He has the hawkish look of an English schoolmaster, complete with wire-rim bifocals, and with an impeccable Oxbridge accent he manifests a newly acquired ambiguity as a politician archbishop.

Dr. Donald Coggan, sixty-five years old, 101st spiritual leader of more than 70 million Anglicans worldwide, moves vigorously amongst crowds of adoring layfolk and church hierarchy alike, glad-handing it, imperious and funny in turn. His face shines with evangelical sincerity and glows with scholarly success as he talks about the Church’s role as a place of worship, holiness, and outreach to a lost world. He believes that prayer meetings and more loving, caring Christian communities make a successful church.

In private he’s sharp and evasive, and he fences questions like a politician. He eschews labels. “I’m not low church, I have a high view of things. You think I’m conservative. I would have thought I was rather liberal on a lot of issues.” He’s clever, cold, and calculating and will bully verbally if he thinks he can get away with it.

His qualifications for his new role are impeccable: undergraduate study at Cambridge; graduate theological training at Oxford; a Hebrew scholar; curate for three years at St. Mary’s, Islington, a center of the evangelical movement in a working-class district of North London. He is married to a physician’s daughter and has two daughters, both born in Canada when Coggan was professor of New Testament studies at Wycliffe College in Toronto, a post he held for seven years. On returning to England in 1944 he became principal of London College of Divinity. Then he served as bishop of Bradford from 1956 till 1961, when he was named archbishop of York, succeeding Dr. Michael Ramsey, who became archbishop of Canterbury.

Coggan’s election to the see of Canterbury, like those of his predecessors, was not without opposition. It is known that he was not Ramsey’s choice, but opposition was based more on procedural grounds and came from those who wanted a more democratic method of appointment. Many feel that an archbishop should be appointed by the church and not the state. At the present time the archbishop is nominated by the Queen on the advice of her prime minister and nine bishops sitting on tombstones in a cathedral crypt.

Coggan is, in turn, a theologian, evangelist (please, not after the order of Billy Graham), preacher, pastor, administrator—in short, everything an archbishop should be.

He was formerly president of the United Bible Societies, embracing twenty-four national Bible societies throughout the world, and in 1964 he launched a campaign, “Feed the Minds of Millions,” to increase worldwide distribution of Christian literature. He has written nine books and kept Prime Minister Harold Wilson waiting four days before accepting the archbishopric.

Coggan has spoken out against permissiveness, has condemned gimmicky advertising employing sexual undertones, and thinks the Church of England is in for a time of enforced poverty because inflation is draining its wealth. He adds, however, that the outcome may be spiritual enrichment.

Coggan and Ramsey are very different in theology and style. Observers of the religious scene sense that the new archbishop has softened his theologically conservative stance. Only time will reveal whether the spirit of compromise has bitten deep into his holy mitre.

Presiding at the recent opening of the seventy-fifth anniversary synod of the Diocese of Kootenay in Nelson, British Columbia, the archbishop spoke with me about the Anglican church in the world today:

Question. Your Grace, it’s generally recognized by Christian and non-Christian alike that the Christian consensus which prevailed till recently in Western society is lost. How do you communicate the Christian message in a secular age like ours?

Answer. I’ve no easy answer to that. We must not forget there has been a very powerful Christian penetration of thought and culture. The Christian Church cannot be neglected both in numbers and in influence, and sometimes we get bullied by a consideration of figures. In all our cultures we are seeing a Christian penetration especially in new and developing countries, notably in the Third World. We see it in such Christian political leaders as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.

Q. What is the essential Christian message today for post-Christian Western Man?

A. A large number of thoughtful contemporaries are coming to see the barrenness of a life lived on a purely materialistic basis, and many are coming to see the significance of our Lord’s saying that man cannot live by bread alone.

Q. Your theological position is that of a conservative and you’re sometimes called an evangelist. What do you see as the evangelist’s role for the Church today?

A. I would have thought I was pretty liberal on a lot of things. I find labels old-fashioned and out of date. I would not like to be thought of as an Evangelical in the party sense, certainly not in the Billy Graham sense. I know and admire Graham as a man, but I have never engaged in his type of work. I see myself as one who makes known the love of God in Christ.

Q. What is the difference between Evangelicalism and fundamentalism?

A. I do not want to confuse those terms. The last word I would attach myself to is “fundamentalist.”

Q. The charismatic movement is sweeping mainline denominations. What was thought to be the esoteric ramblings of a few non-conformist fundamentalist-Pentecostal churches can be found in most major denominations. Why this phenomenon?

A. Lesslie Newbigin, bishop of South India, made the point that if you are to have a truly ecumenical movement, there must be three strands to it, not two. Not only the Catholic, not only the Evangelical, but also that real stratum of New Testament which could broadly be called charismatic.

Q. Does the movement’s lack of intellectual integrity worry you?

A. This is my chief anxiety. I am anxious lest it be too much on the emotional and too little on the intellectual. But we must not shut our eyes to the fact that it has brought a certain joy and liberty which is certainly lacking in the two main other divisions.

Q. Charismatics have a theology of the Spirit but little theology of the Word. Fundamentalists have a theology of the Word but little theology of the Spirit. Liberals seem to have little theology at all, apart from the social gospel. Do you think an evangelical theology combining both the Word and the Spirit is a viable alternative?

A. From what I’ve heard—I haven’t been at them—of recent conferences of evangelicals, they have recently come alive to the social implications of the Christian Gospel in a way in which they had not been doing very well previously.

Q. Does the failure of union with the Methodists in England and the breakdown of Anglican and United Church talks in Canada worry you? Is organic union worth working for?

A. It worries me a lot. Both Dr. Ramsey and I were greatly disappointed at the breakdown of Anglican/Methodist talks, and I understand there has been the same disappointment expressed here in Canada. I believe we must press forward toward organic unity, and not least at those painful points of ministry and sacrament where so often the discord comes. I think this can be advanced along two lines. One, along the continuation of the deepening of the theological talks, and two, along the grass-roots of the ordinary man in the Anglican pew getting to know his opposite number in the Roman Catholic and United Church pews, praying with him and evangelizing with him.

Q. You are a low churchman, your predecessor was somewhat high, more Anglo-Catholic. Does this mean rapprochement with Rome is out?

A. I am a very high churchman, as far as my predecessor was, because he read the New Testament. I have the same feelings or rapprochement. He and I are encouraged by the joint statements on eucharist and ministry, and watching with deep interest the third area, namely, authority.

Q. Will the issue of authority—for Protestants, Scripture; for Rome, the pope and church—prove irreconcilable?

A. The question of authority is bound to prove a difficult one. I give no forecast as to how the third statement might appear or when. I think it is a very difficult road with grave problems at the moment.

Q. The Anglican church is, by and large, full of nominal believers, and they are fast dwindling in number. Do you propose a full-scale evangelistic thrust to convert the camp followers who remain?

A. There are far too many nominal Christians in Anglicanism and in all other branches of the Christian Church, and they constitute a major problem. It seems that the nominal Christian lets down his Lord and his faith by his nominality. The situation is patchy. Many churches are empty, some half full, many packed to the doors. I long to see nominality turn to vivacity.

Q. You’ve spoken out against racism in South Africa, especially with respect to arms sales. Is your stance still as strong? Is apartheid contrary to the Gospel?

A. Yes, indeed, I’ve always said so. It’s damnable in many of its manifestations in South Africa. I do not think the right way to help to end it is to cut all one’s links with that country. We must keep the doors open. I don’t care for the doctrine of “holy hands off.”

Q. Is there a Christian solution to the Irish question? Many feel it’s Christianity which is the basis and cause of the conflict.

A. That’s an oversimplification. It’s primarily a political issue with a religious and historical undercurrent. There must be a political solution to it if it’s to be resolved but on Christian lines. It’s absurd to talk in Christian terms of a Roman Catholic who shoots a Protestant or vice versa; there is nothing more unchristian than that.

Q. What are your views on disestablishment? Is it possible?

A. I hope we shall not have disestablishment. There are other ways to a solution of our problems. The General Synod has made it quite clear that it wants the church to have a greater voice in the choice of its chief officers. I don’t think it’s past the wit of British man to find a way through short of a breach with the state.

Q. Is ordination of women to the priesthood inevitable?

A. My own belief is that it will come. My own personal view, is it should come. When I don’t know. And how, I don’t know. The theological and sociological questions already have been answered affirmatively. Anglicans should not fear a disruption of relations with the Roman Catholic Church as a result of going ahead with the ordination of women. Many Roman Catholics are seriously questioning the ban on women in the ministry, and some Roman Catholic priests in England want it to happen.

Q. Do you foresee a time when a woman might be archbishop?

A. The logical conclusion is, if women are ordained to the priesthood some will be consecrated to the episcopate.

Q. Malcolm Muggeridge sees Western civilization on a Gadarene course, hell-bent for dissolution and decay. Do you agree?

A. Yes, I do. I think the evidence is all around us.

Q. Is there a possibility that you might try to patch up relations with Malcolm Muggeridge? While he’s for Christianity, he’s against the Anglican church’s capitulation to the spirit of the age.

A. I have met him, enjoyed him, and I said to him once, “Mr. Muggeridge, I would very much like to take you on a tour and let you see what really is going on.” We had a good laugh, and that was the last time I met him.

Q. Do you see any conflict between the World Council of Churches and the recent Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization?

A. No comment.

Q. What is your opinion on the Lausanne Covenant?

A. I don’t know enough about it to comment.

Q. What is your opinion of the World Council of Churches’ giving money to support radical armed groups on the African continent?

A. It’s such a tiny percentage of their money given to this. I think the thing has been blown up far beyond what it deserves.

Q. What of the principle of the thing?

A. I have expressed the view and hold to it that I should like to see a pretty careful bit of work done on this and to find out how many in fact are the causes which use violence and that profit from WCC money and to see if it should not be withdrawn.

Q. Has the WCC effectively destroyed itself with respect to the biblical message of salvation?

A. I attended New Delhi and Uppsala, and looking back on Uppsala especially I tend to think that those who attended it were so oppressed by the appalling features of the Third World as to restrict their concern almost to this world and to think of salvation as too political. I hope that at Nairobi in 1975 the WCC will look to the dimensions of the biblical message.

Q. Could the Church as a power mediate in the Middle East crises?

A. Henry Kissinger has not been able to do it. I have to admire his efforts. The task of the Church, especially its laymen is to be mediators, reconcilers, wherever there is strife.

Q. Can the Church really be a bastion of strength in the modern world any more?

A. Not a bastion that holds back progress, but a source of strength. It’s not a haven for the frail, not a hospital for bits of broken humanity, but a battle-center, a training ground for the strong to fight against sin, ignorance, and disease.

Q. Do you see the role of the Church changing in the seventies?

A. There will be new directions, but it can never change its original purpose. The Church should be a place of worship, holiness, and outreach into the community.

Q. Are you going to retire at seventy?

A. I took office as a matter of fact before the seventy retirement age was accepted. I could go on according to the present law. Probably the incumbent of this particular office oughtn’t to go on much beyond that because of the sheer weight of the office.

Pham Xuan Ang, 62, is a former civilian district chief of Quang Nam province in South Viet Nam who also worked for a time for the U. S. Agency for International Development (AID). In the final hours before Saigon fell he and his wife and other relatives, including his 29-year-old son Ba Vinh, a biochemistry teacher, joined the tens of thousands leaving the country. Some simply did not want to live under Communism, some were running out of sheer panic. The Phams were fleeing for their lives.

Last month the Phams landed at Indiantown Gap, a military base near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for processing. A nominal Buddhist, the elder Pham had been reading a New Testament he’d found and had decided he wanted to become a Christian. Then he got involved in a spiritual nurture program run by Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) workers at the camp who helped him to follow through on his decision. Among them were Jack Revelle, former field director of the CMA work in South Viet Nam, and former Indochina hand John Sawin and their wives.

Pham hopes his family members, who attend daily chapel meetings with him, likewise will become followers of Jesus soon. He also hopes sponsors will be found soon so that his family can leave the camp and make a new start in life.

Pham is one of 15,000 at Indiantown Gap and one of an estimated 130,000 refugees whom the American government is trying to resettle. They are being processed in four military bases (Indiantown Gap, Camp Pendleton in California, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida) and in several staging areas in the west Pacific. Many on Guam and at Pendleton and Eglin live in tents; those at Chaffee and Indiantown Gap live in barracks. The going is slow. There are security checks, medical examinations (overall, the Vietnamese are a healthy lot; the incidence of tuberculosis, for example, is less than that among Americans), language and orientation classes, and often long waits while sponsors are located. As of mid-June some 100,000 refugees reportedly were still in the pipeline.

The government is providing food, lodging, and medical care at the camps, but it has contracted with private voluntary agencies to handle resettlement. So far, nine agencies—four of them religious ones—have signed or are about to sign contracts. The negotiations between the agencies and the government have been marked by much haggling over terms and conditions, the amount of paper work required, and the like. The agencies are to receive $500 for each person resettled; the money will come from the $405 million appropriated by Congress for the program. Several of the groups began working at the outset on a strictly volunteer, privately financed basis.

The four religious agencies are Church World Service (the relief arm of the National Council of Churches), United States Catholic Conference, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Other religious groups are assisting with resettlement, but they must be accredited for sponsor placement through a contract body, and they will not receive any of the $500 per head grants unless the contract body channels the funds to them.

The Seventh-day Adventists, Southern Baptists, and Assemblies of God have linked up with Church World Service (CWS). All three had missionary work in South Viet Nam, and they are mainly interested in locating and resettling their own people. Nevertheless, they are helping a number of other refugees as well. Food for the Hungry, an independent evangelical relief agency based in California, is also working through CWS. Food’s president, Larry Ward, who assisted with the evaluation of more than 1,000 people from South Viet Nam, and several associates have set up a job-training, counseling, and sponsor-placement center for refugees at a leased medical center in central California. Ward figures the program will cost $250,000. Another evangelical organization, World Vision, last month was considering a hookup with CWS.

Because of the CWS’s identity with the National Council of Churches, leaders of the Christian and Missionary Alliance—wary of a backlash by conservative constituents who dislike the NCC—chose instead to join arms with the International Rescue Committee, a secular organization with Jewish leadership.

The CMA began working in Indochina in the early 1900s. Most of South Viet Nam’s Protestants are members of the CMA-affiliated Tin Lanh (Good News) Church. So far, CMA missionaries have identified nearly 2,000 Tin Lanh people in the camps. Each camp has several CMA missionaries who formerly served in Indochina. They are working in the resettlement program, aiming to find sponsors among American CMA members for all of the Tin Lanh people. New converts are referred to other evangelical churches for sponsorship.

Each contract agency has its own ideas about how the $500 per refugee will be used. Some will keep the entire amount as a reimbursement for administrative expenses. Several agency heads insisted in interviews that it costs more than $1,000 in overhead to resettle a refugee, and that costs escalate further if sponsors must be replaced (the agencies are required to guarantee sponsorship). “We’re already spending a lot of our own money,” said one executive.

Other agencies will spread the money around. The U. S. Catholic Conference will channel $350 of the $500 to dioceses, which in turn will pass along up to $300 to sponsors and refugees toward reimbursement of initial resettling expenses—a practice begun even before federal funds were available. (The Catholics are hoping to resettle about half of the refugees.) After a stormy committee meeting last month, the CWS said it will give $100 jointly to the sponsor and the refugee for expenses, a practice it has not followed before. Some CWS members are a bit uneasy philosophically about accepting any government money.

The religious agencies have had difficulty in recruiting prospective sponsors. Spokesmen blame everything from the recession to bigotry to a lack of communication (prospective sponsors should indicate their interest to the appropriate denominational officer or directly to one of the resettlement groups). Sponsorship, they say, involves a moral obligation to provide food, shelter, medical care, and pocket money, and to assist in finding a job. The sponsorship might last from a few weeks to a year, depending on how long it takes to obtain employment. Unexpected major crises may be cared for by the local public welfare department with other funds from Congress, but some confusion exists on this point among government officials.

In a number of cases, congregations are assuming sponsorship even when a single guarantor’s name is required for the record. An Episcopal minister in Minneapolis last month assumed sponsorship on behalf of his congregation for an extended family of twenty-six at Indiantown Gap.

Church groups meanwhile are engaged in extensive orientation and outreach work in the camps. Under the leadership of the newly organized Baptist Committee for Refugee Relief, chaired by Pastor Al Oliver of Adelphi, Maryland, the Southern Baptists at their own expense established and are running the entire education program at Ft. Chaffee. One of their products is a booklet entitled This is America. A similar program at Pendleton was recently taken over by the state of California under federal funding.

At several camps refugee clergymen of the CMA’s Tin Lanh Church have been hired by American military authorities to be camp chaplains. At Pendleton two such clergymen are at work along with CMA missionaries Keith Kayser and Robert Greene. There are three chapel worship services daily, classes for new believers, English-language Bible study classes (one for Cambodian refugees), and evening evangelistic meetings, featuring films, guest musicians, and special speakers. Some 500 Christians have been identified among the 18,000 at Pendleton, and there have been 150 new converts, says Kayser. A third so far have been baptized in a swimming pool. Assisting in the work is OMF missionary Rose Ellen Chancey. The group is also producing Christian literature in Vietnamese.

About 500 Tin Lanh constituents have been found at Ft. Chaffee by CMA missionary Richard Drummond and his associates. They report some 300 conversions have been recorded among Chaffee’s 28,000 refugees.

Nearly 200 Tin Lanh churchmen have been found at Eglin in Florida, and another 200 have professed Christ since coming to the camp, according to CMA missionaries George Irwin and Leroy Josephson. About 100 volunteers from the First Baptist Church of nearby Fort Walton Beach are helping the 5,000 refugees at Eglin to fill out papers, to find their way around camp, and to feel at home.

THE HOUSE THAT PORN BUILT

Leaders of the Nationwide Festival of Light, an evangelical organization set up to fight pornography and moral degradation in Britain, say they plan to establish a hostel in London for “victims of moral pollution,” including young homosexuals, “porn addicts, and others involved in erotica.” The objective is to reach for Christ “victims of permissiveness”—including those in the London entertainment world who have contributed to the moral decline, and to provide them with care “in a civilized, loving, and morally pure atmosphere.” A married couple will supervise the work, which will also rely on psychiatric and social resources in reclaiming the products of “commercialized depravity.”

ROGER DAY

Merger Musings

A showdown vote on the proposed merger of the Wesleyan and Free Methodist churches moved one step closer last month when the administrative board of the Wesleyan Church approved a “basis of merger” for presentation to the June, 1976, Wesleyan General Conference. The proposed basis (including a constitution) had previously been worked out by the joint Committee on Merger Exploration.

This means attention will focus on the 1976 Wesleyan General Conference as the first solid indication of how Wesleyans in general feel about merger. If approved there, the proposal will then require approval by Wesleyan districts and by two overseas Wesleyan general conferences and their districts.

Merger approval by the Wesleyans would then be followed by a Free Methodist decision. This would come at the 1979 FM General Conference, or at an earlier specially convoked conference, and would also require approval at the FM district level.

The 1974 Free Methodist General Conference declined to take action on the merger proposal, preferring to await a Wesleyan decision. Sentiment in the Free Methodist Church is mixed; merger discussion at a recent FM “Conference on Mission and Strategy” reportedly was “lukewarm to negative” on union. Some strongly favor merger, however, including upper Midwest regional superintendent Orin Scandrett, who says that “the Wesleyans are ten years ahead of us” in church-planting strategy in the Minneapolis area.

But some Frees say merger would be “a step backward,” citing negative images projected by some Wesleyan and Pilgrim Holiness churches in the past. (The present Wesleyan Church resulted from the merger of the Wesleyan Methodist and Pilgrim Holiness churches in 1966.)

Wesleyan general superintendent Melvin Snyder reports the Wesleyan Church will probably reach 100,000 members by the date of the 1976 General Conference. The denomination has shown some growth since the Wesleyan-Pilgrim merger. Free Methodist membership stands at 70,000 in North America and 143,000 worldwide.

The Wesleyans and Free Methodists cooperate in several areas, particularly in publishing. A joint hymnal is in preparation for release in January.

HOWARD A. SNYDER

Conservative Presbyterians: Unity, Yes; Union, No

After ten, years of merger talks, the 23,000-member¹The figures include both communicants and children. Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RP-CES), and the 10,186-member²The figures include both communicants and children. Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) at last voted on the issue. Many observers had predicted that the more doctrinally stringent OPC would vote against the proposed merger, but the delegates to the OPC General Assembly came up with a 95–42 vote favoring it, a 69 per cent majority. The RPCES commissioners (delegates) in their assembly, however, fell short of a necessary two-thirds majority in voting 122–92 (57 per cent) to approve it. Within hours the assemblies exchanged messages, pledging to continue discussions “with a view to effecting an eventual union.”

The RPCES and OPC assemblies were hosted concurrently on the campus of Geneva College near Pittsburgh by the 4,287-member Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), which held its annual assembly at the same time. The some 500 commissioners and hundreds of visitors mingled freely between sessions and held two joint meetings.

Theologian Francis Schaeffer, an RPCES member, was among those who argued against merger. If union is approved, he warned, “our time will be consumed by ten more years of division and debate.” RPCES pastor Richard Gray of Coventry, Connecticut, a member of the committee on union, also opposed merger. “Union will destroy unity,” he declared. “As soon as we can find unity, that will produce union.” He implied that he was referring not only to points of difference with the OPC but also to the possibility that some key RPCES churches would withdraw rather than merge.

Both bodies are staunchly evangelical, and they agree on major doctrinal points. The differences, says an RPCES spokesman, are largely in styles. The RPCES emphasizes evangelism and church planting, while the OPC stresses an academic view of faith, giving much attention to the finer points of doctrine and practice. The RPCES has taken a stand for total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, but the OPC holds that liberty of conscience precludes an official proscription on this matter. Also, the Orthodox Presbyterians don’t believe that churches should operate colleges. The RPCES operates 600-student Covenant College at Lookout Mountain on the Tennessee-Georgia border (nearly 10 per cent of the students are Orthodox Presbyterians). On this point the OPC was willing to allow it to be a part of the plan of union.

Another factor that damaged the union cause is the case of California pastor Lawrence Andres. In 1973, Andres, a graduate of the RPCES seminary in St. Louis and pastor of an RPCES church in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, was called by the Sunnyvale, California, Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Andres moved to his new pastorate, but the local OPC presbytery rejected him as being deficient in doctrine (one report described him as “too mystical”). Under OPC law, the Sunnyvale church was not permitted to retain him as pastor. The situation festered for months, and finally last year Andres and some members withdrew from Sunnyvale and founded an independent congregation nearby. Meanwhile, he was admitted to the local RPCES presbytery, and a feud broke out between the OPC and RPCES presbyteries. Not surprisingly, commissioners from these two bodies voted against union at last month’s meetings.

On top of this, some Orthodox Presbyterians suspect that dispensational theology—a position fiercely opposed by the OPC—lingers in certain RPCES circles.

The OPC, RPCES, and the RPCNA all voted to join the 280,000-member Christian Reformed Church and the fledgling 80,000-member Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in organizing the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council. Action by the OPC to enter a five-year Christian-education publishing venture with the PCA encouraged speculation of future merger with that group, the product of schism within the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern). The OPC also authorized a committee “to initiate exploratory conversations” with the 3,054-member Reformed Church in the U. S. (Eureka classis), a group of German background, as well as with all founding members of the new North American council with a view toward union. OPC leaders said they hoped these actions would help to correct the church’s image of sectarian separatism.

All three bodies have thus far resisted the women’s liberation trend. All are agreed against ordaining women as ruling elders, but there is disagreement about whether women can serve on boards. The RPCES sent back for further study a recommendation that women be ordained as deacons, a practice followed by the RPCNA for more than forty years.

A statement critical of the Toronto-based Institute for Christian Studies was approved by the RPCES. Institute leaders stress the meshing of Christianity and culture, but many RPCES members accuse them of holding neo-orthodox views of Scripture, an accusation the institute’s people deny.

Statements opposing the charismatic movement were referred by the OPC and RPCES to their churches and presbyteries for study. The papers concur with Calvin in concluding that the so-called charismatic gifts ended with the Apostolic age.

When missionary Arnold Kress experienced glossolalia during a charismatic worship service in Japan in early 1973 he was ordered home by the OPC for a year’s “study leave.” Although Kress insists that his limited use of tongues has been confined to private devotions, and that he has neither practiced nor promoted glossolalia in his mission church 350 miles north of Tokyo, church officials object that tongues is a “revelation gift” which presumes to impart new revelation on a par with Scripture. If Kress’s “problem” remained unresolved by this month, steps were to be taken to rescind his ordination.

Married and the father of five children, the 40-year-old minister hopes that his years of language study and missionary service will not prove to have been in vain. “I love my church very deeply,” he says, “and I am hopeful of reconciliation with my brethren and a return to Japan under our mission.”

Another OPC highlight was a lively 3½-hour debate over whether the church’s Christian Education committee should be enjoined against quoting from The Living Bible and promoting it in publications. Six of the OPC’s eleven presbyteries submitted overtures (resolutions) expressing the fear that the Taylor paraphrase might “open the door to some erroneous doctrinal views based on this version’s Arminian bias.” (Arminius was a Dutch theologian associated with views that differed from Calvin’s.)

After being assured the volume would be banned from advertisements in denominational publications, the assembly approved a committee recommendation against proscribing “the use of any version, translation, or paraphrase of the Scriptures,” but advising against quoting from The Living Bible in educational materials except in instances when “no suitable alternative can be found.”

A recent Fuller Seminary study shows that over the past ten years the RPCES has registered a whopping 74 per cent increase in, membership and the OPC 22 per cent. The RPCNA, however, has suffered a decline (less than 1 per cent).

The RPCNA (its members are known popularly as “Covenanters”) has its roots in Scotland. Immigrants established the first Reformed Presbyterian congregation in North America in 1743 in Pennsylvania. The Covenanters sing from the Psalms rather than hymn-books, and without the use of musical instruments. They practice “close” Communion, but commissioners acted last month to admit properly examined non-member adherents to the table.

The RPCNA requires all its members to subscribe to the Westminster Standards of the 1640s as a test of faith, but a committee now is reviewing that requirement and may decide that only the clergy need to subscribe. (The RPCNA, RPCES, and the OPC hold in common a commitment to the Standards and to the inerrancy of Scripture.)

Other RPCNA distinctives include non-participation in civil government until its acknowledges the lordship of Christ, strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and abstinence from alcoholic beverages and tobacco. These positions have softened in recent years, and the rationale for them is shifting from negative premises to positive ones.

The history of all three bodies is marked by conflict and schism. The RPCNA represents the hard-line side of an 1833 split of Reformed Presbyterians over questions of politics and citizenship. The OPC traces its beginnings to the departure of J. Gresham Machen and others from Princeton Seminary in 1929 to establish Westminster Seminary. Defrocked after setting up the conservative Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions, Machen and his associates—100 Presbyterian ministers and seventy congregations—in 1936 organized a new denomination later known as the OPC. A few months later Pastor Carl McIntire of Collingswood, New Jersey, and President J. Oliver Buswell of Wheaton College broke with the OPC to form the Bible Presbyterian Church. The rift occurred when the OPC denied their demands that the denomination adopt total abstinence and premillennial views of eschatology as official positions.

In 1956 a row broke out in the McIntire camp over personality and policy issues. In the ensuing rupture the McIntire faction retained the Bible Presbyterian name, and his opponents reorganized as the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In 1965 some 2,000 members of the other Reformed body in the 1833 schism linked up with the Evangelical Presbyterians to form the RPCES.

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

CODE TWO: COUPLE IN TROUBLE

Divorce is on the increase in a number of countries, and both government and church authorities are becoming increasingly concerned.

In Greece, the state requires a couple to submit their problems to arbitration by the church before divorce papers are filed. But some priests of the Orthodox Church, interested in stopping the trouble before it reaches the compulsory arbitration stage, have come up with an idea on how to get a bad spat in a hurry. They’ve equipped their cars with two-way radios so that friends or relatives of an unharmonious couple can alert the roving priests to rush to the scene of the crisis.

Religion In Transit

President Ford, acting on a request of Congress, proclaimed July 24 as National Day of Prayer. He asked Americans to pray for strength to meet national challenges, for unity, and for “the blessings of freedom throughout our land and for peace on earth.”

The New York Supreme Court ruled that the American Bible Society does not qualify for exemption from a city real-estate tax on its headquarters. The Episcopal Church won’t have to pay taxes on its headquarters, according to another decision.

Personalia

Jeb Magruder, former White House aide convicted in Watergate, was named administrative vice president of Young Life. He and his wife have been active at National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C., since his release from prison.

Clergyman Donald G. Ray, 57, was elected secretary of the United Church of Canada, the denomination’s top administrative post.

Retired theology professor David W. Hay, 69, of Toronto’s Knox College was elected moderator of the 100th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Waiter Burke, retired chairman of the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, a Connecticut Congregationalism succeeds Mrs. Horace Havemeyer, Jr., as chairman of the board of directors at New York’s Union Seminary.

NAME DROPPING

Thomas Jefferson Adams is the new pastor of First Baptist Church of the Deaf in Portland, Oregon.

He comes from George, Washington.

South Korea’s very real differences from a totalitarian society give the lie to the widening belief that its present restrictive regime differs little from the repressive conditions that prevailed during the Japanese occupation (1905–1945) or that presently exist under North Korean Communism.

The land with the largest population percentage of Protestant Christians in Asia, South Korea has not curtailed religious liberty of public assembly to worship, to preach the Gospel, to evangelize openly, and to make converts. This is in marked contrast to North Korea, where the disappearance of church buildings is propagandistically attributed to American saturation bombing during the Korean War, while suppression even of an underground church is assured by the requirement that five families lodge together in communes where each family is officially responsible for policing the others. South Koreans voluntarily reject atheistic Communism as a malevolent totalitarian system. They enjoy various rights like that of private property, though they lack freedom of political criticism, dissent, and protest.

It might therefore be understandable if Christians were to forgo other considerations in order to safeguard the noteworthy freedoms they have, in view of South Korea’s accelerated emphasis on national order and security in the aftermath of Communist victories in Indochina and of Kim Il-Sung’s North Korean demand for American withdrawal and the reunification of Korea on his own terms. At what point does one torpedo a ship full of friends because of pointed disagreements with much that its captain—President Park of South Korea—does?

South Korean security precautions must, moreover, be viewed in terms of the fact that its capital, Seoul, tenth largest city in the world, is only twenty-five miles from the North Korean border and two seconds from military air strike across the demilitarized zone, where acoustical engineers recently detected seventeen underground infiltration tunnels dug by North Koreans.

Yet the Gospel of Christ contains more than the assurance of divine forgiveness and new life; it includes also the seed of human dignity and freedom. To obscure this essential fact is no less to imperil the human soul than to neglect personal evangelism. William Carey went to India to preach the Gospel, but he never hesitated to protest the burning of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres. In South Korea today Christian protest is directed at inhumane treatment of political prisoners and at other restrictive measures that demean the value of human life.

The potential collision course between government restriction and Christian freedom involves multiple fronts: lengthy imprisonment of thirty-two political prisoners without fair trial and the execution of eight of these without public evidence warranting the death penalty; use of torture in interrogating political prisoners; removal by special decree (Number Nine) of every right of public dissent against government policy; harassment, detainment, or confinement of family members and relatives of political prisoners who gather to pray for the government and the nation; official requirement of student anti-Communist demonstrations; restrictions on a free press and other mass media, such as the stationing of South Korean CIA¹The CIA mentioned throughout this article is a South Korean agency, not its well-known U. S. counterpart, with which it has no connection. agents in the editorial and news rooms of the Christian Broadcasting System’s HLKY, oldest private station in the country, as well as at all other major networks; unconfirmed reports that CIA agents have asked for advance copies of sermons in order to allay political criticism.

Use of torture is difficult to prove, and no documented case of it has been presented in over a year. Temporarily imprisoned groups of students have insisted that one or another of their number was mercilessly tortured, but, while many have doubtless been roughed up by interrogators, personal confirmation of physical torture is quite another matter. More probably, taped recordings of physical torture were played in adjoining rooms (a form of psychological torture?) to create an impression of what awaited those who did not fully cooperate with government investigators. Yet the refusal of South Korean authorities to release the bodies of executed political prisoners to their families for private burial has fanned the worst possible suspicions about physical torture.

The harassment of a particular series of prayer meetings was ventured because government agents viewed them as acts of political criticism and hence as indirectly serviceable to the Communist threat. Of the aforementioned thirty-two political prisoners, none except for one Catholic was a Christian; some of their families, however, who have become believers were forcibly prevented by CIA agents or police from attending the prayer gatherings that on the day after the executions attracted some 500 persons and that represented the last continuing expression of public concern over their relatives’ fate.

The Park regime tends to interpret separation of church and state to mean not that a church has liberty to pursue all legitimate concerns but rather that Christian leaders and workers should be uncritical of the political order. Even the opposition political party has been stripped of all effective public dissent by a recent emergency decree that under severe penalty prohibits any public criticism of the present regime.

After a shutdown lasting several months, universities and seminaries have been reopened under prospect of permanent close in the event of political protest. Campuses are now required to enroll students in military exercises that prepare a student militia; faculty members are involved in related duties as leaders of company squads or as advisors. To discourage campus political activity, CIA agents and representatives of the education ministry have long kept a watchful eye on all schools; since hostile demonstration has been banned as a precondition for reopening the institutions, however, military training has become a compulsory part of the academic program.

The militarization of Korean universities and seminaries is causing many educators growing concern lest the campuses be lost as intellectually critical centers of society. To be sure, the Korean academic ideal is more that of the literati than of the intelligentsia, but even a regimented literati is a worrisome prospect. While assurance is given that there will be no interference with academic administration, government spokesmen (by telephone or in personal conversation) pressure presidents of educational institutions to dismiss specific faculty members or expel specific students for political rather than academic reasons.

The present regime is consequently losing credibility among university and college students as unnecessarily restrictive of liberties and as inadequately protective of justice; such a mood gains popularity more easily among a younger generation that knows only discontents with its own government than among an older generation that fought Communist tyranny. It would be misleading, however, to attribute all student criticism to moral concern; some students have an elitist spirit critical of all historical reality, and some simply want the same campus freedom that earlier students had. Others, however, feel that the South Korean government made needless concessions during the Japanese annexation period and that the regimentation inherent in present policy offends the Korean character. Some students wanted for questioning—the possibility exists that these include a few Communist plants no less than South Korean CIA agents—are now hiding out from authorities determined to uncover and deal with every public expression of political opposition.

Educators fear that compulsory anti-Communist demonstrations will be self-defeating, since voluntary and intellectually persuasive considerations will be dwarfed, particularly among those who consider political reflection, analysis, and criticism crucial; moreover, imposition of controls may seem to the student generation to narrow differences between two regimes of totalitarian disposition. Even more distressing is the fact that, as some observers fear, South Korean educational, military, and economic policy may soon become aspects of a nationalistic blueprint for a specific future already being shaped.

Quite apart from its modern Christian heritage, Korea has had a long tradition of right of remonstrance under Confucianism, the state ideology from the fourteenth century to the Japanese occupation. In Confucian practice young scholars who passed civil-service exams selected lines from the classics as texts through which they emphasized the ruler’s moral responsibility and criticized government policy in the presence of the king. Rulers who were ethically irresponsible and neglectful of the people not infrequently exiled such critics and sometimes ordered their execution.

Nonetheless, Korean tradition was far less concerned with individual rights than with human rights in general, and not even the problem of minority rights was considered vital.

The Christian missionaries espouse and practice a higher view of personal dignity and freedom in view of the image of God in man and the divine purpose, which limits civil government. But the missionary’s proper role in promoting human rights is now widely disputed. In more developed countries, the World Council of Churches actively champions civil liberties. Quite apart from the fact that it sometimes does this in the controversial context of a Marxist criticism of society, is it equally proper for missionaries to champion human freedoms in developing countries bound to ancient cultures and non-biblical religions? Where Communism is a threat and national security a high priority, should the missionary exercise the same role as elsewhere?

The posture of the foreign missionary in Korea as elsewhere is somewhat different from that of the nationals. Most missionaries are from lands that recognize the right of public demonstration and political protest. The Korean government has been increasingly vexed by adverse missionary assessment of restrictive policies. It deported George Ogle, for example, a Methodist missionary who, besides promoting industrial social change by enlisting factory chaplains to organize labor unions, also ventured prayer meetings with relatives and friends of political prisoners. Korean authorities viewed these prayer meetings, which originated in Ogle’s home, as possibly subversive because they provided a context for political criticism of government policy and thus might fuel obstructive demonstration. Ogle was one of eight American Christian workers who in a hooded demonstration on the grounds of the American embassy protested U.S. support of the South Korean government with its repressive policies. American authorities approved the demonstration in advance; sharing the sense of South Korea’s need for military readiness, they nonetheless seem unconvinced of South Korea’s need for unreasonably stern political repression.

Missionaries who complain to visiting U. S. leaders or who express displeasure to U. S. embassies about foreign diminution of human rights are readily considered obstructive to national policy by American allies. What is most serviceable in such representations, of course, is a factual report of what is actually happening. Wherever the United States supplies generous military and economic aid to foreign countries that abbreviate human rights and even harass legitimate Christian enterprise in violation of full religious liberty, citizens in America ought to unite in expressing to the American president, to Congress, to the State Department, and to the U. S. ambassador abroad their convictions about universal human dignity and freedom. America has won such rights at great cost on the home scene, and the struggle for their ongoing perpetuation there is a matter of daily headlines. Totalitarian-expensive powers are not American allies worthy of uncritical support and defense. Indifference to diminishing rights will only encourage the rise of abuses on the American scene also. Christian conscience has good reason to assert its claims. The American press—both secular and religious—takes an increasingly dim view of political restrictions in South Korea, and this stance reflects not only Anglo-Saxon political traditions but Christian concerns also.

South Korea like every other nation must earn the trust of its allies. In the aftermath of the American failure in Indochina, however, threatened and insecure Asian nations are reluctant to entrust their future mainly to a foreign power. South Korea is also well aware that the United States is defensively leagued with Spain and other countries whose political postures differ greatly from American democracy, and it is no secret that even the United States itself speaks with multiple voices. Yet respect for foreign self-determination does not require suppressing American witness to the dignity and rights of human beings, and the Christian community least of all ought to condone the unjustifiable diminution of these rights.

South Korea’s President Park sees himself not as a despotic ruler but as an embattled hero whose anti-Communist leadership has held North Korea at bay, has brought remarkable economic progress to South Korea, and has cost him the assassination of his wife. The most precious and memorable gift that Park could give to South Korea would be the precedent of a peaceful transition of power in 1978 when his term expires, for the good of a land whose growth and gains have in numerous ways outstripped its present vision and leadership. Some perceptive observers think that South Korea’s future now hangs decisively upon the directions taken nationally during these next five years. Whatever those directions may be, it is South Koreans themselves, and neither American expatriates nor global allies, whose determinations will be ultimately decisive. By breeding uneasy apprehension and fear among the South Korean citizenry, the present policy of the Park regime actually defeats the very confidence and hope it seeks to instill.

CARL F. H. HENRY²The author, lecturer-at-large for World Vision International, recently completed a ten-week Asian lecture tour, in part at the Asian Center for Theological Studies and Mission in Seoul.

I am delighted to announce the addition of Harold Myra to our staff as publisher. He has been publisher of Campus Life magazine and is the author of several books, the latest of which is entitled Is There a Place I Can Scream? (Doubleday).

Regrettably, John Lowing left the staff June 30 to become feature editor of the new National Courier in Plainfield, New Jersey. This is a fine opportunity for him, and we rejoice with him. His very popular “What If …” cartoons will continue to appear in our Eutychus section. After nine years of close fellowship we were sorry indeed to see John go.

Arthur Matthews is joining us as an associate editor with news and editorial responsibilities. He graduated from Louisiana Tech University and was assistant editor of the Presbyterian Journal for twelve years. He has been doing pressrelations work for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for the past three years. We welcome him and anticipate that his journalistic experience will be an asset to the magazine.

Members of the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination (12.5 million members, an increase of nearly a quarter of a million over the previous year) came to the city of the palm—outstretched, grumbled some—this month and opened their 118th annual session with the ringing of a Mississippi-made replica of the Liberty Bell. But this year’s convention was no bell-ringer for the media people whose editors back home kept dinging them for hard news. The most excitement seemingly came on the second night during a talk by former Miss America Vonda Kay Van Dyke. One of the 16,212 registered messengers (delegates) shouted “Hallelujah!” and awakened two children, who ran screaming from the bleachers in panic.

The most applauded message was delivered by potato-faced Jerry Clower, a 275-pound yarn-spinning deacon from Yazoo City, Mississippi. A Grand Ole Opry star, he became the first comedian ever to address the SBC, though a few preachers have tried to play the role. He repeatedly got serious points across with a light touch.

A sampler from the corn-pone comic who bills himself as the world’s greatest fertilizer salesman: “King Solomon said it is better to eat poke salad and turnip greens, drink branch water out of a gourd dipper, live in a shotgun house, and be dirt poor but have Christian love … than to live in a mansion with charbroiled rib-eye steaks three times a day, having all the money you can spend, a wash hole in the back yard, and a big car while bickering and arguing without love.” Then he called for “everybody lovin’ one another and … gettin’ it on for the glory of God!”

While the messengers were gettin’ it on with election of officers, pageantry, reports, sermons, and occasional mild parliamentary debate, reporters tried to discern the state of the only mainline denomination in America that continues to enjoy healthy growth. They concluded that the SBC still is conservative, cooperative, concerned, and non-charismatic.

Champions of biblical infallibility were elected to the two most prestigious posts. Pastor Jaroy Weber of First Baptist Church, Lubbock, Texas, was reelected convention president. (Second-term election is customary: a motion to limit a president to a single one-year term failed this year.) Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church of Memphis and the one who nominated Weber for the convention presidency in 1974, was elected to head the pre-convention pastors’ conference. Conservatives are expected to promote Rogers for the convention presidency next year.

Some observers noted the hand of the unofficial Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship (BFMF) in the elections of both Weber and Rogers. Weber was the BFMF’s candidate for his first-term election in Dallas. He was nominated by Rogers, a BFMF director. Rogers was, in turn, nominated this year for president of the pastors’ conference this year by Pastor Charles Stanley of Atlanta’s First Baptist Church who is also a BFMF director. However, both Weber and Rogers said that the BFMF (see following story) played only a minor role in their elections.

Weber, in his presidential address, referred specifically to the 1963 convention statement on the Bible,* declaring, “Let us hear the ring [of God’s bell] calling us to biblical authority.” Remarked Rogers in an interview: “Jaroy and I both stand where the rank and file of Southern Baptists are: for the Bible as the infallible word of God, evangelism, and the local church.”

A celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the SBC’s cooperative program was begun with the arrival of the final bearer of a torch relay. More than 1,200 SBC youths carried the torch in a 1,300 mile run from Memphis, birthplace of the pipeline program that has channeled $1.6 billion to SBC mission causes. Prior to 1925 SBC agencies raised support through fund-raising “agents” who canvassed churches. T. V. Herndon, a Louisiana messenger at the 1925 Memphis convention helped to pave the way for the new program with his reported criticism of the agent system as being “too spasmodic, and we just can’t have enough spasms to meet the needs.”

The cooperative program “divine game plan” (Weber’s term) calls for individual churches to send a percentage of offerings to state offices. State conventions divide their pie between SBC state causes and national operations. The average division this year is approximately 65–35 per cent in favor of states. Then SBC messengers vote on how the convention’s percentages will be apportioned to agencies (foreign and home missionary boards, the six seminaries, the Radio and Television Commission, and so on). The Miami convention adopted a cooperative program budget of $51 million for 1976 (up 25 per cent from 1975), half of which will go to foreign missions.

Speakers at every session clanged for social concern. Weber asked SBC churches and agencies to “set aside at least one day a month for fasting and praying for our nation and for the starving multitudes of the world.” But he cautioned that “speaking” to the “social problems of the world … must be in the context of biblical revelation and not from the lips of liberal sociologists, philosophers, or theologians.” A world-hunger resolution was passed after brief floor debate in which a Texas messenger reminded that “feeding with the Word of God” should be “our primary concern.”

Weber also reported that a new nine-member Disaster Assistance Coordinating Committee had been set up for “immediate” response to “great disasters.” This, he said, would satisfy past criticism that SBC agencies had been slow to respond. (Southern Baptists shouldered a major role in the Vietnamese refugee resettlement program. See story on refugee work, page 60.)

At a mid-convention news conference, Weber branded the charismatic movement as “divisive” anywhere it appeared. And he said he hoped it would not be brought before the convention because it would “destroy the spirit of fellowship.” He suggested that the subject could better “be resolved in the local church by good, strong Bible teaching.” He declined to term the movement as “near heresy” (as Pastor W. A. Criswell of Dallas characterizes it), but he felt this was the sentiment of about 95 per cent of the SBC pastors.

Nevertheless, the issue was raised by messenger Tommy French of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who urged Baptists to refute “certain practices and teaching of neo-Pentecostalism, more commonly known as the charismatic movement” The resolutions committee edited his motion, calling instead for a reaffirmation of the 1963 convention statement on the Holy Spirit (which does not mention baptism in the Spirit or speaking in tongues).

On another issue of current interest, Mrs. R. L. Sappington, a Houston pastor’s wife and arch-foe of SBC feminists, suffered her first setback in three years. She wanted a committee of “men” to draw guidelines on “family structure.” Presumably such guidelines would have prevented an agency from employing ordained women. By a large majority the convention declined to support her proposal.

In contrast, Christine Gregory, the newly elected president of the SBC Women’s Missionary Union, said she “respected the right of women to be ordained as pastors when they feel this is God’s will for their lives.” In a press conference she stated: “If a woman feels she is called to be a pastor, this is between her and God, and it should not be our perogative to deny her.” However, she added, she would never seek ordination for herself.

SBC luminary Criswell noted that “some churches have just not caught on” that Baptist deaconnesses are “perfectly biblical.”

In other actions:

• a resolution calling for a tougher stance on abortion on demand was aborted. The promoter, layman Wade M. Jackson of Dayton, Ohio, charged afterwards that his resolution was “illegally censored” by the committee on resolutions, leading to its rejection. Jackson wanted the SBC to “disapprove the widespread practice of abortion and its commercialization and exploitation by irresponsible advocates.”

• a study committee’s recommendation that the SBC name be retained was accepted. A constituency survey had shown only 35 per cent in favor of change (first choice: Cooperative Baptist Convention).

• the Christian Life Commission and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs were instructed to “keep the public aware” of school curricula and to report back next year on the experimental National Science Foundation’s MACOS (Man: A Course Of Study) now being taught in selected school systems.

Perhaps the most incendiary resolution was dropped because the author had to return home early for a funeral. M. O. Owens of Gastonia, North Carolina, a director of the BFMF, had planned to ask for the clarification of a crucial phrase in the 1963 statement. He wanted the convention to decide whether the Bible itself or the truth contained in the Bible is without any mixture of error. The key sentence in the statement says the Bible “has … truth without any mixture of error.” Inerrancy advocates interpret “has” as “is” while those inclined toward neoorthodoxy read it as “contains.” BFMF’s Powell says he called every member on the 1963 committee that drafted the statement. All of them said their intended meaning was that the Bible in itself is truth without error, Powell claims.

All together, a record number of resolutions were introduced. Among those shelved were: a protest against the “building of temples to idols on government property” (a reference to Buddhist worship tents in Vietnamese refugee camps), opposition to federal welfare programs, and support for the right of astronauts to read the Bible from the moon. Among those adopted: condemnation of media depiction of violence, “not only physical acts … but also psychological violence such as racism, chauvinism, and economic discrimination, as well as profanity and vulgarity”; a call for U. S. government agencies to launch a “vigorous campaign” against alcohol abuse; and a commitment to “pray and fast” for persecuted Christians “whom our missionaries had to leave behind [in Viet Nam].”

Potpourri: A “joggers’ jubilee” attracted only thirty-six in the humid morning heat. A Jewish hotel employee praised a Baptist preacher who, after hitting a parked car, “went to every room looking for the owner.” San Antonio pastor Jimmy Allen proposed a network of Christians to counsel politicians making decisions affecting society. Past SBC president Criswell “deplored” a recent “striptease service” in a Dallas-area Unitarian Church (see June 6 issue, page 46).

The Mississippi Liberty Bell will ring again at the 1976 convention in Norfolk. This prompted a Miami wag to muse that “maybe we ought to elect a ding-a-ling.” But first, said he, “we’d have to check his clapper for orthodoxy to the 1963 statement and loyalty to the cooperative program.”

This may be difficult, for among the vast amorphous body of Southern Baptists one person’s ding-a-ling is another’s bell-ringer.

COLSON, CONS, AND CHRIST

Ex-con Charles Colson of Watergate ill-fame told applauding Southern Baptist pastors in Miami that a “rough-hewn” Baptist preacher had helped him find a “new freedom” in prison and that his incarceration had been “one of the richest experiences of my life.”

“Before going to Maxwell [the federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama] I felt awkward and uneasy about speaking of Christ,” he recalled. “But as I saw and heard Brother E. W. Bloe [a Montgomery area minister] preach Christ boldly, all of those awkward reservations passed from my life. It was yet another step in my journey.”

Colson said he had felt “lost” his first night in jail. “I was brought into a bare, sterile room, stripped naked, photographed, given a number, put in a shower and scrubbed down for lice, given a pair of soiled, worn underwear, and deposited in a crowded dormitory with forty other men where the loudspeakers ground, the lights burned, and the urinals smelled all night long.”

“While despairing my fate,” Colson said, “I heard an announcement that prisoners could attend services in an auditorium. The country preacher [Bloe] was so overflowing with Christ’s love and the Holy Spirit that tears rolled down his cheeks. They began to roll down mine as I felt that night a tremendous surge of strength and the thrill of Christ’s presence.”

Back in his sleeping quarters, Colson was “drawn to the radiance” of Paul Kramer, a 27-year-old Viet Nam Marine war hero, serving time for the sale of hard narcotics. “I found that he, too, had asked Christ into his life.” The former Presidential counsel and the convicted pusher formed a prayer team that night and began looking for other believers.

A week later they met a man in “terrible trouble.” His wife was ill and broke with five children to support. Colson, the ex-Marine, and several others knelt with the man on the cold tile floor in a dingy little room and prayed for his release. The next day he was paroled to care for his family.

After that, the prayer group in the room grew rapidly. “They didn’t know what we did in there each night,” said Colson, “but whatever was going on they wanted it. As men’s lives were changed, I discovered the same Christian fellowship at the bottom of society that I had known at high levels of government.” (Colson was converted in August, 1973, shortly before Watergate began unraveling, then became active in Christian government circles.)

The men in Colson’s prison fellowship carried Bibles and prayed over meals in the mess hall. “Whenever we would sit at a table,” Colson noted, “men around us would fall silent, stop eating and talking, and bow their heads with us. We could feel the Holy Spirit working.”

Some of his prison mates who have since left prison are in full-time lay ministry and one is in Bible college.

Colson said that since being released he has been “talking with senators and congressmen, officials at the Justice Department, and others in the Washington fellowship about a vision of encouraging Christian fellowships in prison.” He told the Baptist pastors, who endorsed his talk with hearty amens, that the head of federal prisons had given approval for selected Christian prisoners to attend a Christian retreat where they will be taught “basic discipleship and then sent back to be witnesses for Jesus Christ.”

Baptist Bill Powell: Inerrancy The Issue

The Southern Baptist Convention’s most controversial preacher wouldn’t be recognized by most convention messengers if they saw him: a vocal, feisty, former denominational worker who has something of the build, profile, and tenacity of George Wallace. William A. “Bill” Powell also carries a bit of Wallace’s appeal: the image of a little man bucking a big establishment with simple-sounding but hard-to-answer questions. And, as Democratic party leaders may be doing with Wallace, some Southern Baptist leaders may be ignoring at their peril the questions Powell has raised: (1) Do most Southern Baptists interpret the 1963 SBC Baptist Faith and Message statement on biblical inerrancy (see preceding story) to mean that the Bible itself, in its original form, is truth without any mixture of error? (Powell says they do.) (2) If so, should SBC agencies employ persons, notably teachers and writers, who hold that the Bible contains a mixture of truth and error?

Powell, 50, is editor of the Southern Baptist Journal, the official organ of the independent Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship (BFMF). The BFMF was organized by a group of SBC pastors and laymen in March, 1973, at the First Baptist Church, Atlanta, because of their “deep concern” over “the inroads that liberalism is beginning to make within our great denomination.”

In the first Journal issue Powell insisted that the BFMF was in the “middle” of the Southern Baptist doctrinal “stream,” and would “shun relationships” with schismatics. Through the Journal, BFMF members would “magnify the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God, as well as mission and evangelism.”

Powell’s track record is that of an SBC loyalist: New Orleans Seminary graduate, SBC pastor for over ten years, superintendent of missions for the Chicago Southern Baptist Association for four years (during which the association grew from eleven to fifty-five congregations), and eleven years with the SBC Home Mission Board, where he pioneered and developed new procedures for telephone and bus evangelism. In his last three years with the HMB he held bus ministry conferences throughout the nation (flying his own plane) and established himself as a sort of “Mr. Bus Ministry” among Baptists and other evangelicals. In all this, he was of no controversy.

When publication of the BFMF journal was announced, that changed quickly. The first press release brought a shower of brickbats and roses. Critics charged that the use of “Southern Baptist in its name indicated a lack of integrity; Powell and the BFMF were parading under false pretenses. John E. Roberts, editor of the “official” South Carolina Baptist Courier, said the BFMF publication posed a “dangerous threat” to the SBC for two reasons: (1) It presumed to be the “only journal among us willing and able to tell the truth about Baptists”; (2) “it would censure any who do not conform to the Fellowship’s views on theology and orthodoxy.” James Cole, editor of the Louisiana Baptist Message, lamented “how sad it is to watch an individual or a group … develop a messianic complex.”

The roses came mostly from pastors of small to medium-sized churches. Several said they had planned to leave the convention; now they would stay and await the developments. A former denominational worker in Indiana called the BFMF and the Journal “the only hopes Southern Baptists have from the human standpoint.”

While disavowing “Gestapo tactics,” Powell vowed to “expose” any agency employee “raising doubts about the inerrancy of the Bible. “Southern Baptists,” he said, “have every right to know the doctrines of the teachers and writers they support. Every time we can get a quotation we can document, we’re going to name them, the agency, and how much money they get from the Cooperative Program to pay this man who is raising the doubts.” This wouldn’t be character assasssination, he insisted.

One of the first “named” was William E. Hull, provost (dean) of the School of Theology at Louisville’s Southern Baptist Seminary. After reprinting a Hull article entitled “Shall We Call the Bible Infallible?,” Powell challenged the professor to present his views on Scripture before the first nationally sponsored BFMF activity. At the conclusion of Hull’s address, Powell asked him to give straight forward answers to nine questions (such as: “Was Adam the first man?” “Did some fish swallow Jonah?” “How can the average Christian determine what parts of the Bible are true and what parts are error?”). Hull replied in part, “When the Bible presents something as history, I will believe it as history. When the Bible presents something in symbolic language I will accept it as symbolic literature and believe the truth to which it speaks.” Powell, calling Hull’s answer unsatisfactory, pecked away at him in succeeding issues of the Journal.

When Hull accepted a call to the First Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana, shortly before the Miami convention, suspicions abounded that the controversy had influenced him to change jobs. Friends say not. In an interview, Hull, 45, said, “It never crossed my mind. I simply answered the call of God to the pastorate.” Powell retorted that “reliable groups say he resigned under pressure … because of his liberal views about the Bible.” Reacting to this, one of Hull’s state editor friends snorted, “Powell would take credit for the sinking of the Titanic.”

Most “exposures” in the Journal have related to biblical inerrancy. An exception was a “brewery prayer” delivered by Randall Lolley, now president of Southeastern Seminary, at the dedication of the new Schlitz brewery near Winston Salem, North Carolina. Lolley was then pastor of the First Baptist Church of Winston Salem. The prayer, as printed in the Journal, was noticeably ambiguous. Beer can be seen only indirectly in the plea, “Grant to them [the employees] all the resources, wisdom, and skill that shall be demanded of that industry.” Powell devoted several columns to the incident.

The week before the Miami convention Powell called on “friend” Grady Cothen, new head of the Sunday School Board (1,400 employees; $52 million worth of sales in 1974; even its own zip code) to announce Powell’s plans for an “alternative” Southern Baptist Sunday-school curriculum “with a strong commitment to verbal inspiration.” In an interview, Powell conceded that his BFMF directors had voted not to sponsor the curriculum. He envisions its being published under a non-profit board friendly to the BFMF. Scripture Press materials, published by an independent firm in Wheaton, Illinois, would be used after being “baptized, edited, and imprinted.”

Powell called Cothen a “good man” but one “who has inherited some men who don’t share his point of view [on the Bible]. I pray that he can change things, but there’s no instance in history where a denominational publishing agency has gone as far as ours and reverted back to the orthodox position. If ours does, we’ll thank God.”

At Miami, Powell was apparently having trouble rounding up all the board members he wanted for the new publishing venture. Convention president Jaroy Weber was “surprised” to learn of the intended alternative curriculum. “Our churches have the freedom to use any literature they want,” he said in an interview. “But we already have the finest literature in the world and the freedom to correct it when necessary.”

How much influence Powell and the BFMF have in the SBC is hard to gauge. Weber, whose first-term SBC presidency was promoted by the BFMF, will “not say anything critical against them. They are friends of mine.” Adrian Rogers, the BFMF director who was elected president of the SBC pastor’s conference this year, said, “Nothing would make me happier than for the BFMF to work itself out of a job.” (Rogers’s Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis will be the temporary home for the independent Mid-America Seminary when the “alternative” school stressing verbal inspiration of Scripture moves to Memphis this fall.)

Some others who hold to the BFMF’s views on inerrancy tend to agree with a Texas pastor (not W. A. Criswell) who said, “I’m a verbal inspirationist from the word go. I deplore liberal trends. But I have reservations about [the BFMF’s] spirit and tactics.”

LaVerne Butler, 49, the new chairman of the BFMF’s board of directors, said in a Miami interview that the group would continue the fight. (Butler is pastor of the 3,900-member Ninth and O Baptist Church in Louisville, which has led Kentucky Baptists in baptisms for the past five years.) But, he warned, “if BFMF ever becomes a rabble-rousing group I will publicly disavow my support.”

The Journal (30,000 circulation, partly paid) currently has a deficit of $23,000, mostly in salaries due Powell and one or two others, according to Powell. “But we were $30,000 in the red last Christmas. We’re doing better.”

Powell has “heard” that he is now an unmentionable for most state papers, although the SBC Baptist Press news service provided a convention release on the BFMF that he called fair. Tongue in cheek, he quipped that “a couple of seminaries have offered me doctor’s degrees if I’ll only go away.” This seems unlikely. “It took seven years for the Christian News to win its first victory over seminary liberals in the Missouri Lutheran synod. We’re only two years old.”

The SBC may be hearing a lot more from Powell and the BFMF.

JAMES C. HEFLEY

Destiny For Downtown Churches

What’s Ahead For Old First Church, by Ezra Earl Jones and Robert Wilson (Harper & Row, 1974, 134 pp., $5.95), and Survival and Mission for the City Church, by Gaylord Noyce (Westminster, 1975, 162 pp., $3.95 pb), are reviewed by A. J. Conyers, doctoral student, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

Led by Dean Kelley’s Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (1972), at least a score of recent titles have examined the mystery of how churches might expect to grow, or even survive, amid the difficulties of this age. Judging by the number of books, this is an important question for most churches, and it is especially so for the city church, where failing business districts, changing populations, and new traffic patterns are assuring that at least some churches will not survive. Which ones will, and how, and why, are the questions taken up in these two new books.

Jones and Wilson deal mainly with those pre-eminent city congregations typified by “Old First Church,” though they apply their study to other churches with a comparable city-wide outreach. Similarly, Noyce’s book concerns those central congregations that have long been the religious and cultural focal points of metropolitan areas. Neither book is marked by unbounded optimism; the authors of both are acutely aware of the great handicaps under which many city churches now labor. Both see a need for change—often drastic change. Both are honest attempts to seek answers, and, in their attempts, they are seriously and similarly flawed.

In What’s Ahead, Ezra Earl Jones of the United Methodists’ Board of Global Ministries and Robert Wilson of Duke University find a number of difficulties converging upon Old First Church. They note the alarming decline in membership for an increasing number of central-city churches, and the consequent frantic efforts to keep the churches alive. The success of these efforts, they conclude, will largely depend upon the willingness of congregations and leaders to be innovative in their ministry.

There are some encouraging exceptions to the general trend among Old First Churches. Jones and Wilson have looked for the things that distinguish these churches from their failing peers in other cities. A winning combination, they say, is a pastor who provides strong leadership (emphasize strong—energetic, inner-directed, success-oriented), and trained lay leadership. Other factors that they see in a successful downtown ministry are: a large potential constituency, accessible location, continuous recruitment, and what the authors call a “created fellowship.”

In much of this discussion, however, something is curiously missing. Perhaps it was scientific restraint that caused the authors to see a strong-willed pastor who is inner-directed rather than one who has a strong sense of direction born of moral earnestness and spiritual depth. The former description could still, sometimes, be more accurate—but one would hardly expect the latter to be missing entirely.

The tendency to reduce the Church to terms that are comfortable in closed-system, secular thought is the greatest weakness of this helpful book. The reader is hard put to find anything distinctive about the Church as an institution, unless he is satisfied with an occasional nod to “Christian beliefs,” with little enlightenment on what these might be.

Following this line of thought, the authors see fellowship in the Church as “consciously created” by skillful leadership. It is the product more of organizational savvy than of any community of condition and purpose. In ministry and outreach the authors emphasize “useful strategies” rather than biblical imperatives.

While Jones and Wilson see diversity as an organizational necessity, Gaylord Noyce of Yale Divinity School comes nearer to making it an essential ideal of the church. His argument in Survival and Mission For the City Church proceeds from this central theme. Scripture, though generously applied, is used more to support the author’s theme than to give it direction.

For Noyce, the key to survival and continued ministry is, first, identifying the various roles that a city church might fill. New Testament “images” of the Church are sufficiently varied, he says, that one can conclude that “ ‘Church’ is no rigid concept.” These biblical concepts, however, have a theological rootage, expressing a “relation between believers and Christ, or between God and the church.…” Noyce feels free to use metaphors of a “sociological rootage.” Admitting the danger of failing to express the distinctive faith of the Church, he says they nevertheless “serve for translating Christian commitments into Main Street action,” and he pictures a church as a “cathedral,” “living room and forum,” “family,” “servant church” or “revolutionary cadre.”

Having thus cut the cord to biblical precedents, he proceeds to offer numerous alternatives for mission in the city. Some suggestions, such as making church buildings available to other community organizations, are admirably practical. Others, such as the promotion of week-day Bible study, are enough to warm the heart of most evangelicals. Still others, such as classes on “Christian Yoga” and experimentation with Eastern cults, are a bit eccentric to say the least. It doesn’t seem to matter to Noyce what form a church takes so long as it offers diversity. The key is to offer something for everyone.

The overall picture is of a church without any definite commitments except to diversity itself. It becomes a medium for unlimited options, governed equally by biblical mandates or currently popular notions. The Church is found to be a headless body without coordination of limbs, or worse, no body at all, only cells of people following no particular purpose except that which “seems right in their own eyes.”

The author’s call to diversity is a very practical concept, even biblically well founded. Yet his failure to begin with biblical foundations leads to a different kind of diversity from, for instance, that taught by Paul. The distinction is not difficult to see. If diversity grows from the authority of God’s Word, there is variety enough, like that of a vast garden of infinite color and form, and yet with a certain divine orderliness and fittingness. Without this “theological rootage,” the diversity becomes little more than the kind found in the litter along the highway, reflecting only the temporary tastes of a throw-away culture. Diversity can be a rich byproduct of Christian commitment; but as an aim in itself, it distorts Christian values and takes on the ruined and eccentric character for which the Church, first of all, is seeking remedy.

Both of these books are only one step from making a vital contribution to one of today’s pressing needs. But as they are, they reflect the common error of allowing temporary needs to govern eternal priorities.

Ins And Outs Of Possession

The Devil’s Bride: Exorcism Past and Present, by Martin Ebon (Harper & Row, 1974, 245 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Gordon Melton, director, Institute for the Study of American Religion, Evanston, Illinois.

After plowing through a number of recent books on exorcism, the demonic, and the phenomena of possession, I was pleased to encounter this one. It rises above the narrow and largely naïve presentations in most of the literature and brings to the issue the insight of a large number of religious and secular disciplines. Ebon discusses biblical exorcism and also exorcism in other cultures and religions. For the Christian he supplies data important in understanding how exorcism fits into Jesus’ total ministry and, by inference, into ours.

Possession and exorcism occur at all periods of history and in a wide variety of cultures. Interestingly enough, most possessions are considered positive occurrences. Some cultures were guided by persons believed to be spirit-possessed, such as the oracle at Delphi and the shaman. In biblical language, the Spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon Saul and he prophesied (1 Sam. 10:6). In the New Testament the disciples were baptized with the Holy Spirit, which resulted in the manifestation of the gifted (1 Cor. 12:1–11; Acts 10:44–47) and fruitful (Gal. 5:22; James 3:1–18) life.

Possession of the kind that needs exorcism is also ubiquitous. The shaman is an exorcist. But Jesus, Ebon points out, rose above most exorcists. He was patient and understanding and approached the possessed as a person, and not just an occasion to show his power. Jesus did not exorcise everyone, and there is a distinction between the healing and the exorcising ministry (Mark 1:32–34; Matt. 10:1). Paul distinguished the gift of healing from the gift of discerning spirits (1 Cor. 12:4–11).

Obsessed people have certain symptoms according to the accounts in the Gospels. They are irrational, speak obscenities, are sometimes deaf and dumb, show epileptic characteristics, are endowed with great strength, contort and abuse their bodies. No one person has all the symptoms, and some symptoms may be had by those not possessed. More often Jesus used a healing prayer and the laying on of hands with the sick. Possession was just one among many afflictions.

Possession, then, is of two kinds—positive and pathological. The two are often confused, and Jesus himself was accused of being possessed of Beelzebub (a well-known Near Eastern demon, often confused with Satan) while he was engaged in healing by the Spirit of God. Supernormal phenomena are no evidence of God’s Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit-filled life is the only standard of judgment.

Ebon raises a cluster of theological questions. He also informs the reader of the various issues raised for the exorcist by psychology and parapsychology and of a number of possession cases that give hard-core evidence of the supernormal. He discusses how the Church has treated the possessed throughout history. Ebon even hints that the claim to be demon-possessed has become popular in this decade because it relieves the so-called possessed one of responsibility for his or her own behavior.

Finally, for the would-be exorcist (and that includes every pastor who will someday have to deal with a person asking to be exorcised) Ebon has a helpful chapter on medieval exorcism and the requirements placed by the Church on exorcist activity:

Before the priest undertakes an exorcism he ought diligently to inquire in the life of the possessed, into his condition, reputation, health, and other circumstances; and he should consult with wise, prudent, and well-informed persons, rather than those who might be too credulous and inclined to be deceived. Melancholics, lunatics and persons bewitched often declare themselves to be possessed and tormented by the devil; these people, however, are more in need of a doctor then of an exorcist.

The current interest in exorcism has been caused by many cultural factors, such as the hunger for the supernatural in a secularized world and church. There is also little doubt, however, that a major contributing factor is the widespread circulation of a number of books that extol the power of Satan and strongly suggest that body ailments and emotional needs and states are sure signs of demon possession. Ebon is an excellent antidote to such naïveté.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Christianity on Trial, by Colin Chapman (Tyndale, 594 pp., $7.95 pb). This is a masterpiece of popular apologetics. The most basic questions about Christianity, the universe, and man’s existence are posed. Each major philosophy or religious system of today responds in turn, with Christianity getting both the first and the last word on each question. The reader serves as the jury.

A Religious Guide to Europe, by Daniel Madden (Macmillan, 529 pp., $9.95). If you are planning a trip to Europe this book could help you visit many inspiring spots that you might otherwise miss. Describes briefly (sometimes too briefly) monuments, shrines, monasteries, cathedrals, and museums in Austria, Belgium, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scandinavia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey.

Five Sermons and a Tract, by Luther Lee (Holrad [5104 N. Christiana, Chicago, Ill 60625], 135 pp., $3 pb). Lee (1800–1889) was one of the early leaders of the Wesleyan Methodists. This collection can, in the words of the edtior, Donald Dayton, “remind present-day Wesleyans of their heritage of Christian concern for the oppressed” and “contribute to the current resurgence of social witness among biblically oriented people.” Opposition to slavery and the sale of liquor and support for the ordination of women are among the topics.

An Exegetical and Practical Commentary on Acts, by H. Leo Eddleman (Books of Life [Box 1647, Dallas, Tex. 75221], 410 pp., $6.95 pb). A helpful, verse-by-verse commentary, full of suggestions for preachers. By the former president of New Orleans Baptist Seminary.

The Ethics of Fetal Research, by Paul Ramsey (Yale, 104 pp., $2.95 pb). As objectively as possible Ramsey relates what is happening in this area of research and then raises some thought-provoking questions about the validity of it. He offers no answers, but his questions lean strongly toward taking moral implications into account.

Your Faith Can Heal You, by Norvel Hayes (Manna Christian Outreach [Greensburg, Pa. 15601], 80 pp., $1 pb), How to Pray For Healing, by Mary Wenhe (Revell, 96 pp., $1.50 pb), Healing: Prayer or Pills?, by Jonathan Yoder (Herald, 56 pp., 95^ pb), and Healing, by William Nolen (Random, 309 pp., $8.95). The gamut of views on healing is represented here. Hayes maintains that to settle for less than healing is to settle for less than God’s will. Many of his statements are not substantiated. Wenhe discusses many attitudes that should be in evidence when one prays for healing such as humility, unselfishness, obedience, and joy. The last two books, both by doctors, arrive at different conclusions but maintain a high view of the role of medicine. Yoder justifies God’s use of medicine as a means to healing. Nolen sought for two years for a valid faith healer and concludes that there is no such person. He does sympathetically speculate on why people turn from the physician to the healer.

Thinking About God, by John Macquarrie (Harper & Row, 238 pp., $8.95). Advanced students of contemporary theology will want to see what the divinity professor at Oxford has to say. Many of the chapters grew out of journal articles. Basic concerns are the method of theologizing, theism, and interaction with various other theologies (hope, process, Heidegger, Bultmann, and others).

UFOs Explained, by Philip Klass (Random, 369 pp., $8.95). Some Christians are troubled by the possibility of extraterrestrial beings probing earth; others use the accounts to fit into biblical description and prediction. UFO religious cults have emerged. Anyone interested in the subject should read this book. Klass is to be commended for tackling the “best” claims for UFO visits instead of just the obvious hoaxes.

You Mean the Bible Teaches That …, by Charles Ryrie (Moody, 127 pp., $1.95 pb). Several of the most pressing social controversies such as divorce, women’s lib, and civil disobedience are dealt with from a scriptural perspective. Concise and in some cases controversial interpretations but worth the reading.

Just Mahalia, Baby, by Laurraine Goreau (Word, 610 pp., $12.95). The author chronicles Mahalia Jackson’s pilgrimage from the slums of New Orleans to her success as the queen of gospel singers. It’s all there: Mahalia’s conversion, baptism, rejection of the blues, romantic problems, professional difficulties. However, the author’s choppy, arty style makes it difficult to get. What this book needed more than anything was a good editor. Mahalia deserves better.

Now That I’m a Christian, by Chuck Miller (Regal, 76 pp., $1.95 pb). Using a step-by-step approach to Christian growth, this study guide includes chapters on the nature of God, a Christian’s self-image, and biblical priorities. The manual’s graphics and design are geared toward the junior and senior high level and stress the importance of individual study as well as group sharing. Perforated sheets allow the user to make a permanent notebook. Recommended for the new Christian.

How To Communicate

Christianity Confronts Culture: A Strategy For Cross-Cultural Evangelism, by Marvin K. Mayers (Zondervan, 1974, 384 pp., $5.95 pb), is reviewed by Harvie M. Conn, associate professor of missions and apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Especially because of its strengths in the area of applied skills, this book by the ex-head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Wheaton College is welcome. Since he deals not so much with “strategy” as with skills, not so much with “evangelism” as with “communication,” Mayers’s title and especially his subtitle are somewhat misleading. The reader who expects a guidebook in the planning of change will be disappointed. That is not the intent of the hook. But the reader who comes looking for suggestions in the application not merely of anthropology (model three of four around which the book revolves) but also of social psychology, psychology, and education will find much stimulating reading and exercise.

This practical focus of the book shines especially in the group activities suggested at the end of each chapter and in the expansive use of case studies made throughout and gathered in eighty-two pages at the conclusion of the volume. Sometimes with debriefing questions, sometimes not, the case studies are especially effective in moving the user of the volume from theory to concretization. There are ample and exciting suggestions for the teacher in role-playing, games, and simulations. Guidelines are given for the use of these materials. Supplementary reading in Weeks, Folkes, et al, ed., Casebook in Church and Society (Abingdon, 1974), would be helpful for the user.

The one place where I would like to see amplification and revision is in the opening chapter, “Exploring the Subject of Change.” Here are raised the theoretical questions of the nature of mission and the role of the behavioral sciences, in particular, anthropology. One would expect a full biblical-theological treatment of the areas, a Christian approach to current scientific theory that would provide a framework for the materials that follow. Here one may be disappointed. The functionalist structuralism of Malinowski and others seems presupposed without even a bibliographical clue to the challenges they face from such scholars as I. C. Jarvie (The Revolution in Anthropology) and Robert D. Baird (Category Formation and the History of Religions) Mayers points “in part” (p. 26) to the value of conceptual models like those of Claude Levi-Strauss without indicating the Hegelian concept of dialectic on which Levi-Strauss, for example, builds his anthropological methodology of binary oppositions. I am not advocating a move from Malinowski to Jarvie. I am simply pointing out the need here for more theoretical structuring, molded by biblical directive, than I found.

This weakness of Christian theoretic at the foundational level may explain why Mayers sees James “not … as a theologian at all, but rather, as a behavioral scientist!” So Jesus, Paul, and James share “the behavioral science approach to life.” And “the Bible record … becomes a guidebook by specifying various historical settings or situations in which man needed to approach the lived experience cautiously.” This is to look for more in the Bible than it is, the inerrant Word of God whose purpose is the declaration of the history of redemption in Christ. The behavioral-science approach comes close to usurping the redemptive-history “approach.”

Minor questions arise also. Is it theologically and historically justified to say that “one of the pitfalls of reformed theology is that the individual is made to feel worthless before God”? Is the converted sinner “something enriching God”? Is it wise pedagogical practice to encourage the playing of a simulation game like “Instant Rejection,” in which one is to select a person as the object of rejection and “then … proceed to work with all the tools at your disposal to reject that person and communicate the message of rejection to him”?

Despite these strictures, I welcome the appearance of what will be a useful tool for missionaries on both sides of the ocean.

—New Periodicals—

The split in Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, caused the cessation of the theological journal edited by its faculty. Now there is a mostly new faculty, and the quarterly Concordia Journal made its appearance in January, 1975. All theological and Bible-college libraries should subscribe, and many individuals will want to do so also. (801 De Mun Ave., St. Louis, Mo. 63105; $5/year.)

The Journal of Christian Reconstruction is to be published twice a year with the intention of reaching intelligent laymen with orthodox Christianity of a rather conservative, Calvinistic nature. Many of the writers are graduates of Westminster Seminary. The first issue featured several articles on Satanism; the second defended six-day creationism. (Box 368, Woodland Hills, Calif. 91364; $6/year.)

Thirty years ago Kenneth Scott Latourette completed his seven-volume magnum opus, “A History of the Expansion of Christianity.” His concluding chapter was a summing up of all he had written about the spread of the Christian faith during the previous two thousand years. His comments help us to see the future from the perspective of the greatest historian of missions.

In Christianity was a vigour which impelled some of its choicest and most understanding exponents to go forth as missionaries and proclaim their faith by word and deed.… The overwhelming majority of missionaries were from the minority who had committed themselves fully to Christ.

Christianity did not always expand. It failed to take advantage of what appeared to be some of its greatest opportunities. It was clear that the nature of the faith did not ensure the persistence of Christianity among peoples who had once known it. It seemed also borne out by experience that open persecution was seldom if ever solely accountable for the elimination of the faith. Nor were the attacks of a scepticism which appealed to reason much if any more successful. The most dangerous foes were more subtle—the social or political prestige of a rival religion, slow attrition by weaning away the rising generations, a secularism which held that the most desirable goods of life were not those most esteemed by Christianity but were to be obtained in other ways than through that faith, and movements of population which took millions from environments in which the outward observances of the Church were a normal part of the social conventions.

In the past hundred and fifty years Christianity has had its greatest geographic extension and its widest influence upon mankind. Throughout its history it has gone forward by major pulsations. Each advance has carried it further than the one before. Of the alternating recessions, each has been briefer and less marked than the one which preceded it.…

Is there warrant in history for confidence in the dogma of progress, so fondly cherished by man in the nineteenth century?… It may well be that in the course of the centuries Christianity will become the professed faith of all mankind. If this comes, presumably it will be only after a vast reach of time.… Yet two facts forbid the confident expectation that eventually, in the slow processes of history, all men on the planet will be brought into full conformity to the Christian pattern. One is in the very essence of that pattern. It is forever beckoning man on and appealing to him as both a duty placed on him by his nature and as a hope, yet it is unattainable within time.… Moreover, the historical record reveals the fact that in lands longest under strong Christian influence not only has striking advance been registered towards Christian ideal, but also some of the chronic sins of mankind have swelled to gigantic proportions.… A Christian conviction is not surprised by these phenomena. It expects evil and good to go on together throughout the span with which historians concern themselves and it maintains that sooner or later the historical process will be terminated by the act of God.… The Christian ideal and the historical process are each such that perfection, as the Christian judges perfection, will not be attained within time.

It is of the very core of the Christian’s faith that the God and Father of his Lord, Jesus Christ, will not be defeated. The Christian holds the resurrection of Jesus also to be fact.… The Christian is certain that Jesus is central in human history. His confident faith is that in those who give themselves to God as they see him in Jesus there is working the power of endless life and that from them God will build, to be consummated beyond time, the heavenly city, the ideal community, in which will be realized fully the possibilities of the children of God. The eternal life and this ideal community are, in the last analysis, not the fruit of men’s striving, but the gift of a love which man does not deserve, and are from the quite unmerited grace of God.

From Chapter XVIII of A History of the Expansion of Christianity: Volume VII, Advance Through Storm. Copyright 1945 by Harper and Brothers; used by permission of Harper & Row. The set is now available in a kivar edition from Zondervan.

In the creation account nobody speaks but God until Adam is enlisted to name the lower animals that yield him no partner and then recognizes Eve as his divinely fashioned helpmeet. When Eve appears in silent splendor, escorted by the Lord, she elicits Adam’s exclamation of awe and gratitude: “Now this, at last—bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh!—this shall be called woman, for from man was this taken” (Gen. 2:23, NEB).

God did not bless his completed new work until he had created both male and female in his own image, declaring his creation now to be “very good” (Gen. 1:26–31). Adam’s need for a helpmeet for earthly life was one that he himself obviously could not meet; only God could provide a counterpart essentially similar yet necessarily different. Not of dust nor of the lower animals but of Adam’s own rib God forms the helpmeet; in her essential being she is part of Adam. Man’s role in the creation of Eve is one of patient passivity; Adam’s deep sleep emphasizes that God alone creatively established human bisexuality in unity.

When first recorded as speaking wholly on her own, in costly conversation with Satan, Eve yields to temptation and implicates Adam (Gen. 3:6). It is the man whom God nevertheless singles out and addresses: “He called to the man … ‘where are you?’ ” (v. 9). Much as Adam blames “the woman you gave me for a companion” (v. 13), mankind is repeatedly in Scripture said to have sinned and fallen in Adam as divinely designated head of Eve and of the race (cf. Rom. 5:12 ff.).

Whatever other distinctions enter into man and woman relations, these facts at least are basic: (1) God determines man’s and woman’s existence and station; (2) woman made from man (1 Cor. 11:8) is not inferior to him but indispensable to the completeness of humanity and therefore stands no less than man at the climax of creation; (3) woman presented by God to man is in her silent dignity spontaneously recognized by Adam as his divinely formed helpmeet; (4) marriage is a creation analogue of a redemption-mystery involving Yahweh and Israel and Christ and the Church (cf. Eph. 5:30–33); (5) in the garden Adam and Eve had nothing to hide; they were wholly open with each other, spiritually, morally, and physically; they were naked but not ashamed.

Today man and woman have a great deal to hide. The battle between the sexes began with the Fall, which shattered the divinely intended role of Adam to be God’s viceregent in the home, and that of Eve to live in marital obedience. Instead of a God-oriented family distinguished by a spiritually receptive and responsible Adam and a deferentially observant Eve who acknowledges that in God’s creation-order man is first, and who by her devout presence “wins over, without a word” (cf. 1 Pet. 3:1), we witness a revolt by both man and woman against this creation-order and the consequent forfeiture of its redemption-restoration.

The Bible nowhere teaches male superiority and supremacy and female inferiority and servility. What the Bible pattern establishes instead is the indispensability under God of man and woman to each other in the context not only of society but also of the home as its basic unit. God’s superiority is the fundamental emphasis (cf. 1 Cor. 11:11, 12, “God is the source of all”). Paul expounds this divinely intended order in a Corinthian milieu where, contrary to the practice in Christian churches, a strong effort was under way to introduce a confused equality.

Equality in Christ, Paul insists, destroys neither apostolic authority in the Christian community as a determination of the crucified and risen Lord, nor the order that God intends between man and woman in the home and in the church. Identical yet different by creation, man and woman have by nature different physical and psychological needs and even in the realm of redemption are intended for special roles, symbolized in the early churches by the distinction between uncovered and covered heads. Jews and Romans covered their heads when worshiping, although Greeks did not; when Paul uncovers the heads of males he does so for a biblical and not a Greek principle. At stake is the acceptance or rejection of a divinely established order; to annul this order leads finally to rejection not only of apostolic authority but also of divine authority. The man has God in authority over him as responsible head in the home and attests this by the uncovered head in worship; the woman on the other hand covers her head and thus acknowledges that she is not head but that her answerability to God involves also a responsible earthly head equally accountable to God.

This does not mean that woman has a double intermediary between herself and God. For, as Karl Barth commented, both “the superordination of man” and “the subordination of woman” are “grounded and explained in Christ” (Church Dogmatics, II/2, p. 311). Barth emphasizes that Jesus Christ is at once “the sum of all superordination” whose divine authority overarches man’s, and “the sum of all humility before God” whose humbling in human nature far surpasses woman’s. The woman’s proper subordination to the authority of man under God is sanctified by the subordination of Jesus Christ to God in which he stands in the place of both man and woman.

None of this in the least justifies discrimination against women in areas such as legal rights, work opportunities, and wages, or the exploitation of women as sex objects. The New Testament does not defer to the ancient pagan and in some cases also Jewish concept that wives have no rights. Submission of wives to their husbands is to be “fitting in the Lord” (Col. 3:18); any implication of inferiority is ruled out by the parallel injunction that husbands love their wives (v. 19), indeed, “as their own selves” and as Christ loves the Church (Eph. 5:25–33).

Discussion of women’s liberation is doubly distorted today from the Christian standpoint because the debate occurs in a context in which modern man—even the supposedly Christian man—fails woefully to reflect what responsible authority in the home implies. Even Christian women’s libbers therefore reflect a reaction to an inordinate male liberation that flees answerability to God for man’s role and responsibilities. Male criticism of women’s lib is voiced not from the apostolic standpoint of the responsible yet free Christian man, but rather from the murky perspective of one who sees woman more as competitor than as companion. Instead of the responsibly authoritative head and the solicitous helpmeet, we then have the garrulous male seeking to silence the woman. While he would subject woman to his domination, he neglects God’s dominion over his own life.

If it is no little thing for woman to take the place God has assigned her in the home and in the church, it is no little thing either for man to take his God-intended place. The Bible provides no excuse for overrated man or devalued woman.

Two bluejeaned girls sat beside their huge back packs stormily discussing their philosophy of life. Words flowed out on clouds of cigarette smoke, twisting and turning in the minds of the listeners. “The whole trouble with the world is men. Men are all wicked. Men have caused all the problems that exist. Men are horrible. Women should never love men. Women should love only women. Women should love women physically and in every other way. A relationship between two women is what can be really beautiful. If you had only women loving women, the world would be all right.”

This “solution” would indeed change the world. Empty of a new generation, empty of both boy and girl babies, civilization could grind to a halt. Exaggerated? An extreme position, yes, but one actually held by radical lesbian women’s lib advocates who are twisting and filling with fog the minds of other young women. First the exaggerated emphasis on equality of men and women, then shifting ideas turning to unisex, then superiority of women, and suddenly a cry for the pushing aside of men altogether. A maze of twisting turning paths leads to this barren solution.

Isaiah 5:20 and 21 give warning: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” This is a description of reversing truth with falsehood, of putting an individual human being’s wisdom in the center, of accepting the darkness of Satan’s twisting lies in the place of the light of God’s truth. Eve and then Adam fell for this twisting of God’s truth. The results of putting human wisdom against God’s truth are devastating at every level.

Isaiah goes on to picture vividly the result of living on the basis of calling evil good, and good evil, of putting darkness for light and light for darkness, of putting bitterness for sweetness and sweetness for bitterness. “Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. 5:24). The picture is of plants whose roots have rotted so that the plant withers, and of flowers that dry up, and then of a fire that finishes off the fruitfulness by destroying even the stubble. A desert remains.

Building a “new world” on a twisted base where all God’s laws are turned backwards will result in only barrenness of every sort. The very things being screamed for the loudest will die like plants with no roots. “Be not wise in your own conceits” we are told in Romans 12:13.

But, we may say, “I am not twisted in my views on men and women. I do believe God has made the two to be one in an amazing way physically, spiritually and intellectually, with the wonder of fruitfulness and new life as a result. I have no barren reform in mind for the world’s ills. I’m fitting into the real world. I have no strange or twisted changes to set forth. I do realize that men and women are different, and that God created the differences in the first place, so that trying to wipe them out is starting out in the wrong direction.”

Well, what is the danger of putting bitter for sweet and calling evil good in spiritual areas? There are subtle areas where people are being twisted and turned with even more dangerous “propaganda” than that concerning male-female relationships. Satan never stops his attempts to put salt in the sugar bowl and sugar in the salt shaker. If he can succeed in making people feel that they have some exciting and “sweet” relationship that feels “spiritual” without involving Jesus Christ, then he continues to blow a stream of confusing “smoke” into people’s “eyes of understanding.”

This is an age of confusion, and there is a plan behind the confusion. Satan’s drive is to wipe out truth with scribbles of lies reversing everything. Paul warns in Second Timothy 3:5 and 7 about “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away … ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of truth.” We are not with a “form of godliness” that is a false form of the true godliness. The only true godliness comes through being one with the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. There is no source of being filled with the Holy Spirit other than oneness with Christ through accepting his death on the cross as the death of the Second Person of the Trinity in our place. There is no other name, no other person, by whom we can be saved, nor by whom we can have spiritual life and true spiritual fruit. We are to be a part of his body, as Ephesians 5:30 tells us.

People who are “ever learning” yet “never able to come to the knowledge of truth” may be those who study and study and continue to get further from the truth of the Bible all the time, or those who search for spiritual feeling and try out various possibilities, all the while getting further and further from the “true Bridegroom” and into more and more barren spiritual relationships.

If we are to have the true fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; if we are to know something of the power of the Spirit as we read the Word of God and pray; then we must be in the place of the faithful bride. There cannot be a mixture of the bitter in the sweet water of life. Light does not mix with darkness. There is danger surrounding us spiritually, even as there is danger surrounding persons who discuss the possible ways of reforming evil by setting forth reversed values.

Who is included in the marvelous wedding preparations? “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” What a wonderful moment that will be! We are a part of that “bride,” and we have “now” to make ourselves ready, not by getting on to the bandwagon of some false reform that pays more attention to the “bride” than to the Bridegroom, or that aims more at providing spiritual excitement or a kind of peace for the bride than at pleasing the Bridegroom now. “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 9:9).

We must not get mixed up in the wrong “reform group” or we will not only sadden the Bridegroom but will also be specifically neglecting a tremendous task he has given us—and only us—to do, with the help of the Spirit.