There is in our generation in evangelicalism an estrangement, even a cleavage, between Church and theology. Some would express it as an antithesis between doctrine and life; theology is then understood to be a purely theoretical business while the task of the Christian is to be active in shaping practical life. Elsewhere the seductive power of philosophy has caused some to fall prey to what has been aptly called “fear of thinking.”

Another common sign of what we are speaking of is the polarization of evangelism and teaching. Among evangelicals the first loyalty then goes to evangelism; teaching is easily held to be a matter of secondary importance for which one does not care greatly or has little energy left.

This cleavage in evangelicalism between Church and theology seems to be particularly wide at present. It has been deepened by the attitude toward the Word of God held by influential schools of modern theology. This attitude issues not just in form criticism but in unbridled criticism of the contents of the biblical message. Theology has posed as master of the Gospel.

Add the fact that certain church leaders have not only let this go unchallenged but have asked their churches to acquiesce to the development, and everything is set for conflict, even a divorce. A theology dominating will produce a church suspicious, then seditious or separating.

The Church cannot remain indifferent to this separation between itself and theology. For this division causes inestimable damage to the Church in at least three ways.

First, a lack of doctrine leaves the preaching of the Church (which naturally will go on) without re-examination and therefore without possible correction. Since the lack of theology also entails a lack of tradition and relation to the Fathers of the Church, so the corrective given with the history of Christendom is lost, too. The Church must surrender to the reign of subjectivism. It is likely to fall victim to strong individual personalities, to heresy and division.

Second, without vivid theology the Church has no reply to the questions put to it from the outside, questions for which—according to First Peter 3:15—it ought to have answers ready at all times. Unfit to meet the ideological and philosophical challenges of its surroundings, the Church withdraws into a ghetto existence and so loses touch with reality, with the normal life of mankind, and therefore with the task of mission, which is the lifeblood of the Church.

Third, the Church pays for its lack of theology with the loss of a substantial part of its own young generation. Those questions that are addressed to the Church from the outside the young will put to the church leaders also from the inside. When these leaders, because they lack theological resources, simply refuse to enter the dialogue, to the mind of the questing they deny the absoluteness of Christianity and suggest that the Christian faith after all has no answer for the twentieth century. In short, a church without vitality of doctrine will be guilty of losing its own children.

These things actually do happen, although they are not at all unavoidable. The fathers of evangelicalism were powerful theologians who influenced the whole of Protestant Christendom and provided it with a strong doctrinal base. The separation of Church and theology or of evangelism and doctrine is not justified biblically, either. Christ exercised both throughout his earthly ministry, both primary proclamation and doctrine (see Matthew 13). Paul traveled the route of his first missionary journey for a second time in order, as we read, to “strengthen the brethren.”

That many evangelicals are avoiding theology is bound to have disastrous consequences. They react to the wrong theology by abstaining from all theology. They resemble a person who, having once been served rotten food, decides to abstain from eating in the future altogether. His decay is only a matter of time.

The cleavage between theology and Church is also a problem of theology.

In Matthew 24 Jesus describes two types of servants of the Lord. The first one is forgetful of his Master, eats and drinks with strangers, and beats his own people. The other one faithfully follows his Lord’s commission to feed his fellow servants at the proper time. These two figures to my mind also represent the alternatives facing the theologian. He can live one way or the other. His true calling, though, is expressed in Christ’s words addressed to Peter: “Once you have been converted, strengthen your brethren!” It is expressed also in those parallel words spoken after his resurrection when he thrice asked Peter “Do you love me?” and finally commissioned him to “feed my sheep, feed my lambs.”

Much of today’s theology seems still to be before its conversion; therefore it fails to “feed the sheep” and strengthen the brethren. The problem is that it perhaps cannot as yet answer Christ’s question, “Do you love me?” A conversion of theology to the love of Christ is the first thing needed. Conversion to God would also further conversion to brethren, and love of Christ would bring about caring for his household.

It is the task of theology not to get drunk with foreign ideas and beat up God’s children but to feed and strengthen them. Theology’s task is part of shepherding the Church.

Of course there still exists that third type of a theologian, lovable and learned, who quietly serves his research interests and, with great satisfaction and the inner glow of a slightly heightened blood pressure, follows the path of his studies.

He would not think of beating his fellow Christians. They simply don’t exist in his world view, and therefore he would neither beat them nor feed them.

Theology as art for art’s sake—that attitude, too, fails to fulfill the task set to theology.

Today theology’s problem is a widespread lack of responsibility toward the Church, a failure to recognize its obligation. It likes to reign, and is little prepared to serve. It is not unlike the maid who deserts her household, runs away from the kitchen to the fair, and returns with paper flowers and a little cotton candy thinking they will cheer and feed the family.

From the Christian point of view, theology must never be satisfied with its own pursuit of the knowledge of God, but must move on to teaching the doctrine of God, passing on to others what it has been given in listening to the Word and Spirit.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive”—this is also true for theology. Service, the special province of Christian ethics, is for the theologian, too.

KLAUS BOCKMÜHL

The Humanist Manifesto II called for the legalization of “the right to die with dignity, including euthanasia and the right to suicide.” It bore some well-known signatories, including B. F. Skinner, Corliss Lamont, Betty Friedan, Gunnar Myrdal, and Julian Huxley. Can Christians endorse these “rights”? They need to know what Scripture has to say in this area. Be sure to read the two articles in this issue on death, one on mercy killing and the other on the bereaved, and the lead book review, which evaluates eight recent books on death. And then do something to make it possible for people to “die with dignity” without resorting either to suicide or mercy killing, both of which are foreign to biblical revelation.

For weeks the citizens and officials of Clearwater, Florida, were trying without success to clear up a mystery: Who was behind the $2.3 million purchase in December of the ten-story Fort Harrison Hotel downtown?

The purchaser was announced as Southern Land Development and Leasing Corporation, which in turn rented the facility to a new organization known as the United Churches of Florida (UCF). The UCF proceeded to move more than 200 of its people into the hotel. Guards were posted to keep outsiders out. A nearby bank building was also purchased by Southern Land and turned into an office complex, presumably for UCF use.

Attempts by reporters to obtain information on who was behind Southern Land and UCF were thwarted. Sorrell Allen, identified as UCF’s “membership director,” said the purchase was made by property investors who wished to remain anonymous. UCF, he said, was simply a non-profit lay organization trying to promote church unity. (As a start, UCF offered to sponsor an hour-long broadcast on Sunday mornings by pastors of area churches.)

Clearwater mayor Gabriel Cazares was rebuffed in his demand for full disclosure, and he tangled with Allen during a riproaring broadcast on a local radio station. Meanwhile, rumors were spreading that the Mafia or the Arabs were taking over.

Some of the mystery was suddenly cleared up at the end of last month when a spokesman arrived from Los Angeles and announced that the controversial Church of Scientology had put up 95 per cent of the purchase price and was sponsoring UCF. The spokesman, Scientology minister Arthur J. Maren, said the secrecy was to spare the UCF from being overshadowed by the mention of any “dominant religion.” (Even the Jack Tar hotel chain, which sold the Fort Harrison, was not told the true identity of the buyer, say sources.)

At first Maren denied that the hotel would become a Scientology center; it would be open to all churches for conferences, retreats, and the like, he insisted. But a few days later, under incessant pressure from Cazares and reporters, Maren conceded that the hotel would be available only to Scientologists who are at “advanced levels” of training.

Mayor Cazares expressed outrage. “This confirms what we suspected from the beginning—they did not level with us.… They have misused our ministers, they have misled the public, and they have evaded the truth,” he declared.

Some of the ministers signed up by UCF immediately disavowed the relationship. Then came another bombshell. Shown photos, three pastors who had already taped broadcasts said the chief technician at the taping sessions was none other than L. (for Lafayette) Ron Hubbard himself, the millionaire science-fiction author who founded Scientology. Hubbard, who is about 65, moved to England in the 1960s at a time when the church was under pressure from various government agencies, and he has been seen in America only a few times in the last seven years or so.

Maren confirmed that Hubbard was in the area. Then a telephone tipster sent reporters scurrying to an apartment complex in nearby Dunedin. The voice said they would find Hubbard living there amid a lot of young people, teletype machines, offices, and a cafeteria. Guards, however, barred the reporters from the eighteen-unit building. A young woman who identified herself as Mrs. Laurel Watson, Hubbard’s chief spokesman “when he is not here,” confirmed that the condominium was indeed Hubbard’s residence but that he was out for the moment. She said the teletype machines were used for communication between the apartment and the offices downtown, but she declined to answer most other questions.

Within half an hour Maren and an aide came hurrying to the scene. Maren said Hubbard was actually living in Miami, and he appeared to contradict Mrs. Watson on other points. Eventually, the newspeople were ordered off the property.

The hubbub in the press continued, and Cazares and Maren exchanged bitter charges. At one point Maren suggested that Cazares’s background and real estate holdings ought to be investigated. Cazares had ready answers to Maren’s accusations, but it was evident that the Scientologists had done considerable digging into the mayor’s past.

At mid-month, Maren announced that the Church of Scientology was suing Cazares and the St. Petersburg Times, and Cazares declared he was filing a counter suit.

In its short but stormy history the Church of Scientology has sued a number of individuals and newspapers, plus dozens of government agencies. Many of the suits are dropped, dismissed, or lost, but the effect has been to make critics wary about speaking out. Hubbard has been quoted as saying, “We should be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance, so as to discourage the public press from mentioning Scientology [except on the religion page].”

Scientology’s beginnings can be traced to a book Hubbard wrote in 1950, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It contained principles that, he said, restored him to health after a serious illness. A lot of people latched onto the dianetics idea, essentially a blend of many philosophies and psychological principles into a sort of do-it-yourself method of psychotherapy (see November 7, 1969, issue, page 110).

When the dianetics fad faded, Hubbard introduced a battery-operated device dubbed the E-meter. With it, one’s “engrams” (hangups) could be detected and worked on with the help of a counselor until cleared up, according to Hubbard. Thus, for a price, one could move from “pre-clear” to “clear” status and thence to advanced stages. The process can cost an adherent thousands of dollars in a single year.

Hubbard chartered his idea and movement as the Church of Scientology in Washington, D. C., in 1952, and it has been in and out of trouble with a host of government agencies ever since. Its main centers are located in suburban London and Los Angeles.

The Rise And Fall Of Billy James

Thanksgiving Day, 1974, was a sad occasion for evangelist Billy James Hargis and his family. At the dinner table Hargis asked his son, Billy James II, to say the prayer—something he’d never done before. Minutes later, Hargis bolted from the table and ran to his room. His wife Betty Jane and Brenda, the youngest of four daughters, followed. Billy James II waited a minute or so, then went to see if he could help. He recalled the scene for readers of Hargis’s Christian Crusade Weekly, a tabloid of 200,000 circulation:

“My father slumped crying in a chair. [Brenda was crying] also, her arms wrapped tight around his neck doing all she could to comfort him. My mother [who was recuperating from a serious operation] stood over them both with tear-stained cheeks repeating again and again words of love and devotion.… It is not an easy memory to discard.”

A month earlier, Hargis had abruptly ended a world tour and returned home to Tulsa broken in health, the evangelist’s organization would later explain. But at the time, said his son, “there was doubt within our own minds as to whether he would ever again be physically able to be used of God.”

Hargis announced publicly that on doctor’s orders he had resigned from the presidency of his six-year-old American Christian College in Tulsa, was cutting back on other activities, and would retire for health reasons to his farm in Missouri. Aides were named to head the various entities related to the Christian Crusade, founded in 1950 by Hargis to push right-wing politics and conservative religious causes.

Less than a year later, however, Hargis came bounding back to Tulsa and resumed command of all of his old operations except the college. He said he had experienced physical and spiritual renewal at the farm.

Throughout this entire period rumors about Hargis’s troubles were spreading all over Tulsa and in fundamentalist circles across the land. The stories linked Hargis’s departure from the college to alleged homosexual acts with students.

The rumors began with a student couple whom Hargis had married in September, 1974. They returned from their honeymoon and told David Noebel, then vice-president of the college, that they had compared notes and made a shocking discovery: Hargis had had a sexual relationship with each of them. (Their marriage is now “on the rocks,” states a source close to the couple. Both are undergoing counseling. The boy has psychological hangups involving images of Hargis, says the source.)

In an interview, Noebel said three more male students told him of affairs they’d had with Hargis. The evangelist justified his acts by pointing to the friendship between David and Jonathan in the Bible, Noebel says he was told. The youths also alleged they were threatened with blacklisting if they talked.

In October, 1974, Noebel and other college officials summoned Hargis from Korea, where he was touring, and confronted him with the allegations. According to Noebel and another who was present, Hargis, 50, acknowledged his guilt and blamed it all on “genes and chromosomes.” Hargis agreed to resign as president and sever ties with the school. Noebel said the health reasons Hargis announced were a “cover.”

At one point Noebel asked twelve prominent evangelical leaders to come to Tulsa and offer counsel on how to deal with the situation. Only one came, he said.

In the succeeding weeks and months there were personnel shakeups and hassles between Hargis and the college over financial arrangements (Hargis persuaded the board to give him an annual stipend of $24,000 as part of the settlement). When Hargis handed over the college to the new board, with it went a $700,000 mortgage (and $3.5 million in assets), but the evangelist declined to permit the college any further access to the all-important mailing list of contributors.

When Hargis announced his comeback last year, Noebel claimed it was a “royal double cross.” The idea originally was for all the leaders “to stick together and try to save the Hargis ministries,” explained Noebel. Saving the ministries, he implied, meant keeping Hargis out. Most of the leaders, however, handed the reins back to their former boss. Sagging finances were blamed.

Things remained unsettled on campus. Two dozen angry parents, having heard the reports of Hargis’s alleged sexual involvement with students, arrived to remove their offspring. Noebel was able to convince most of them that as a result of the housecleaning all was now well. Enrollment nevertheless dropped from 204 to 174.

Last fall one of Hargis’s youthful accusers took his story to the district attorney’s office. An assistant prosecutor suggested that because he was of age and had consented to the acts it was useless to file charges.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY learned that the youth then went to the Tulsa World and told religion editor Beth Macklin “everything.” Ms. Macklin conferred with other editors. But World policy prohibited them from doing anything with such a story unless it was a matter of court record.

Time magazine eventually got wind of the story and published a full-page account in its February 16 issue. Asked by Time about the charges, Hargis through his lawyer replied simply: “I have made more than my share of mistakes. I’m not proud of them.” He went on to say that he had made his peace with God.

After Time’s story appeared, other reporters from across the nation pressed for information, and Hargis appeared to change his position. Through a spokesman he denied “emphatically” the charges leveled at him, and he attributed them in part to a power struggle not unlike a church fight “where one group wants to take over from another group.” He warned against “a new anti-hero wave sweeping across our country that could ruin America.” It is, he said, “a wave of destruction of people’s reputations to serve any purpose that the liberals and the Communists have in mind.” There are always people around, he asserted, who are “willing to cooperate with these extremist elements to satisfy their own jealousies and vendettas.”

As for himself, declared Hargis, “I know that my conscience is clear.”

At mid-month his lawyers said they were considering the possibility of filing legal charges against Time and therefore would have no further immediate comment.

Among Christian Crusade’s related ministries that Hargis heads are the David Livingstone Missionary Foundation (Jess Pedigo is its chief officer), a daily broadcast, the weekly paper (edited by newcomer Dan Lyons, an ex-Jesuit priest—an identification Hargis has never disclosed to his readers), the Billy Hargis Evangelistic Association, a Tulsa church (Charles Secrest is pastor), a foundation known as Evangelism in Action (purpose: publish tracts, build retirement homes, establish institutional ministries), a tour agency, and a direct-mail firm. To house all this activity, the evangelist recently leased with a purchase-option a large new six-story building in Tulsa.

In the January 25 issue of Christian Crusade Weekly, Billy James Hargis II remarked: “my father has been given strength to be placed once again at the helm of this mighty movement; but for how long?”

It is a question that many in and out of the Hargis camp are pondering.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

AVOIDING SHIPWRECK

Rosamond Lilly Swan, a 75-year-old widow, wanted to be remembered not as a “poor old shipwreck” but as an “active, vital person.” She had cancer, however, and she was wasting away, unable to convince her doctor and loved ones to let her go in peace—without all the drugs and gadgetry. In an appeal published in her church’s newsletter, she asked for the right to die. Her fellow members of the First Church (Unitarian) of Dedham, Massachusetts, then unanimously passed at the church’s annual meeting a resolution in which they pledged to work for right-to-die legislation. That very night they informed the suffering woman of their action. She seemed pleased.

On the next day she died.

Vatican Views: Quo Vadit?

What’s a loyal Catholic to believe—and do—these days?

More and more, the Roman Catholic faithful are unsettled by actions of the Vatican, its worldwide hierarchy, and Catholic scholars. Positions accepted throughout the church are now being questioned on all sides. The resulting confusion shows up in a variety of ways, including a decline in attendance at mass and widespread disobedience of the prohibition against contraceptives.

A new Vatican document on sex had hardly left the hands of the bishops last month before Catholic editors and professors started raising questions about it.

Unlike the 1968 pronouncement on birth control, which was a papal encyclical, the new document is from one of the Vatican’s administrative sections, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. However, it was issued with the Pope’s approval, and within a week of its distribution he defended it at a weekly audience.

“Why this unlikely and deplorable demonstration by screaming people?” he asked after hearing of an invasion of the Milan cathedral by a group of feminists. The protest had been staged in the see where he once had presided as archbishop.

He said the document showed the “wise and beneficial love of the church, really mother and teacher.” It was generally seen as a reaffirmation of traditional Catholic teaching against any sex outside of marriage. It condemns premarital sex, homosexual acts, and masturbation.

Criticism came not only from Italian women fighting for an abortion referendum but also from official Catholic sources. The Tablet, a Brooklyn diocesan weekly, described the statement as a “difficult document with serious flaws.” Said a Tablet editorial: “We are deeply committed to the right and duty of ecclesiastical authority to teach the truth, but not to the presumption that ecclesiastical authority can create the truth.”

The document was welcomed as “very good and very needed” by Editor Joseph O’Hare of the Jesuit weekly America, but he expressed disappointment that it did not deal with a positive “theology of sex.” A Maryknoll priest-psychologist, Eugene Kennedy of Loyola University, criticized it as “out of date.”

More predictable reaction to the ban on extramarital liaisons came from vocal homosexual-rights groups in Italy and the United States. Their opposition to the document’s section on homosexuality simply spotlighted parts of the pqper that defenders were having difficulty explaining. A distinction was made in the paper between those whose tendencies toward homosexuality are “incurable” and those whose tendencies are “transitory or at least not incurable.” While it said that homosexual acts “can in no case be approved of,” it suggested that some individuals are not personally responsible for their behavior.

In its editorial, the Brooklyn Tablet said that for the Vatican to direct pastors to sustain the incurables in “the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties” is to “counsel the impossible.” “It is precisely because of the frustration of such a situation that moral theologians are exploring other pastoral solutions,” the diocesan weekly declared.

In the United States, comment on the Vatican document was overshadowed by the larger controversy over abortion. While many Protestants joined with Catholics to seek a constitutional amendment banning abortions, both Protestant and Catholic figures criticized the hierarchy for its anti-abortion emphasis. Three top United Church of Christ officials, for instance, issued a statement blasting the bishops and urging resistance to attempts “to erode or negate the Supreme Court decision on abortion.” Within the pro-amendment ranks, there was division over the question of whether to seek a constitutional revision involving the principle of states’ rights or one that would prohibit abortion nationwide.

It is not only in the realm of sex that loyal Catholics are wondering about official teaching these days. Perhaps a more important issue is the papacy itself. Pope Paul last fall dashed the hopes of many of the faithful when he issued a new constitution on papal elections. There had been hope that he might accept a suggestion to widen the group that will vote for his successor; he had gone on record in 1973 saying he hoped to make the body that elects popes “more representative.” There was wide speculation that more conservative members of the curia pressured him to back off from the position, however. His new rules provide that only cardinals may vote. He did specify that none over 80 could participate. (He has asked many members of the hierarchy to give up their posts when they reach 75. He himself is 78.)

Another jolting development for Catholics was the Pope’s unprecedented gesture in December of kneeling to kiss the foot of Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, a leading figure in Eastern Orthodoxy. The metropolitan had come to the Vatican after the Nairobi World Council of Churches assembly to greet the Pope on the tenth anniversary of the new era of Rome-Constantinople fellowship. (In 1965 the Pope and the patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy lifted the mutual excommunications that had been in effect since 1054.) The Pope’s anniversary statement said he looked forward to the overcoming of difficulties “which still exist and which prevent us from celebrating the eucharist of the Lord together.”

The Pope left many of the faithful wondering what to believe and do on another important topic when he issued his “apostolic exhortation” on evangelization in December. In it, he turned down a number of the proposals from the 1974 Synod of Bishops, including calls for more political involvement and flexibility in evangelism. The pontiff’s statement did call for “more just structures” and non-violent methods to liberate the oppressed.

The response to the bishops’ synod, as well as the new procedures for papal elections, raised new questions about the relation between the Pope and the bishops and how much decision-making power he would share with them.

Much of the attention in the political area has been focused on the Vatican’s attitude toward Communism. The threat of a Communist takeover of Rome or of all of Italy has prompted new anti-Communist activity by the hierarchy in recent weeks. While the pontiff has taken a personal role in warning the Italians against electing Marxists, he has left the faithful wondering about his position on Communism elsewhere. He has been sending Vatican diplomats to work out new accommodations with some Eastern European governments while he has retired or silenced some of the leading Catholic anti-Communist clerics in several lands.

One Italian priest decided he could not live with the ambiguity. After reading the Italian bishops’ statement that said it was impossible to be a Christian and a Marxist simultaneously, Mario Campli promptly quit the priesthood to join the Party. He announced at a mass that he was going to join “the struggle of the proletariat.”

AIRPORT

One of the most eloquent witnesses at a U. S. government hearing on the supersonic Concorde airliner was British bishop Hugh Montifore of Kingston-upon-Thames. The bishop, who lives near London’s Heathrow airport (where the Concorde has landed frequently), advised American transportation officials not to grant landing rights to the Concorde. Concorde’s noise, he said, “can be. unbearable, above the threshold of pain.… It is not hell, because hell goes on forever. It is more like a secular form of purgatory.” He expressed hope that the U. S. would ban the Concorde out of a “sense of obligation to your oldest allies.”

Religion In Transit

A St. Louis judge ordered a four-year-old Missouri scholarship program for needy students to be stopped June 30 because some of the students enroll at religiously affiliated schools. The $3.8 million program offers up to $900 to students enrolled in thirty-one private and twenty-six public colleges in the state. The suit was spearheaded by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Suits aimed at halting federally financed classes on Transcendental Meditation in New Jersey schools have been filed against the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and against the state school authorities.

Thirty-three Protestant and Catholic bodies have filed stockholder resolutions with ten major U. S. companies demanding disclosures of overseas political contributions. The groups also filed resolutions with thirteen other corporations concerning policies in southern Africa and in Chile. In all, the groups—affiliated with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility of the National Council of Churches—hold more than $25 million worth of stock in the twenty-three companies.

Organizers of an ambitious film endeavor known as The Genesis Project plan to produce a series of film segments of every event of the Bible, using the King James Version without extra-biblical commentary. The project is expected to take more than thirty years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Already $5 million has been spent; films of parts of Genesis and Luke may be released by September. Michael Manuel, former general manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company, conceived the idea.

The Manitoba (Canada) Court of Appeals overturned the ruling of the Labor Board and a lower court in declaring that Henry Funk had the right not to join a Winnipeg labor union local because of his religious beliefs. He had been fired from a bakery in June, 1974, for refusing to join the union. The court said the Labor Board should have tried to determine Funk’s own beliefs rather than form a judgment on the basis of what his denomination, the Mennonite Brethren Church, stands for.

New publications:The Catholic Charismatic, a quarterly to be issued by the Paulist Press of Paramus, New Jersey, beginning in March; and Religious Media Today, a quarterly to be launched in April as an evaluation service of what’s current in the religious media, from books to films.

Silenced:New Life, the monthly magazine about renewal in the Episcopal Church. Published since 1973 by the Anchor Society of Denver, it succumbed to rising costs and a low circulation base.

President Ford reaffirmed at a press conference in New Hampshire his position favoring a constitutional amendment that would restore voluntary non-sectarian prayers in public schools. His comments came two days after a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional New Hampshire’s law that permits voluntary recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Chairperson Evelyn Underwood of the history department at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, North Carolina, was elected to chair the board of deacons at the Mars Hill Baptist Church, one of the few women ever to hold such a position in a Southern Baptist church.

Paul Trulin, an Assemblies of God minister who directs crusades for evangelist Morris Cerullo, was appointed chaplain of the California state senate. He is the first fundamentalist or Pentecostal to hold the post in the seventeen years that Senator Albert Rodda has been selecting the chaplains. He succeeds a Buddhist, Shoko Masunaga, whose appointment last year raised a furor in evangelical circles.

A New York City Council committee approved changing the name of a park across the street from the United Nations headquarters to Zion Square. The name change is to protest the recent U. N. resolution against Zionism.

At next month’s biennial meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the main topics will include the Anglican role in the ecumenical movement, the ordination of women to the priesthood, social justice and the place of violence, and evangelism. The sixty-member council represents churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion (including the Episcopal Church) with an aggregate membership of more than 60 million.

DEATH

LOUIS T. TALBOT, 87, chancellor and former president of Biola College (formerly Bible Institute of Los Angeles), well-known pastor and Bible teacher; in Los Angeles.

Personalia

United Presbyterian clergyman Sherwood E. Wirt, 64, editor of Decision since its launching in 1960 as the magazine of the Billy Graham organization, will retire April 1. Associate editor Roger C. Palms, formerly an American Baptist campus pastor, will succeed him.

For forty-two years blind singer Bob Findley of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Baptist preacher Paul Levin of Normal, Illinois, traveled the land together as an evangelistic team (“Paul and Bob”). Last month Findley announced his retirement. Levin will go on preaching and directing a tract ministry.

The following account is based on reports filed by correspondent Stephen Sywulka in Guatemala City, an interview with a mission official conducted by correspondent Robert Niklaus, summaries by Religious News Service and other news agencies, and releases by mission and relief agencies. It was written by associate editor Arthur H. Matthews.

Shortly after 3 A.M. on February 4, an earth tremor awoke Bill and Rachel Vasey, Primitive Methodist missionaries in Joyabaj, Guatemala. Instinctively, they ran for the door. They got out of the room just in time. Central America’s worst recorded earthquake caused the walls to cave in, crushing their bed.

In a guest room were two visitors from their mission board. They remained in bed, and after the initial shock the space separating their beds was filled with rubble and walls were gone on the sides of the beds. But neither the Vaseys nor their guests were injured.

The story could be repeated over and over as the more than 300 North American missionaries in Guatemala reported to their home agencies that they were safe. Not a single missionary was known to have been injured seriously in the earthquake that took the lives of over 17,000 Guatemalans.

The Vasey’s children, along with sons and daughters of many other missionaries, were not at home when the house was destroyed. They were all safe in the mission boarding school at Huehuetenango, which was not damaged.

The earthquake, followed by as many as five hundred aftershocks, was described by U. S. Ambassador Francis Meloy as “the greatest disaster that has befallen central America in recorded history.” The first tremor registered 7.5 on the Richter scale. The most populous part of the nation of about 5.5 million—an area around the capital city of Guatemala and extending northeast to the Gulf of Mexico—was affected.

Entire towns were destroyed. One observer noted that “everything adobe” collapsed, and in some communities adobe is the only kind of construction.

Some of the missionaries who might have been harmed had they been in their adobe houses were those with Wycliffe Bible Translators. All of them were in Guatemala City for their annual branch meeting.

Even though there were no casualties among the missionaries, the evangelical community suffered heavy losses. Unlike the Managua, Nicaragua, earthquake of December, 1972, when most believers were spared (see December 19, 1975, issue, page 32), many Christians—including a number of pastors—lost their lives in Guatemala. Protestants make up about 10 per cent of the population.

“There’s no question that this is worse than Managua,” said Ken Hanna, coordinator of evangelism for the Central American Mission (CAM). He experienced the Managua earthquake and then directed his mission’s relief activities there and after the Honduran hurricane in 1974. “The scope of the devastation is incredible,” he reported a week after the quake. “There are villages we haven’t even heard from yet.”

CAM, the largest Protestant group working in the country, had at least forty churches destroyed or heavily damaged. Among the buildings lost was a new church in Sumpango that had been dedicated only five days before. Over 100 members of those congregations died, including forty-five from the 500-member church in Tecpan.

While no students or staff members were hurt, the CAM-related Central American Seminary and Guatemala Bible Institute suffered relatively minor damage that will cost about $50,000 to repair.

Many Roman Catholic churches, including a recently completed futuristic sanctuary in Guatemala City, were reduced to mangled walls and rubble. Among those destroyed were old churches that had withstood the earthquakes of previous centuries.

In the town of Progresso, only two buildings were left standing: the Presbyterian and Catholic churches. Elsewhere in the disaster area, more than ten Presbyterian churches were demolished, and the denomination’s La Patria School in Guatemala City was severely damaged. Six Presbyterians were reported dead.

The Assemblies of God reported several believers killed, including a pastor and two of his children. The group lost forty-three buildings in the earthquake.

Baptists counted members dead in six towns, including two pastors. At least eight of their sanctuaries were destroyed.

The Primitive Methodists, Nazarenes, Friends, Foursquare, and independent and Pentecostal groups also reported property and human losses.

A Christian and Missionary Alliance church in the capital city was not destroyed, but the earthquake picked up the 400-seat sanctuary and moved it three inches off its foundation.

By 3:45 A.M., the first radio station was on the air, and it was broadcasting hymns and passages of Scripture. The station, signing on an hour and forty-five minutes earlier than usual, was TGNA, an affiliate of CAM. For four hours it was the only station operating in Guatemala City. And for two days it was one of only two stations broadcasting information from the government network, including many personal messages to families about the condition of their separated members. As more stations returned to the air, they were all put on the network.

Without making a public appeal, TGNA collected relief supplies that were distributed to some twenty towns by the staff and volunteers from CAM churches and the seminary. TGBA, the mission’s Indian language station, is located at Barillas, in an area not affected by the earthquake. Its personnel staged a marathon appeal for relief. On the first day, 629 Indians came in with $374. In the area served by TGBA the Indians have an average daily income of thirty-five cents. The donors, mostly Christians, also brought more than 5,000 pounds of corn and other food to the station. Some walked several hours over mountain trails to bring their gifts.

The relief effort that began with Christians in Guatemala soon attracted help from many parts of the world. Within a week, it was estimated that supplies worth $15 million had been shipped to the devastated areas.

Some fifteen outside agencies and twenty-one denominations within Guatemala were cooperating in CEPA (the Spanish acronym for Permanent Evangelical Committee for Aid). The committee was organized two years ago in the aftermath of disasters in neighboring nations. A similar group was organized by CAM churches.

Immediate aid came from Nicaragua’s CEPAD emergency group and CEDEN in Honduras. CAM congregations in Honduras sent $1,000, as did Baptist churches in that nation. Volunteer workers rushed in from Christian groups elsewhere in Central America.

Within hours of the tragedy officials of Christian agencies in North America were also surveying the needs. Immediate shipments of tools, blankets, food, and medical supplies were authorized. Appeals for earthquake relief funds went out from a variety of agencies.

Initially, relief workers faced a problem of having more material at the Guatemala City airport than they could distribute. The tremors had been so strong that many highways were destroyed and railway tracks were badly bent. Helicopters sent by the U. S. government helped with the distribution problem until roads to the interior towns were repaired.

After the first pile-up of goods was moved, it was reported that subsequent shipments were being sent quickly to rural areas of need. More than half of the supplies came from either private or governmental sources in the United States.

Executives of relief agencies began emphasizing early that long-term help will be needed by many of the communities. Instead of asking for medicine, food, or clothes, they were stressing the need for tools, shelter, and means of livelihood.

With housing destroyed in many areas of Guatemala City and in the outlying towns, thousands were sleeping out of doors. Some whose houses still stand were afraid to enter them for fear that aftershocks would topple them.

One CAM congregation that lost its building met on the first Sunday after the disaster on a basketball court. They sang, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

Missionary Helen Ekstrom said after the outdoor meeting: “There was a tremendously beautiful spirit among the believers. I cried when I saw how they were not just putting up with the situation but were praising the Lord.”

Said one leader at the basketball court service: “If we are still here, it’s because God has a work for us to do.” Several conversions were reported after that service, as well as at many others in the country. Both the CEPA and CAM relief committees have stressed a strong evangelistic effort in connection with their work.

Matias Gudiel, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) in Guatemala, surveyed the damage in the city of Tecpan. Among the fatalities were four of the city’s six evangelical pastors. He found an elder who lost four of his children and then told those who tried to console him: “They are with the Lord; they are much better where they are now.”

At mid-month evangelist Billy Graham flew to Guatemala to offer comfort and encouragement in a talk on national radio and television.

As Guatemalans and Christian workers from abroad continued the job of burying the dead, treating the sick and injured, and rebuilding churches, they did so with a firm and positive faith.

Prayer Breakfast: Waxing Eloquent

That grinding noise in the kitchen came from a tooth that U. S. Senator Mark Hatfield had unknowingly dislodged and placed in the disposal with some orange peels. His wife Antoinette quickly filled the gaping hole with white candle wax. En route to last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, where the senator was to give the major address, the Hatfields stopped to buy some chewing gum in case the need for additional adhesive became apparent. A dentist among the 3,000 persons in attendance at the Washington Hilton Hotel assured the Oregon Republican he could not have improvised any better.

Hatfield, who said he had been praying for humility, delivered his speech without a hitch—or smile. It was a sobering call for spiritual revolution. (The address is scheduled for publication in the March 26 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.)

President Ford spoke also. He said that many times since becoming Chief Executive he has derived strength from Proverbs 3:5 and 6. “Often as I walk into my office,” he said, “I realize man’s wisdom is not enough.”

The breakfast drew evangelical leaders and businessmen from all over the country. Many diplomats and government officials also were on hand, including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The event is put on each year by the House and Senate prayer-breakfast groups with help from a low-profile organization formerly known as International Christian Leadership but currently referred to as simply “the Fellowship.” A letter of invitation spoke of the need for reconciliation and unity, and described the breakfast as an opportunity for “building stronger links of friendship on a spiritual basis.”

Congressman James W. Symington of Missouri, an Episcopalian, made his debut as a soloist with a black choral group from St. Louis. He sang a song that he and his wife had written, “It Takes Time to Know a Country.”

A prayer for national leadership was given by U. S. Treasurer Francine Neff, and Secretary of the Interior Thomas Kleppe pronounced the benediction.

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Tackling The Pros

Tackling professional football players for Christ has been one of the goals of such Christian organizations as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) and Athletes in Action (AIA), the athletic arm of Campus Crusade for Christ. Both groups work mainly with college athletes. But the pros need Christ, too, theorize leaders. And when well-known players are recruited for Christ, they point out, there are some great fringe benefits for the Christian—and organizational—cause. As guest speakers, the pros command a wide hearing, and their Christian testimonies carry special weight, especially among young people. Understandably, the competition among sports ministries seeking to sign up the superstars has been fierce on occasion.

About two years ago, ten professional football players met in Chicago and issued a statement of concern about the “lack of communication” between these ministries, and they called for a more cooperative effort in sports outreach. The statement was aimed primarily at the FCA and AIA. A number of pros also were involved in Ira Lee “Doc” Eshleman’s Sports World Chaplaincy. But that ministry was winding down following Eshleman’s announcement that he was retiring as pro football’s first full-time chaplain.

The ten players added that they didn’t want to be identified exclusively with any of the existing ministries. Instead, they wanted to establish a movement of their own that would complement the work of the other groups. Yet they wanted to be free to work with the others if they chose to do so.

With the help of Phoenix businessman Arlis Priest, California attorney Thomas Hamilton, and others, they organized Pro Athletes Outreach (PAO). Priest and his friends agreed to be responsible for the legal, business, and fund-raising activities of the group, while a steering committee of players directed programming. (Priest, a real estate broker and investment consultant, has had counseling ties to a number of players in recent years. He also has served Campus Crusade in important capacities.)

Norm Evans of the Miami Dolphins heads the PAO steering committee. Other members include Mike McCoy of the Green Bay Packers, Jeff Siemon of the Minnesota Vikings, Tom Graham and Andy Hamilton of the Kansas City Chiefs, Ken Houston of the Washington Redskins, Gregg Brezina of the Atlanta Falcons, and Calvin Jones of the Denver Broncos.

From its beginning, PAO has concentrated on evangelism and training. This month it sponsored a five-day conference in Phoenix. More than seventy football players attended, along with some sixty wives and other guests. The event continued a series of annual conferences begun six years ago by Eshleman. The last four conferences were run by Campus Crusade’s AIA. David Hannah, AIA director, said that these were boycotted by people associated with the FCA (an FCA official claims FCA representatives were not invited). But now, noted Hannah, bridges are being built between those working to evangelize and train the pros in discipleship.

This cheerful note was echoed by Priest at a steak dinner for 555 people, most of them Phoenix-area believers who simply wanted to get a close-up glimpse of the football huskies. “It’s a thrill to me to see directors of all these ministries gather together,” commented Priest. “We all have our own things to do.”

Priest in an interview pointed out that representatives of various sports ministries attended the conference and were given an opportunity to tell about their own work.

The conference program had a variety of offerings. Among them: a seminar on marriage and the home, conducted by evangelist Lane Adams; a workshop on how to maintain a Christian testimony in the competitive crunch, led by ex-Campus Crusade staffer Wes Neal, head of the Arizona-based Institute for Athletic Perfection; and a talk by evangelist Tom Skinner, chaplain of the Washington Redskins.

The Campus Crusade touch was pervasive. Slides, films, training materials, and evangelistic literature used at the conference were all Crusade-produced, and the conferees—armed with the “Four Spiritual Laws”—hit the streets in a Crusade-style Saturday witness outing.

An FCA leader reacted good-naturedly to the Crusade input. “After all,” he remarked privately, “Crusade’s materials are the best that are readily available.”

Many non-Christian pros and their wives are invited to attend such conferences (staked by first-time-only “scholarships” worth up to $800 or so), and some of these profess Christ. Among them are linebacker Dave Washington of the San Francisco Forty-niners and his wife, both of whom accepted Christ at a 1972 conference. Washington says that other pros are searching for spiritual satisfaction, too, and that they notice the changes in those who have followed Christ.

One of the searchers at this year’s conference was defensive tackle Ernie Holmes of the Pittsburgh Steelers. En route to the PAO meeting he stopped over in Amarillo, Texas, where he was arrested on drug possession charges. Released on $1,000 bond, Holmes—divorced and on probation from a 1973 gun charge involving assault—traveled on to Phoenix. In a closing-banquet testimony, he said he had come to the PAO conference to find himself. Optimistic friends say that with Christ’s help he did.

GENE LUPTAK

Cited

Mrs. Claire Collins Harvey, a black funeral-home operator in Mississippi, received this year’s citation award by The Upper Room, a devotional magazine. Editor Maxie Dunnam said she was cited for her leadership in the fields of human rights and the worldwide Christian fellowship.

Mrs. Harvey, a United Methodist, was Religious Heritage of America’s 1974 Woman of the Year. She is the founder of Womanpower Unlimited, and a former national president of Church Women United, and she has attended important World Council of Churches conferences (she heads a WCC committee).

She says that faith and social activism go together: “There is no effective Christian witness in the social arena unless it is rooted in the Bible, in personal experience with the Holy Spirit, and with the knowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Gunn: Taking Aim

A United Methodist pastor from Gaithersburg, Maryland, will take over the reins of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He is Andrew Leigh Gunn, 45, who succeeds the retiring Glenn L. Archer. Gunn’s appointment effective April 1, was announced at the group’s annual meeting.

“Let the word go forth again in this bicentennial year,” Gunn said, “that Americans United is the advocate and not the adversary of religious peoples who treasure religious liberty.” He promised “no malice on our part,” but he also vowed not to “hesitate to speak out when religious freedom is in jeopardy.”

The search for a successor to Archer took more than two years. Archer had been the organization’s guiding light since its inception in 1947. Over the years, the group’s primary aim has been to prevent tax dollars from flowing to church-affiliated schools.

A Formula For Dying?

If I Die at Thirty, by Meg Woodson (Zondervan, 1975, 166 pp., $4.95), Free Fall, by Jo Ann Kelley Smith (Judson, 1975, 138 pp., $5.95), When a Loved One Dies, by Philip W. Williams (Augsburg, 1976, 95 pp., $2.50 pb), Straight Talk About Death With Young People, by Richard G. Watts (Westminster, 1975, 92 pp., $2.95 pb), Ye Shall Be Comforted, by William R. Rogers (Westminster, 1950, 92 pp., $1.95 pb), Let Christ Take You Beyond Discouragement, by Albert L. Kurz (Accent, 1975, 128 pp., $1.75 pb), Raise the Dead, by Myron C. Madden (Word, 1975, 118 pp. $4.95), and Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, by Eberhard Jungel (Westminster, 1974, 141 pp., $6.95), are reviewed by Gladys M. Hunt, author of “Don’t Be Afraid to Die,” Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The statistics about death are very impressive, observed George Bernard Shaw: one out of one dies. Yet until recently we have been tiptoeing around death as if ignoring it would make it go away.

As late as 1969 Rollo May in his book Love and Will complained about contemporary values that make sex an obsession and death a matter of poor taste. When I was writing my own book on death, which was first published in 1971, I noticed an awkward silence each time I answered the query, “What are you writing about now?” People seemed embarrassed. Only one or two bothered to ask what I was saying about death. Joe Bayly when he was writing The View From the Hearse had a similar experience and sometimes felt like an untouchable socially because he had three sons who died.

But times have changed, so much so that recently the Journal of the American Medical Association carried an article entitled “Dying is Worked to Death.”

Without question the breakthrough for a realistic handling of death came with the publication of On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. The resistance she encountered in doctors and hospital workers as she attempted to interview dying patients revealed the medical profession’s uneasiness with death.

Dr. Kubler-Ross has described five stages she believes most dying patients experience: denial (It can’t be true!), followed by anger or resentment (Why me?), then a stage of bartering to prolong life, a period of depression, and finally acceptance.

Her observations have become the basic outline for the seminars and films on death. Several books reviewed here relate personal experience to stages she describes. It’s like finding a formula for dying. The problem with this is that some zealous speakers and counselors almost insist that to be normal a person must pass through these stages. Kubler-Ross, however, does not investigate any of the resources of the Christian faith. While these do not rule out the stages she describes, neither is a dying Christian hemmed into that formula.

For instance, it is refreshing to me to read the statement of Orville Walters, a capable psychiatrist and a committed Christian, written just before his own death and published in the Fall, 1975, issue of the Christian Medical Society Journal: “With the self awareness that is required in the competent psychiatrist, I cannot identify in my own experience the stages commonly attributed to the dying patient.” Why? Because God’s presence and grace has been a consistent reality. “I believe,” he wrote, “the vitality of that relationship made possible the acceptance of uncertainty concerning the end of my earthly life.” We cannot program the experience of dying; we can only make observations.

The Church has done a poor job in preparing people for death, both to face their own mortality and to handle grief. An amazing number of people who claim to be Christians still believe that people become angels in the next world or else plague themselves with guilt over failure to “believe more” when someone they love dies. Only a few books have been written to help believers see that grief is good, natural, necessary, and often irrational—and that it is not obliterated by our great and steadfast hope in Jesus Christ. We sorrow, but not as others who have no hope. We have sometimes not allowed people to be as human as God does.

Meg Woodson’s If I Die at Thirty and Jo Ann Smith’s Free Fall are likely to be a new experience for readers, for they were written by people facing death. Free Fall was written in the final months of JoAnn Smith’s life as she was dying from cancer. It is a very honest book, sharing the confusion, doubts, fears, and alienation she experienced. She likens death to the “free fall” experience in parachute jumping—the sense of freedom, the separation from those she loves, the assurance that God will be there in the end.

JoAnn Smith previously learned how to share openly, particularly in the supporting Christian community to which she and her husband belonged. Her openness makes the book possible and may even prove too much for some readers. It is a book to give not so much to a dying person (except as its insights might help someone who needs his or her humanity affirmed) as to the family of a dying person.

As JoAnn and Gordon struggle to accept the news that her illness is terminal, their friends tend to retreat into silence, not knowing what to say or how to act. The Smiths are led to write out their personal theology about what is happening to them and share it with their friends, asking them to stay close, to simply be there and understand. JoAnn is frank about the instability of her emotions: she finds herself trying to use her illness to manipulate events in the family; she sometimes knows she is making others feel guilty for living because she is dying. When she needs her husband’s support the most, she ends up rejecting his expressions of tenderness, which confuses them both and necessitates honest conversations.

She disdains ministers who come to call with their own agenda clearly in mind, never bothering to find out where she is emotionally and spiritually. She talks about the kind of people who really help her. Ministers, theology students, doctors, nurses—and all the rest of us—need to hear this woman simply because she is telling it as she experiences it. You meet a person instead of examining theories.

Meg Woodson’s If I Die at Thirty is a creative retelling of conversations with her thirteen-year-old daughter, who has discovered that cystic fibrosis gives her a limited life expectancy. Spiritually it is a far more buoyant book than Free Fall, without being sticky. (One senses that JoAnn Smith never had this much solid, consistent teaching about the nature of the Christian life or Christian death or about the personal friendship of God.) Here is a loving family trusting in God, believing the Bible, facing their own humanity, struggling, making mistakes, hurting, and knowing the comforting care of God as he gives them flashes of insight into great realities. It is no less honest than Free Fall, but death is the prognosis, not the imminent reality.

And this thirteen-year-old is special. Her authenticity may be questioned by some who have never met a spiritually perceptive child, but my own experience confirms the beauty and simplicity of this kind of young adult. Uncluttered with adult hang-ups, this half-child, half-adult sees life with a clear eye. I’d like to see teen-agers reading this book.

In Let Christ Take You Beyond Discouragement Albert Kurz shares what Donna, his wife, recorded of her own experience in facing death. But I couldn’t help feeling that he included only her triumphant words, or perhaps she wrote only when she felt spiritually good, knowing how he wanted to use her material. Kurz writes to inspire readers to take hold of God’s promises. The effect is essentially sermonic. Everything he says about God is true; the weakness may be that he does not say what is true about humans. Still, Donna Kurz faced death with a firm faith and is a model for those so caught up in self-pity and discouragement that they never dream Christ can take them beyond it. My concern is that for some this book may produce more guilt than comfort.

Of the books reviewed here (eight books on death at one time is quite a dose), When a Loved One Dies by Philip Williams is the most comforting. He takes grief seriously. He handles feelings honestly. Williams understands the problems of concentration in grief and the difficulty in prayer. Hence, the chapters are short, concluding with a brief prayer. You can start anywhere in the book, depending on how you feel. Chapters like “It Can’t Be True,” “If Only,” “You’ll Never Know,” and “Those Old Feelings” will take the grieving person from where he or she is to a brief important truth about God.

It’s hard to tell whether Watts wrote his book for adults or for young people, despite its title. He shows a good understanding of questions important to young people and surveys beliefs common among teen-agers. We do indeed need to do some “Straight talk about death with Young People,” as his title puts it. Teen-agers today have a morbid fascination with death, and few know biblical teaching. The drug culture, Eastern mysticism, rock singers, and television programs—everything from “The Littlest Angel” to police dramas where someone dies nightly—all serve to leave a hazy feeling about death.

Westminster issued in paperback a book by William E Rogers written some time ago. It has good insights into the grieving process and decision-making in grief. Its major suggestion is that a grieving person seek out a counselor very soon after the death. The author believes that well-meaning friends often block our show of emotion with advice to brace up, while other family members are trying to cope with their own reactions and cannot be expected to listen to ours. In view of the statistic that three-fourths of all couples who lose a child have marriages that end in divorce, Rogers’s advice may be right. Grieving people need to be understood and to understand something of what is happening to them.

I had a hard time with Myron C. Madden’s Raise the Dead. It hardly qualifies as a Christian book because of its lack of biblical perspective; I kept trying to figure out why Word published it. Madden does not believe death is a foe (unless we let it be), does not believe in the resurrection of the body or in the existence of demons. What he does believe in is his proposal for a new therapy that takes Freud a step further: beyond sex to death. He wants to get death out of life and help update and correct false ideas about death that give it an unreal vitality, he says. He wants, in addition, to help people let the dead be dead, in a final, clean way, whatever that means. To him “biology says life is the aggressive, thrusting, pulsating force, and it takes any death as a bonus. Death has no power but the power we give it.” His view of death is consistently biological rather than biblical or social. He does handle one area not often touched in other books: the problem of dead relationships. However, Madden is better at defining the problem than encouraging a solution. As director of pastoral care for the Southern Baptist hospital in New Orleans he has evidently counseled many people with severe disorders, and much of what he writes is a discussion of what is essentially psychotic behavior. He believes that when the trap that has been locking death into your psyche is sprung, you will get twice as much out of life. I’m hard pressed to think of anyone this book would help.

Jungel’s book, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, is in a different league altogether from the others in this review. It is a heavy, probing book contrasting the secular and philosophical view of death with a theological view. Basically it is a book for philosophers and serious theological students, raising theoretical questions about the meaning of death. Part I discusses the anthropological and biological view of death, and then death as a social fact. Part II examines the theology of death from the Old and New Testaments and has a strong chapter on “the death of death.” It is a thorough, meticulous book. The author is a professor of theology at Tübingen.

When I finished reading these books on death, I opened my Bible and read First Corinthians 15. Now there is a refreshing look at death. I thought of the early Christians, marked in history by the confidence and poise with which they faced death. Any book that really helps us die must tell us about the resurrection. Something has happened in human history to destroy death and to deliver us from its bondage. That doesn’t mean we won’t suffer, that we won’t be afraid, that we won’t know terrible sorrow. It just means that Jesus meant it when he said, “Because I live, you shall live also.”

BRIEFLY NOTED

Those Curious New Cults, by William Petersen (Keats, 272 pp., $1.95 pb), Reincarnation, Edgar Cayce, and the Bible, by Phillip Swihart (InterVarsity, 55 p., $1.25 pb), The Quija Board, by Edmond Gruss (Moody, 191 pp., $1.50 pb), Transcendental Meditation: A Christian View, by David Haddon (InterVarsity, 27 pp., $.25 pb), and The Meditators, by Douglas Shah (Logos, 147 pp., $3.50 pb). Evangelical refutations of Eastern religious sects. Petersen’s is a reprint treating briefly but capably eighteen groups or practices, two more (Moon’s and Maharaj Ji’s) than in the hard-cover edition. The titles of the other indicate their scope. Recommended.

Jesus Christ Is Not God, by Victor Paul Weirwille (distributed by Devin-Adair, 180 pp., $6.95). At least the leader of a growing Christian deviation does not try to conceal his anti-trinitarianism. For orthodox Christians who might be tempted to think well of The Way because of its adherents’ zeal, claimed biblicism, tongues-speaking, or whatever. Compare with defenses of the biblical teaching in The Deity of Christ by W. J. Martin (Moody) or The Lord From Heaven by Leon Morris (InterVarsity).

Living Christian Science, by Marcy Babbitt (Prentice-Hall, 255 pp., $7.95), The Universal Flame, edited by L. H. Leslie-Smith (Theosophical Publishing House, 263 pp., $5), and The Trumpet of Prophecy by James Beckford (Halsted, 244 pp; $17.95). Some sects are a century old and still going strong. Beckford’s scholarly study of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a major addition to the literature. The other two are by or about several adherents of Christian Science and Theosophy.

Abingdon Bible Handbook, by Edward P. Blair (Abingdon, 511 pp., $15.95). Has brief accounts for laymen of how we got the Bible and what its chief teachings are but is mostly devoted to separate introductions to each of the books of the Bible and Apocrypha. The author affirms the authority of Christ, but takes a mediating or inconclusive position on most matters of conflict among scholars (e.g., personality of Satan, authorship of Ephesians). Although he believes the Bible is “indispensable” for learning about God, he also expects us to decide which parts of the Bible are reliable and which are not! “We should therefore expect different levels of truth and some error in the Bible.” Not recommended for its intended audience.

The Empty Pulpit: A Handbook for Churches Calling a Pastor, by Gerald Gillaspie (Moody, 159 pp., $2.50 pb), Getting the Books Off the Shelves: Making the Most of Your Congregation’s Library, by Ruth Smith (Hawthorn, 117 pp., $3.50 pb), Ministry to the Hospitalized, by Gerald Niklas and Charlotte Stafanics (Paulist, 135 pp., $3.95 pb), Phone Power: Using the Telephone in Ministry, by Augustus Dowdy, Jr. (Judson, 96 pp., $2.95 pb), and How to Build an Evangelistic Church Music Program, by Lindsay Terry (Nelson, 198 pp., $3.95 pb). Five worthwhile “how-to” books.

Contemplative Christianity by Aelred Graham (Seabury, 131 pp., $6.95), and Yoga and God by J. M. Dechanet (Abbey, 161 pp., $3.95 pb). Attempts by two Christian monks to strengthen Western religion by borrowing from the East. We do better to stay with or recover the revelation to the Hebrews rather than go farther east.

Some Ways of God, by C. Stacey Woods (InterVarsity, 131 pp. $2.95 pb). Interesting reminiscences and very helpful exhortations and insights by a pioneer in worldwide work among university students.

From Day to Day: A Message From the Bible For Each Day of the Year, by Frank Gaebelein (Baker, 193 pp., $6.95, $2.95 pb). A book of meditations by one of the most widely respected elder statesmen among evangelicals.

Faith and Freedom, by Mary Senholz (Grove City College [Grove City, Pa. 16127], 179 pp., $6.50). Biography, with numerous excerpts from writings and speeches, of J. Howard Pew (1882–1971), prominent evangelical businessman and munificent donor.

Sons of God Return, by Kelly Segraves (Revell, 191 pp., $1.40 pb), UFO: What on Earth Is Happening, by John Weldon and Zola Levitt (Harvest House, 156 pp., $2.95 pb), and Gods in Chariots and Other Fantasies, by Clifford Wilson (Creation-Life, 143 pp., $1.50 pb). A new religion of sorts—UFOlogy is perhaps the best name for it—has been gaining more publicity, especially since the best-selling books of Erich von Daniken. Generally UFOlogy starts with flying-object sightings and other strange phenomena past and present but attributes to extra-terrestrial, naturalistic beings what Christians attribute to the supernatural. However, these three evangelical books opposing UFOlogy give more concessions to the alleged phenomena, only with a supernatural interpretation, than other investigators would be willing to grant. They are probably better used to woo away cultists than to instruct Christians.

Can Psychotherapy Be Christian?

Faith, Psychology, and Christian Maturity, by Millard Sall (Zondervan, 1975, 181 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Lawrence Crabb, Jr., clinical psychologist, Boca Raton, Florida.

The raging debate continues between those who insist that mental illness is the direct result of sinful behavior and those who maintain that spiritual problems and psychological problems are separable and distinct, one requiring pastoral ministrations and the other professional psychotherapy. In a non-polemical, reasonable, and informed way, Dr. Sall, a clinical psychologist, aligns himself with the latter position. He defends his thinking as consistent with a biblical understanding of man as spirit (vulnerable to spiritual problems), soul (vulnerable to psychological problems), and body (vulnerable to physical problems). His central thesis seems to be that psychotherapy, when carefully understood, in no way contradicts Scripture and in fact offers a valuable tool in promoting the goals of Christianity.

One immediate concern is this matter of goals. Sall argues that the Bible and psychotherapy are “compatible because their goals are not dissimilar—they both seek to bring good and fulfillment, maturity and enrichment, and the ability to receive and give love in a permanent way so that life may bring the highest satisfaction and enjoyment possible.” When his own happiness becomes the Christian’s primary goal, we have reversed Christianity into a man-centered system in which God is reduced to a wonderful resource to be exploited rather than the Lord who requires worship and service. Life becomes less of a warfare for God and more of a quest for joy.

Although I think his assumption of compatible goals is open to question, Sall’s clear, strong commitment to evangelical Christianity is not. In Part I (What Psychology Teaches Us About Ourselves), he helpfully and simply summarizes traditional psychological thinking (primarily psychoanalytic) about personality structure, focusing on the definition and development of the ego. Anticipating the charge that all forms of self-love are bad and that the ego is an evil to be reckoned dead, Sall devotes much of Part II (What the Bible Teaches Us About Ourselves) to the idea that a good self-concept is indispensable to Christian maturity. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on pride in which he asserts that there is a healthy form of pride and then describes false or sinful pride, and how it displays itself in neurotic behavior.

In Part III (Harmonizing Psychology and the Bible as We View Ourselves) he attempts to articulate the valid role of psychotherapy in the Christian community. Christians who are struggling with personal problems and pastors who insist that people who are hurting should simply “trust the Lord” and “turn their problems over to Jesus” would do well to read this part. In discussing whether sin is the cause of mental illness, Sall helpfully suggests that a temper outburst may accurately be called sin but may with equal accuracy be viewed as the expression of underdeveloped ego controls. Both views are correct, and this suggests complementary strategies: set the goal as overcoming the sin problem, then help the person develop stronger ego controls through which the Spirit can more effectively work.

Precisely how we develop stronger ego controls is open to question. Is it a psychological process of uncovering repressed material in a supporting relationship? Or is it simply a matter of choosing to obey God regardless of fears and doubts? Does one have to be whole before he exercises the faith which obeys, or does one become whole by exercising that kind of faith?

Adamsian counselors will be likely to take issue with much of the book. Other Christian counselors like Narramore and Hyder will probably find it generally consistent with their thinking. Most will agree in part, criticize here and there, and end up moving a step ahead on the long road towards a crystallized view of Christian counseling.

Doran’s dead. He died early this afternoon.” Those were Betty’s first words on the telephone.

The words shocked me. We had known it would happen, but had not expected it so soon. My mind numbed as Betty told me the circumstances of his death.

My wife Shirley sat across the table. She and my son watched my face. They knew what was coming next.

“Would you conduct the funeral?”

Another time I would have said yes without a second thought. I felt myself tense. Betty needed an immediate answer. I couldn’t say, “Wait a couple of hours while I pray about it, Betty, and I’ll call you back.”

I had been Doran and Betty’s pastor for two years before the fatal brain tumor. During that time we experienced a close fellowship. A few months after Doran’s surgery I moved to another church twenty miles away. Doran spent the next eight months as an invalid. He could no longer hear, and his muscular coordination deteriorated rapidly. Because of brain damage he lived completely in the past. Consequently he never knew my successor; I had been his last pastor.

For the final two years of Doran’s good health, he and Betty, along with several other business people, had a time of prayer and Bible study every Wednesday morning in Doran’s office. In those seconds while Betty talked to me on the phone, pictures flashed through my mind of those who had been ministered to through our prayer group. David, who had lost his job and his home and was ready to give up on life, found new courage through the group. Tony went through months of deep depression after his divorce, but it was Betty who kept reaching out and saying “Don’t give up. All of us love you.” I remembered Ruth, too. She had grown from a cynical woman of the world into a tender, caring person. Bob once remarked, “I get more out of this than anything else in my week. People are so close to each other here.”

And now Betty wanted me to conduct Doran’s funeral.

Lord, please show me what to do.

I glanced at my teen-age son. He said nothing. His eyes betrayed no flicker of emotion. But I knew what he was thinking.

It was now Saturday, and the funeral was to be Monday afternoon. Another delay.

Delay. That was the word for our vacation. After an especially busy and tiring summer, we had planned to leave the previous Thursday. Twice problems had arisen in the church that kept us from leaving. Twice we had changed our reservations. We had only one week before John’s school started.

I remembered something my son had said a few weeks earlier. He had gone with me to see a family who had not been to church recently and about whom I felt concerned. John made only one comment: “Preachers never get time to do what they want to do.”

Had I neglected him? Not intentionally. But I had put the ministry and the call of other people ahead of my family.

I’ve tried to be available to people and to respond to their needs. On occasion, it has meant postponing or canceling family activities. I can recall times when I scarcely saw my children for two or three days at a time because of the heavy commitment of my time to the ministry.

Lord, guide me.

I looked at John. By going to summer school he would graduate in June. Then college. I knew only too well that this might be the last vacation we could share with him as a teenager. Soon he would be an adult.

I thought of all the things I had wanted to do with my son during his growing years. Now he was sixteen, and few of them had happened. I had been too busy.

Words of Scripture flowed easily through my thoughts: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself …”

Is that your will, God?

Where does responsibility to my family end? Or to the church? What about ministry to my son? Which is God’s will—going with the family or upsetting our plans?

I had wrestled with that question many times before. A year earlier I had gone two days late to a retreat with Shirley because of a funeral. One year we had no vacation at all because of pastoral demands.

Then suddenly I knew what to reply to Betty. After what had seemed like a long period of reasoning, though it must have been only a few seconds, I decided.

“Betty,” I said, “I love you. And you know how much I loved Doran. But I’m going to say no. I can only hope you’ll understand.”

In a few sentences I explained that this time I owed my family priority. Doran had been known and loved by several pastors in the area. One of them, Bill, had frequently joined in our sharing sessions and was Doran’s parents’ pastor. Betty said she would ask him to conduct the funeral.

“I feel guilty about this, Betty. No matter what I say, I feel guilty.”

“I understand. Honest, I do. We know how much you care. You showed your love while he was alive. Doran would have understood, too.”

I stared at my wife and son, seated at the table. Their expressions had changed little, but I noticed a softening. My son’s eyes communicated his thanks.

We went on the vacation, and during that week my wife and I felt we learned to know our son again. We had hardly realized the changes that were taking place in his life. We now could appreciate the maturity of his thinking and the sharpness of his mind.

Several times guilt troubled me. Had I done the right thing?

I believe I did. Later I would ask myself, “Isn’t ministry to my family one of my highest priorities?” The Apostle Paul gave as a condition for ordaining a man as elder that he rule his household well. In trying so hard to minister to people, how many times had I failed to minister to my own family?

Our struggles don’t always center on temptations to do evil rather than good. It sometimes is a question of choosing between two good possibilities. There will often be questions—even afterwards—but being a disciple means living by faith, not by facts that substantiate our decisions.

Did I choose correctly? My faith assures me that God guided my answer because I honestly sought his will. After all, Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth.”—CECIL B. MURPHEY, pastor, Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Riverdale, Georgia.