Sniffing, Stirring, Filling, Fanning
A colorful report carried recently by Ecumenical Press Service opens thus: “A concerted, well-financed campaign against sex education in the public schools is being pursued by ‘far right’ organizations in the United States. They are the same extremist groups that in other years have taken as their targets the United Nations, the National Council of Churches, the U. S. Supreme Court and the income tax” (is nothing sacred?).
Dr. Franklin Littell, chairman of the Institute for American Democracy, it continues, thinks the “right-wing extremists,” some of them baptized Christians, work conspiratorially like the early Nazis, misuse Christian terminology, and under the John Birch flag work “to destroy the ecumenical movement, to polarize opinion and to divert funds away from Christian causes.” All this, mark you, in the context of defending sex education. But EPS assures us all is not lost: “Here and there Protestant denominations and councils of churches are beginning to fight back.” (Other worms presumably are still not turning). NCC sympathizers are cited, one source saying that the extremists’ campaign “comes close to a religious heresy” (a word rarely heard in an ecumenical context).
The same source provides a stunner, for it has the extremists “sniffing out issues which will stir emotions and fill their coffers as they fan the fires.” And if that outrageous image doesn’t rouse the customers, “a number of steps are suggested to obtain community action” against extremists in their midst. Those menacing overtones of something-with-boiling-oil-in-it reminded me of the non-right-wing theologian who was convinced the Coming Great Church would be a persecuting one.
All this glib talk of “extremists” (who, after all, come in different shapes and sizes), got me imagining a future news item: “Outside Bethany Church last night a mob of ecumenical extremists ran amok and tried to disrupt a gathering of non-unionists. ‘We don’t object to togetherness,’ one breathless picket told our reporter, ‘but they didn’t clear it first with Head Office.’ Holding tastefully designed placards with extremist slogans (GIVE SEX A CHANCE and VOTE FOR EUGENIUS IV), demonstrators rendered hoarse snatches from a catholic repertoire of songs. Identified were ‘There’s No Place Like Rome,’ and that show-stopper from the steppes, ‘The Dream of Nikodim,’ with its haunting refrain, ‘Comrades All.’ ”
Thoroughly frightened, I decided that despite its friends and selective reporting I was for sex education after all.
EUTYCHUS IV
Genius And The Gospel
I was encouraged by “The Genius of Charles Haddon Spurgeon” (Feb. 27). I have found his writings and sermons to be very inspirational and meaty. His style of proclamation is simple, direct, and penetrating. Much proclamation of the Gospel is loaded with non-biblical baggage which confuses the hearer in responding to the Holy Spirit’s prodding.… We must realize that in preaching the Gospel, we must speak with simpleness, directness, and with parables that penetrate the heart of modern sinful man.
JAMES ARN
Apostolic Mennonite Church
Trenton, Ohio
One cannot help feeling Mr. Pitts hasn’t quite gotten to the heart of Charles Spurgeon’s genius. Professor Latourette’s statement that he was a “moderate Calvinist” is at best misleading. In his autobiography Spurgeon declares:
I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel … unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the Cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called [see The Forgotten Spurgeon, by Ian Murray, Banner of Truth Trust].
Spurgeon’s genius lay in his fervent preaching of the Gospel of sovereign grace, which the Holy Spirit used to convert thousands. We should conclude that our unchanging God will continue to bless that proclamation in the seventies.
DONALD M. POUNDSTONE
Sewickley, Pa.
The Devil In Eden
What! Conservation is at last creeping into Christianity (“Fulfilling God’s Cultural Mandate,” Feb. 27)? Over the years I’ve found church-related civic-improvement groups to be the most difficult prospects when attempting to sell the case for our diminishing environment. “This Is My Father’s World” may be sung in our halls of worship, but the words always fail their most salient purpose. The best prepared and most skillfully presented sermons on stewardship so seldom focus beyond the collection plate. Any feeling of responsibility by the modern Christian for that great garden of Eden known as the environment is left to Satan for nurture. Congratulations for getting into the act.
JOHN E. MUDGE
Professor of Biology
Farmington State College
Farmington, Me.
Most of my life I have heard the agitators moan about man destroying himself, his neighbor, or his planet. First it was the bomb, then fallout, most recently the Viet Nam war, and now pollution. It seems clear to me that there are always ulterior motives in these crusades. And it is also clear that the present crusade is not to provide a better environment for our people but stricter controls on industry through government intervention, clearing the way for eventual confiscation of the means of production by government. So it is not hard to identify who and what is really behind the new campaign. The subversive editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will one day be held accountable for their part in leading man away from God and into slavery.
JOHN D. SOWERS
Birmingham, Mich.
Lutherans’ Lent
I challenge your use of the word some in your editorial, “The Lenten Season” (Feb. 13): “… Lent, a period long observed by Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches as well as Anglican and some Lutheran churches.” I don’t want to be a nit-picker, but does anyone really know of a Lutheran church in which Lent is not observed? Beginning on Ash Wednesday, my Missouri Synod congregation holds special services each Wednesday until Maundy Thursday, when Holy Communion is celebrated. Lutherans of other synods have similar observances. Lent is vital to any church following the liturgical calendar.
LEO L. RIDDLE
Spruce Pine, N. C.
Theology’S Day In Court
In “Church Property Rights” (Feb. 13) you applaud a Supreme Court decision that civil courts lack competence theologically.… American courts have rendered bad decisions in matters where theology and church polity have been involved, but to take these matters out of their hands is not to handle church property cases like any others, for in other cases the courts do (or should) take into account the significant intentions of donors. If they cannot take into account the religious intentions of donors to religious causes they are utterly incapable of granting justice.…
For example, what if a donor leaves an endowment to uphold the teaching of the Westminster Standards and the trustees, as soon as they get this money into their power, divert it to the Black Muslims, the Black Panthers, to Mrs. O’Hair’s atheistical church, or to some other cause to which the donor is heartily opposed. The trustees could claim this to be a theological matter in which the courts have no competence. Courts have made bad decisions, but they should not fail to judge when justice requires it. If they make faulty judgments the wronged parties should endure it and pray and strive for more righteous courts.…
I agree with your implied suggestion that donors to churches and religious endowments should seek as best they can to insure that what they give will not soon fall into the hands of corrupt or careless trustees who will use it against the intentions of the donors.
STEPHEN M. REYNOLDS
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Wenham, Mass.
Listening To Mcluhan
I pounced upon “McLuhan on Religion” (Feb. 13), very impressed that my first issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY had reported him and that one portion of the evangelical world had been listening to him.…
But he does require careful listening. Even a small transposition of letters can alter his meaning.…
You made either a significant typographical error or one of misunderstanding in your paraphrase of McLuhan: “Radical theology … is in keeping with the current age’s shift from concept to precept.” Precept is no shift; McLuhan’s thesis is that we now deal in the world of percept. The new electric technology with its instant speeds have brought this to be. The young are tired of concepts; they want to feel, to experience, to be. The rational logic of doctrinal concepts must be supplemented with perceived experience—faith at work.
You also missed an important meaning when you quoted him as saying that when Christianity “becomes environmental it loses that inner face necessary for the transforming power, that resonance that occurs between the little minority and the great big dark ground.” McLuhan said “interface.” He talks much of the interval, the disjunction between things which creates resonance. This space is what he refers to in the gap a dropout sets up between himself and something else.…
I also think that McLuhan’s contention that “we are moving into a very religious age” is not “seemingly contradictory,” as you suggest, with his view of the demise of Christianity. Many of the under-thirties are indeed on an “inner trip” in search of spiritual reality; they are not looking for it within institutional Christianity. Genuine personal religion is on the upswing; the institutional brand—by whatever name—is being bypassed.
EUNICE SCHATZ
Urban Research Corporation
Chicago, Ill.
Force Confused
Your January 30 editorial entitled “Force: A Christian Option?” is confusing. It begins by charging that “in the World Council of Churches … there have repeatedly been calls for revolution, for the use of force to alter structures of society that will not yield peacefully.”
You go on to list several examples of violent change which (from your perspective) turned out badly. Do you also suggest that Christians (on both sides of the battleline) were wrong in opposing Hitler with violence? Or that the violence which gave birth to the American state was a mistake?
Unless your answer to those questions is an unqualified “No,” I would say your position is essentially the same as that of the World Council.…
Let me share the following from a statement adopted by the 1968 Uppsala Assembly of the WCC:
The building of political structures suitable to national development involves revolutionary changes in social structures. Revolution is not to be identified with violence however. In countries where the ruling groups are oppressive or indifferent to the aspirations of the people, are often supported by foreign interests, and seek to resist all changes by the use of coercive or violent measures, including the “law and order” which may itself be a form of violence, the revolutionary change may take a violent form. Such changes are morally ambiguous. The churches have a special contribution towards the development of effective non-violent strategies of revolution and social change.…
Finally, there is the confusion which results from your apparent equation of revolution, force, and violence. You don’t give us your definitions of those words. Toward the end of the editorial you point out that there is another kind of force (“spiritual power”), but that is certainly not the earlier connotation. Your prior usage, in assigning blame to the World Council, suggests that by force you mean physical force, by revolution you mean violent revolution.
CHARLES P. LUTZ
Associate Executive Secretary
U. S. Conference for the World Council of Churches
New York, N. Y.
