While blacks and women in America have been gaining rights and a share in decision-making on the national level that they should have had decades ago, another large group of Americans seems to be losing influence. Many Christians are now strangely intimidated into silence. Their contribution to public-affairs debates is being increasingly disqualified as sectarian.

The “disfranchisement” of Christians in America, like the oppression of blacks and the ward or tutee status imposed on women, depends on myths. These myths are expressed without being clearly understood and are repeated, in many cases, by the very people whose interests they suppress. Undoubtedly the myth of white supremacy intimidated a substantial portion of the Negro population for decades, substantiated as it appeared to be by the continuing relegation of the Negro to servile or inferior status. But at a certain point in their history, blacks repudiated it. And once its existence was acknowledged, it was rather quickly rejected, in principle at least, by whites as well.

What of the status of women? We should distinguish between the biblical distinction of the function and role of the two sexes, accepted by all biblical Christians, and the complex of social and cultural attitudes now customarily if somewhat oddly entitled “male chauvinism.” Needless to say, such a complex of attitudes, particularly when it was accepted or at least to some extent unresisted by women themselves, was a powerful factor in keeping them from enjoying the full measure of the dignity with which the Creator endowed them as well as the formal rights to which the Constitution and public laws entitle them.

The situation of Christians in America today, like that of blacks and women only a short time ago, also suffers from the prevalence of a derogatory and harmful mythology, substantial elements of which are accepted by Christians themselves. Not until Christians recognize that they are kept ineffective in a society major facets of which they themselves have shaped will they recognize the prevalence of these debilitating myths and do something to eradicate them from popular consciousness. Like the androcentric myths of male supremacy, the secularistic myths of Christian inferiority represent a whole complex of attitudes and assumptions. Their effect, unless bared and renounced, can put believers in a position that anti-Christian forces easily exploit.

Ours is an age of slogans rather than of mythology so called, and we may identify elements of the myth of Christian inferiority in terms of generally accepted slogans that support and maintain it. Consider the currently fashionable catchword “pluralism.” In a “pluralistic” society such as ours, we are told, no one group should dominate or impose its opinions on others.

“Pluralism” is a concept void of content. It can mean everything or nothing. As Professor Perry London of the University of Southern California pointed out at a recent Wheaton College conference, the political freedoms of which Americans are justly proud—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association—have their origin in a relatively homogeneous society in which there was a broad consensus on fundamental values. A considerable degree of freedom could be allowed because there was a wide measure of agreement and self-discipline concerning the limits within which freedom was to be exercised. As the consensus has deteriorated, the limits have been forgotten, and the exercise of freedom in various areas is pushing toward extremes that will unravel the fabric of society and ultimately force upon us a desperate choice between chaos and authoritarian control.

Early America was “pluralistic” within a Christian context. No one was obliged to worship God according to the manner of one particular group—e.g., Congregationalist, Episcopal, or Baptist—but it was rather generally taken for granted that most Americans would worship God within the framework of one or another branch of the Christian tradition. Those who placed themselves outside the tradition—Jews and other members of non-Christian religions, freethinkers, and atheists—were few in number, and society could easily accommodate their diversity without danger to its fundamental cohesion.

To speak of “pluralism” in a context in which those who wish to revere God and those who militantly deny his existence have equal status would certainly be awkward, but even this would not be an absurdity for the Christian. If he were expected to accept the fact that public institutions and ceremonies would at times be indifferent to God and appear to presuppose the autonomy of man, he could also expect that the atheistic minority, in the name of pluralism, might tolerate the occasional expression of public reverence for God and the presupposition of his sovereignty in certain public institutions and ceremonies. But this is precisely what “pluralism” as currently understood does not do. It never allows public institutions to reflect the views of the theistic and nominally Christian majority; in fact, it demands that they explicitly repudiate them and affirm the autonomy and self-sufficiency of man, a concept as odious to Christian minds as it is untrue to objective reality. It is as absurd to think that substantial actions could be launched to prevent astronauts from public reading of Bible texts while traveling at government expense as it would be to suggest that they ought to be prevented from not reading them. But somehow a commitment to “pluralism” permits the one and inhibits the other. It is just another element in the mythology that effectively keeps Christians in America from contributing any of that which is most precious to them to general public discussion, even when it is concerned with ultimate values and the nature and destiny of man.

Another area of modern American life in which the substantial weight of the Judaeo-Christian ethical tradition has been explicitly rejected in favor of a permissiveness derived from paganism is the continuing controversy over abortion on demand. From the historical perspective, the overwhelming testimony of Christians from the earliest days to the present has been one of opposition to abortion except in cases involving a serious threat to the life of the mother. Major Protestant ethicists, including in our own generation figures as diverse as Barth, Bonhoeffer, Thielicke, Ramsey, Outler, and Schaeffer, agree on this point. Yet, as it happens, several major American denominations support not merely a limited liberalization of abortion but the unique access to abortion on demand created by the Supreme Court in January, 1973.

Christians suffer from intimidation and oppression in our American culture. As blacks and women have done, we must reject the mythology that debilitates us.

What has led denominational Protestant executives to break so dramatically with the ethical standards of Christendom during almost two millennia? What consideration could be strong enough to persuade not only many leaders of liberal or less-than-biblical denominations but also a number of conservatives thus to repudiate a major and constant element of the Christian ethical heritage?

Incredibly, nothing more seems needed than the slogan “freedom of choice.” For instance, at the recent International Conference on Human Engineering and the Future of Man, several participants said in discussion that they personally deplored abortion on demand but nevertheless supported “freedom of choice.” Such an attitude reveals a grave defect in logical and moral reasoning: Christians’ willingness to accept it as a valid argument on a substantial issue suggests that we are losing our influence on public policy less because it is being wrested from us than because we are simply lacking in basic intellectual tools and discipline.

“Freedom of choice” is a slogan, not a position. It contains everything and nothing. Another word for choice is decision, and choice or decision-making is the chief issue in ethics. The task of ethics as a discipline is to teach and enable people to make right choices. Unless one has freedom to choose, one cannot make an ethical decision. But unless one uses one’s freedom to choose the right, the decision is unethical and immoral.

If by “freedom of choice” we mean that people should be allowed to use their free will to make either an ethical or an unethical decision, without suffering for choosing unethically, we are engaged in an absurdity that, if carried to its logical conclusion, would put an end to public law. The man who has been cuttingly insulted may have to choose between an act of vengeance and acceptance of his humiliation. Factually he has the potentiality—in other words, the freedom—to choose either course, vengeance or patience. But it would not occur to us to legalize the vendetta on the grounds that we must permit freedom of choice. Those societies and subcultures that permit or even require an offended individual to seek to avenge himself justify it not as “freedom of choice” but as an ethical decision made, for example, for the sake of an ethical good such as personal honor. By saying that we must allow “freedom of choice” in the abortion/right-to-life issue, we cannot really mean that we advocate freedom to choose between an ethical and a radically unethical course of conduct.

In this respect, to advocate “freedom of choice” is a more serious moral error than merely to support freedom from punishment. Homosexual acts have long been punishable by law in many societies. A Christian might legitimately argue that such acts should be free from punishment, on the grounds, for example, that the attempt by the state to restrain homosexual behavior by the penal code is ineffective and produces more abuses than it hinders. But for a Christian to argue that homosexual behavior should be legitimated in the name of freedom of choice is not really to support the general principle of freedom of individual decision; it is, rather, to remove this particular area of decision-making from the moral and ethical sphere, and thus to break drastically with biblical teaching and the Christian moral heritage.

The widespread acceptance of the slogan “freedom of choice” among Christians is more likely to stem from defective training in moral reasoning than from an explicit rejection of biblical teaching or of the Christian’s right to a voice in the formulation of public policy, but the end result is the same: Christians are in effect disfranchised, and society as a whole is deprived of the value of any ethical insights drawn from or embedded in our biblical heritage. A liberal society in which there is no attempt to write laws on a theocratic basis may frequently reject such biblically derived insights or decline to embody them in its public laws. However, the Christian has every right to share such insights with society at large and to attempt to persuade it of their validity.

lt is absurd to espouse a ‘freedom of choice’ that allows people to do evil rather than good, with no thought given to the consequences.

No American historian would seriously contend that the phrase “regarding an establishment of religion” in the First Amendment means anything other than what it says: it forbids the establishment of a national religion or church. It did not in fact forbid the establishment of state churches, as both Massachusetts and Connecticut had them at the time of the amendment’s adoption and retained them for many years to come. The limitations of federal power contained in the Bill of Rights have subsequently been extended to apply to the individual states as well. Yet even when applied to the states, the First Amendment means only that no state may establish a state church, just as the federal government may not establish a national church. It certainly did not mean, in its conception, that nothing in public law or policy may reflect the convictions or insights of any church or of the Christian religion.

It is absurd to suppose, as the Supreme Court did in a 1961 decision on prayer in public schools, Engel v. Vitale, that the recitation of a prayer in public school constitutes an “establishment of religion” in the sense of the First Amendment. In fact, the Court’s reasoning in that case was based more on the contention that the state authorities of New York, in formulating or designating a prayer, were becoming “entangled” in a religious issue rather than on the obviously absurd contention that they were thereby establishing a religion.

The transition from the precise and limited prohibition of establishment to a general and all-embracing prohibition of “entanglement” is another way in which the influence, convictions, and counsel of Christians are rendered ineffective. The doctrine of entanglement is derived from a concept that is not constitutional in origin (although it goes back to one of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson), namely, the “wall of separation” between church and state. Even though Jefferson himself was opposed to revealed religion and wished to reduce the influence of the Christian churches in American society, his concept of the wall of separation was far less noxious in the early nineteenth century than it has become in our day. In Jefferson’s day, government at all levels was extremely limited; there was no compulsory education, for example. Hence to insist on a rigid separation, an exclusion of the church and religion from all areas of state activity, represented far less of a repression of religion and its relegation to the fringe of social life than a similar insistence does today.

According to a recent ruling of the United States Supreme Court (Meek v. Pittenger, 1975), states are forbidden by the First Amendment from providing services such as remedial reading therapy for slow learners in private, religious schools. A state-paid therapist working in a religiously oriented school, the Court reasoned, might be subjected to certain pressure to conform to the religious orientation of the school. This would make it necessary for the state to act as a watchdog to protect the freedom of conscience of its therapists from such religious propaganda, and this watchdog role would then “entangle” the state with religious issues in an unconstitutional way.

The result of this is that parents of children with learning disabilities are triply disadvantaged if they choose to provide religiously oriented education for them: first, because their children are handicapped, which itself alone constitutes a heavy emotional and psychological burden for the children and their families; second, because they must themselves support the private school in addition to being taxed for public facilities they do not use; and third, because they also must pay separately for private therapy provided by the state free of charge to those who are willing to cooperate with the government educational system.

The reasoning involved is so contrived that one must look behind it for some motivation other than that given. It would seem that the Court, consciously or unconsciously, is intent on increasing the cost to individual parents of not submitting to the state-run educational establishment. In other words, the long-range effect of such regulations is to price independent schools out of the market for all but the very wealthy. Thus, without actually closing or forbidding them, the government ultimately will effectively eliminate non-government schools and thus strike a heavy blow against the “pluralism” and “freedom of choice” it so greatly extols in other matters.

Before the government assumed responsibility for so many areas of human life and development, elementary and secondary education were relatively inexpensive, and millions of people of modest financial means were able to provide alternative schools for their children. Additional special educational services, such as remedial education, generally had to be provided outside the schools in any case. It is evident that when the state starts to provide such services on a broad basis, but only for those who are willing to buy the whole package of government-planned education, it is subjecting religious beliefs to a kind of financial discrimination.

Separation of church and state does not mean the systematic exclusion of anything religious from every aspect of life involving the state.

For the sake of argument, we may assume that there might be valid political and sociological reasons for such discrimination, and perhaps the majority of Christians would accept such reasons as sufficient. But it should be recognized that discrimination, not impartiality, is precisely what such decisions as Meek v. Pittenger involve. They are not interpretations of the “separation of church and state”; they are implementations of a policy of suppression of the church by the state. At present, such implementations are mild and relatively innocuous. But Christians should be aware that this is where present legislative, judicial, and regulatory trends are headed, and recognize that, carried to their logical conclusion, they will result in the relegation of Christians and their Christian convictions to the fringes of their own society.

The doctrine of the separation of church and state, if it refers to institutions and organizations, is salutary and acceptable. If it is interpreted to mean the systematic exclusion of all religious attitudes, insights, and values from every aspect of life and every square foot of space where the state exercises a measure of involvement or regulation, then it is illegitimate and represents nothing less than a long-range program for the suppression of religion, and specifically, of the most widely represented and active religion in America, Christianity.

Perhaps the indifferent majority of Americans who bear the name of Christian but do not exhibit any consistent Christian convictions in their lives may some day be supinely subjected to the activistic minority who would like to restructure society on fully secularistic principles. This has happened elsewhere in the world; there is certainly no guarantee that it will not happen here. But when Christians themselves promote an increasing disfranchisement—and, in the long run, their own relegation to outsiders and second-class citizens in their own society—by giving automatic, quasi-religious assent to the fullest expansion of doctrines such as the separation of church and state, they are as foolish and self-destructive as the Negroes who tolerate the myth of white supremacy.

Faced with these trends, the Christians of America must take some prompt measures. In fact, if it is true, as Tertullian wrote to a pagan Roman audience, that the Christians are to society as the soul is to the body, then Christian efforts to protest the Christian aspects of our society and civilization are in the interest not merely of Christians but of society as a whole.

First of all, Christians must learn to apply more rigor in their moral reasoning. They must, for example, learn to distinguish between a principle that has a definite content, such as the commandment against false witness, and one that is merely an empty, adaptable slogan, such as “freedom of choice.” If pluralism means that committed Christians are not to impose their convictions on the nominal Christian majority or the non-Christian minority, then it must also mean that Christians can expect that society not attempt to suppress or discredit their convictions and rights.

Second—because the process of education in moral reasoning will take some time—Christians must challenge the slogans, the “sacred cows” of modern Americanism that serve as convenient tolls for the destruction of Christian institutions and values. As a beginning, every time a Christian encounters the slogans “freedom of choice,” “pluralism,” and “separation of church and state,” he must challenge them, require the person voicing them to give them a specific content, and deal with them then not as doctrines deserving of mythological or quasi-religious reverence but on the basis of the specific content that their advocates ascribe to them.

Third, Christians must acknowledge that if God has placed them in a largely non-Christian society (at least in the sense of genuine commitment, as opposed to merely nominal Christianity), it is not in order that they be transformed by it, but for its healing and transformation by them. Can God expect less of Christians than that they at least have the courage to attempt to persuade non-Christians that the organization of society according to Christian, biblical principles to the advantage of all?

Conversely, if Christians, who through our historical development have been the trustees of most of the ethical and moral widsom of our civilization—for it has come to us through Christian sources—refuse or are too timid to share it with others, they are depriving the whole nation and all its people of a good of which they are supposed to be stewards and disseminators, not mere warehousemen. What this simply means is that it is a Christian duty to proclaim to all society, not just to the like-minded, the social value of the laws, principles, and insights that we derive from our biblical heritage, but that correspond in their ultimate validity to the nature of man as a creature made in the image of God.

A great man,” wrote Hegel, “condemns the world to the task of explaining him.” On that view, the world has a job on its hands with William Barclay: New Testament scholar, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, best-selling author, working-man’s friend, and extraordinary communicator.

“I have a second-class mind,” says the sixty-eight-year-old Scot. “I never had an original idea in my life.” So how does he himself explain his success? A good memory, hard work, an ability to work to order (he never wrote a Sunday sermon after Thursday), a facility with words, and a capacity for thinking in pictures rather than theological abstractions. The good memory was confirmed when I interviewed him recently; he not only remembered our one previous meeting eighteen years ago but reminded me of an aspect of it I had completely forgotten.

I wanted to ask that “second-class mind” if he thought the Kirk (the Church of Scotland) had any first-class minds today, and if so why didn’t we all benefit from them—did their kind of genius necessarily involve unintelligibility? The question went unasked; it would have been invidious had I named names, and William Barclay is a charitable man.

But how, I asked, did he account for his popularity and quotability even in conservative circles where on some themes he would be dubbed heretic? A clumsy question, but greeted with customary good humor. Much of the information he was sharing, said Barclay, was theologically neutral. Moreover, he didn’t begin by talking in negations: rather than express doubts about the Virgin Birth, for example, he would say what the Virgin Birth was all about.

Reticent on some subjects, including the inspiration of Scripture, Barclay claimed to be in some things “ultraconservative.” He had found himself the only member of his divinity faculty who “believed that Matthew, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels attributed to them.”But he would call himself “liberal evangelical.”

He is a universalist. “Like most people brought up in an evangelical home,” he says in A Spiritual Autobiography (Eerdmans), “I did not at first know that there was any other way of thinking of the Atonement except in terms of substitution.… But there were things about it that left me unhappy. It seemed … to present me with a God who was out to punish me and a Jesus who was out to save me … [and] that the whole conception starts from the wrath of God, while the New Testament starts from the love of God.”

In the same book he writes that “miracles were often not so much stories of what Jesus once did, but symbols of what he still can do.” He testified in a BBC radio broadcast that God had stilled the storm in his own heart some years before when his only daughter and her fiancé were drowned at sea. After that broadcast he received a letter that said: “Dear Dr. Barclay, I know now why God killed your daughter, it was to save her from being corrupted by your heresies.” The postmark was Northern Ireland. The letter was anonymous.

Earlier this year, when he wrote a series of articles for the Kirk’s magazine Life and Work, Barclay was stridently accused of left-wing bias by a high-ranking aristocrat. The alleged bias amounted to no more than a preference for comprehensive—i.e., public—schools. “I have no politics,” Barclay assured me. “I could not describe myself either as left or right wing.” Politics had nothing to do with it; he was concerned only to say the Christian thing.

Then he startled me. “The most evangelical preacher I have ever heard,” he said, “was Rudolf Bultmann.” I asked him why. “Because he preached hell-fire-save-your-soul.” Barclay admitted he could not reconcile that with much of Bultmann’s writing, “although it can never be denied that the aim of all Bultmann’s writing is confrontation, the confrontation of the individual with the living Christ.”

When I took him to task for his equation of home and happiness with marriage and family (a bachelor interrogator could do no less), I challenged his apparent dogmatism on the issue. But the man whose own marriage has been very happy (though he doubted if his wife had read any of his books) was unrepentant. He disapproved of a celibate ministry; parish work was likely to be carried on more effectively by a married man who needed the help of a partner in his work. Resisting the temptation to ask if this was not connected with an earlier admission that he was “a handless creature,” domestically helpless, I pressed him on the broader issue, but he was reluctant to make exceptions, other than for missionaries. Oddly enough, he turns things on their head regarding women ministers: he disapproves of their being married. Working wives on the whole he thought were bad for home and children.

In a magazine article Barclay had cited the danger of misrepresentation in journalism. I asked if he had been a victim of this, but he had no substantial complaint; his concern rather was about those who condemned him without having read a word he had written. It was not unusual for conservative students to come to him apologetically after their first year in his class, admit that they had been warned against him, and say how unfounded had been their fears. Barclay genuinely does not mind criticism—if critics get their facts right. A naturally friendly man, he finds nothing more offensive than a shut mind, but he would still knock “the mind which is open at both ends.”

He does not think anyone has a right to confront a total stranger with “Are you saved?” It was like asking about the state of the stranger’s bank account. “A relationship has to be arrived at in which it is possible to talk of these things. But the great and grave danger is to lose the chance of talking about them at all.”

Like Baron von Hügel, William Barclay urges ministers to have some non-religious interests, including TV-watching to keep them abreast of current talking points. His own hobbies are stamp-collecting, following the soccer scene, and golf, which he gave up reluctantly in recent years because of emphysema (he had “come to look on heaven as a place where there will be no more stairs”). Although deaf for more than forty years, he had a hearing aid that not only overcame the deficiency but enabled him to conduct choirs. I recall that my college entertained Barclay’s once. His triumphed on the soccer field, then under Barclay’s baton sang to soothe the wounded feelings of the vanquished. Music has been an integral part of William Barclay’s life. As a parish minister in Renfrew he always listened to the Scottish Orchestra on Saturday evenings, convinced that “great music is a tension-reliever,” and by far the best preparation for Sunday activity.

I asked if he had any suggestions about how to arrest the alarming decline in church membership (the Kirk has lost 120,000 communicants or 10 per cent of the total in the past five years). The professor said he found an openness to religion, but he saw a problem in how to make Christianity meaningful to those outside the church. The traditional conservative evangelical approach he described as being “too authoritative in the beginning.” The church had to be taken to the people; he would be glad to conduct a service in the golf-club bar on a Saturday evening—but how the Gospel was got across depended on the place and the circumstances.

In church services, Barclay would like to see on Sunday evening a radical reordering of the traditional format that presented visitors with hymns they might not know and prayers that meant little. How would he do it? “Begin with the sermon,” he replied promptly, “talk for forty-five minutes on a topical theme like ‘Christianity and Money’ or ‘Christianity and Sex.’ ” That strategy was followed in the suburban Glasgow church of which he is an elder. After the sermon/lecture there was an interval for tea in the church hall, then discussion when those with a point of view—trade unionist, communist, or anyone else—could have his say. The proceedings concluded with an epilogue. Barclay said that such occasions might bring 400 to church, of whom perhaps 150 would stay for discussion—this, it should be added, in a land where many churches have canceled their evening services for lack of support.

There seemed some link here with Barclay’s advocacy of a two-tier membership, put forward in one of his books where he deplores the virtual disappearance of church discipline. In one category he would place those who are “deeply attracted to Jesus Christ and the Christian way,” in another “the many fewer who are prepared to make a total commitment to Jesus Christ.”

Although he retired from Glasgow University in 1974, Dr. Barclay is now a visiting professor in the biology department in the University of Strathclyde. The title is an administrative expedient; his task is to lecture on professional ethics. This is not too demanding, however, and most weekdays he is found in his office at the Collins publishing house, not far from Glasgow’s ancient cathedral. There he works on the Old Testament part of his Daily Study Bible. The New Testament series (published in the United States by Westminster) has in two decades sold about 1.5 million copies and has been translated into many languages, including less well-known ones such as Estonian and Burmese.

Barclay plans to produce three volumes every two years, and to complete the Old Testament in six years. The first installment is due at the end of March. Lady Collins, a devout Roman Catholic and head of the company sponsoring the present project, made only one proviso: that he begin with the Book of Psalms.

Explain the phenomenon as we will, William Barclay’s writings and broadcasts have spoken about Christianity to many millions otherwise unreached. Those who criticize his message could well copy his method, lest he reasonably point out that he prefers his way of doing it to their way of not doing it. Only with culpable slowness are some of us learning that it is not enough to know the Lord’s song in a strange land; we must also learn how best to sing it.

Our new anonymous correspondent, Eutychus VII, begins his column in this issue. We look to Eutychus to “prove that the pin is mightier than the sword in deflating ecclesiastical pretense, sham, and present-day religiosity” (the quote is from a collection of Eutychus I’s letters, Eutychus (and his pin), published by Eerdmans in 1960). Our first Eutychus was Edmund Clowney. The sixth scion in this provocative line was Harold O. J. Brown, unmasked last issue, and I want to thank him for two years’ worth of good reading. To the latest occupant of that window-seat at Troas: Welcome! Stay awake, and help us stay awake.

The East African church newspaper Target recently carried an article entitled “Moratorium, A Bitter Pill to Swallow” (issue of October 12, 1975). Christian Council secretaries of Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan have categorically rejected the idea of a “moratorium” on missions. The term has, they say, “created unnecessary confusion and misunderstanding both in Africa and abroad, and should therefore be dropped and substituted with the more direct term ‘self-reliance.’ ” When about 1,000 evangelical church delegates met at the Congress on Evangelization in Nigeria last August, they flatly rejected moratorium.

Western Christians should not use moratorium as a cover-up for spiritual inertia. Encouragingly, at the 1970 Urbana missionary convention 884 students signed up for missionary service if God so led, and in 1973 there were 5,585.

The concept of a moratorium on missions as proposed at the Lusaka Assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) means the unconditional withdrawal of all missionaries and financial resources from overseas for five years. This has not been followed through even by the advocates of moratorium. The Chicago Daily News for two successive days in January, 1975, reported two pleas by Canon Burgess Carr. In one report the headline was, “Keep Missionaries Home.” But the next day another read, “Financial Help Still Is Being Requested.”

In its July 26, 1975, press release, the AACC announced the following concerning the financing of its new $1 million Nairobi headquarters: “The Committee authorized the raising of grants and loans from mission boards in the U.S.A. to a total of $500,000.”

In the April, 1975, International Review of Mission, Professor Peter Wagner outlined four reasons behind the call for moratorium. Let me examine these first and then add three more.

1. Western cultural chauvinism. The thinking runs like this: Missionaries have destroyed our culture and imposed theirs on us. They should therefore go home and take their money with them. Only when this is done can the church in Africa find its identity.

Admittedly, some aspects of culture have been condemned by missionaries unnecessarily. Wagner cited as examples of “Western cultural chauvinism” efforts to advance such concepts as two-party elections, capitalism, and literacy as second to godliness. But how widely are these concepts pushed by missionaries?

2. Theological developments. It is usually felt that foreign missionaries are standing in the way of the development of theologies that speak in various cultural contexts. Some missionaries may indeed think that the final word has been said in theology. But this view is not general. Undoubtedly, members of a given culture have certain advantages in contextualizing theology, within that culture. But they do not necessarily make use of these advantages. Some African champions of “African theology” have been branded “black Europeans” by fellow Africans.

3. Paternalistic interchurch aid. It is true that some missionaries fall into the temptation of the “syndrome of church development”—that is, staying on the scene too long after planting a church, and not moving on to plant new churches. But is moratorium the answer to this? Wagner rightly suggests: “Perhaps in this case a relocation of missionary personnel would be in order rather than a moratorium.”

4. Nonproductive missionaries. It is suggested that some missionaries are not producing. But who can be the judge? Even the non-fruit-bearing branch is to be pruned and not torn off. The Church can help in the pruning by prayerfully working out the solution in each individual case rather than by listening to a pontifical pronouncement from Nairobi or Geneva.

I want to add the following points.

5. Moratorium is a part of the liberation process. Some Christian leaders see the Church as a party to the colonial strategy of oppression of Africans. In the early colonial days the missionary was a hero who risked his life contacting the Africans. The white colonial officer found him an asset. A few missionaries shared in the paternalism of the day. Unfortunately, that is still the case in some situations today. But this does not warrant the description of Christianity as a system of servitude from which African Christians should be liberated. Missionaries have preached the message of freedom. “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

6. Moratorium is part of a wider ecumenical strategy. At the New Delhi assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1961, the International Missionary Council was integrated into the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. At Bangkok in 1973, salvation was described as “the peace of the people in Vietnam, independence in Angola, justice and reconciliation in Northern Ireland” (assembly papers, Section II, p. 90). The preparatory material for the recently concluded WCC Fifth Assembly in Nairobi presented mission only as dialogue. To accept the unconditional withdrawal of missions is to sign a death warrant for worldwide evangelism. Evangelicals cannot afford to do that while 2.7 billion people are still unevangelized.

7. Moratorium and politicizing seem to go together. The emphasis placed by ecumenicals on human development rather than spiritual new birth as a priority makes missionaries irrelevant. An African Christian leader pled for a replacement of spiritual sermons with lessons on economic development. It has been reported that many churches in Mozambique have been turned into medical clinics and food-distribution centers, and that some missionaries have been imprisoned. In some countries, political indoctrination is now replacing religious instruction. Some ecumenical leaders in Africa praise these moves.

Political and social circumstances may necessitate a withdrawal of missionaries. In such situations our sovereign Lord can still bring good out of a humanly tragic situation. But the Church should not be disobedient to the heavenly vision. The 3,000 missionaries emerging in the Third World should join hands with the missionaries from the West and “be occupied” till He comes.

In rejecting moratorium I do not mean to imply that all is well in the household of faith. My main concern is the remaining task of evangelism, which requires a cross-cultural sharing of the Gospel. The strategy that would meet this need is the training of Africans for leadership.

Missionaries with paternalistic and culturally chauvinistic attitudes should bring these sins to the cross and plead with the Lord for a new heart. Nationals and missionaries should cry before the Lord, “Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee?” (Ps. 85:6). When Christians are filled with the Spirit of God, cultural relevance and contextualization will be brought about in the church without moratorium. It is pruning we need, not uprooting.—

BYANG H. KATO,

general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar,

Nairobi, Kenya.

A first was recorded in both evangelical and Jewish circles when more than forty scholarly participants met last month in New York City to discuss the state of their relationship. Organized by Interreligious Affairs Director Marc H. Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee and G. Douglas Young of Jerusalem’s Institute of Holy Land Studies, the three-day exchange was designed to evoke frank and clear discussion of areas that have traditionally kept the two communities apart. Papers from both sides considered the following topics: The Messiah, The Meaning of Israel, Social Concerns, Biblical Authority, Current Morality, and the Problems of Minorities in a Pluralistic Society.

The conference was the fulfillment of a long-held dream of Canadian-born, U. S.-educated Young, himself now an Israeli citizen and a leading spokesman for Christians in that country. Conference sessions were held in New York’s Calvary Baptist Church and at the American Jewish Committee’s headquarters.

Although the evangelical delegates were hand-picked to represent a wide variety of theological expression all were known to be reasonably friendly to modern Jewish and Israeli interests. Some, typified by elder statesman Arnold T. Olson of the Evangelical Free Church, have gained considerable prominence with Christian advocates for Israeli causes.

Major topical addresses were delivered from the evangelical side by Marvin R. Wilson (Gordon College), William A. LaSor (Fuller Seminary), Carl E. Armerding (Regents College), Paul E. Toms (President, National Association of Evangelicals), Vernon C. Grounds (Conservative Baptist Seminary), and Young.

Jewish positions were set forth by scholars representing all three traditions (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform).

For many on both sides the highlight was a luncheon address by Evangelist Leighton Ford of the Billy Graham organization. Ford’s forthright presentation, a number felt, enabled the Jews to have a better understanding of the Christian dynamic of evangelism. “For me to disclaim a desire to evangelize all people would be dishonest,” he said. On the other hand, he acknowledged, “the experience of getting to know you and of reading and praying for this dialogue has been a great learning experience for me.” He went on to point out that “my Lord is of your people. To be anti-Semitic is to be anti-Christ.”

Perhaps more significantly, says Armerding, Ford’s talk underscored wide areas of shared social concern, a theme echoed later by Toms, Tanenbaum, and others at the landmark symposium.

Key issues emerged on which both sides seemed to share a basic understanding. These included the Jewishness of the New Testament, social and moral concerns, and the need for fair and equitable treatment of Israel in world opinion.

On several other issues a beginning was made, reports Armerding. LaSor opted for a development of Messianism in the Old Testament that would not set Christian hermaneutics totally at variance with Jewish biblical scholarship. Armerding argued that the New Testament preserved the distinction between Israel and the church, but he pleaded for Christians not to see modern Jews merely as pawns in the Christian eschatological scheme. A panel discussion led by Kenneth Kantzer (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) featured papers on scriptural authority. The Jews clearly represented a much wider divergence in positions than their evangelical counterparts.

In two areas especially, much remains to be done, says Armerding. Jews neither appreciate nor fully understand the “conversion” mentality of evangelicals. Although discussion was frank and friendly, he states, it is apparent that evangelicals must learn why Jews react as they do, and adjust their own approach to what years of “forced conversion” have taught the Jewish community.

The second area concerns responsibility for the death of Christ. Despite a sincere attempt by the evangelicals, notably Kenneth Kantzer, Edwin Yamauchi (Miami University, Ohio), Roger Nicole (Gordon-Conwell seminary) and A. T. Olson to define the matter biblically, feelings were ruffled in both camps.

A persistent note of special concern came from the only three women in the dialogue (two Jewish, one Christian). They forcefully reminded the overwhelmingly male audience that neither community had done much to recognize the real issues of women and their role in faith and life.

The exchange was seen as a good beginning. The organizers expressed satisfaction with the results and spoke of plans for a second stage of talks.

A Bash For Cecil

Ten years had passed since A. Cecil Williams landed on the San Francisco scene as pastor of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. It was time for a big bash, a “Celebration of Change” to honor the black mesmerizer who had transformed a dwindling traditional inner-city church into a pulsating funky haven for those who wanted to “get it on” in a psuedo-religious way.

The celebration, held on a recent Sunday, began with the usual two jam sessions of jazz, light shows, dance exhibitions, and soul singing and pop preaching by Williams that characterize Sunday mornings at Glide. Both “services” were packed. The festivities continued with street entertainment by a mime troupe. Tables in the social hall and parking lot overflowed with free literature promoting a variety of controversial causes, from gay liberation and the Black Muslims to Socialist parties. On display was a soon-to-be-marketed “Cecil Doll” that resembles remarkably its namesake: lanky, Afro hair style, black-rim glasses, bright clothes.

The major event of the celebration drew 3,000 of Williams’ followers to the church and the sidewalks of the neighboring Tenderloin district to hear twenty speakers pay him tribute. Among them were prominent politicians, spokesmen for ethnic groups, radical leader Angela Davis (she got a standing ovation), and Margo St. James, founder of Coyote, the union for working prostitutes. Ms. St. James recounted how Williams had provided a meeting place at Glide so she could start her organization which now has chapters in twelve cities. (Dedicated to legalizing prostitution, Coyote will hold its third national convention in Washington, D. C., this July.)

Methodist bishop R. Marvin Stuart of San Francisco, who sometimes disagrees with Williams, sent a letter commending the minister for his “courage, dedication, and vision” in reaching social outcasts. “Despite upset and controversy, we will not forget the dignity, hope, and fuller life that Glide United Methodist Church is bringing to people in this community,” said Stuart. “Your ministry is, of course, central to Glide’s witness.”

The final event was a benefit concert in the evening by Marvin Gaye and Quincy Jones at the Cow Palace to raise money for Williams’ new “Center for Self-Determination.”

Williams said that when he came to Glide ten years ago “it wasn’t a good day. Not with the people who were here then. No, they were determined to drive me away, and I was determined to drive them away, and I won.” The unusual changes wrought by Williams prompted religion columnist Lester Kinsolving to describe Glide Church as “America’s only Sunday morning night club.” Ironically, many of Glide’s new styles were financed from a foundation set up by a staunch conservative for the furtherance of evangelism.

A theological assessment of Williams was offered by maverick Abraham Feinberg, a retired reform rabbi and unpaid member of Glide’s staff. In an interview, Feinberg said he is more conservative in his theology than Williams. He said he does not consider Williams a Christian. Wielding a cane given by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi in 1967, the 76-year-old social-justice crusader declared: “Cecil has never spoken Christian doctrine in the church in the three years I’ve been here. If this were a Christian church I wouldn’t be here. I don’t understand why the United Methodist Church tolerates Cecil here.”

Williams has been asked many times whether he is a Christian, but he indicates that he shrugs off the question—or angrily stares down the questioner. “When you come in here, I’m not going to ask you, ‘Are you a Christian?’ I can tell by the way you walk, the way you talk whether or not you’re a person.”

ROBERT CLEATH

Religion In Transit

RAP ’76, a three-day conference on Religion and the Presidency, will bring together the major presidential hopefuls and several hundred religious leaders January 19–21 in Washington, D. C. Each candidate will read a paper and answer questions by panelists. RAP is the brainchild of Fred B. Morris, a former United Methodist missionary jailed on political charges in Brazil. Among the co-sponsors he enlisted are evangelical leaders Carl F. H. Henry and Clyde W. Taylor.

A United Methodist Congress on Evangelism will be held in Philadelphia January 4–8. Speakers include President Ford.

A random survey of 50,000 churchgoers by clergyman-editor Norman Vincent Peale’s organization indicated that they want more sermons dealing with prayer, God’s guidance, and the Bible, and less on politics and social action.

Highschool students affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church were boycotting schools in the Pittsburg, California, area. The school superintendent had refused to excuse the youths from audio-visual and television instruction. Parents and UPC pastor Jack Smith insist that movies and TV are sinful.

More than 10,000 persons participated in the recent convention of the Greater Los Angeles Sunday School Association (GLASS), a record.

Personalia

William Sloan Coffin, 50, the controversial Yale chaplain, announced his retirement from campus ministry to embark on “a ministry to the world.”

Jesuit Daniel Lyons, 55, the well-known conservative Catholic columnist who is leaving the priesthood (he recently married 24-year-old Irish singer Mary Cooney), was named editor-in-chief of the 200,000-circulation Christian Crusade Weekly, the paper published by Evangelist Billy James Hargis.

World Scene

After more than five months in captivity, French medical missionary Paul Horala of the Sudan United Mission was finally released by rebels in Chad.

More than 23,000 decisions for Christ were recorded at a four-week evangelistic campaign in Bogota, Colombia, according to correspondent Lindsay Christie. The meetings, held on a vacant lot, were attended by as many as 20,000 or so per session. About 150 churches supported the crusade. Pentecostal healer Yiye Avila of Puerto Rico was the evangelist.

Southern Baptist missionaries report that more than 700 Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees in three camps in Thailand have professed faith in Christ. In one camp two dozen Christians who escaped from Pailin, Cambodia, reportedly led seventy fellow refugees to Christ.

Ten Southern Baptist missionaries were still in embattled Beirut last month. They said they were safe but that church and personal property had been damaged, and that “things are quite critical.”

In the words of Philip Potter, organized international ecumenicity is in the wilderness.

That assessment of the World Council of Churches’ position, given by its own general secretary, summed up the feeling of many delegates on the last day of the council’s Fifth Assembly, held in Nairobi, Kenya. For the organization’s top executive and other veterans, as well as for the 80 per cent of the delegates who were attending their first assembly, it was hard to see ahead to any “promised land” after their eighteen days together in November and December.

Potter is confident, however, that there is at least a call to the “holy land” even though current ecumenical leaders may not see its features clearly. The 54-year-old Methodist from the West Indies has participated in one capacity or another in all five of the assemblies, and he has a theory about the council’s historical development that labels the fourth one (in 1968, at Uppsala, Sweden) as the “exodus.” It was that turbulent meeting which mandated a clear turn from more “churchly” activity to the more “worldly.”

Even though there may be general agreement on the WCC’s distance from Zion, the consensus ends there. Some of the delegates went home with a conviction that the ecumenical body is now headed toward an emphasis on evangelism and missions. For others, the council is finally ready to promote utopian socialism on a worldwide basis. Another group is convinced that the “holy land” is the organic union of all denominations. Still others think the WCC will concentrate on combatting repression, colonialism, and violence.

Whatever the destination, Potter is the WCC’s Moses. He became its top executive between the Uppsala and Nairobi assemblies, succeeding Eugene Carson Blake in 1972. He got a mandate to continue in the post when the new Central Committee, the between-assemblies policy-making body, met for a full day after the Nairobi assembly adjourned.

Sharing leadership duties with the general secretary during the next seven years will be the moderator of the new Central Committee, Archbishop E. W. Scott, Anglican primate of Canada. He has a reputation as a social activist as well as that of a unity advocate.

One of the Nairobi meeting’s little-noticed acts was the adoption of a revised constitution that concentrates power in the Central Committee. The old charter said that the assembly, in which all member denominations are represented in proportion to their membership, should “ordinarily meet every five years.” While the meeting pattern has never followed this provision strictly, the new constitution specifies the less frequent schedule of meetings “at seven-year intervals.”

Despite a projected deficit in 1976, the assembly elected an enlarged Central Committee, increasing the number by about fifteen. The new constitution allows up to 145, but the final number named in Nairobi was 136.

When the Central Committee meets in August it will have a full docket of matters committed to it by the 700 Assembly delegates. Among the first tasks will be to fill the many vacant spots on WCC commissions and committees. Most of them will be directed until then by staff along with only a “core” of advisory members.

In its eighteen days, the assembly was largely preoccupied with its African setting and with various presentations from the platform. Most of the business was crammed into the last week.

The assembly was the first in Africa for the WCC. Early in the program, delegates viewed a drama commissioned by the All Africa Conference of Churches to depict an African view of the missionary effort and its effect on culture. The play opened with non-Christian tribesmen living peacefully and closed with carnage after foreign Christians appeared. Its author and director was described as the product of mission schools who had since decided “not to continue in the church.”

Daily news reports reminded delegates of the fighting by rival factions in Angola, formerly Portuguese West Africa. The World Council has given funds to all three of the “liberation movements” in that country (see November 7, 1975, issue, page 57), but spokesmen emphasized that no money has gone from the special fund of the Program to Combat Racism since Angola’s independence day. Attempts were being made to send relief supplies to areas under the control of all the groups, officials said. The assembly passed a resolution calling for the cessation of all foreign military intervention, but the only nation named was South Africa. Nothing was said of the Cuban and Soviet assistance.

Kenya’s president, one-time freedom fighter Jomo Kenyatta, did not make a scheduled appearance at the assembly, but he invited delegates to a reception at his residence. He was also the featured speaker at the laying of the cornerstone of a new headquarters building for the All Africa Conference of Churches during the assembly.

Voted down was a motion to restrict grants from the Program to Combat Racism to non-violent groups. The Central Committee was authorized to determine the future shape of the WCC’s most visible program.

Repeated appeals were made during the assembly to leave specific details to the Central Committee, and delegates generally complied. There were exceptions, however. On the last day, for instance, Potter asked for passage of a statement condemning the government of Korea. One of the eight delegates named by member churches of that nation had been refused permission to travel to Kenya, and WCC attempts to get him (and three other Koreans who had been invited to participate in other capacities) out of the country failed. Even though the general secretary wanted specific action in this case, the delegates voted to refer the matter to the Central Committee.

The assembly’s difficulty in deciding whether to be general or to name names came into clear focus on the document which came to be known as the “Helsinki resolution.” A drafting committee had brought to the floor a document describing the 1975 Helsinki Agreement on Security and Cooperation in Europe as “a sign of hope in a world tom apart by opposing ideologies.” The paper called on all signatory governments to implement its principles, including the clause calling for respect for freedom of religion.

A Swiss delegate’s attempt to amend the resolution by pointing to “restrictions on religious freedom, especially in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” brought the meeting to one of its most heated moments. Soviet speakers said there was no evidence of denial of rights. Westerners pushing for the amendment were accused of wanting to break fellowship with the Soviet bloc. There were amendments to the amendment, and the parliamentary situation got entangled. M. M. Thomas, who was then presiding, declared a tea break. The two veteran Soviet members of the Central Committee and the experts in the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign affairs department, Metropolitan Nikodim and Vitaly Borovoy (see photo), rushed to the platform. They huddled there with Thomas, Potter, and other council leaders. A few minutes of debate followed the recess, but then a vote of 259 to 190 sent the document back to the drafting committee.

Overnight, the panel worked for a compromise acceptable to the Soviet delegation and the movers of the amendments. The result was one that spoke only of “alleged denial of religious liberty in the USSR” and asked all signatory governments to the Helsinki agreement to implement all provisions of the pact.

Finally approved by a show of hands, the resolution sent the whole discussion to the Central Committee, asking it to consult with member churches in all the affected nations. The resolution also requested the general secretary to report those consultations by the August meeting of the committee.

On some other topics, the assembly was specific. The new war in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor caused the delegates to ask for withdrawal of Indonesian forces as well as for Australian reception of refugees. A paper on human rights in Latin America castigated Chile and asked Argentina to be more hospitable to refugees. However, a floor attempt to include Brazil by name was thwarted by Brazilian delegates. Several Asian nations were identified as having human rights problems.

DUMPING THE REVEREND

The Right Reverend Mervyn Stockwood, outspoken Anglican bishop of Southwark, London, wants to abolish ecclesiastical titles such as Reverend and Venerable. He condemns them as both unscriptural and ridiculous. He feels that, like gaiters, they should be dumped in the trashcan of “pompous ecclesiastical absurdities.”

ROGER DAY

The six new presidents will be influential in the WCC’s decisions during the next seven years over what issues to handle in a general way and what issues to handle in detail. While the Central Committee officers (a moderator and two vice-moderators) have in recent times been more visible and more powerful than the largely ceremonial presidents, the members of the presidium still have a vote and power in the between-assemblies policy-making.

Most prominent and controversial member of the new presidium is 46-year-old Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Nikodim (born Boris Georgievich Rotov). The world traveler from Leningrad has been on the WCC’s Central and Executive committees since his denomination joined the council in 1961, but he is the first Soviet to be elected to the presidium. In addition to his other duties, he has been president since 1971 of the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference.

There was a widely publicized effort to keep Nikodim off the list of presidents, but it never got to the stage of a clear-cut issue at the Nairobi meeting. M. M. Thomas of India, the retiring moderator of the Central Committee, was suggested as an alternate, but he refused to stand for election. William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church U. S. A., was generally given the credit for trying to prevent Nikodim’s elevation. The American Presbyterian succeeded, however, only in getting the assembly in a parliamentary tangle and apparently in getting the Soviets to substitute the name of one of their delegation for another on the Central Committee.

In addition to having its first Soviet, the new presidium will be unique in that it will have two women, Cynthia Wedel and Annie Baeta Jiagge. They are not the first women to serve as presidents, but they will be the first two to serve simultaneously. Mrs. Wedel, now an official of the American Red Cross, is an Episcopalian and former executive and then president of the National Council of Churches in the U. S. A. Mrs. Jiagge is a justice of Ghana Appeal Court and a member of that nation’s Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Completing the presidium are J. Miguez-Bonino, a Methodist and dean of post-graduate studies at Union Seminary of Buenos Aires, Argentina; General T. B. Simatupang, a member of the Indonesian Christian Church and president of the Indonesian Council of Churches; and Olof Sundby, Lutheran Archbishop of Sweden.

Reelected honorary president was W. A. Visser’t Hooft, the Dutchman who guided the organization of the council and then served as its general secretary until his retirement. He was present and active throughout the Nairobi meeting.

A Thompson motion to provide for election of an additional honorary president and to have duties of the office specified by the Executive Committee was withdrawn before delegates could vote on it.

While the retiring Central Committee chairman, M. M. Thomas, would not allow his name to be proposed in opposition to that of Nikodim’s for the presidency, the Indian ecumenical veteran was voted a seat on the Central Committee. Also returned to that body was his vice-moderator during the past seven years, Pauline Webb of England.

The new Central Committee includes more women, more young people, and more representatives of churches in developing nations than ever before. The committee’s meeting on the day after assembly adjournment had been advertised to reporters as an open session, with the possibility of an executive session of a few minutes to decide some personnel questions. After an hour and a half for opening preliminaries and adoption of some rules changes, the new committee went behind closed doors for more than five hours to select its own officers and its Executive Committee, which is empowered to act on many matters between the annual sessions of the Central Committee.

When the elections were concluded, the Executive Committee also included more people from the youth, female, and “third world” categories than previously. Among the young members are Gundyayev Kirill, 29-year-old Russian Orthodox seminary dean, and Bena-Silu, a leader of Zaire’s Kimbanguist Church.

Named vice-moderators of the Central Committee (and thus members of the Executive Committee) were Jean Skuse, a Methodist woman who recently was appointed general secretary of the Australian Council of Churches, and Karekin Sarkissian, a native of Syria who is currently archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America. They, Archbishop Scott, and sixteen other members were elected to the Executive Committee during the Central Committee’s long executive session. Its next meeting will be in August.

The small Executive Committee will be faced with decisions on staff and budget during a year in which revenues are expected to fall far short of the amount necessary to carry on the program at the 1975 level. Few specific directives were voted by the assembly, but broad guidelines were approved. Potter told reporters at the end of the eighteen days that no program had been scrapped by delegates, and that there were requests for new staff and programs in several areas.

Among the problems facing administrators will be how to serve the expressed needs of the ever-widening circle of member denominations. There were 271 churches on the rolls before Nairobi. Fifteen more were admitted by the assembly, eight as full members and seven as associates (because they do not meet the minimum 25,000-communicant strength specified in the constitution for full membership). Among the newest affiliates are such African independent denominations as the Nigerian-founded Church of the Lord (Aladura) and the Kenya-based African Israel Church, Nineveh.

The assembly was unable to produce consistent WCC positions on a number of issues. One was a common date for Easter. Eastern Orthodox spokesmen refused to join in setting such a date until their own pan-Orthodox conference agrees on changing the time of the observance.

Another standoff issue was that of Zionism. Just before the assembly Potter had issued a statement urging the United Nations General Assembly to “reconsider and rescind” its resolution branding Zionism as racism. Palestinians and their friends at Nairobi were not able to get the WCC assembly to label the handling of Palestinian refugees as racism, but they were able to keep the assembly from saying what Potter had said before it met.

Continuation of the council’s program of dialogue with people of other faiths was voted, but not before addition of a preface opposing syncretism. The preface drew some bitter attacks, especially from Asians. Present on the platform as the program was considered were the first official assembly guests from non-Christian religions: a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, and a Sikh.

Also taking an active part in the meeting were sixteen observers delegated by the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. The Pope sent a message of greetings.

The presence of the non-Christian guests and the Roman Catholic observers was publicized widely. Not so noted was a group invited by the WCC as “conservative evangelical advisers.” Ten were supposed to have attended, but council officials could furnish the names of only five who attended: Michael Cassidy of the African Enterprise missionary organization in South Africa; Larry Christenson, charismatic Lutheran pastor from California; David Hubbard, president of Fuller Seminary; Juan Carlos Ortiz, charismatic pastor in Argentina; and John Stott, well-known Anglican preacher and author. Some of them stayed only a few of the eighteen days.

Other evangelicals were at the assembly in other categories, and a few of them had an off-the-record meeting with Potter to express their concerns. How their causes fare, as well as those of all others who were at Nairobi, will be seen in the coming seven years as Potter, his staff, and the new Central Committee look for what they think is the “promised land.”

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Mozambique: Reeducating The Trapped

There are no member churches of the World Council of Churches in Mozambique, the former Portuguese East African colony. The country, however, was never far from the minds of delegates at the WCC’s Nairobi assembly, since the Marxist government there is one which the council helped bring to power. FRELIMO, which got funds from the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism when it was a liberation movement, is now ruling the nation.

Near the end of the assembly, the delegates received a letter from the officers of the Presbyterian Church in Mozambique, praising the council “as an instrument of unity and international peace” and applying for membership. WCC procedures for admission of new members require a six-month waiting period after the formal application is received, so the assembly was unable to admit the Body. The Central Committee will be authorized to act on the matter in August, though.

Even if no denomination is ever admitted from Mozambique, the country will continue to be a WCC concern. Several times during the assembly, newsmen asked for a WCC explanation of why the government it helped empower has jailed national pastors and Christian missionaries (among them two Nazarenes from America, Armand Doll and Hugh Friberg). There was no response. WCC spokesman were asked what the council had done to seek their release. There were only hints that anything had been done, and on the record a spokesman would say only that there was no written appeal to FRELIMO. (It was learned that at least one WCC executive visited Mozambique just prior to the assembly.)

In the letter from the Presbyterians was an acknowledgement of an invitation to send an observer to the Nairobi meetings. The letter, written by Church president Osias Mucache and moderator Isaias Funzamo, revealed much about the situation of the church there. A paragraph in the WCC’s “provisional translation” into English (from French) said:

At the present time, the major preoccupation of our church is the problem of adaptation to the new social structures of independent Mozambique. It is a matter, on the one hand, of finding new forms for the presence of the church in society, and, on the other, of finding means of devoting ourselves to the Christian edification of believers and of giving an effective biblical formation to the laity in view of their increasingly close collaboration in the work of evangelization. In this great work of reconstruction and reorganization in our church, we hope to have the collaboration of all our brothers in Christ, by prayer and the Christian experience of their country, and chiefly of those whose political system is similar to that chosen by the government of our country.

Another Presbyterian, Valente Matsinhe, identified in a news release of the Nairobi-based All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) as an “administrator” of the denomination, is also described as a FRELIMO general secretary in his area. Matsinhe told an AACC interviewer he was a “committed Christian and socialist.” He explained that FRELIMO knew that prior to independence Mozambique’s churches were controlled from “outside” and that this was inconsistent with the party’s policy of self-reliance. For this reason, said he, the government has designated one church organ, the Christian Council of Mozambique, to represent all churches.

“The government of Mozambique wants a self-reliant church and is very firm that only the Christian Council of Mozambique should represent all the Christian Churches,” he declared. He went on to ask the AACC for more assistance so that “we shall be able to mentalize the Christians toward their role in a socialist nation.”

The FRELIMO government has taken a hard line toward the churches and especially toward foreign missionaries. Armando Emilio Quebuza, the nation’s political commissar and interim minister, published an official “circular” last October accusing churchmen of a variety of crimes against the new nation. In a paragraph on the last of eleven pages of his document, he said:

Once we can detect these architects of division who travel in darkness from house to house and who stick leaflets threatening the dignity of the people, or who meet with a view to manipulating and making plans for ideological attacks or even attacks which are anti-Revolutionary and against our people, these people must be neutralized and the truth communicated to the competent bodies.

All this is because Mozambique people led by FRELIMO are decisively engaged in the construction of new men, liberated from all vicious qualities and all corrupt ambitions of imperialism. This will only be possible if we reeducate those who willingly and unwillingly fell into the former traps of imperialism.…

The “traps” identified in his paper are not only such denominations as the Nazarenes, but also African independent churches and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

After the WCC assembly in Nairobi, the plane to Mozambique’s principal city, Lourenco Marques, carried several assembly participants in addition to the observers from Mozambique. Some were WCC staff members going on an unpublicized mission. Also aboard was American William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church and president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. Asked if he were going to Mozambique on behalf of the WCC, Thompson said he was not. The mission, he explained, was for his denomination. He added that he would be visiting the Christian Council, the Presbyterian Church, and missionaries of his own denomination.

Thompson’s observations, together with those of the WCC staffers on the trip, will no doubt be taken into consideration when the Central Committee considers its future relationships with churches in Mozambique.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

Irish Ired

In many denominations around the world battles are being fought over membership in the World Council of Churches. One such struggle involves the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, which has some 145,000 members in both Ulster and the republic.

A group of Irish Presbyterians who want their church to withdraw from the World Council of Churches sent observers on a fact-finding mission to the Fifth Assembly of the WCC in Nairobi. Clergymen James Neely and John Kelly, their travel expenses raised by the 1,000-strong anti-WCC group known as the Campaign for Complete Withdrawal, are to report their findings in a series of meetings around the country.

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is deeply divided on the issue of WCC membership. At last year’s General Assembly a crucial vote was deferred for twelve months to allow for further discussion. A showdown is shaping up for this June when the assembly meets again. Both the pro-WCC and anti-WCC groups have been lobbying strenously through meetings and literature.

Opposition to the WCC concerns theology and finances. Some feel that the WCC has a liberal theological orientation that is out of step with churches of the Reformed faith, and they suspect that some WCC funds are helping to finance African terrorist groups.

The Inter-Church Relations Board is a major group within the denomination lobbying for staying in the WCC. It has prepared papers by local church scholars and historians outlining the Presbyterian Church’s official position and links with the WCC. One of the board’s leaders, cleric Ian McDowell, was a delegate at Nairobi.

A third group not yet committed either way was represented at Nairobi by WCC delegate Alastair Dunlop.

The outcome of the debate will probably remain uncertain right up to the final discussion at this year’s assembly in Belfast. Denominational information officer Donald Fraser, a pro-WCC man, predicts that the “prolonged debate at all levels in the church will probably lead to a majority for staying in the World Council.” Anti-WCC leader James Neely feels that the vote will be close but that his side will win.

One possible outcome is a compromise in which the church stays in the WCC with certain fixed guarantees to satisfy the dissidents. At any rate, whether the deliberations at Nairobi provided adequate ammunition for either of the warring factions in the church remains to be seen.

ALF MCCREARY

Seeking Sisters

Some 1,200 persons, mostly Catholic nuns, attended a Detroit conference on ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood. A continuation task force was organized to press for ordination, and nearly 100 women who are actively seeking ordination signed a statement. Bishop Carroll T. Dozier of Tennessee, for one, came away convinced that the U. S. hierarchy had better take seriously what was said there.

Fortunate Fathers

At the prodding of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Baltimore, a mammoth mail-order charity operation conducted by the Pallottine order is being subjected to an audit. If the results are made public as promised they will reveal for the first time how much money is being attracted by the order’s highly sophisticated solicitations.

The Pallottine fathers gained notoriety in recent weeks through disclosures of their financial dealings with scandal-ridden politicians in Maryland.

The order is believed to be one of the largest mail-order charities in the country. It was founded in Italy in 1835 by St. Vincent Pallotti.

Included in alleged improprieties was a $54,000 loan said to have financed the 1974 divorce of Maryland governor Marvin Mandel. Mandel, who is Jewish, has since married a Catholic divorcee who converted to Judaism. Mandel is currently under federal indictment on fraud charges.

The order’s practices first came to public attention through an investigative account in the Baltimore Sun. The newspaper found that the order had spent more than $1.9 million in 1974 mailing 106 million computerized appeals for donations that, with a sweepstakes contest, may have brought in as much as $ 15 million. Of this amount, only $261,895 in cash and $146,148 in supplies were transferred to overseas missionary work, according to Pallottine records. The order declined to disclose how much it holds in investments.

THE CIA: KEEPING CLOSE

Republican senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon was among the churchmen disturbed by reports last year that the Central Intelligence Agency had used missionaries in its information-gathering operations (see October 10, 1975, issue, page 62). In August, Hatfield sent a letter to CIA director William Colby requesting that clergy and church officials be placed on the CIA off-limits list. (The CIA earlier had issued internal directives prohibiting operational contacts with Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars.)

In a reply made public last month by Hatfield, Colby said it would be neither “necessary nor appropriate” to bar CIA-clergy links. “In many of the countries of the world,” said Colby, “representatives of the clergy, foreign and local, play a significant role and can be of assistance to the United States through CIA with no reflection upon their integrity nor their mission.… Any sweeping prohibition such as you suggest would be a mistake and impose a handicap on this agency which would reduce its future effectiveness to a degree not warranted by the real facts of the situation.”

Hatfield, a Conservative Baptist who attends Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, next appealed to President Ford. He pointed out to Ford that many innocent missionaries are harmed by the CIA’s policy, and that legitimate missionary programs are “suspect and frustrated by the taint of previous CIA involvement with other religious groups.” Further, said he, such CIA-mission ties “pervert the Church’s mission and create the view that the United States will resort to any means in pursuit of its particular interests.”

Presidential counselor Philip W. Buchen replied, saying that Ford “does not feel it would be wise at present to prohibit the CIA from having any connection with the clergy.” Explained Buchen: “Clergymen throughout the world are often valuable sources of intelligence, and many clergymen, motivated solely by patriotism, voluntarily and willingly aid the government by providing information of intelligence value.” A review of the matter, however, is underway within the CIA, added Buchen. The review is to determine “whether any regulations are needed to guide the CIA in its future relations with clergymen,” he stated.

Hatfield last month introduced legislation in the Senate aimed at ending the CIA’s religious connections (see editorial, page 23).

A missions executive in Washington, D. C., shook his head when informed of the government’s stance on CIA-clergy relationships. “This is bad news for our missionaries overseas.” he said.

Shaking Up The Pentecostals

It didn’t register on the Richter scale, but a sharp jolt shook up the fifty delegates and other participants at last month’s fifth annual meeting of the scholarly Society of Pentecostal Studies, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The jolt came not through a new upper-room visitation of the Spirit but in a banquet talk by the main speaker, Nazarene clergyman Timothy Smith, the renowned Johns Hopkins historian. Smith challenged his audience of old-line or “classic” Pentecostals and modern-day charismatics to abandon the use of tongues.

While acknowledging that tongue-speaking is attractive “because of its mystery” and because it “transcends the rational” and represents a “renunciation of intellectual pride,” Smith nevertheless declared that the modern use of tongues is a “mistaken bypass” based on a misunderstanding of Scripture. He maintained that glossolalia in the New Testament refers to known dialects, not unknown tongues. The entire thrust of Scripture is “reasonableness and clarity,” he argued, and unknown glossolalia would defeat understanding. Concluding that there is “no evidence of [such] religious glossolalia in the New Testament, the early Church, or in history,” Smith called on Pentecostal leaders to “use intellectual honesty responsibly to face this misuse.”

Not surprisingly, there was some aftershock. Pentecostal responses offered by Russell Spittler and Hollis Gause criticized Smith on exegetical grounds, and informal discussions continued on into the night.

In his first paper, “Radical Wesleyanism and American Culture,” Smith emphasized that Christian perfectionism “was the dominant influence in promoting nineteenth-century American idealism.” This paper created no controversy since most Pentecostals recognize the vital part played by the Wesleyan-Holiness movement in producing the Pentecostal movement.

Smith’s challenge—reflective of increasingly vocal views in the Wesleyan-Holiness camp—could be the beginning of deeper dialogue between Wesleyans and Pentecostals. In the closing business session of the conference, the delegates elected Assemblies of God educator Donald Argue as their president, and they strongly suggested that the next annual meeting be devoted to a study of the biblical basis of Pentecostal teaching and practice in order to respond to Smith’s challenge.

Most of the other papers concerned the conference theme—“The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Where Are They? Where Are They Going?” Black Pentecostal scholar Leonard Lovett called for “more authentic social involvement among the oppressed.” Grant Wacker, a Harvard graduate student, suggested that Pentecostal and charismatic groups are growing rapidly around the world because of the great stress of the 1960s and 1970s. “People need the Comforter in times of stress,” he concluded. Another student, Harold Hunter, asserted that ancient texts show glossolalia flourishing in the early Church during the persecutions but slowly fading away after A.D. 325 when the Church gained acceptance in the Roman Empire.

Two papers on the music of Pentecostalism added insight on current trends. Joseph Nicholson of Evangel College called on Pentecostals to “evaluate musical texts for correct theology” and to develop a greater appreciation for the great old hymns of the Church. On the other hand, Phil O’Mara, a Catholic charismatic researcher, explained that Catholic charismatics were much less interested in the “old hymns” than in “folk, gospel-rock, and Protestant-inspired “choruses.” His study of song-books used by Catholic prayer groups found that as many as one-third of the songs were written by Protestant Pentecostals. Thus Pentecostals and charismatics seem to be moving in opposite directions on the matter of hymnody.

The three-day conference was hosted by the Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, the 1,500-member nerve-center of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement.

VINSON SYNAN

Captive Missionary

Kidnapped, by Karl and Debbie Dortzbach (Harper & Row, 1975, 177 pp., $5.95) is reviewed by Philip Siddons, pastor, Wright’s Corner United Presbyterian Church, Lockport, New York.

It has been said that man’s greatest fear is fear of the unknown. The narrative of the missionary nurse taken hostage by rebel Ethiopian guerrillas supports the theory. The chapters are alternately written by Karl and Debbie Dortzbach. Though Karl’s reflections are mostly theological in tone, it should be remembered that all he had was a blind hope that his wife would be returned safely—a trust in God’s provision that had to defy every painful image his imagination could evoke.

Debbie was pregnant, was forced to run two hours at gunpoint, and underwent the horror of seeing her nurse companion murdered. She was exhausted physically and mentally. She suffered meager food allotments, unsanitary conditions, and constant fear of what her captors would do to her. Still she was with human beings—creatures capable of almost any horror, yet also capable of doing right.

Her underlying trust in God enabled her to make several discoveries. She realized that true freedom is not defined by one’s relationship to others; freedom is within. In the midst of a cholera-and malaria-infested chaos of fear and uncertainty, she was freed to rise above her situation. Although she constantly felt bitter toward her captors, she was able to turn her attention from herself toward them—and to attempt to love them. She was able to discern some of the meaning of denying self, taking up one’s cross daily, and following Him. Although she was a captive, she was free to see the charm of an obscure nomad woman, free to observe bugs and birds, and free to notice a sign of her Creator’s sense of humor in a wrinkled and weather-worn lizard.

The story ends happily; the Dortzbachs are reunited. But perhaps a deeper source of satisfaction to the reader is the reminder that God is above time—that he looks on the completed side of the tapestry which we occasionally see as only a hodge-podge of knots and frayed ends.

Did John The Baptist Write Revelation?

Revelation, by J. Massyngberde Ford (Doubleday, 1975, 450 pp., $9.00), is reviewed by Robert Mounce, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.

For several years students of apocalyptic have been waiting for this Anchor Bible commentary on Revelation by Professor Ford of Notre Dame. Now it has appeared, and it promises to stimulate critical discussion for a number of years.

Ford’s “bold hypothesis” is that chapters 4–11 come, not from the Apostle John (or any other John about the end of the first century), but from John the Baptist at a time prior to the public ministry of Jesus. Chapters 12–22 come from a disciple of the Baptist who had a partial knowledge of Jesus, and chapters 1–3 plus a few verses in chapter 22 were added later by a Jewish-Christian editor. Therefore the book of Revelation is essentially a Jewish apocalypse—“a composite work from the ‘Baptist School’ who represented a primitive form of Christianity and inherited the Baptist’s prophetic, apocalyptic and ‘fiery’ (boanergic) tendencies.”

How does Ford arrive at this conclusion? By arguing that Revelation is unlike Christian apocalyptic and is similar in a number of points to the role and message of John the Baptist. For instance, the image of the Lamb of God applied to Jesus is found only in the gospel sections associated with the Baptist. The image of the bridegroom, the idea of baptism by fire, and the emphasis on wrath all reveal the rhetoric and outlook of the Baptist.

What should be said about this novel hypothesis? That the author argues her point well cannot be denied. Yet the questions raised by the thesis are far harder to answer than the details it explains. Upon learning that “Revelation is not primarily a Christian work”—it “does not fit into the Christian apocalyptic genre”—one must ask, How then was it ever included in the Christian canon? Until that question is answered, many will wonder whether Revelation isn’t more Christian than Ford will allow.

The format of the commentary is excellent. Translation of each unit is followed by a section of critical notes. For the first time an English commentary on Revelation has given careful attention to the Qumran materials and their eschatological outlook. The critical notes are helpful and to the point. The reader should be cautioned, however, to check all primary references. On pages 296–300 I found nine errors, including a non-existent Greek word (strenao), the citation of a Latin botanical term (thuia articulata) as the transliteration of the Greek zulon thuinon, and the statement that katoiketerion occurs only in Revelation 18:12 in the New Testament (it is also used in Ephesians 2:22).

The section of notes is followed by broad comment on the basic themes of the unit. Here we find some interesting suggestions—among them, that Flavius Josephus is the second beast, and that the Harlot of chapter 17 is Jerusalem rather than Rome.

Ford rearranges the final chapters in an effort to untangle the millennial Jerusalem (21:9–27, 8; 22:1–2) from the eternal Jerusalem (21:1–4c, 22:3–5; 21:5a, 4d, 5b, 6, 7; 22:6, 7a, 8–13, 7b, 17b, 18, 19). Exactly how the two Jerusalems became so interwoven is not explained. In the introduction Ford says that the editor has “masterfully” arranged “the most exquisitely and artistically constructed of all the apocalypses.” Perhaps the final chapters were altered by yet another editor!

Ford’s commentary marks out a new direction for the interpretation of Revelation. Her ideas will generate a great deal of critical discussion. With the important exception of the major thesis, the book will supply a significant amount of basic information that, properly understood, will shed considerable light on Revelation.

The Variety Of Sexuality

The Sexual Celibate, by Donald Goergen (Seabury, 1974, 266 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Nancy Hardesty, doctoral student, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

Books on marriage and the family multiply like rabbits on publishers’ lists of late. Conferences and congresses consider the state of marriage today and strategies for saving the nuclear family. Seldom does anyone stop and ask, Are our priorities in the proper order?

Donald Goergen reminds us that Christians have only one choice in vocation: discipleship. Marriage, religious community, singleness are only three concrete expressions of that vocation. Our thinking about them should be shaped by biblical and theological concepts and not by contemporary cultural institutions.

The Sexual Celibate is a valuable contribution to such thinking. Georgen draws not only on his life as a Dominican and his work as a teacher of theology at a Catholic seminary in Iowa, but also on training at the Kansas Neurological Institute and the Menninger Foundation.

Sexuality, says Goergen, has to do with the sexes, our relationships with each other. The Bible and historical theology have seen sexuality not only in procreative terms but also in terms of celebration, fellowship, eschatology, and love. Sexuality is not synonymous with genitality but has an affective dimension as well. Both dimensions must be integrated in the mature person, who can then make responsible decisions concerning its expression. Chastity, which Goergen defines as the virtue concerned with touch, should characterize all Christians. It is not a synonym for celibacy, and celibacy is not a synonym for virginity in Goergen’s book.

The high point in the book is Georgen’s discussion of friendship, which picks up strands from Scripture, medieval treatises on friendship, examples from the lives of great Christians, and contemporary psychological insights. He reminds us that all mature people, regardless of their life style, need both intimate friendship and periods of solitude.

The Sexual Celibate is one of those books that should be read from beginning to end. Unless one has Goergen’s definitions clearly in mind, one may be a bit unnerved by his use of the word “homosexual” to describe what sociologists would call “homosocial” friendships, close relationships with those of one’s own gender. Protestant readers, likewise, should not be put off by the fact that Goergen speaks from within the tradition of Roman Catholic religious community life. His excellent discussion has a multitude of insights to offer all Christians, whatever their life style.

Inner-City Ministry

Everybody’s Afraid in the Ghetto, by Keith W. Phillips (Regal, 1975, 182 pp., $1.45 pb), is reviewed by Wesley G. Pippert, reporter, United Press International, Washington, D. C.

Keith Phillips has written a straightforward, clear-eyed account of the white Christian working in the black inner city. It is not only a book in which Phillips’s love shines through; it is an honest piece of writting as well. He writes of almost as many setbacks and failures as victories and changed lives. Anyone who has spent even the slightest amount of time in inner-city ministries knows that this is the reality of the ghetto.

Phillips, now twenty seven, is the founder and president of World Impact Incorporated. He had entered UCLA in 1964 with dreams of going into politics. Then he became director of Youth for Christ clubs in the Los Angeles inner city, and it changed his life. Eventually he recruited busloads of Biola students to go with him into Watts.

A few years later, his commencement address at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, led to the start of a similar ministry in Wichita. And a chapel talk at Grace Bible Institute led to a ministry in urban Omaha. In each case he enlisted the student bodies to help him.

Phillips built his witness upon genuine friendship. He talked to the youth of the inner city, listened to them, played ball with them, accepted them, and conducted Bible studies. Some accepted Christ. Many rejected him.

I began reading Phillips’s book with skepticism, and in the first chapter, in which he told of his fears during his first trips into Watts, he sounded to me like the typical white suburbanite. But his evident honesty, genuineness, and love convinced me his work is worthy.

BRIEFLY NOTED: REFERENCE BOOKS

Lutheran Cyclopedia, edited by Erwin Lueker (Concordia, 845 pp., $24.95). Major revision of the 1954 edition. Not just on Lutheranism but on all sorts of religious topics that Lutherans and others might wish to look up. There are also numerous entries that few are likely to look up, at least in a book with this title (Agnes, Eliza Agnew, Agni, and Agnoetae, to name four that appear consecutively). Properly speaking, this is a dictionary of church history much as those issued by Oxford, Westminster, and Zondervan, and it will be helpful to consult along with the others. All dictionaries are fallible, but for a variety of reasons church-history dictionaries are especially prone to error or distortion.

Lutherans in North America, edited by Clifford Nelson (Fortress, 557 pp., $22.50, $12.95 pb). The six parts, by six authors, are chronological, so this can be read as a narrative history. Thanks to a detailed index, together with abundant bibliographical references in the margins, it will probably be used more for reference by those wishing information on some topic in American Lutheran history. Unlike many denominational histories, this one tries to be reasonably fair to the various subdivisions instead of ridiculing “schismatics.”

Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, edited by Karl Rahner (Seaburg, 1,841 pp., $32.50). Major theological libraries already have the six-volume work, issued in the sixties and now out of print, of which this is the abridgement. No one with ready access to the large work need consult this, but for others this is a helpful presentation of progressive Catholic scholarship. Beware of unevenness: Calvinism merits six pages, Lutheranism nary a line.

A Guide to Indexed Periodicals in Religion, by John Regazzi and Theodore Hines (Scarecrow, 328 pp., $10). Superb! Some 2,700 religious periodicals are covered one or more times in seventeen abstract and index services. This book has not only a listing by title of each such periodical and where it is indexed but also a listing by the key words in the titles.

A Treasury of Quotations on Christian Themes, compiled by Carroll Simcox (Seabury, 269 pp., $12.95). An excellent collection of 2,859 quotations arranged by topics (e.g., prayer, friendship, silence), which are in turn grouped into six areas: God, creation, man, Christ and his Church, life in the Spirit, and the End. Indexes of sources and subjects.

The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas (Moody, 321 pp. $7.95). More than 1,500 brief quotations from those sixteenth and seventeenth-century English Christians who wanted the church to reform itself considerably more than it had. Arranged by topics such as affliction, excess, mercy, worship. Better for personal reading than for inserting into public discourse.

The Cambridge History of the Bible, three volumes, edited by P. R. Ackroyd et al. (Cambridge, 1,873 pp., $24.50/set pb). Originally published 1963–70 in hardback, this set is a standard, multi-authored survey of the original compilation of the Scriptures, and of their subsequent transmission, translation, and exegetical study. The focus is on the major languages of Western Europe.

A Dictionary of Protestant Church Music, by James Robert Davidson (Scarecrow, 349 pp., $12.50). A few long articles (e.g. on psalmody), but most entries are less than a page (e.g. burden, precentor). Bibliographies at almost all entries plus a full index to persons and topics referred to in the entries. A distinctive contribution.

Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious Thought, edited by John Henry Blunt (Gale Research Co., 656 pp., $28.50). As the title suggests, this is a reprint. Originally published in 1874 in England. While treating the whole range of church history, the work is tilted toward English movements. The editor’s strongly establishmentarian views and prejudices come through loud and clear. Discerning users can find a lot of helpful information together with abundant illustrations of how not to write history.

Stand in front of Massachio’s mural in the Carmine Chapel in Florence, take a deep breath, and look. The faces of people living centuries ago seem alive. You pick out strength, imagine personality and character, feel you could talk to various ones, sense their emotions. How old was this Massachio when he stood with brush and paint, shivering in the cold of stone and plaster walls, and painted on a flat grey surface people talking to one another, taking part in a passing moment of history but preserved in a way that no changes of time and situation could touch?

One moment, preserved in paint by an artist who had to be younger than twenty-seven, because he died at twenty-seven before the whole wall was complete. How did his hands have such skill? How could his mind conceive of new, delicate ways to bring out perspective, to mix his paints? How could he place the features and also the personalities of people he knew or had seen on a cold hard wall, to make them alive for so many centuries? Inherited? From whom? Who first had such skillful hands, such workable ideas?

Come to Ghent and walk in the little room where Van Eyck’s painting is well lighted, to be carefully looked at. Sit and look and wonder. Walk up close and find the detail of delicate flowers in the grass, birds flying, the fine hairs of men’s beards so realistic one feels one could brush them, the pearls embroidered on robes standing out with roundness and luster that take one’s breath away. Sit and contemplate the marvel of the subject matter—the Mystic Lamb, standing on the altar, bleeding yet standing, bespeaking the Messiah who came as the Lamb to die and rise again. Look at the fantastic colors, the bright greens, scarlets, blues, yellows mixed by a secret formula Van Eyck devised. Where did it all come from, his skill, his ideas? He did certain things that had never been done before. How?

Let your eyes move down to the date at the bottom of the frame: “Van Eyck 1432”! This man had skill that was not taught. No art school produced him. Where did it come from?

Walk into the Leonardo Da Vinci section of the National Science Museum in Milan and go slowly by the models of his inventions. Remember his paintings, think of him as an artist, but look now at his models and his sketches, which show something of the fabulous diversity of this man’s ideas. Here is a finely proportioned wing made as he projected the thought that one day men could make flying machines. There is a wonderful thing to distill water, and to refrigerate, and here is a model showing how to produce steam, and then how to use it in never-before-thought-of ways. See the model of a furnace for melting metals, cranes and levers for lifting weights, hydraulic power harnessed in his mind and made in a model men could copy.

Look at the walls, covered with sketches of muscles, veins, the heart, lungs, the nervous system, complete anatomy understood in an amazing way in this one man’s mind, and sketched with beauty and detail that cannot be described. Study for a moment his maps of cities and regions, his botanical studies of flowers and plants, his architectural plans that include a whole “model city.” See the weapons such as a cannon, boats with contraptions to drag rivers or lakes, barges to drag the sea, paddle wheels and wheels to turn them—no need to row. Look at the drawings of musical instruments and those that show his understanding of acoustics, of the movement of the moon, stars, planets, of geometry and algebra.

Take time to think and wonder. Where did the ideas come from? The skill, was it inherited? From whom? How can a human being have the creativity demonstrated in the work of artists, and in the work of scientists, and even more in a combination such as Leonardo?

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” (Ps. 139:14).

“O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works” (Ps. 105:1, 2).

“Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself” (Isa. 44:24).

“I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens.… For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.… Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?” (Isa. 45:12, 18, 9).

“Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein: I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand” (Isa. 42:5, 6).

“All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:3, 4).

“Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the things framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?” (Isa. 29:16).

Though fallen and sinful, spoiled and warped, less by far than he could be, man is wonderful, and glimpses of the original wonder of God’s most marvelous creation show through in people through the centuries. The very existence of art speaks of the existence of the Creator, Artist God, who made man in his own image.

Stand before great works of art and worship the God who made man in his image. Stand before great works of art and weep for the spoiled creation, as Satan tempted and twisted Eve and Adam’s minds into believing him rather than God. Weep today for those who are twice twisted as they claim to be following God, yet engage in what Isaiah 29:16 calls a “turning of things upside down” by saying, “He made me not.” Everyone who turns away from the literal creation of Adam and Eve, and therefore the literal design of the marvel of human beings made so fearfully and wonderfully down to the tiniest detail that Leonardo could so magnificently draw, everyone who turns away from the personal design in God’s mind brought out by his hands in the reality of living beings made in his image, is saying in essence, “He made me not.” This is what grieves God.

“O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.” Let us adore the Creator of all things, the One who made man in his image, and then came in human flesh to enable human beings to become the sheep of his pasture, the people of his own flock, forever, never to be spoiled again.

EDITH SCHAEFFER

How About $2.50 A Soul?

I have a friend who pastors a small church in a small town. The big-name evangelists don’t make it into town for regular crusades (and now, television fans, “Billy Graham’s Temecula Crusade”). But the no-name evangelists do. When you don’t have a name, you have to have a gimmick … or a guarantee. And the evangelist who came to my friend’s small town did.

He called all the pastors together, described his crusade, and then said in sacred tones, “I can guarantee that 250 souls will come to Christ in the seven days I’m here.” For the 250 souls and seven days, no-name wanted $1,500.

Later my friend and I figured it out on his calculator: 250 souls for $1,500 is $6 a soul. That seems high even in today’s inflationary market. If he can make guarantees, we reasoned, why can’t we dicker on the cost? So we came up with a counter-proposal.

We’ll pay top dollar—$5 a soul—for first-time conversions. (We don’t want the evangelist stacking the deck, so to speak.) We’ll spend $2.50 for second-and third-timers. (Nazarenes would call them that; Presbyterians would say “reaffirmations of faith.”) However, we’ll only pay $1.50 for people over sixty-five because they are unlikely to go into “full-time Christian service.”

We presented the plan to the evangelist. For some reason, he didn’t buy it. I can’t understand it. He could have made $2,100 in a good week.

EUTYCHUS VII

Surprisingly Healthy

Your editorials in the November 21 issue (“And How Are Things at Home?” and “Book of the Year, Topic of the Year”) stating that “if you think that raising children is chiefly the woman’s responsibility, rid yourself of that notion” and commending the books of Scanzoni-Hardesty and Jewett to your readers reminded me that I have wanted to write for several weeks to commend CHRISTIANITY TODAY for its positive and healthy approach to the “women issue” in evangelical circles. The editorials, book reviews, and articles have been more favorable to the equal status and role of women and men in society and church than, very frankly, I had expected. I encourage you to take even more forthright leadership in helping evangelical Christians to come to a proper and peaceful acceptance of the privilege and responsibility of every Christian to serve in any position in the Church to which God may call her/him.

DAVID M. SCHOLER

Associate Professor of New Testament Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary South

Hamilton, Mass.

I was puzzled and dismayed to hear that fifty-five out of 150 evangelical leaders canvassed by Eternity should honor Scanzoni and Hardesty’s All We’re Meant to Be as a “most significant” book, the one that evangelicals “need to read” for 1975. Has the view of Scripture of one-third of such leaders so changed as to accept with favor a book whose hermeneutical and exegetical presuppositions are so at variance with those one used to identify as their own?… But perhaps the fifty-five were disarmed by the preface in which a warmed-over version of the “God’s will” plea is entered, the writing of the book being portrayed as an answer to prayer, an evocation of the working of God’s love in two hearts.… That there is substance to the charge that women have not been given their proper place in the Church is clear enough. But there are only two ways to remedy this: revive the biblical structure and practice, or replace it with another one. The danger for Christians, especially Christian leaders, is to allow a proper guilt over the failure to work out the biblical structure in their own families and churches to stampede them into an innovation which is not only now the easier option but also destructive and non-biblical. As Harvard Divinity School dean Stendahl candidly notes in his essay on the topic, the ideology of feminist theology finds its roots “in the Enlightenment or in Hellas or in the cult of Baal,” not in the Bible. Here, I believe, is the real choice: not exegetical but ideological, and therefore not the outside of the cup but the inside.

JEREMY JACKSON

Syracuse, N. Y.

From Resource To ‘Rip-Out’

I would like to express appreciation for the good articles that have appeared in CHRISTIANITY TODAY this past year. More and more it is becoming the best resource for my keeping up with current thought and trends important to the parish ministry. Two other periodicals have been dropped because of the excellent coverage in this magazine.

One aspect of the magazine has been disturbing recently. It has begun to look like Sport’s Illustrated, Psychology Today, and some of the other periodicals that specialize in postcard inserts throughout the pages. One wonders if the next “pop theology” will be called “rip-out Christianity.”

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has a much more vital service than being an outlet for bulk mailing purposes. I detest the thought of having to rank this periodical as one that has to be cleaned out before it can be enjoyed and studied.

EDWARD B. NEWTON

Lakeview Covenant Church

Duluth, Minn.

Just a word to express my appreciation of your excellent magazine. I read it cover to cover. I especially like those low-key cartoons, where you often transpose a Bible character into a present-day confrontation.

MARK BUHITE

Reynoldsville, Pa.

Separate—From What

Your November 7 issue on higher education raised the question of whether Christians should “season” secular campuses, but addressed itself entirely to Christian colleges. On the basis of my six years on three secular campuses in the U.S. and nine years (six as a student) in two British universities, I would encourage every Christian student to go to a secular campus.

Parents commonly send their children to Christian colleges to protect them from anti-Christian teaching and morality, and to give them Bible teaching integrated with their studies, in a community with a Christian life-style. The monastic issue is an old one; biblical separation is from sin, not from sinners. Christians are to be salt and light in a rotting and dark world. When a professor becomes aware of a substantial Christian minority among his students and colleagues, his teaching will usually show less anti-Christian bias. And we have nothing to hide; Christianity has the answers, and will stand up in debate. Further, the major need for today’s Christian student is to integrate his faith and studies with his life, which includes witness to his non-Christian contemporaries.

GLYN O. ROBERTS

University of Colorado

Boulder, Colo.

Visiting Associate Professor of Astro-Geophysics