Old Time Religion And One Other
Last month I stumbled on a new release from Ecumenical Press Service. Dutifully if dully I picked it up, for this Geneva publication owes its popularity neither to exciting prose nor to sensational tidings. On the contrary, it takes itself very seriously, its veracity is unquestionable, its contents unsullied by humor. Nevertheless, the issue I saw gave me the mental staggers: “WCC to Launch Dialogue with Men of Living Faiths.”
What was this? A WCC admission of fallibility, or at least inadequacy, would have been momentous. But this went further, suggesting that the WCC’s minus could be rectified through talking with those for whom faith was positively alive. My thoughts raced as I sketched a tentative itinerary so that the seeking souls sent out two by two from Route de Ferney should not waste time in realizing what they lacked in living faith.
The exhilaration didn’t last. Never was disillusion more utter. That headline was just a shabby device to trick the guileless into reading on and discovering that a get-together of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims was planned. As sponsor, the WCC is putting up a sizable sum for the meeting, scheduled for next March in Lebanon.
EPS says that participants will be mainly “scholars … who have sufficient competence in at least one other religion beside their own.” Those unversed in the esoteric will find the terminology mind-boggling. What, for example, is the mark of having already attained “sufficient competence” in one’s own religion, much less in that of others? Who are the examiners who shall issue proficiency diplomas? What are the ground rules? And how about the scholar who can profess all four religions?
I do not yet know the names of those who will offer Christianity as their major at the dialogue. I know they will be men of broad sympathies who will go humbly “to learn” and will ensure that discussion is not snarled up by archaic ideas about the uniqueness of Christianity. Here the WCC can point proudly to its past record of not going all out for conversions.
Says a WCC staffer: “Today religious pluralism is no longer an academic point to be discussed but a fact of experience to be recognized.” Since we’re putting things on that unsatisfactory basis, let me offer another fact of experience. “To the Hindu philosopher,” said Arthur Mayhew, “all religions may be equally true; the administrator, comparing a Christian settlement with the pariah village at its gates, has good reason to know that they are not equally effective.”
EUTYCHUS IV
Hoover: Pro And Con
J. Edgar Hoover’s magnificent article, “The Interval Between” (Dec. 19), richly merits the widest reading.
GEORGE S. REAMEY
Highland Springs, Va.
Not only does Mr. Hoover fail to see the evils in our history to which lawlessness, nihilism, violence, and youthful rebellion are reacting; he is blind to the perverse sense of values and inhuman policies of the present against which these things are a protest. It is his kind of unwillingness to be awakened by protest that evokes more extreme forms of the same. If he is concerned about the loss of virtue, how can he overlook the racial discrimination that perpetuates the mental, social, political, and economic enslavement of almost an entire race of people? In bemoaning the evils of our day, he chooses to ignore our violent militarism that permits the continuation of a senseless war that is destroying a nation on the other side of our planet. He glosses over the pollution of our environment that will leave to a later generation the tragic legacy of poisoned air, land, and water. He brushes aside the charges of police brutality, thereby escaping his responsibility to grapple with the real oppressiveness of so much of our law-enforcement policy. He expresses no alarm over our degenerate sense of values that tolerates the shooting of children to protect property, or the shooting of black militants to protect white supremacy while the Mafia runs wild. The legal process tramples on the poor and caters to the rich by means of fines, bail, and pre-trial detention. Why won’t he see this as one of the major causes of the breakdown of respect for law and authority?
Mr. Hoover’s selection of the evils that he wishes to condemn and the virtues that he wishes to extol, as well as his uncritical devotion to the American dream (and the doctrine of “manifest destiny”), betray a blind patriotism which prophetic Christianity can never endorse. His selectivity allows him to praise a romanticized past that never existed and to shut his eyes to the past and present evils in our society that have brought us to a crisis that he deplores but does not understand. Reflective evangelical Christians will sense immediately that he has focused our attention on symptoms rather than causes, has thereby eliminated the need for national repentance, and has allowed us the comfort of going about business as usual (provided that we beef up our police forces and intensify the piety of our culture religion). He implies that we must be loyal to America because it is Christian, if not because we are Christians. Since when does such fervent devotion and blind loyalty to one’s fatherland become a demand of the Gospel that calls us into the international fellowship of God’s world-wide family?
VERNON GEURKINK
Madison Square Christian Reformed Church
Grand Rapids, Mich.
The article by J. Edgar Hoover is the best of its kind I have ever read.
R. E. MCDOWELL
Falling River Baptist Church
Brookneal, Va.
Books On Blacks
“Read, Baby, Read” (Dec. 19) commends the thief, dope-peddler, and pimp Malcolm X as a sensitive, highly intelligent black leader. Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver are also included in the recommended list of readings. No doubt one can learn something of the criminal mind by reading these authors; but the article would have been better had some elementary Christian morality been used in assessing the merits of these protagonists of riot, arson, and murder.
GORDON H. CLARK
Butler University
Indianapolis, Ind.
One might suggest these few additional books … Irving Howard’s The Christian Alternative to Socialism, Frank Meyer’s In Defense of Freedom, Russell Kirk’s Enemies of the Permanent Things, Leonard Read’s Let Freedom Ring, and George Schuyler’s Black and Conservative.
ROBERT M. METCALF, JR.
Memphis, Tenn.
May I also suggest Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South.
RICHARD L. TROUTMAN
Associate Professor in History
Western Kentucky University
Bowling Green, Ky.
The Malicious Side
As one who is in touch with aspects of the evangelical situation in Great Britain, I was appalled to read the maliciously one-sided report of the position of Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (“Who Is Dividing British Evangelicals?,” News, Dec. 19).
It is true that Dr. Lloyd-Jones has stirred controversy by his criticism of the World Council of Churches. But it is also true that his main emphasis in recent years has been on the need for a real unity of all evangelicals. There is no one in either Britain or America who is more positively and urgently sounding the call to evangelical unity than Dr. Lloyd-Jones. It is utterly false journalism to ignore totally this central aspect of his ministry while condemning him for allegedly promoting dissension and disruption.
DONALD A. DUNKERLEY
Associate Pastor
The First Presbyterian Church
Babylon, N. Y.
America—North And Latin
Although we appreciate the interest of your magazine in informing about the First Congress on Evangelism held in Bogotá, Colombia (News, Dec. 19), we are somewhat annoyed about the expression that the congress had a “made in America” stamp (“Evangelism in Latin America”).
Anybody who is fairly acquainted on how the congress was organized, programmed, and administered will conclude that this was really a Latin-American congress with some support from outside. The executive committee who headed all the procedures was primarily a Latin-American committee selected on a regional basis; 85 per cent of the delegates were Latins, and of speakers nineteen were Latin Americans and only three were North Americans.
It is always interesting that reporters find minor matters of mentionable interest. The fact is that the still prevalent anti-Roman Catholic attitude among Latin American evangelicals is a natural product of past experience. Converts have always been far more unsympathetic with the Roman Catholic Church than the missionaries. In fact, missionaries at times have had to try and calm the troubled waters.
Finally, the report states that no votes were taken. Votes were taken on the declaration and the long-term planning; the delegations elected their representatives of future regional congresses starting with the United States (Latin American communities) that hope to have a congress in 1970.
CARLOS LASTRA
Co-President
Primer Congreso Latin-americano De Evangelizacion
Bogotá, Colombia
Wormy Aftertaste
The evaluation of Karl Barth by Klaas Runia (Dec. 5) was very good. However, the aftertaste is not so pleasant.…
Runia appears to place Barth outside the house of the religious existentialists. I cannot agree. Barth may stand in the doorway, but he faces in. Runia has discussed the weakness of Barth’s solution to the problem of the authority of God’s Word, but Runia has not clearly stated the most serious consequence of Barth’s theology of Scripture. Mysticism is the result, and the later theologians are not so much a break as they are a development. I think that with the addition of one or two of his well-written sentences Runia could have given us a much more balanced evaluation.
I, too, think that Barth was a great man and a Christian; but his theology had a worm at its root.
H. B. HARRINGTON
The Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter) Church
Broomall, Pa.
Incalculable Boon
I appreciate very much the articles you print from time to time which bear on the relationship of the fine arts to the Christian life. In my opinion, the outstanding example of such articles to date is Leland Ryken’s “A Christian Approach to Literature” (Dec. 5).
Professor Ryken has said so well what has needed to be said so urgently, but, to my knowledge, has been said so feebly in evangelical circles. I believe it would be an incalculable spiritual boon if every born-again Christian would read, and reread, this article.
E. ROGER TAYLOR
Music Teacher
Canadian Nazarene College
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Insofar as Leland Ryken’s “approach to literature” connects “the Puritan ethic” with an unbiblical stance, it is libelous, The implication that Puritans neither recognized nor enjoyed beauty is reminiscent of H. L. Mencken’s caricatures, which make amusing reading but are bad history and hopelessly dated. A careless characterization of Puritanism by a Christian scholar is, moreover, especially unfortunate.… Seventeenth-century Massachusetts men were not insensitive to beauty, art, or even pleasure.
WILLIAM B. BEDFORD
Charlottesville, Va.
Balancing Camp
I strongly disagree with William Gwinn’s statement in the article on Christian camps (News, Dec. 5) that we need “a movement away from meeting-centered and speaker-centered camps to a more personal interaction between counselor and camper.…”
At Word of Life camps we emphasize both the centralized and decentralized program. We bring to our camps leading Bible teachers, evangelists, and missionaries, for God manifests his Word through preaching (Titus 1:2). We also have a top-notch counseling program by which we decentralize our program to bring the counselor together with the camper.
Let’s keep this thing in balance. We have found this works well not only in our camps in the United States but also at our camps in Brazil and Germany, and we plan to use this same procedure in the 100 camps that we hope, Lord willing, to establish around the world.
JACK WYRTZEN
Director
Word of Life Fellowship, Inc.
Orange, N. J.
