There were fifteen families in the Clydeside tenement in Scotland where I spent my boyhood. All were poor, but we were about the poorest, living in a single room. For part of the time my father (an honest, sober, hard-working shipyard laborer) was unemployed, for those were the Depression years. Our income was twenty-three shillings a week ($5 then), and that was before the rent was paid. We never had jam on our table till I was fourteen. Yet never once did I go to bed hungry.

It was many years before I met really hungry people. To see the hungry you have to go out of your way. When I did, there was something ironic about it. A village in a remote part of eastern Turkey had been devastated by an earthquake. When I got there, emergency relief supplies were beginning to arrive, but the destitute and illiterate survivors were bewildered by the labels on canned meat from kind people in one Western European country. With more heart than sense they had mixed in cans of pork, not realizing that this was a Muslim community.

In Haiti soon afterwards I saw hungry people in the waterfront shantytown at Port-au-Prince. Hungry people provoke unlikely reactions: their predicament I was to contrast most unfavorably with the ascetic but orderly economy of neighboring Cuba.

Not long ago in England a young couple, moved by the plight of the world’s hungriest, auctioned all their furniture and gave the proceeds for relief work. This was their response to what is called “active involvement in the world hunger crisis”—a standard euphemism for the millions of people who are starving to death one by one. But of course “it is a lot easier emotionally to handle the fact that millions of people are starving if we don’t see them as individuals.”

That sentence is from W. Stanley Mooneyham’s newly published book, What Do You Say to a Hungry World? (Word, $6.95). Mooneyham, president of World Vision International, admits that he does not have all the answers to his question, but he manifestly agrees with the Epistle of James on what not to say: “If a fellow man or woman has no clothes to wear and nothing to eat, and one of you say, ‘Good luck to you, I hope you’ll keep warm and find enough to eat,’ and yet give them nothing to meet their physical needs, what on earth is the good of that?” (Phillips).

Mooneyham is greatly troubled that a quarter of the world’s population—one thousand million people—are trying to exist on an average of twenty-seven cents a day. His intention is that you and I shall be made clearly and uncomfortably aware of their misery. His is no academic dissertation: he tells us simply but grippingly what he has seen in Ethiopia and Latin America, among the Middle East’s two million displaced Palestinians, the homeless hordes of Calcutta, the people uprooted in recent Asian wars, and millions more. No political implications, but a steady look at things as they are and what can be done about the situation.

He dismisses some myths that have come into vogue; among them: that it is impossible to produce enough food to feed the present world population, much less any increase; that the starving masses are about to revolt; that the United States is generous in actual grant assistance to poor countries.

He reminds us that the food crisis does not stand in isolation from the rest of the world’s problems but is exacerbated by climatic conditions, an uncontrolled population, ecological factors, deficient medical services, inadequate educational programs, discriminatory distribution systems, global economic inequity, and repressive political regimes. Mooneyham could doubtless have spelled out these latter factors and increased the impact of his case, but one can assume that in the interests of the ongoing work the half may not be told.

Confronted by disaster, he nevertheless rejects the view that would take refuge in apocalyptic and a withdrawal from the world until the imminent Crowning Day. That would be a denial of the dual citizenship that obliges us to care for physical as well as spiritual deprivation. Because he believes this passionately, Mooneyham has ranged the world to find the nature of the need and where it is greatest so that he and his colleagues can help to meet that need in the name of Christ.

His work has taken him into desolate and dangerous places. He has seen harrowing destitution as few of us have. He has been not only a planner and an administrator but of necessity a diplomat as well, for frustrating man-made obstacles are put in the way of meeting man’s need. National pride is one. Incompetence and corruption in high places are others. Not least, sometimes at home there seems to have been sheer ignorance and almost deliberate misunderstanding, not only of his mission but of his basic thesis that world hunger calls for a moral and ethical approach to the use and misuse of world resources. (That last sentence is mine more than Mooneyham’s.)

It must have been a constant temptation in this most complex subject to take off on diversions around the periphery, but Mooneyham has stuck to his task with an admirable singlemindedness. He never lets us off the hook for long. He keeps confronting us with uncomfortable, irrefutable facts that people don’t much care for, and that will keep his book off the best-seller lists. Those who do expose themselves to it are buying 272 pages worth of trouble, including some 130 footnotes that should forestall any charge that this is all just one man’s hobbyhorse.

Mooneyham’s whole thesis presupposes a truth of which we should not but do need to be reminded: that Christian living calls for Christian caring. Not that many of us are in the slightest danger of lovelessly bestowing all our goods to feed the poor; perhaps, more insidiously, our imbalance may be found in the area of angelic tongues-speaking, which requires an expenditure of energy that only the well-fed can afford. Even more likely, however, we will stumble because of a failure of the imagination even more terrible than the example I cited earlier, a failure summed up in those most blankly uncomprehending words, “Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty …?”

With his unique capacity for the vivid illustration, Mooneyham tells that during an international conference of world Jewry in Brussels, the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union loomed large, provoking the expression of strong opinions. At two o’clock in the morning, one of the delegates was awakened by the ringing of his telephone. “Why are you calling me at this hour?” he demanded irritably. “Because,” came the inexorable response, “you were sleeping.”

Stan Mooneyham rings a strident alarm all through these pages. He is a troublemaker who places inordinate demands on our compassion. Why couldn’t he have stuck to quiet talks on personal holiness?

J. D. DOUG’AS

Although the leaves are still falling, Christmas is on its way. An advertisement in this issue (page 45) gives you the chance to get a head start on Christmas giving by ordering gift subscriptions to Christianity Today. A year’s subscription is a twenty-five-part gift of good reading that some of your relatives and friends are sure to appreciate.

Cheryl Forbes has been on our staff for almost six years. Starting as a secretary, she was promoted to editorial assistant and then to editorial associate. Now she has become an assistant editor. In addition to general editorial duties, Ms. Forbes edits “The Refiner’s Fire” and our letters section.

To keep its presses rolling and profitable, the giant Meredith Corporation—publisher of the eight-million-circulation Better Homes and Gardens magazine—has a five-year contract with Penthouse International to print Penthouse and Viva, slick monthlies featuring pictures of women and men in various states of undress and sexual activity.

Many of the workers at the huge plant in Des Moines, Iowa, think the contract is not good for homes, families, the nation, or themselves. Five who refused to work on the nudie magazines now have plenty of time for their own homes and gardens: they were fired. Others have quit Meredith because they didn’t want to have any part in producing the skin journals, and some employees are said to be working under protest.

The five who were fired cited religious convictions and asked to be assigned to other publications. The company refused and suspended them for a “cooling off period.”

The suspensions lasted less than a month. On September 29, management told the five that if they had not changed their minds they were discharged as of the next day.

Corporate officials also told the three men and two women that if they later decide they will work on the Penthouse publications they can have their jobs back. But if they go back, according to an official, their seniority and benefits will be forfeited, and they will have to start at the bottom again, in accordance with company and union rules at the Des Moines plant.

The senior worker among the five is a twenty-four-year veteran with Meredith, engraver Bill E. Mackin, 50, a Baptist. He is vice-president of his union local and chairman of its executive board. As a labor representative, he has dealt with corporate officials over the years, presenting the grievances of other workers. He told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that management people, with whom he was on a first-name basis, often commended him for the way he presented labor’s concerns and for his “conservative” approach. When his own big grievance came up, though, he was not as “liberal” as Meredith’s management.

He said a top officer told him, “Bill, come back any time you want to, but leave your convictions at home.”

Donald L. Arnold, Meredith vice-president for employee and public relations, gave this explanation: “It’s our view that our discharge of these five employees for refusing to perform their jobs does not violate laws protecting religious freedom. We could not reasonably accommodate all the individuals in the printing plant who might conceivably claim the same privilege. Any attempt to do so would lead to chaotic personnel problems.”

In the first few days of the dispute Meredith did, indeed, “accommodate” him, Mackin said. Penthouse and Viva work was routed around him, and he was assigned other jobs. He conceded that the company might have a real problem if such objectionable material had to be sent only to employees who had no convictions about doing such work. He believes a large majority are unhappy about the contract and would rather not have any part in fulfilling it.

On the other hand, he rejects the company’s argument that it agreed to do the two magazines out of economic necessity. Meredith spokesmen have said the loss of printing contracts with the Conde Nast publishing firm (Vogue, House and Garden) left them with idle press time that had to be put to productive use. Mackin thinks that Meredith failed to work hard enough to keep the Condé Nast business and, in fact, refused to print one magazine on grounds that it was a non-standard size. He said Meredith then contracted with Penthouse to print one of its publications the same non-standard size. A company official claimed that size was only one factor in the discontinuance of the Conde Nast business.

At any rate, Mackin thinks Meredith could have found other jobs to keep its presses rolling and its workers busy. He says he believes the Lord has prospered the corporation over the years because of the large number of Christians working there because of the quality of its products.

In discussing the dispute, a Meredith spokesman emphasized that the company was only the printer, not the publisher, of Penthouse and Viva. The distinction made little difference to Mackin and the other objecting workers. The veteran engraver said the group didn’t want any part in “spewing forth [this] filth” across the nation.

The press run for Penthouse, aimed at a male audience, is estimated at five million. About one million copies of Viva, edited for women, are printed. Meredith actually began its fulfillment of the contract last year at its plant in Lynchburg, Virginia. Company officials confirmed that parts of both publications are still being produced there. They denied that any employees there quit or were fired over the matter of magazine content. There was much less publicity over the issue in Lynchburg, but one Christian is known to have left his job there.

According to Mackin, all the Des Moines workers independently reached the decision to refuse to work on the skin magazines. There has been little organized support, in fact. The long-time engraver and the other two men, Larry Latham and David Coldwell, are all Baptists, but they belong to different congregations. The women are Doris Boots and Virginia Zepeda. One belongs to a community church, and the other is a Jehovah’s Witness.

Mackin’s union presented a grievance over the question, but it was denied. The workers seeking unemployment compensation after their firings have been summoned to appear before a state board to explain their claims.

So far little help has come to them from any source. However, Mackin is confident that some good will come out of it all. At least, he says, the press coverage has brought him letters of encouragement and assurance of prayers from all over the nation and from as far away as Korea, where a soldier read an article about it in the Pacific Stars and Stripes.

It seems ironic, remarked Mackin, that one day a Des Moines paper reported in one column the firing of the Meredith employees who refused to work on the sex-oriented publications while in the adjacent column there was an article reporting a sheriff’s raid on a distributor of pornographic materials.

The Unsettling Case Of Unsettled Orphans

Adoption proceedings are usually held out of public view and attract little attention. A California doctor’s suit against an evangelical adoption agency has changed all that, though, in the case of twenty Cambodian orphans.

Richard S. Scott, a physician with the Los Angeles County Health Department, has won the first round in a legal fight to prohibit permanent adoption by the eighteen evangelical families approved by Family Ministries of Whittier. (Two other children who have not yet been placed in adoption homes but who are in California foster homes are affected by the suit.) In a “notice of intended decision,” Superior Court Judge Lester E. Olson ruled in Scott’s favor and prepared the way for some landmark decisions in higher courts.

Issues raised in the highly publicized trial went far beyond the usual questions of suitability of the proposed homes of the children. The judge’s decision, which was to be formally issued before the end of this month, touched on questions of tax exemption of churches and religious agencies, the right of such organizations to “discriminate” in selection of the people with whom they work, the role of the state in adoption, and the status of refugee orphans.

While Scott has won the first major legal test, Family Ministries, World Vision, and the couples who got the Cambodian children last spring have vowed that the fight is not over. Dennis B. Guernsey, executive director of Family Ministries, said his agency would challenge the Olson ruling in state appellate courts. World Vision president Stanley Mooneyham, who had the youngsters brought to the United States when Phnom Penh fell to the Communists, has announced plans to file a separate suit on constitutional issues. This action is expected to be taken in federal court. The parents who have received the orphans are also planning litigation.

At the center of the controversy is a fifteen-month-old Cambodian boy, Trop Ven. Scott was at Los Angeles International Airport in April when the youngster and others who had been evacuated from World Vision’s Phnom Penh nutrition center arrived. The physician contacted Family Ministries about the possibility of getting the boy, and the agency notified him of the steps involved in the process. He was cautioned, however, that if he filed an application he would be at the end of a line of 1,200 others seeking children.

According to Guernsey, Scott and his wife never formally applied for the boy and thus were never turned down. He explained that after the Scotts saw in Family Ministries literature that it required adoptive parents to be “active members in good standing of an evangelical Protestant church,” they “apparently concluded that because they were Episcopalians and not regular church participants they were disqualified as adoptive parents.”

After he made his own determination that he would not get Trop Ven from Family Ministries, Scott filed the suit that not only asked for the one boy but also challenged the procedures used in placement of all the refugee children. In the trial, he produced Roman Catholic and Jewish witnesses who said they had been denied children by the agency.

Family Ministries contended that it is a time-honored practice for Protestant agencies to place babies with Protestant families, Catholic agencies to place them with Catholics, Jewish agencies to place them with Jews. Mary Sullivan, chief of adoption services for the California Department of Health, said a state regulation required placement with “parents whose religious faith is the same” as the child’s or his parent’s. In the case of the Cambodian orphans, the religion of the parents was unknown, but World Vision was named substitute parent by Cambodia.

Not only did California Attorney General Evelle J. Younger file a brief stating that World Vision had legal custody of the children when Phnom Penh fell, but General Sak Sutsakahan, the last chief of state before the nation fell, was put on the witness stand to explain that his government recognized World Vision’s authority to place the orphans inside or outside Cambodia. Mooneyham testified that World Vision, as substitute parent, requested Family Ministries to find Christian homes for the children. Attorneys for Scott did not challenge the testimony of either the Cambodian or the World Vision leader. Neither was cross examined.

In his decision, the judge refused to accept the conclusion that the children had been relinquished to World Vision and that it could therefore decide the religion of adoptive parents.

The wider issue in the ruling is the finding by the judge that because agencies of government assisted with the process of evacuation and adoption at various stages, therefore no religious discrimination could be practiced in placing the orphans.

Scott had argued the tax exemption enjoyed by Family Ministries was a state subsidy and thus, in effect, it was a state-funded agency which could not legally discriminate. In his order, Judge Olson agreed that religious discrimination in this case was unconstitutional.

World Vision is expected to appeal to the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution in its suit. The complicated cases may take six months to a year or more to settle. Meanwhile, all of the authorities have agreed to let the children stay with the initial adoptive parents. Trop Ven is living with an Orange County couple who attend a Lutheran church.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

ON TARGET

Parishioners at St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church in Columbus, Ohio, turned in their handguns, including their children’s toy guns, at a Sunday mass this month. The action was in response to an appeal by parish priest Richard Engle, who said the guns would be melted down into crosses. Engle, who handed over his own .22-caliber target pistol, said the appeal was prompted by the recent attempts on President Ford’s life. The priest and his people plan to send crosses manufactured from the firearms to Ohio’s congressional delegation as a protest “against the proliferation of handguns.”

Goodness And Mercy

Informal surveys of clergymen show that most agree it would be best to allow Karen Ann Quinlan to die. The 21-year-old New Jersey woman has been kept alive by mechanical means for five months, the victim of irreparable brain damage, and her Catholic parents have sought court approval to let her die “with dignity.”

Pastoral Pay

Recent studies show that average clergy salaries continue to lag behind those of comparable vocational categories. According to one major study, average pay to pastors in 1973 was $10,348 for salary and housing (an amount equivalent to $14,383 by next year under current inflationary patterns). The high ranged from an average of $12,250 for clergy of the Christian Reformed Church to $7,091 for Assemblies of God ministers. Specific salaries varied widely from the average.

Examples of other averages: Episcopal Church, $11,869; Lutheran Church in America, $11,328; United Methodist Church, $10,915; Christian Church (Disciples), $10,031; American Baptist Churches, $9,819; Evangelical Free Church, $9,714; Southern Baptist Convention, $9,688; the Wesleyan Church, $7,641.

The national average amount is simply too low to make ends meet for most pastors, laments Lutheran financial specialist Manfred Hoick, Jr. And when pay is low, he points out, the result is financial frustration for the pastor and his family—and impaired effectiveness in his ministry. In other words, everybody suffers, including the congregation.

Prison And Priorities

Church-state tensions in South Korea eased a bit last month when Presbyterian clergyman Kim Kwan Suk, general secretary of the Korean National Council of Churches, was paroled from prison. He and three other church leaders had been convicted in early September of misappropriating relief funds from overseas, diverting the money from slum work to political and legal defense activities (September 26 issue, page 48). Kim had been given a six-month sentence minus the 150 days he spent in jail before the trial. No information was immediately available about the status of the other three leaders.

In other recent developments, two major declarations were issued by groups of church leaders at meetings in Seoul. Top-level leaders of eighteen denominations, including all of South Korea’s major ones, signed a “Declaration of the Korean Churches.” It sets forth the “defense of our faith” and national security as “the primary task” of the churches. It reaffirms the churches’ “priestly and prophetic functions” amid the current church-state crisis but expresses the belief that such ministries can be carried out constructively and in the spirit of reconciliation. Nevertheless, the statement warns, “if and when the freedom of our faith and mission will be threatened by any pressures, we four million Christians firmly resolve to resist them at the risk of our lives.” The statement expressed regret that some church leaders who protested restrictive government policies had been imprisoned and that two missionaries had been deported.

The statement also says that South Korean churches welcome financial and personnel assistance from foreign mission agencies but only if it is “given without infringing upon our autonomy.”

The other document issued in Seoul, a “Declaration of Mission,” came out of a consultation attended by fifty delegates, representing evangelical missionaries and agencies in twelve Asian countries. Drafted by Asians, it calls for churches of the Third World to take their places as equal partners with the churches of the West in the task of world evangelization.

Mistakes of Western missions are emphasized but not without some self-criticism for the overdependence of Asian churches upon outside resources and their slowness in accepting missionary responsibility.

The statement’s sternest criticism is directed toward liberal ecumenists for their theologies of liberation and revolution and for their refusal “to take the Scriptures to be the Word of God.” Assert the Asian leaders; “We cannot accept, as a part of the Christian mission, any activity which challenges biblical authority.”

On another controversial topic, the declaration states:

To advocate a moratorium of the Christian mission in the face of the desolute reality of the mission field is erroneous human judgment destitute of the power of the Holy Spirit. We have to train new mission forces to succeed to the Western mission before we talk of the termination of it.

The declaration was presented publicly in a service at Seoul’s Central (Assemblies of God) Church, attended by 8,000.

Participants at the five-day consultation, which ended early last month, formed the Asia Missions Association (AMA) to promote cooperative missionary work and to sponsor a training center for missionary candidates (it has been set up in suburban Seoul). Christian and Missionary Alliance leader Philip Teng of Hong Kong was elected AMA president, and Presbyterian minister David Cho of Seoul was named general secretary.

TWO-WAY OFFERING

Pastor Howard Conatser of the 4,000-member Beverly Hills Baptist Church in Dallas recently preached a series of sermons on the types of offerings in Scripture. At one midweek prayer service he announced that a freewill offering would be received. Normally, collections are not a part of the church’s prayer meeting.

Conatser told his audience of 950 that the church didn’t really need the money. “We are already $100,000 over our budget for this year,” he said. “But you need to be blessed; you need to experience the grace of giving.”

After the offering was received the pastor directed the deacons to return to the congregation with the baskets, which contained more than $1,000. “It’s God’s money,” he explained. “If you need money and have asked God to help you get it, take what you need.” Only a few did but for them the collection in reverse was a godsend, observed reporter Helen Parmley of the Dallas Morning News.

One parishioner told of a clean but poorly dressed youth who took a couple of bills from the basket as it passed, then lifted his head and said softly, “Praise the Lord.”

Honduras: After The Hurricane

One year after Hurricane Fifi dealt destruction across northern Honduras, life appears to have returned to normal. Bridges and rail lines are back in service, and the banana fields are green again. But with damage estimated at more than half of the nation’s annual $900 million GNP, it will be a long time before the fragile economy fully recovers. Fifi destroyed 90 per cent of the crops in the prosperous Sula Valley—including the bananas that provide the bulk of the country’s foreign exchange; drowned 100,000 head of cattle; and washed away or damaged 25,000 houses, leaving an estimated 300,000 persons homeless. Estimates of the death toll vary from 5,000 to 10,000. No one really knows.

Response came quickly from a number of international Christian agencies. World Relief Commission (WRC), the relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, made an immediate grant of $35,000 to evangelical missions working in the disaster area and later added $135,000 more. A joint program by Food for the Hungry and Seattle’s King’s Garden produced 557,000 pounds of food, 32,000 pounds of clothing, and $55,000 worth of medicine. Their Mercy Airlift DC-3 flew fifty-eight missions within Honduras as well as ferrying supplies from New Orleans. Medical Assistance Programs (MAP) air-lifted over five tons of medicine and other goods. The Relief Air Force (RAF), a cooperative effort of WRC and Missionary Aviation Fellowship, worked with eight mission groups, providing food drops to isolated villages and other services. (JAARS, the air division of Wycliffe Bible Translators, recently joined the RAF, which will be used in future disasters.)

Much of the aid was channeled through CEDEN, the Evangelical Committee for National Emergency, established after the 1969 Honduras-El Salvador “Soccer War” and reactivated by Fifi.

Vast amounts of aid poured in from denominations and ecumenical agencies overseas. Church World Service, relief wing of the National Council of Churches, sent $360,000 in cash and $259,000 in material aid. Catholic Relief Services, the U. S. Catholic relief unit, sent $3.8 million in cash, goods, and services, $1.2 of it spent in reconstruction.

An unpublicized aspect of Fifi was the swift and generous response of Christians in Central America. Appeals by evangelical radio TGNA in neighboring Guatemala brought in twenty-five tons of food and clothing and more than $4,000 in cash, much of it given sacrificially. CEPAD, the Nicaraguan Evangelical Committee for Development, set up after the Managua earthquake, sent several truckloads of supplies as well as money. Goodwill Caravans of Costa Rica provided medical teams. One man from an unaffected area of Honduras traveled three days by foot, horseback, canoe, and bus to deliver an offering from his small church.

After the initial stage of emergency food and medical care, evangelical efforts focused on long-range development, primarily in housing. CEDEN is building at least 500 homes in several projects. It is also providing programs of family orientation, meals for children, and seeds and tools for home gardens. Mennonite, Baptist, and other groups have also been involved in housing projects.

Typical of long-term relief is the Central American Mission (CAM) project in El Progreso. The CAM church there took responsibility for its whole “barrio,” where some seventy homes have been rebuilt through a combination of U. S. funds, materials donated or given at cost by Honduran businesses, and local self-help labor. Through community effort and church funds a sewage line was put in and a swampy breeding ground for mosquitos filled in.

Results have extended beyond the material. A strong witness accompanying the relief program has more than doubled attendance at the CAM church and changed the whole atmosphere in the previously vice-ridden community.

“Fifi prepared hearts in an amazing way for the Gospel—in an area already considered responsive,” says CAM missionary Neil Livingston. Pastor Julio Marriaga, the CAM relief coordinator who told his congregation the Sunday after Fifi, “This is no time to sing hymns—this morning we’re going to get shovels and dig out the houses of our brethren who were flooded,” sees unprecedented opportunity for evangelism. Hundreds of professions of faith have been recorded by CAM alone in a series of campaigns that accompanied the relief and reconstruction program.

Some evangelicals have voiced concern over the close link between CEDEN and Church World Service. CWS has heavily supported CEPAD in Nicaragua, and one missionary was told by a CEPAD staffer that the agency wants to be the sole voice of Protestants to the Nicaraguan government. This could lead to a requirement that any missionary wishing to enter the country must have CEPAD approval.

Like CEPAD, CEDEN concentrates on social and physical need, leaving the spiritual aspect basically to the churches. However, “it’s important that people know why we do what we’re doing,” said Gustave Kuether, a United Church of Christ missionary who was a regional director of CEDAN for several months.

Economic recovery is not Honduras’s only problem. Peasant unrest continues after protest marches last summer against slowness in implementing agrarian reform. The marches were broken up by the army, and a dozen leaders were reportedly shot. An influential segment of the Roman Catholic Church has allied itself with the peasants. Two priests were murdered earlier this year, and according to a newspaper account, a wealthy landowner and two army officers were responsible for the slaying.

STEPHEN SYWULKA

SITTING OUT THE CELEBRATION

To most Mennonites, all wars are bad—including the American Revolutionary War. And while the majority of Americans see the Bicentennial as a celebration of the nation’s birth, some Mennonites view it as a celebration of war. Among them are leaders of the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) conference of the Mennonite Church, who have asked their 200 congregations with a membership of 16,000 not to participate in Bicentennial activities. Many of the activities seem “nationalistic and imperialistic—just contrary to our whole stand against war,” explains conference moderator David N. Thomas.

Religion In Transit

Congressional alert: The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to consider next month areas of proposed tax reform, including the matter of charitable contributions and the possibility of eliminating their tax-exempt status, according to Arizona congressman John B. Conlan. A proposed bill affecting charitable contributions died in December, and it’s doubtful that any bill undermining church giving could pass, but Conlan says he doesn’t want Christians to “be caught sleeping.”

Minutes before the film projectors were to begin, a tear gas cannister was set off near the stage inside the Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills, driving off the invitation-only audience at the world premiere of The Hiding Place. Among the celebrities routed were evangelist Billy Graham, whose organization produced the film, and Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian on whose life the $1.7 million movie is based. Nazi sympathizers were blamed for the incident. The guests joined in a song service outside while firemen tried in vain to remove the fumes, then proceeded to a reception at a nearby hotel.

The two-year-old Manhattan Church of the Nazarene plans to air a five-hour, star-saturated television special on Channel 11 in New York City on October 26. Aimed at garnering support for the church’s urban ministries and at creating an awareness of the city’s spiritual needs, the show will be broadcast live from the Lambs Club, a Times Square-district landmark recently purchased by the church. The building’s 500-seat theater doubles as a sanctuary, the ballroom has been converted into a Christian supper club (complete with entertainment), and there are plans to open a Christian Institute for Arts and Media. Manhattan’s pastor is Paul Moore, formerly associated with a Jesus-movement revival in New Jersey involving 5,000 young converts.

Founder-president Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ called for reconciliation in a Sunday service last month at Melodyland Christian Center, a large charismatic church in Anaheim, California. From its beginning, Crusade has had a ban on tongues-speaking staffers, and no change is foreseen in the policy. But at Melodyland Bright said it was time to put aside the barriers that divide Christians. “I’ve never spoken in tongues; I don’t have that gift, but I love those who do,” he said. (Bright’s son Zachary is a student at LIFE Bible College, run by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and he attends the charismatic-oriented Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California.)

Ever deepening rift: At the insistence of broadcaster Pat Robertson and evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, Logos International canceled Bible teacher Bob Mumford (October 10 issue, page 52) as a speaker at next month’s big charismatic conference on the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. Robertson and Miss Kuhlman, who disagree with Mumford’s teachings on discipleship, threatened to boycott the meeting if Logos failed to axe Mumford.

Minneapolis insuranceman Yernon M. Blikstad, a member of the Lutheran Church of the Brethren, was ousted from The Gideons International after twenty-nine years of membership in the 31,494-member Scripture-distribution organization. He was accused of violating Gideon policies (he says he inadvertently included 200 Gideon Bibles among other Bibles he was selling at cost at a Catholic charismatic conference, failing to get the necessary approval). Blikstad says he has sold or distributed some 500,000 Bibles or Bible portions in the last seven years, mostly the Revised Standard Version, the American Bible Society’s “Good News for Modern Man” translation, and the Living Bible paraphrase. The latter two have been rejected by the Gideons for distribution. Three years ago Blikstad was dropped by the Christian Business Men’s Committee because of his involvement in the charismatic movement.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, asking that two small school districts near the city be forbidden from handing out Bibles at commencement exercises. The districts have been offering graduates since 1893 a choice of Bibles, purchased with tax money.

Public schools in Oregon must not permit nativity scenes in school buildings while classes are being held, according to a ruling by Attorney General Lee Johnson.

Jehovah’s Witnesses reported nearly 300,00 baptisms throughout the world last year, a 34 per cent increase. It was a record harvest, say leaders of the sect, which claims two million members worldwide.

Personalia

Martha Edens, a former executive with the National Association of Mental Health and the wife of a Methodist minister, is the new general director of Church Women United in the U. S. A., the largest ecumenical body of church women.

Pastor Forrest D. Haggard of the 1,700-member Overland Park (Kansas) Christian Church was elected president of the World Convention of Churches of Christ (Disciples), a cooperative agency embracing Disciples groups in thirty-four countries.

Suffragan (assistant) bishop Scott F. Bailey will become bishop of the Episcopal diocese of West Texas. He has also been appointed to serve as the executive officer of the denomination’s triennial convention next year in Minneapolis.

Ian Moreland Hay, an executive of the Sudan Interior Mission, next month will succeed Raymond J. Davis as the SIM’s general director. Davis, 65, director since 1962, will head an SIM conference center in Florida. The SIM, founded in 1893 in Canada, has 800 missionaries, most of them serving in Africa.

From the rubble of the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco and the strung-out Sunset Strip in Los Angeles emerged hundreds of young people in the summer of 1967 who forsook drugs, free sex, occultism, and Eastern mysticism to follow Jesus.

Thus began the so-called Jesus movement, a descriptive virtually unknown until the late Look used it in a headline of a feature in its February 9, 1971, issue.

In the months that followed the 1967 spiritual explosion in the West Coast counterculture, vast numbers of young people across the land similarly embraced Christ. A love-hungry, peace-seeking generation had come home.

Much of the action took place outside of the churches, but young people in churches in scores of communities came alive too. They hit the streets and parks and beaches with guitars and Bibles in a prodigious outpouring of witness marked by its relevance to time and culture. There were Jesus-music concerts, underground-type Jesus tabloids, and Jesus witness marches. Coffeehouse and hot-line ministries flourished.

Then came all the press notice in 1971 and after that the fads, the era of buttons and bumper stickers and Jesus wristwatches. It was also a period when many churches and para-church organizations harnessed part of the movement—or became caught up in it. Campus Crusade’s Explo ’72 in Dallas, attended by 85,000, probably reflected both aspects.

Sometime in 1973 the press stopped talking about the Jesus movement. Many soon reached the conclusion that the movement had died.

Ironically, the movement in 1973 was thriving in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, for example, where it was probably bigger numerically than it ever was in California. And it was booming overseas.

On the other hand, the movement as a whole was in the throes of transition, undergoing the same kind of changes affecting the overall youth scene. The trend was away from streets and into books, away from confrontation and toward contemplation. Among Christians there was less emphasis on outreach, more on worship and Bible study. Large segments of the movement disappeared behind closed doors, and some segments that failed to adapt to the times disappeared altogether.

How does the movement fare today, if indeed it survives at all? To find the answer, CHRISTIANITY TODAY revisited several of the movers and shakers of the early days of the movement.

Ted Wise. Hundreds, probably thousands, can trace their spiritual ancestry in Christ to this former sailmaker. Wise was one of the artistic beatniks who were squeezed out of San Francisco’s North Beach district by economic pressures. He and the others moved into the low-rent Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, where they became known as hippies and where they were joined by tens of thousands of young people in 1966 and 1967. Wise, in his late twenties at the time and beset by marital woes, became a Christian in 1966 after reading a stray Bible that belonged to one of his wife’s relatives. He and his wife began attending a Baptist church in suburban Mill Valley but retained their cultural identity and their friends in the hip scene. Within months, Wise had led his closest friends to Christ.

Wise and his friends became the first staffers of the first Christian coffeehouse in Haight-Ashbury, the Living Room, opened in 1967 by several evangelical ministers in the area. There were no salaries with the job, so the group worked at odd jobs to keep afloat. To help make ends meet they and their wives and children shared a large old house they dubbed the House of Acts—one of the first modern Christian house ministries. Hundreds of troubled persons found a temporary home at the House of Acts, and many of them also found Christ there.

In time, Haight-Ashbury changed, the coffeehouse was closed, and the group split up. Officials in a San Francisco suburb hired Wise to head a community anti-drug program. On the side he helped to direct youth outreach ministries.

For the past few years Wise has attended the Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, where he assists with a postcollege singles group of 450 persons. He was a participant in last year’s congress on evangelization at Lausanne. His most intense wish is to become involved in full-time Christian work someday.

Ted Wise is representative of many of the early leaders of the Jesus movement: They still are turned on to Christ, they still have a strong inclination to be engaged in Christian service, they remain person-oriented in their concept of ministry, they have become identified with an organized church, and they are working hard to support their families.

Bob Smith, 60, one of Peninsula Bible Church’s pastors, says the Jesus people have made important contributions to church life. The most important is “a note of reality,” he states. A lot of traditional barriers have been broken down, he says, and the congregation is friendlier and better off spiritually for it.

Jack Sparks. One of the most colorful and effective Jesus-movement groups was the Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF). It was founded by Jack Sparks and a handful of fellow Campus Crusade for Christ staffers as a Crusade front in Berkeley in 1969. Disagreement arose almost immediately over Crusade’s policy requiring headquarters approval of published materials, and CWLF chose to become independent.

Sparks is a soft-spoken Ph.D. (statistics and research design) who taught at Penn State before joining Crusade. Under his direction CWLF became one of the best-known activist groups in Berkeley, speaking out on social issues, taking part in demonstrations, distributing stacks of literature, but always pointing to Christ in vigorous evangelistic appeals (see May 8, 1970, issue, page 40). Hundreds were converted through outreach efforts, and an ongoing program of group fellowship and Bible study was instituted for them. Dozens signed on as CWLF staffers.

One of CWLF’s productions was Right On, the first Jesus newspaper (see April 9, 1971, issue, page 38), and one of the few such papers still being published. In the beginning it was an outright evangelistic sheet, containing testimonies of converted dopers and radicals, mini sermons, and the like. Social issues and current affairs were touched on but not to the extent they are today. It has evolved into a top-quality thought publication that reflects the serious mood in the campus world. There are columns on the arts, interviews with name personalities, and controversial editorials on sticky questions. It has a paid circulation of 10,000, operates on a shoestring (its staff of college grads work at part-time jobs to augment their slice of the monthly payroll, which has never exceeded $500), and is edited by Sharon Gallagher. She is a Westmont College sociology graduate who studied at Regent College in Vancouver and under Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland.

Two months ago CWLF suffered a serious rupture. The CWLF fellowship had evolved into a house church of some seventy members under the direction of Sparks and Arnie Bernstein, a Jews for Jesus leader. At the same time, Sparks was also allied with other former Campus Crusade staffers who head shepherd-disciple type ministries with a heavy emphasis on authority. A clash occurred among Sparks’s house group in August on questions of authority, and half the group—including most of the CWLF staff—left the Sparks camp. (One issue: Some CWLFers wanted to attend other churches; Sparks declined to give permission.)

The upshot is that Sparks will concentrate on writing, house-church, and discipleship ministries. The CWLF name will not be used by either party. Sparks will be identified with the Fellowship of Renewal and Outreach. The dissidents will call themselves the Berkeley Christian Coalition, with Bill Squires as director. Squires was associated with CWLF from its beginning.

The coalition will publish Right On, sponsor The Crucible lecture and educational program, oversee a house ministry, and back the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (publication of materials on cults). A suit initiated by the latter against Transcendental Meditation teachings in public schools was pending in a California court this month.

The former Crusade staffers with whom Sparks is now “mutually committed” in an “apostolic band” are: Ken Berven of Seattle; Dick Ballew and Jon Braun of Santa Barbara, California; Peter Gillquist of Grand Junction, Tennessee; Ray Nethery of Mansfield, Ohio; and Gordon Walker of Nashville. The seven see themselves as apostles or missionaries called to set up and oversee small church groups patterned after biblical discipleship. Community, commitment, submission, and authority are recurring words in descriptions of the small groups. A chain of command already exists between the groups and the apostle-missionaries. This has led to the same kind of criticism as that leveled against Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, and others in the charismatic-oriented Christian Growth Ministries of Fort Lauderdale, Florida (see October 10 issue, page 52).

Chuck Smith. Nine years ago Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California, had twenty-five members. By 1969 it had 150. Then it launched into an outreach program beamed at young people in the streets. Within two years attendance reached 2,000, hundreds at a time were being baptized in the ocean, building expansion programs could not keep abreast, and Look, Time, and network television reporters were knocking at the doors. Pastor Chuck Smith claimed he was not doing anything differently from before. Yet the throngs of young people kept coming.

Calvary Chapel today has 15,000 members. About 10,000 attend the three Sunday morning services. The majority of those in the congregation are under 35. The Sunday school is so crowded out that high schoolers are encouraged to attend a church service instead. The Saturday night youth meetings attract between 4,000 and 5,000, and 2,500 show up for Thursday night Bible-study meetings. Nearly 800 were baptized on a recent Monday night.

Smith dedicates fifteen babies every Sunday (five per service), and the waiting list is months long. The nursery has 200 cribs. A Christian day school through eighth grade has an enrollment of 630, and plans are moving ahead to build a high school.

There are no unpaid bills except for a mortgage of $300,000 on a mountain conference center (it will be paid off within a year). In fact, the church has a cash reserve of $350,000 (there are 5,000 tithers of record), and it owns $250,000 worth of television equipment. Calvary has started branch churches in other cities and Bible-study groups across the country, has built a $50,000 missionary radio station in Guatemala and is building another in El Salvador, and keeps a number of evangelistic music teams busy around the world.

The church has eight ministers (one is Smith’s son). Smith holds Foursquare Church ordination credentials, and he believes in Full Gospel doctrine, but Calvary’s church services are not charismatic oriented. There are only a few standard hymns or choruses (usually without instruments), no upraised hands, no tongues messages or prophecies, no “singing in the Spirit,” no shouted Amens. There is no choir (Smith says too many church troubles originate among choir members, and he thinks the entire congregation should be a choir). Nearly everyone brings a Bible, and many people take notes. Smith, 48, majors in verse-by-verse exposition, and his sermons last about forty-five minutes. He rarely gives up his pulpit to speak elsewhere.

Persons interviewed at random said they attend Calvary mainly because of Smith’s Bible teaching and partly because of the love they sense there.

Calvary Chapel has perhaps reaped more in sheer volume from the spiritual harvest of the Jesus movement than any other church. But, asserts Jesus-movement leader Carl Parks of Spokane (see January 29, 1971, issue, page 34), young people are as responsive to the Gospel as ever, and they will flock to churches where love, purpose, and clear Bible teaching abound—as many pastors besides Smith have discovered.

Parks, whose ministry has touched 3,000 youths, defines the Jesus movement as simply a revival that occurred in the youth culture, and he says there have been relatively few dropouts.

Undeniably, the movement has made an impact for good on the lives of many individuals, and a lot of churches are stronger for it. But with all the present-day emphasis on discipleship, community, and church activity in the apparent absence of new styles and strategies in evangelism, the current crop of teenagers might well ask: Whatever happened to the Jesus movement?

Morocco: Jabiri In Jail

A leading Moroccan Christian has been sent to prison for six months, because, police alleged, he broke the Muslim fast of Ramadan. The trial judge refused to accept the defense of Mustapha Jabiri, a telecommunications officer at the Casablanca airport. Jabiri contended that he has been a baptized Christian for more than five years and should therefore be exempt from a statute requiring all adult Muslims of the kingdom of Morocco to observe the Muslim fast. (During the month of Ramadan Muslims are prohibited from eating from early morning until night.) Jabiri was given the maximum sentence allowed.

Jabiri, in his early thirties, married, and the father of four small children, was a participant in last year’s evangelism congress at Lausanne. He reportedly was denounced to the police by a religion teacher with whom he had been having a private conversation concerning faith in Christ.

Some two hundred ex-Muslims in the 17-million-population nation have publicly witnessed their faith in Christ through baptism, says a mission source, and they practice this faith as openly as possible in a country which does not recognize legally their existence. Many more Moroccans might have openly claimed their Christian allegiance, says an observer, if the judge in the Jabiri case had upheld the right of a professed Christian to be exempt from Ramadan.

Earlier this year medical missionary William Campbell of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and his family were expelled from Morocco for allegedly bribing two young Moroccans to become Christians. Campbell, 49, and his wife Holly (they have four children) were sentenced to a six-month prison term last September in connection with the charges, which Campbell labeled as false. The couple had remained free pending various appeals, including a final one to the national supreme court. In June they were suddenly expelled on two hours’ notice.

Campbell is associated with the Philadelphia-based North Africa Mission. For the past five years of his twenty years as a missionary in Morocco he was engaged in general practice in the central coastal city of Safi. The trouble started in 1973 when a group of townspeople accused Campbell of using his position to influence Muslim young people to change their faith. Religious freedom is ostensibly guaranteed under Moroccan law, but it is illegal for anyone to attempt to undermine a Muslim’s faith by taking advantage of “weakness or need,” or by using medical, educational, or orphanage auspices for such purposes. To do so is classified as seduction or bribery, punishable by up to three years in jail.

A young convert in Safi had gone to France in 1970 to attend a Bible school and a girl had gone to Tangier a year later to study nursing at the mission hospital there. The youths were not mentioned in the petition, but they were cited by the prosecution in the Campbell trial last year. The judge ruled Campbell had bribed them, even though no testimony was elicited from them.

Campbell states that he obeyed the law and did not use doctor-patient relationships as occasions for Christian witness. He and his wife meanwhile did host a Sunday morning meeting in their home for eight or so young Moroccan Christians. Last year the group of young people recorded on a tape cassette their greetings to a Campbell daughter studying in the United States. Authorities listened to the cassette at the post office, then arrested the Campbells on the proselytism and bribery charges. Under intense pressure from Campbell’s critics in Safi, national authorities apparently chose to deport the couple rather than to create an embarrassing international incident by jailing the Americans on religious charges. (U.S. aid to Morocco—it exceeded $33 million in fiscal 1973—has been declining in recent years; conceivably, such an incident could have made matters worse.)

The Morocco government last year nationalized the North African Mission hospital in Tangier. The mission closed several schools it operated. A government order officially banned missionaries, and a number of them left. The North Africa Mission and a Church of England mission agency, however, still have a low-profile presence in the country, and the Gospel Missionary Union has been getting better response than ever to radio broadcasts and Bible correspondence courses, according to a mission spokesman.

Compared to other Arab countries, says a mission source, Morocco has had an excellent record for its treatment of the once large Jewish minority, and there is still a Ministry of Rabbinic Affairs in Rabat. For Moroccan Christians, the case of Mustapha Jabiri highlights the need for constitutional changes which would allow national Christians the same freedom as Jews to practice their faith publicly and without fear.

Morocco signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that upholds among other things the freedom of religion and the right to hold and express opinions without interference. If that is so, a Moroccan believer might well wonder, why is Jabiri in jail?

GORDON FYLES and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

In expressing concern over liberalized approaches to sex education, some evangelicals have suggested that perhaps too much sex information too soon in life could be as damaging to the child as too little too late. When one looks at the churches’ catastrophically high dropout rate among teenagers, he cannot help wondering if perhaps the same danger exists with religious education.

Between the ages of twelve and twenty, approximately two-thirds of Protestant Christianity’s sons and daughters decide to leave their churches. Although many will return in later years, most of them will be permanent dropouts from the organized church. Could it be that one of the reasons is the punitive and painfully negative image of God and the Church unintentionally communicated to the young people in their earlier years?

Centuries ago Solomon observed, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). The symbolic Hebrew language used in this passage pictures a mother cow helping her newborn calf survive by licking the calf’s lips with milk, thereby creating in the calf a taste for milk. The obvious implication is that if one is to help a child to have a healthy appreciation of spiritual matters when he is older, it is necessary to create in him a taste for spiritual things when he is young. One wonders what the early religious impressions must have been for these young people who drop out of church.

Does the teen-ager decide all of a sudden to leave his church? Probably not. It is more likely a gradual process. Perhaps he has gradually overcome his fear of his parents and now dares to say to them what he would like to have said when he was younger, “I don’t like to go to church and I’m not going anymore.” Perhaps also he has felt a widening discrepancy between the church’s message and his needs.

In my counseling practice, about 85 per cent of my patients are from evangelical backgrounds. Early in the counseling relationship I attempt to find out how the person is relating his faith to his life situation. A key question for determining whether his faith is contributing to his problem or helping him overcome it is simply, “As a child, how did you picture God in your mind?” The vast majority report early images of God as a punisher rather than as a rewarder.

Jesus was careful about the impressions of the Kingdom he left in the minds of children. He took time to lift them up in his arms and bless them. He rebuked his disciples for mistakenly assuming that his crowded schedule had no room for children. “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,” Jesus said, “for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).

As a whole, the institutional church has never shared Christ’s view of the Kingdom importance of children. Church is an adult institution. The average church service holds little or no interest for children. Pastors who try to make parts of public services meaningful to children often meet with adult resistance.

To make matters more frustrating for youngsters in church, the limits of their attention span are ignored. Sitting still for an adult service of the usual length places impossible physiological demands upon a child. Yet if he becomes restless and objects, he is likely to be verbally or physically reprimanded on the spot. The adult who takes a child out of the sanctuary usually does so not to relieve him of boredom or frustration but to discipline him.

Pediatricians have learned that babies and small children associate the pain and threat of shots with the doctor’s white coat. This association affects the child’s later attitude toward the doctor, and many pediatricians have stopped wearing the white coat for that reason. Children may also associate the medicinal odor of the doctor’s office with the pain they have previously suffered there. Because of painful experiences, most children dislike the doctor’s office.

A child is just as capable of associating pleasure and pain with his trips to a church building. Could it be that an accumulation of church experiences through infancy and childhood predisposes a person’s eventual choice to stay in the church or leave?

In addition to being subjected to unreasonable physical demands, infants and young children who are made to sit through adult church services are often overwhelmed by the verbal content. Although the rewarding nature of God and angels can be appropriately expressed to pre-school and early elementary children, sermons about the endtime often create in children’s minds an image of God as a punisher and not a rewarder.

Children under twelve usually cannot cope with eschatological truths; their minds seriously distort them. And these distorted ideas may well be frightening.

One woman told me of this preschool memory. Her parents took her to a church where much was said about Bible prophecy. They were farmers, so they had to work together to protect crops ready for harvest from threatening weather. One day a sudden turn in the weather made it necessary for the parents to waken the older children before daylight in order to get the necessary field work done before time for school. The two smallest children were left sleeping in the house. The parents intended to be back from the field before the little tots woke up, but the work took longer than expected.

When they awoke and couldn’t find their parents or brothers and sisters, the little ones were terrified. They searched the house and farm buildings and were taking the lid off the well when the rest of the family returned. This experience, frightening for any child, was especially terrifying for the little girl who in later life related the incident to me, for she concluded that Jesus had come, the rapture of the Church had taken place, and she and her tiny brother were the only ones in the family left behind.

Most ministers give little thought to how what they say might be distorted in the minds of children in the sanctuary. Sunday-school teachers are generally more aware of the physical and mental limitations of the child; but many of them, too, need to give more attention to the kinds of memories their teaching and classroom management are creating.

Secular educators have seen the need for research to help teachers recognize levels of readiness as they introduce children to literature and mathematics. As a result, a lot is known about how the child acquires his reading and math skills. But the Church has done little to determine levels of readiness for learning spiritual truth. Research of this type is greatly needed.

Could we increase the spiritual survival rate of our children by communicating God to them in ways that are more appropriate to their developing thought processes?—RICHARD D. DOBBINS, pastor, Evangel Temple, Akron, Ohio.

As the big truck wound its way up the steep curves of a mountain road, a red car full of a variety of people stayed close behind. The driver of the truck waved happily at the driver and passengers in the red car; then as another curve was rounded the passenger in the truck waved vigorously at the red car. A bit behind was another car with the same destination—in fact, there was a little caravan of cars. This was a “crew,” a group of people who had come together for a period of time to do something that couldn’t be done if they weren’t together.

The “something” is a documentary film, one that we pray will say something strong to a world that has turned its back on truth. In the months of daily travel and work in a medium that is very new to some of us, we are seeing biblical truth enacted in a practical way day by day, over and over again. In this particular filming there is an amazing unfolding of what Christian life is all about.

The producer is the top man. Yet he is also the truck driver, and at times he is under the truck trying to find out why the oil is leaking. When the cameraman has set up his equipment in just the right spot and it is time for action, it is the director who barks out the orders to be followed not just by the soundman and the assistants, the script girl and the cameraman, but also by the producer. The producer must be willing to be ordered to dash off at a run to stop noisy people from walking by, or to stop a farmer from running his tractor for a few minutes, or to get something that was mistakenly left back in the truck. Later the director sits at a meeting where the producer is making decisions and giving orders.

As I sat in the red car watching the producer—that is, the truck driver—wave that day, I knew it was a hard and dangerous job to get that truck full of props, scaffoldings, clothing, camera equipment, and an amazing assortment of other things safely up the mountain. It struck me that the days ahead of us would be a living demonstration of what it means in some measure to be abused and to abound—interchangeably.

Is it beneath the dignity of a producer to be treated as an errand boy? Is it beneath the dignity of a director to go back up a mountain to get the truck when it had to be left behind because of a sudden storm? Is it unreasonable to ask the narrator to get up at 5:45 along with the rest of the crew to make use of the best morning light?

In Christian teaching about our “place” in life, the stress is on willingness for sudden changes, for interchangeable places, for giving orders or taking them, for being served or serving, for sitting at the table or washing floors. We are to be willing to change places gracefully—by his grace! God asks us to be ready for anything he has in his plan for us, and he does not give us a plan far ahead.

In making a film, one finds that changes are continually made in the schedule. Why? Because of weather and other unpredictable elements. Day by day, God’s children, too, ought to be ready for his sudden orders to go somewhere else, to do another thing.

Paul, writing to the Philippian church people, rejoices in their good care of him but acknowledges that they didn’t have the opportunity to do all they had hoped to do for him. Then he goes on: “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned in whatsoever state I am, to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:11–13).

We find out something of the extent of Paul’s abasement when we read Second Corinthians eleven. We know he knew real hunger and shipwreck, prison life for two years, cold and nakedness, dangers in cities as well as in the wilderness. Paul knew what he was talking about when he said he had learned to be abased. However, he tells the secret of being able to endure such excruciating experiences: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Only by experiencing the need of Christ’s strength and grace can we experience the rewarding fact that “my grace is sufficient for thee.”

Notice that when Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” this also applies to what he has just said, that he has learned “to abound” as well as “to be abased.” It takes the help of the Lord’s strength to “abound,” to be the director or the producer, and it takes his strength to be willing to be treated as a servant. God gives us a marvelous promise here, through Paul, of a delicate “adjuster” within us. We who, if we are willing to obey the Lord, are apt to be thrown around, back and forth, between abased and abounding can have this “adjuster” by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the help of the strength of Christ. It is meant to help us cope with difficulties and also with honors and responsibilities.

In First Corinthians 4 Paul writes: “I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake.… Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; and labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless: being persecuted, we suffer it.… I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.” What is the warning? It seems to me we are being told again that we must be ready for a quick interchange, to be abased and to abound, to be received by people wanting to hear what the Lord has for us to say, or to be “fools for Christ’s sake.”

Jesus our Lord and Master, our Director, Counselor, King, Saviour, himself showed us what quick changes we are to be ready for. He had been teaching, leading, instituting a new testament in this central moment of history as he led the disciples in the first Lord’s Supper. Yet it was at this gathering that he wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and began to humbly wash and dry the disciples’ feet.

After this, Jesus put into words his command: “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John 13:14–17).

In what practical ways are we showing the Lord, angels, demons, and people watching us that we are willing to be abused and to abound—interchangeably?

EDITH SCHAEFFER

Analogies To The Good News

Peace Child, by Don Richardson (Regal, 1974, 329 pp., $7.95, $3.95 pb), is reviewed by Kenneth Pike, professor of linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Reader’s Digest has selected Peace Child for its condensed book feature for the December, 1975, issue. The book is much more than just a thrilling story.

Don Richardson’s thesis is that “redemptive analogies, God’s keys to man’s cultures, are the New Testament-approved approach to cross-cultural evangelism.” He uses his experience with the Sawi tribe in Irian Jaya (then Dutch New Guinea, now part of Indonesia) as a paradigm. He did not want to “resort to the ‘schooling’ method used by some, in which one simply writes off the present generation as unteachable, concentrating instead on enrolling hundreds of children in schools, where a steady Christian influence over many years aims at a second-or third-generation victory.” He chose instead to meet them within their culture.

Among the Sawi, “the idealization of treachery” was a part of their view of life. Treacherous men were “the epitome of Sawi manhood.” When told the story of the crucifixion of Jesus, they proclaimed Judas as the hero of the story, whistling with admiration and chuckling with delight at the ability of Judas to do this by himself without other disciples’ suspecting anything. The action of Judas was “real tuwi asonai man.” This term seemed to contain the key to an understanding of the whole central cultural complex and (as one of them said) “means to do with a man as Hato is doing with that pig—to fatten him with friendship for an unsuspected slaughter!” It was the deliberate cultivation of apparent friendship in order that its betrayal might seem the sweeter, and might better enter into future legends of successful planned treachery, with the eating of the enemy’s flesh in hilarious celebration. And within this pattern, “always it was the women who supplied that gratifying adulation which made the risking of one’s life worthwhile.” The Sawi “honored cruelty” such that their “highest pleasure depended upon the misery and despair of others.”

Yet there were clear pointers to the fact that their consciences knew that treachery was wrong. These expressions came, most of all, from friends of the damaged parties, who were grieved by the deliberate acts. A dirge from the wife of a killed one expresses this:

O who will deal with the children of treachery?

O who will overcome those who use friendship to fatten their victims?

O what will it take to make them cease?

Counter killings, made in revenge, showed that their consciences clearly labeled such action treachery. Similarly, in the revenge eating of human flesh by new partakers, there was squeamishness and dread that was overcome only after long chiding by the more experienced.

The habit of reacting with anger is not acquired late in life, nor by accident. Rather “the Sawi child is trained to obtain his will by sheer force of violence and temper. He is goaded constantly to take otaham, ‘revenge,’ every time he is hurt or insulted.”

But the thing that puzzled Richardson “was why there were any Sawi left at all,” what with killings along with high infant mortality. The culture seemed to be self-annihilating, “prevented only by its fragmentation into small mutually isolated communities.”

He could see no analogy here between what they lived and the Gospel. To his astonishment, however, Richardson found that he had been wrong. A counter ideal existed alongside this treachery that provided a mechanism leading to peace. He had “thought of the Sawi culture as based on a single pillar—a total idealization of violence,” but he now found that “somewhere in prehistory the ancestors of the Sawi had accomplished what the theory said could not be done. They had found a way to prove sincerity and establish peace even in the dread context of tuwi asonai man.” Specifically, “if a man would actually give his own son to his enemies, that man could be trusted!” This was accomplished (as he saw demonstrated) by a heart-rending ceremony in which eventually, after internal struggle, a man would grab a young son, and offer him to his enemies. The enemies, if genuinely desirous of peace, would in turn find that one of their number would offer one of his sons to the first group. The members of the receiving respective communities would then in turn lay hands on the adopted son. “And everyone who laid his hand on the given son was bound not to work violence against those who gave him.”

This was the key Richardson had been praying for. Returning to the story of Judas, discussed in this context, Jesus was now seen to be the tarop, the peace child, and Judas the breaker of their most solemn, sacred agreement. As they put it, “But you said a friend betrayed him. If Jesus was a Tarop (peace child), it was very wrong to betray him. We have a name for that. We call it tarop gaman. It’s the worst thing any one could do.” Hence Richardson continues, “Before this moment Judas had been a super-Sawi. Now he was a villain.”

This bridge over the cultural gap allowed deep understanding by the tribesmen of the crucial point. “From now on, any Sawi who rejected Christ would see himself not as denying an alien concept, but rather rejecting the Fulfiller of the best in his own culture!”

This particular custom did not carry across tribal boundaries unchanged, but similar bridges could be found. In a neighboring group, the Kayagar, they eat the peace child, instead of just laying hands on it. As one of the men explained, “That way an accidental death of the child [which breaks the peace covenant] does not end the peace, because he is living inside everyone!”

Often the people’s sensibilities were offended by their own customs. For instance, after the body of a beloved one who had died had been put up in a tree and allowed to decay, one man was required to handle some of the mass even though he was filled with revulsion. It was called, by them, “touching the stench.” Such ceremonies might be accompanied by a wail: “Words of remon!… Why are you delaying so long? Because of your delay, death has taken my son away.” They explained, “Remon is what happens when a caterpillar escapes from death by transforming into a moth … to live on in a new body. It also describes the way a lizard or a snake escapes death by shedding its old skin.” There is a legend behind this custom:

A lizard and a karasu bird had an argument. The lizard, as the symbol of remon, said men should remain free from the power of death. The bird, because it dies so easily, was the symbol of death.… [A] snake kept saying, “rimi! rimi! renew!” These were the words of remon. But the bird kept saying “sanay! sanay! decay! decay!” … The lizard gave in, and from that time on began to die; but, the ancestors said, “someday the words of remon will come back to us. After that, those still alive will renew their bodies like the lizard and the caterpillar. There will be no more death” [pp. 301–3],

So, the men argued, perhaps “when mankind has reached the fullest measure of sorrow, the words of remon will come the more quickly.” Richardson feels that the men here parallel the attempt of men elsewhere where the “same psychological bent may be expressed in such ways as an accident proneness, penance, protest fasting, flagellation or self-imolation.” The Christian doctrine of the resurrection is the antidote to such despair, with the “Sawi belief in the future return of remon” as “the redemptive analogy through which that antidote could enter.”

Richardson feels that analogies are always present. But even more important theoretically, such elements can be studied to see that “Christ is the fulfiller of every man’s true self.” In the Asmat group, for example, there is a ceremony in which boys pass through a “passage formed by the bodies of the six fathers and mothers,” which is a “symbolic communal birth canal.” The boys are “reborn into the kinship system of the enemy village” with peace “through a new birth experience.”

Such elements, Richardson feels, are to be seen as parallel in principle to Paul’s reference to the unknown god of the Atheneans, or to the Logos mentioned by John, or to legends of a deluge.

Richardson has made his case more forcefully than I could do, although I have been interested in the problem for fifteen years or more, arguing in unpublished seminar papers that Christ could compete with every man’s ideal neighbor. At first, I had thought that it was possible to say merely ideal man, but I soon had to change, for reasons similar to those met by Richardson. The goal of grasping for power and dominance with resultant ideal power status must not be confused with the ideal of the kind of man one would want his neighbor to be when one is away and must leave his family at home. Yet even in the first, it seems to me, God accepts any challenge thrown down to him. He can meet power with power, if that is necessary to the process of convincing, whether now or in the final showdown. But, for us, he insists that our ideal of greatness be that of a servant (Matt. 20:25–28).

Richardson’s book performs a great service in implying that some of our study should be channeled toward understanding systems of conscience, systems of values, systems of anger-inducing situations, systems of hurt assuagement, and the underlying universal principles of conscience that are shared across cultures (and presumably are genetically present by God’s creative ordinance, even though there is great variation from culture to culture).

Incidentally, I am writing this review from Irian Jaya, where I have just met Richardson (who is working with the Regions Beyond Missionary Union) and also watched the showing of the film with the same title as the book (available through Gospel Films). The film is well worth seeing, impressive in photography and in reconstruction of some of these events, with Richardson and his wife playing themselves. For the study of this kind of problem in depth, however, the book itself is needed. I do not know of anything to compare with it in theory or in practice.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Bible Characters and Doctrines, sixteen volumes, by E. M. Blaiklock et al. (Eerdmans, 128 pp. each, $1.75 each pb). With the recent appearance of the last two volumes this set of guides for a four-year-long daily study of the Bible is now complete. Each volume serves for three months and contains both doctrinal studies (e.g., man and sin, the character of God, the Holy Spirit) and studies of biblical persons—well known, anonymous, and representative. Blaiklock has done all of the latter, and a number of evangelical Bible teachers alternated on the doctrinal studies. Highly recommended.

Facing Grief and Death, by William Tuck (Broadman, 153 pp., $3.95). A practical aid from a Christian perspective on ministering to the bereaved.

So Many Versions?, by Sakae Kubo and Walter Specht (Zondervan, 244 pp., $2.95). Extremely helpful descriptions, comparisons, and evaluations of sixteen major recent translations of the Bible (or large portions of it) into English. Includes an annotated list of scores of minor translations.

Fact and Faith: Coming to Grips with Miracles in the New Testament, by David Bartlett (Judson, 144 pp., $3.95 pb). If preachers and teachers make allowances for Bartlett’s being a little more skeptical than he needs to be, this book can provide useful insights for proclaiming the miracles as signs rather than simply as marvels.

Genesis and Early Man, by Arthur Custance (Zondervan, 331 pp., $8.95). Seven papers in defense of a literal Adam and Eve who lived a few thousand years ago. The author is well informed about and accepts the valid data used by scientists to “prove” the antiquity of man, but interprets the data quite differently. For a review of the first volume, Noah’s Three Sons, in this series, The Doorway Papers, see August 8 issue, page 28.

The New Testament Student, edited by John Skilton, has been launched as an irregularly appearing journal with original and reprinted articles by evangelicals for those who are serious Bible students but not necessarily academic specialists. It is hoped that reports of meetings and projects can be included. Standing orders are available at $3/issue (P.O. Box 185, Nutley, N. J. 07110). The first volume, entitled “Studying the New Testament Today,” has 204 pages and includes nine major articles plus information on New Testament studies at Westminster Seminary.

Schizophrenia: A Source of Social Insight, by Brian W. Grant (Westminster, 252 pp., $10). A seminary teacher and counselor gives a sympathetic and scholarly study of schizophrenics, suggesting positive contributions to be found from their abnormal behavior. Some scriptural examples are used. The author wonders, “Are we that radically different from those whose madness periodically erupts to the surface of their lives?” Thought-provoking.

Enriching Exegesis

The Gospel According to St. Luke, by Leon Morris (Eerdmans, 1974, 349 pp., $3.95 pb), is reviewed by H. Leo Eddleman, professor of Old Testament, Criswell Bible Institute, Dallas, Texas.

Leon Morris’s extensive familiarity with Luke’s writing and his loyalty to it shine through this volume, which is a fitting conclusion to the series of Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. The lengthy introduction may be amply justified by its thorough treatment of the purpose of this Gospel and some few determinative critical problems. Morris recognizes that only in recent years has much attention been drawn to the fact that Luke alone of the four gospel writers has a “sequel to his Gospel.” Apparently the other three writers of the life and ministry of Christ felt that the story could hold its own without being buttressed by an account of what happened after the ascension. Accordingly, Luke appears to Morris as practically obsessed with the idea that “God is working out his purpose. This purpose is seen clearly in the life and work of Jesus, but it did not finish with the ministry of Jesus. It carried directly into the life and witness of the church.”

Luke’s frequent use of dei and boule or “purpose” (nine out of the twelve uses of the word in the New Testament are Luke’s) clearly reflects the sense of urgency and divine imperative he saw in the ministry of Jesus. The Church is not a new departure in the sense of being irrelevant to what had gone before. Rather is it the inevitable outcome of what Jesus “began”: his life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension. What happened after the ascension is to the life and work of Christ what his resurrection is to his death. A glaring gap is there without sequel. Morris causes one to wonder why the other gospel writers had nothing to say about “those first days in Jerusalem,” Pentecost, and the going forth into other regions with the Gospel.

Morris is obviously at home in Luke’s language. But he does not try to prove too much by Greek words, grammar, and etymology. His treatment of the series of “woes” in Luke 11:42–54 exemplifies the depth, taste, and accuracy with which he produces positive and enriching exegesis.

For reference, for serious study, for preparation of expository preaching, this volume will be a boon to anybody’s library.

Guidelines For Teen-Age Behavior

Compass For Conscience, by Dave Grant (Revell, 1975, 94 pp., $2.50 pb), is reviewed by Norman L. Geisler, professor of philosophy of religion, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Dave Grant, a former Campus Crusade worker, asserts that his book is “not intended to be any kind of authority on morality.” He correctly describes the approach as “more like counseling.” He takes the cue from C. S. Lewis’s suggestion that morality is like a fleet of ships where there are three considerations: Is the ship seaworthy? How can ships avoid running into each other? What is their common goal? Our day, Grant feels, has stressed the second to the neglect of the first and the last. He tries to give attention to all three.

Grant strongly stresses motivation as a key to ethical decision-making; “the morality of decision-making is more concerned with the why than the what,” he writes. He is not unaware of the problem this causes when “situational ethics says if your motive is love then your behavior will be all right.” This is only half right, he says.

He proposes three reference points for ethical decision-making: man’s goal, man’s purpose, and the motivation. He does not discuss absolute moral norms but does assert that “there are no absolute behavior forms in morality.”

Grant successfully avoids legalism, asceticism, and situationism, but his aversion for rules leaves him open to the charge that he overlooks, if not neglects, the need for absolute ethical laws in decision-making.

The primary value of the book lies in its use of provocative illustrations and catchy phrases to drive home an ethical point. The book is readable and valuable, especially for a teen-age audience. It covers sex, alcohol, drugs, smoking, and pornography, and touches on some other topics.

Regrettably, the author falls prey to the all too common affirmation that all sins are equal, forgetting that Jesus spoke of “weightier matters of the law (Matt. 23:2) and of the “greater sin” vs. lesser ones (John 19:11). All in all, the book is a biblical, non-legalistic guide for young people with convincing illustrations and penetrating questions on some important questions facing them today.

Understanding Yourself

Put It All Together, by Maurice Wagner (Zondervan, 1974, 162 pp., $4.95), and Guilt and Freedom, by Bruce Narramore and Bill Counts (Vision House, 1974, 159 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Lee Roddy, La Canada, California.

These two books cover the broad, serious field of what makes us tick. Put It All Together is written in nontechnical language for readers who want help in resolving feelings of insecurity. It is also for those who want to learn more about emotional problems so they can help others.

Maurice Wagner is a professional counselor with a Ph.D. in psychology. He traces our self-deception from childhood, when we learn to hide our true emotions (“Tell the man you’re sorry”), through the beginning and growth of guilt. Keeping close to Scripture, he offers ways to rearrange priorities and establish good relationships with others. He talks about the two great commandments in Matthew 22:37–40 and concludes that a new sense of security is possible through obedience to these priorities specified by Christ.

This is a book for digging, not for leisurely reading, but the reward is more than sufficient. The reader will have a fuller understanding of how he got the way he is, how he can change, and how he can be at peace—not only with God and man but with himself.

Guilt and Freedom digs into early masquerades that cause guilt and self-acceptance. The authors describe many real-life situations, and readers quickly identify with real problems and see how they were solved. Narramore teaches psychology at the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology in California. Counts is co-director of the Light and Power House, a Christian training center for youth in California. He also lectures part-time at Rosemead.

The authors look into our own stern accusations of self (“You’re guilty; you’re a failure”). They go on to show that freedom from guilt is central to God’s plan. The Bible does not say that Christians are to have a fear of punishment, a sense of worthlessness, or feelings of rejection. A Christian with unresolved guilt carries about a destructive force that causes spiritual deadness and defeat.

The authors examine the basis for guilt-free living, lay a foundation for a healthy self-esteem, and conclude with information on how readers can be freed from fears of punishment and rejection. The reward is unbroken fellowship with the Creator.

New Periodicals

The Bulletin of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies made its debut with the Summer, 1975, issue, and included five papers read at the annual meeting last April (on marital reconciliation, witness at a secular campus, guilt, premarital sex, and behavior modification) together with news of the 750-member association. For membership and subscription information write the executive secretary at 27000 Farmington Road, Farmington Hills, Michigan 48024.

Although edited from a conservative Roman Catholic perspective, a new thrice-yearly journal, Faith and Reason, should be in the libraries of all seminaries and colleges with religious-studies programs. The six articles of the first issue (Spring, 1975) include critiques of the theology of liberation and of contemporary amoralism. The second issue looks at abortion and the constitution and evaluates Tillich’s Christology. The intention is to be scholarly yet readable for non-specialists ($7.70/year; Box 192, Pembroke State University, Pembroke, N. C. 28372).