education of the adult to teach the children, training adults for what they ought to do as Christians rather than for what they ought to believe. “Faith and Life” will yield to “Faith and Action.”
The belated recognition of the shortcomings of the “Faith and Life” curriculum is a healthy sign for the Presbyterian Church, particularly in light of the declining church-school enrollment. But many will protest that the problem lies not so much with the “approach” to Christian education as with the content of the educational materials and the objectives of the individual lessons. It is not so much that the biblical and historical material is faulty—though many would complain that an uncritical takeover of many of the assumptions of liberal New Testament scholarship weakens biblical authority—but that in many instances curriculum materials neglect such basic themes as the Atonement and the historical significance of Christ’s resurrection. Often they seem to shy away from presenting a challenge for a personal commitment to Jesus Christ.
Could it be that the children who have grown up under the “Faith and Life” curriculum have failed to grow into mature Christians, not because the methodology of the system was wrong, but because they were never confronted with the need for that personal relationship to Christ which would make them Christians in the first place? And could they have entered adult life thinking they were Christians when, in point of fact, they had never actually understood the fundamentals of the Gospel?
If responsible self-criticism of the “Faith and Life” curriculum by members of the Presbyterian Church could reach this level, the architects of the “new approach” to Christian education could produce a curriculum that would have untold potential for spiritual good in coming decades.
