Bible Book of the Month: The Epistle of James

The range of thought in this epistle of James, some have said, is so limited that we are kept on rather a pedestrian level. Even if that were a strictly accurate estimate of the Epistle, let us remember that our flight to the heights from which far-reaching vistas of truth open out before us is a preparation for returning to the ordinary walk of life on its more prosaic levels. The supreme test of the quality of our religion is how we react to the long monotonous trudge on hard and stony roads, and not in the moments of ecstatic communion or in moments of specially strenuous activity (Isa. 40:31). We ought to be grateful to find in the Canon of Holy Scripture a book as severely practical as this Epistle, a book that contains words as sharp and uncompromising as these: “Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves” (1:22); “you believe that God is one, and you are quite right; evil spirits also believe, and shudder” (2:19, Weymouth).

The great Christian scholar, Origen of Alexandria (circa ca. A.D. 230), is the first Church writer who explicitly quotes this Epistle as Scripture, ascribing it to James, the Lord’s brother. In the Shepherd of Hermas, written about the middle of the second century, we hear fairly clear echoes of the teaching of the Epistle. In an earlier writing, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, written about the year 96, the echoes are much fainter; indeed, the evidence supplied by this writing is of doubtful validity. But, if the external evidence for the Epistle should appear to be rather vague and inconclusive, there seems to be no doubt about the evidence supplied by the Epistle itself. It enables us to reach some conclusions with regard to the authorship that seem to be irrefutable.

Authorship Of James

The writer was a Jew. He speaks of Abraham as “our father” (2:21), he applies to a Christian place of worship the word “synagogue” (2:2), he uses the Jewish word “Gehenna” in 3:6 and a specifically Jewish name for God in 5:4. He was a Jew of Palestine, knowing well its early and latter rains (5:7; cf. Deut. 11:14) and its hot burning wind that withers he grass (1:11). The name of this Jew was James, and the only one of that name mentioned in the New Testament whose claims call for any scrutiny here is James, the Lord’s brother. The disciple of Jesus, James the son of Alphaeus, seems to have been an obscure and undistinguished person; and James, the son of Zebedee, died early as a martyr, in the year 44 (Acts 12).

There are three interesting lines of argument in connection with the internal evidence that students might profitably explore. In my commentary on James in the New International Commentary (published in 1954) I have explored them with a fair degree of fullness. Here I simply mention them.

1. In the vocabulary of the Epistle there are some coincidences of language with the vocabulary of the speech of James at the Jerusalem Council of the year 50 and the letter issued by that Council (Acts 15). There are also two coincidences of language between the vocabulary of the Epistle and some of the words of James recorded in Acts 21:24 and 26. 2. The Epistle is the work of just that type of mind which is typical of James in the New Testament and in Church tradition. 3. The Epistle contains more reminiscences of the teaching of Jesus, and especially of the Sermon on the Mount, than all the other apostolic writings put together. The writer is not quoting from our Gospels; he must have stood very close to Jesus, to be able to reproduce so much of His teaching in a way that is strikingly independent.

If these three features of the Epistle are studied carefully and judicially, they will be seen to provide strong evidence that points in the direction of James, the Lord’s brother, as the author. The evidence is cumulative in both force and volume. This James is the only James in the early Church who was so well known that the simple designation, “James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ” was sufficient to identify him at once to his readers. The Epistle has nothing whatever to say about the controversy that led to the holding of the Jerusalem Council of the year 50, the controversy about the place of Gentiles in the Church. Some have argued that this shows that it was written long after that Council, when that controversy had fallen into the category of “old unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago.” A far more reasonable theory, and one to which the majority of scholars adhere, is that it was written before the Council. Various hints here and there in the Epistle also point to an early date. Even so radical a scholar as Dr. A. T. Cadoux, in his little book on The Thought of St. James (published in 1944) advocates the early date, mentioning such arguments in support of it as the simplicity of the greeting, the use of “synagogue” for a Christian place of worship and the reference to “elders” only as officials of the Church (5:14).

Alleged Weaknesses

Some have looked with suspicion on the Epistle because of what they have described as its lack of theological teaching. We can, however, find a good deal of what has been called “compressed theology,” in such phrases as “Of His own will He brought us forth” (1:18), “the implanted Word” (1:21), “heirs of the Kingdom” (2:5) and the like. A remarkable feature of the Epistle that deserves careful study is the witness that it bears unobtrusively, at more than one point, to the Deity of Christ. In its very first words James stands as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is one with God. Jesus is the Judge who stands before the door (5:9), and His Name is the resource of the Christian in sickness and sin (5:13–15). As Bengel, Warfield, J. B. Mayor and even so advanced a scholar as James Moffatt have held, in the first verse of the second chapter Jesus is referred to as “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glory.” As Moffatt says, the Christian religion is there described as belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the divine Glory, which is a striking term for Christ as the full manifestation of the divine presence and majesty. Severely practical the Epistle may be, but, as I have said in my commentary, the practical exhortations “have their roots in deeper things, in the vital truths of Christian theology, though these roots, as is natural, are, to a large extent, hidden from the eye.”

Others have criticized this Epistle because of what they regard as its lack of evangelical fervor. Luther had doubts about it because he thought that it contradicted the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. This is a very serious misunderstanding. The plain truth is that Paul and James deal with entirely different subjects. Paul in his teaching on justification is combating Jewish legalism; James is making his protest in the interests of morality, against Antinomianism. We may put it like this: they are not antagonists facing each other with crossed swords; they stand back to back, confronting different foes of the Gospel.

Dr. John Duncan of the New College, Edinburgh, once said that Antinomianism is the only heresy. That may be going too far, but it most certainly is a foul and pestilential heresy. There are some ardent evanglicals who need to have their souls strengthened and braced up by the searching, ethical teaching of an Epistle like this.

Addressed To Dispersion

James, revealed in the Book of Acts as a person of commanding power and influence in the Jerusalem Church, writes here to some Christian Jews of the Dispersion (1:1). They had experienced the miracle of regeneration (1:18). James speaks of the worthy Name which had been invoked upon them in baptism (2:7). He exhorts them to wait in patience for the coming of the Lord (5:7), looking for the crown promised to those who love Him (1:12). The Book of Acts describes a migration of Christian Jews from Jerusalem, which followed the death of Stephen (Acts 11:19). Thus, there could quite easily have been Christian Jews of the Dispersion to whom, at an early date, this letter was written.

Analysis

It has been said that James seems “to have poured out what was uppermost in his thoughts, or closest to his heart, without waiting to connect his matter, or to throw bridges across from subject to subject.” This tentative analysis may be suggested: (1) greeting (1:1), (2) trials from without (1:1–12), (3) trials from within (1:13–18), (4) hearing and doing (1:19–27), (5) respect of persons (2:1–13), (6) relation of faith and works (2:14), (7) sins of the tongue (3:1–12), (8) the false and the true wisdom (3:13–18), (9) mischief caused by strife and evil speaking (4:1–12), (10) the uncertainty and brevity of human life, leading us to humble dependence on the will of God (4:13–17), (11) the terrible doom that the rich oppressors of the Church are to meet (5:1–6), (12) final exhortation to the Church to stand firm and to be forebearing in view of the coming of the Lord (5:7–12), (13) various activities of the Church—prayer, praise, visitation of the sick, confession of sins, and the restoration of backsliders (5:13–20).

Tools For Exposition

It will be difficult to find a better Commentary than the one by that prince of biblical exegetes, Dr. Alfred Plummer, which was issued as one of the Expositor’s Bible series. For close study of the Greek text, a study so minute as sometimes to be in danger of becoming wearisome, those who know Greek will be well advised to have beside them, if at all possible, J. B. Mayor’s Commentary (Macmillan). J. B. Hort’s notes extend only as far as 4:7; they exhibit so often the keen exegetical insight of that great Anglican scholar that we profoundly regret that he was unable to complete his work. Help can be obtained from Ropes’ Commentary (I.C.C.), Moffatt (Moffatt Commentary), Arthur Carr’s little textbook (Cambridge Greek Testament), and, of course, from John Calvin.

Is Modernity Worth Sparing?

The question so little raised, but so pressingly urgent, is whether Western culture is any longer worth sparing? After all, if salvation (the term is theological) is ethical, by what right do men expect a halo permanently to hallow their pagan ways? Today not sin, but rather Christianity is subterranean. The basic Christian dogmas are marginal to the prevailing outlook on life. The ideas by which men shape their social life have become warped and individualized. Art and literature are no longer simply Christian-pagan, but pagan-Christian; the humanistic motif has triumphed and reaches even into the churches. When has paganism dared, as in our decade, to incorporate even Jesus as one of its fleshly themes? When has the music and song of the churches, historically centered in the Psalms, erected so wide a bridge to the world, so that the world itself replies in kind, although carnally, blending the spiritual motif and rock-and-roll with scant sense of incongruity and attracting to religion many who do not take it seriously? Our streets are crammed with pagans, and not even the revival of religion—and an indubitable awakening there is among many sincere Christians—can hide from view this conformity of religion to paganism. Indeed, more worldly-wise adults in the Americas are said to consult newspaper horoscopes than consult the Bible for light on the day’s decision.

Each passing decade now finds the inhabited world in a state of instability and shock worse than the preceding period. Every sweep of the horizon discloses widening crevices. The soulless nations remain as bleak signposts after the landslide of Western civilization into abysmal pagan depths. In civilized Europe in 1945 and 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, more people succumbed to cold and starvation than for many preceding generations or centuries; millions of refugees from bombed cities or hostile governments begged for asylum; fully a third of the people in France and Italy voted for Communist party candidates; the homeless survivors of oppressed continental Jewry fled to Palestine for refuge, while a million Arabs were dispossessed in that dissension-wracked land. The ascendancy of the white race seems nearer its eclipse.

Indeed, the future of human history itself lies in doubt. Henry Steele Commager, in The American Mind (1950), points to the unparalleled “breakdown of personal integrity … looting and destructiveness, … sexual promiscuity” discovered in the second American war, and remarks that the two world wars failed to induce in the American “either a sense of sin or that awareness of evil almost instinctive with most old world peoples … but accentuated his own assurance of power and success. His culture was still predominantly material, his thinking quantitative …” (pp. 432, 410). The old landmarks of Christian culture are vanishing, and some “prophets” are left with no more basis for optimism about the future than a confidence that man is a “tough animal.” National fatigue is spreading, and despair increasingly clouds the face of the man in the street.

The world is less one world than ever, except in its sins. It has less homogeneity; beyond a common veneration of science, a common dread of the atomic bomb, the great unanimities slip away. The Kremlin, depending on the Marx-Lenin philosophy, regards a clash with the Western powers as inevitable. Europe, the home of modern Western civilization, is caught in the tug of war between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. The United Nations itself is frustrated by a lack of unity; any great power bent on war can exercise its veto power, and even small powers have already spurned U.N. verdicts.

The real question before us is not whether Europe and America will be cut to the Soviet pattern, or Russia to the Anglo-Saxon; rather, it is whether the whole world in our day will go down in nihilism. We are face to face not merely with one of the great divides of history, but with the divide of divides in the sphere of human decision.

When C. Virgil Gheorghiu penned The Twenty-fifth Hour, a best-selling French novel, he applied that title deliberately to “The hour when mankind is beyond salvation—when it is too late even for the coming of the Messiah. It is not the last hour, it is one hour past the last hour. It is Western Civilization at this very moment. It is NOW.” Although Arnold Toynbee might write (A Study of History, p. 554), “We may and must pray that a reprieve which God has granted to our society once will not be refused if we ask for it again in a humble spirit and in a contrite heart” (a stupendous if, indeed). Gheorghiu speaks of Western civilization as already being superseded. Only while we can be sure that a man and a culture have not drifted past redemption’s point does any semblance of hope remain. In any event, we are far down the road to final destruction and doom. Our culture is afflicted with moral paralysis, and may never learn to walk again. At least, hope is fast running out that it can recover from its crippling deformities.

Only skilled pilots can maneuver the ship of Western culture any longer through the twilight of midcentury chaos toward even the hope of a sunny dawn. No other post-Christian generation has stood as desperately as ours in need of expert navigational advice. Sprawling mudflats and sloughs extend treacherously on every side, and the sea of life is encumbered with obstacles that faith alone can move.

Indeed, a deeper problem vexes us today: how long before a people set adrift lose their capacity for taking compass bearings? What are the limits of heaven’s tolerance? When does collective shame reach a depth from which there is no route back? When is the cup of iniquity in a given culture full to overflowing? When is “civilization” divinely outlawed, and faced with a death penalty? Dare we any longer look for the spiritual reconstruction of a culture that stinks already? Has it, like Lazarus, perchance already been dead four days, and the Lord refuses now to come near its grave?

The Christian concern to “rescue” the Christian-pagan culture of the West is remarkably strange. Whatever bears the impress “pagan” is marked for judgment, as the early Christians well knew. The apostolic community was aware that “this present evil world” is near death, that the forces of Satan almost everywhere intrude into its life, that in this world of wars and rumors of wars there is no unending peace. They made no goal of rescuing a pagan culture; nor would they have ventured to perpetuate a pagan-Christian, or a Christian-pagan, culture. What God sends to its death in judgment neither prophet nor apostle can resurrect. And the pagan spirit is doomed, no less in A.D. 1956 than in A.D. 1. Indeed, only a Christian-pagan conception of the Church’s task can be committed absolutely to the goal of cultural rescue—for this implies a primarily social conception of the Gospel and a highly optimistic view of society and history as well.

To some, it may seem a needless concession to pessimism to speak of modern culture as headed for doom and as outside the pale of redemption. But to those familiar with the New Testament this perspective cannot but appear realistic. The lively sense of historical end-time produced in the early Christians a quite different expectation from that among most modern Christians, many theologians included, who think the possible extermination of a pagan-Christian civilization on this fair planet an intolerable and insufferable presumption. That is why, to this Christian-pagan way of thinking, committed at all odds to the survival of a Christian-pagan culture, the blessing of the Church is conferred upon Christian-pagan strategy: the United Nations becomes the only real hope for peace, the integration of the races takes priority over the regeneration of the race, and so forth. The church of the hyphen, of the Christian-pagan disposition, made room even in its divinity schools for professors hostile to all supernaturalism, who promoted the organization of the Church while yet they were enemies of the evangel, propagating instead (as the essence of Christianity) the mirage of the social gospel. The twentieth-century church yielded to Communism, with its radical atheism, a role of challenge against the Christian-pagan patterns of our day more dynamic than the Christian-pagan forces themselves retained. Communism ranged against a pagan-Christian culture, in the interest of paganism, displays more zeal than those segments of the Christian camp whose main interest is the perpetuation of a Christian-pagan order. Both have lost the vision of Augustine’s The City of God; one is still enamored of Plato’s Republic, while the other is committed to the Manifesto of Marx and Engels.

For the early Christians, the only hope for the whole world lay in the appearance within it of what Professor F. Van Der Meer refers to as “a new category of men … ‘christanoi’ or ‘christians’ ” (in Atlas of Western Civilization, p. 36). The advancing Christian witness added a new dimension to human personality, one that the Bible depicts in the idiom of regeneration, justification and sanctification. Redemption through Christ altered man’s sensibilities in every sphere of life. The early Christians were not committed, therefore, to the perpetuation of Graeco-Roman culture. They preserved what was compatible with their faith, but they were not primarily concerned with the fate of a civilization which, however religious, was not built on foundations of genuine spirituality. They knew that only supernatural regeneration produces men and women of indomitable faith, unshakable peace, superb morals and neighbor-love. They knew because they had participated in the life of the old culture before their walk with Christ. They did not regard it as a Christian responsibility to aid a dying culture in exploring non-Christian or pagan-Christian avenues of survival. They had a Gospel to preach, and they preached it as to dying men and doomed nations.

The great frontiers before us all now are either nihilism or repentance and faith, for the present soul fatigue must lead, if not to spiritual renewal, then to disillusion and destruction. Once a world was dying in its sins, and Christianity seized the initiative. The safe era of the pax romana served as a framework for the propagation of the Gospel within the empire, and later the Christian witness systematically moved beyond the frontiers of the empire into barbarian lands. When the old culture succumbed, Christianity survived. The fate of the culture was not the fate of Christianity.

Only evangelical Christianity voices the biblical verdict: the modern mind is unsound, and requires renewal; the modern man stands in need of supernatural rebirth. Speculative philosophers still prattle about “maturing” the modern mind, or “shaping” the modern mind, but evangelical theology alone uses the relevant vocabulary: the utter necessity of regenerating the whole man.

The continuation of our very existence depends on the solution to basic problems, which Christianity alone has power to solve. The peoples of the world stand in desperate need of moral and spiritual enlistment, charging daily life with a sense of ultimate responsibility. We need to overcome the feelings of a generation which is not only incredibly ignorant of Christ, but which lives as if the Gospel were untrue. Many hear the Gospel today as something unbelievably novel, much like the throng in the Athenian market place.

The Christian needs to tell forth the fundamental facts of incarnational religion with a vividness to match the hour. He must enter, unintimidated by their modern eclipse, into a mood which grasps the elements of biblical revelation as new discoveries.

He need not fear because he speaks for a minority view. The power of Christianity has never depended on numerical superiority. The fisherman Peter by himself could resist the Hebrew religious leaders; the tent-maker Paul could carry the message of Christ through the far-flung Roman empire; the scholar Augustine in his day could convincingly interpret the debacle of history from the Christian standpoint; Luther could spark the Reformation and Calvin help sustain it; Wesley could turn the tide of secularism in England a century ago, and in our time Billy Graham can carry light to the Gentiles of three continents. So God through his anointed servants in succeeding generations becomes the light of a city, of a country, of a continent.

When the old Roman Empire crumbled, Christianity was scarcely known to the east of Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages, Europe alone (including Britain) was a virile center of Christian faith, transplanted later to America and other colonies. It is highly questionable whether there any longer exists a genuinely Christian nation on the face of the earth. But true followers of Christ are salted over the face of the globe. In Israel there are not many, fewer still in Egypt and Syria, but there are some; interdicted by totalitarian persecution in Red China, by autocratic religion in Colombia; eking out an apprehensive existence in Soviet Russia and satellite lands like Hungary; singing hymns in the jungles of the Cameroons and of the Congo—they remain the light of the world. In much of Southeast Asia the enterprise of “foreign missions,” as Western churches refer to it, seems to be drawing to an end. But the Church itself is in little peril of extinction even there. For dedicated nationals remain united with their living Lord. Indeed, recent events have quickened the cause of evangelism, for national workers now courageously proclaim the apostolic message in centers where the missionary movement itself has lost a biblical witness and vitality.

In his column “Spires of the Spirit” in the Washington Star, the chaplain of the United States Senate, Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, notes that even in the United States only a vigilant minority carries forward the fight for freedom. He recalls the sixteenth-century letter of Henry IV of France to his friend Crillon, who had failed to appear for a crucial battle. With biting scorn, the King wrote: “Go hang yourself, brave Crillon. We fought at Aques and you were not there.” Although applied to the tense modern battle for liberty, the anecdote can also be given a sharper turn. What more shameful verdict may history and eternity pronounce upon today’s Christian minister and the layman than this: “It was an end-time—for your generation and its culture—but you were not there”?

In 1956 no man, least of all a professing Christian, can afford to be neutral. These are days of unmasking, when neutrality discloses only those who desert the faith. Christian compassion leaves no man to his own destiny, for the lack of spiritual decision leads to hell, first on earth and then for eternity. It is not for us to answer the question “after 1956, what?” for God holds the future in His hands, but there is a question for whose answer we may be sure, “what must I do to be saved?” The Philippian jailor asked it centuries ago. The apostolic reply, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, and your household” (Acts 16:31), which wrought emancipation for one imprisoned soul, still has power to free all who are captive to the spirit of paganism. The Gospel in its very unveiling of the living God imparts at once a new hue to man and society, and to nature. It has power still to bind the awakening conscience to Christ and the inspired Scripture. If any word of Christ’s holds out hope to the West it must be found in His last instruction to the first century followers: “Go ye … and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:19 f).

A generation and a century, a civilization and a culture, which advance under alien commands are trooping always on the quagmire of doom. In passionate obedience to the Great Commission the Church fulfills her mission, while, by their response to the Christian confrontation, men and nations seal their destiny. In a time of peril the Church can do no better than to obey those majestic marching orders, rushing to the aid of dying men carrying their misplaced hopes with them.

Fear Of Man Ejected By Fear Of God

In his first inaugural address Franklin D. Roosevelt made the statement that has become a popular and common quotation. He said in part, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” From pulpit and platform this quotation has been hurled to dispel the dark, overhanging clouds of fear—but without effect. Darkling clouds still lower over our civilization.

The fear of Roosevelt’s concern cannot be compared to the new dread that possesses the hearts of people. The fear of 1933 was defined by Roosevelt as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” The present terror is not nameless, nor unreasoning nor unjustified.

Atomic and hydrogenic doom is the name of this fear. Scientists reason that the new destructive weapons are capable of destroying civilization, if not the earth itself. Dread of their use is indeed justified, for previous wars have revealed the demonic character of man.

Actually the new fear has displaced an older fear. Fear of man is superseding fear of God. Millions have shaken off the dread of God only to become enslaved by another anxiety—fear of the future, the fear of man for man. This modern apprehension terrifies as much as did concern of the hereafter implanted by the thought of fire and brimstone. Terror of unrighteous and of sinful man in possession of nuclear weapons has supplanted terror of the righteous and holy God.

In casting off the fear of God man has in reality repudiated that which alone will dispel the fear of man. Isaiah pointedly asked, “who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; and forget-test the Lord thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth?” (Isa. 51:12, 13). If man had not forgotten God, he would not now be living in fear of man.

Dread of man finds its source in distrust of divine power. The creature is thought to possess greater power than the Creator. Reflection on the infinite might of God evidenced in creation and providence generates confidence and peace. God has greater power to preserve than enemies have to destroy.

Only fear of God will cast out fear of man. This is not a terrifying or servile fear of God but a reverential fear. It finds its source in the realization of God’s power and righteousness. Wisdom and true religion are the fruits of reverential fear. It leads to Christ and commitment to His care and providence.

The present generation needs to learn that the only road to real security and confidence is found in the fear of God. Only Almighty God has the power and the love to protect man from man. Commitment to Him makes fear of man unreasonable, for God’s power is unbounded and man’s power limited. It makes terror unjustified, for the Psalmist has declared that those who abide under the wings of God’s protective care shall not be afraid for the terror by night. Only as a nation dwells under the fear of the living God does fear of man become “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”

Only to a God-fearing nation can it be declared in truth, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

A Preacher’s Great Temptation And The Spiritual Antidote

Every minister called upon to stand in the pulpit week after week should read 1 Corinthians 1:17 to 2:5 at frequent intervals.

Paul the great preacher, the divinely instructed theologian, places his finger squarely on the ever recurring temptation to proclaim God’s truth with “enticing words of man’s wisdom.”

To the unregenerate world the preacher is engaged in a foolish business and it cannot be otherwise. Man in his natural state wants a convincing sign or a well reasoned philosophy. To yield to such pressures is an insidious and deadly temptation.

It is not easy to preach a message which is a stumblingblock to some and meaningless jargon to others. Nevertheless that is the preacher’s mission.

But how can it be effective? Does not reason demand that we convince our hearers by the very force of logic and erudition? Take care! Paul found the preaching that has lasting effect is centered in Christ and Him crucified; foolishness to the world but the power of God to those who will believe.

An intellectual concept of the gospel message is vital, but there is also the absolute necessity of a personal relationship with the One Who made that Gospel possible. This experience of the burning heart enables one to rise above the ever-present temptation to please the “itching ears” in any given congregation. It is this recognition of the supernatural origin and effect of the Gospel which alone can compel the minister to preach the message on God’s terms and in God’s way.

- More from Alexander Ross

Theology

Judgment on the Christian West

Charles W. Lowry

In the year of grace and also of infamy, 1956, it is difficult to write in measured terms and with analytical judgment. The words, above all others, that every American needs to hear, are set forth in several verses from Jeremiah 8. From the President down to the mechanic in overalls and the high school boy, we need to meditate on this strange and accusing declaration of the reality of iniquity, of divine displeasure and of shattering judgment.

I harkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his own course, as the horse rusheth into the battle.

Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but may people know not the judgment of the Lord.…

The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them.…

For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

In a special sense, I believe, these somber and accusing words are addressed also to Christians and the Christian church.

Rejection Of Neutralism

Here I am thinking not only of American prelates and Christian intellectuals, some of whom long ago half-baptized Communism by saying it was a Christian heresy; and of all too complacent middle-class churchmen, who from Sunday to Sunday sit in comfortable seats in richly appointed edifices of worship. I am thinking, also of a leader like Professor Karl Barth and his disciple Pastor Martin Niemoller, who between them have called on Christians to repudiate American and anti-Communist foreign policy and to be neutral in the East-West struggle.

The Hungarian people have declined neutralism. With startling unanimity—reliable estimates say 99 per cent were behind the revolt—they rose against the stooges of the Kremlin in their midst and they did not flinch when Soviet discipline and steel and firepower were concentrated against them.

What did the West do? Britain, France and Israel seized the chance to assault Egypt. The United States was in the midst of a presidential election in which—as in 1916 and in 1940—peace was so much the leading issue that Adlai Stevenson, with the aid of men normally as realistic as Clinton Anderson and Stuart Symington, had gone to the most extreme lengths to try to seize the other handle of the peace stick. We acted with creditable decisiveness on the Middle Eastern crisis, thanks to the coolness of President Eisenhower and in considerable measure to the readiness of the United Nations as a whole to take a stand. On Hungary, where world unanimity was lacking, we pushed through a resolution or so in the United Nations, so far without effect, and earnestly embarked upon laudable plans for relief and for receiving refugees.

Nothing But Words

What is the position of the Christian American? It has been stated categorically, but I believe justly, by Manes Sperber, speaking not for the Christian specifically but for the West. Writing in the New Leader, he says:

A stony silence was the West’s only response to the revolutionaries perishing in the battle for Hungary.… Having come to the aid of the Hungarian people with nothing but words, the West now does not have even the right to weep.

Sperber is right; we have lost the right even to weep. The last rags of righteousness are stripped from our souls, and we stand naked and shivering in the Wind and in the lightning and thunder of the just judgment of Almighty God.

Perhaps, however, not so much to say anything pious or wise, but in order not to keep silent, as St. Augustine once said in a very different context, we can meditate on the extraordinary predicament in which Christendom is and in which Christians are. Perhaps it is not being presumptuous to do this, if we realize that Christianity has a special responsibility for Communism. In a sense the latter is the Christian West’s unintended, but definite and fantastic, gift to the world.

Predicament Of Christendom

What are the hard facts? First, communism arose in the West, specifically in Germany and Great Britain with a considerable French infusion. Second, Karl Marx, the Moses of Communism as Engels was the Aristotle, was a baptized Christian and an Evangelical at that—which in Europe means a Lutheran. We Christians commonly speak of Marx as a Jew, and in favor of this is the fact that he was very Jewish in his mind and soul.

A third fact is that the materials which went into composing communism as a system were drawn from Western philosophy, scientific progress, industrialism and social conditions in the nineteenth century. A fourth fact is the astonishing assimilation in Communism as a doctrinal and mythological system to the Bible and Christianity. This can be shown by a doctrine-to-doctrine comparison, such as is worked out in my book Communism and Christ. It must, however, be stressed that this is an example of unconscious thinking.

It is a result certainly unintended by Marx who was passionately sincere, subjectively, in his conviction that religion is the opiate of the people, the dope administered by beneficiaries of capitalism, and the leading obstacle to social and historical progress.

Communism is as far as ancient Gnosticism from being in the normal sense of the phrase a Christian heresy. It is rather an opposed and a competing system, controlled by diametrically antagonistic premises; and it is in a very nearly exact sense the expression in twentieth-century terms of the spirit of Antichrist. It seeks deliberately, strategically, uncompromisingly and with fierce, inhuman hostility to extirpate the influence, teaching and name of Jesus Christ.

The confusion, division, rationalization and compromise of Christians in relation to this issue are surely a marvel of the present age which future historians will find scarcely credible.

The fifth and final fact to be noted is that Communism as a creed and a universal salvation system has been exported from West to East, thus reversing a religious trend of thousands of years.

The Demonic In History

So much for what is. If, next, we ask why this is, the answer is very difficult and can be either brief and summary, or very long drawn out and complicated, with every facet of modern history brought into the story. We must give the short answer.

The Bible teaches us that there is a great mystery about faith. Indeed, the apostle Paul says that the short and simple truth about living Christian faith is that it is God’s gift. This applies in principle, also, to every powerful expression of faith and to the primacy of the will to believe in human existence.

From this standpoint there is no rational explanation of the faith of Marxism-Leninism, aptly named for two of the great believers of history. Reason can list and link together many important conditioning factors and circumstances, but the final explanation must be assigned to the mysteries of human freedom, the power of the demonic and the satanic in history, and divine providence and judgment.

The Judgment Of God

Particularly important is the last named explanatory factor, divine providence and judgment. The biblical and Christian view of history is that God is everlastingly at work in His world both as Creator-Lover and as Judge. While we may well shrink from facing and accepting the relation—for “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”—there can be no doubt that God is related in a most important way to the astounding, total phenomenon of Communism.

Communism, also stripped at this moment of its last hypocritical pretension and standing naked in all its hideous, inner ugliness, represents the fearful divine verdict on Christian and Western civilization: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” That is, Communism denotes both in its curious origin and in its extraordinary expansion the existence of a grave sickness in Western culture. This sickness is primarily of the soul and therefore concerns most intimately the Christian Church.

The heart, literally, of a civilization is the values which are generally accepted by its people and which are the cardinal motives of life in its manifold phases. Communism stabs us awake because its values are explicit and are in violent, deliberate contrast with those the West has received and taken for granted. What we generally fail to realize is that Communism could not have arisen and certainly could not have advanced so spectacularly without a preparatory loss of faith in transcendent reality and a secularization and materialization of values.

What of us in the United States? To some extent we have missed or at least blunted the secularization that has swamped Europe, including Great Britain. There are widespread indications of religious revival in our country as a whole and there are our fantastic church statistics. According to Dr. Will Herberg, more than 95 per cent of all Americans actually identify themselves religiously.

Liberty More Than Life

Yet soon after the merciless rape of Hungary by the Soviets, I heard a former Soviet Colonel of Intelligence “Meet the Press” of America. The half hour in which this took place was one of the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. Four top news correspondents set out to obtain for the American TV audience a story from the Colonel who had repudiated communism and “the inhuman communist system.” They never got much of a story, for their minds and that of their guest never met. They felt the Hungarian revolt was a failure. They wanted the Colonel to comment on the harsh dilemma of the captive peoples. He never conceded failure even in the slightest degree and he really never accepted a question those crack inquisitors gave him. Each time he would tilt or transpose the question so as to bring it over into a different dimension of existence.

The devastating climax of the interview came when the young ex-Soviet Colonel so very mildly said that it seemed to him that our main purpose in America was to stay alive. For the people of East Europe, on the contrary, this was not the situation. For them existence under the communist system had become intolerable and liberty mattered more than life.

Behind this attractive, apparently baffling young Russian I seemed to see and hear distant figures like Patrick Henry, Sam Adams and our first Congressmen who adopted on July 4, 1776, a ringing declaration of defiance even against death. But I could not see that this got through to the American reporters. They seemed to be fixated in another, flatter dimension, the dimension of peace, prosperity, and “don’t topple the applecart” in which most of us seem to be living.

The Inner Meaning

“Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” Is this indeed the inner meaning of Communism in relation to the Christian West?

On this question Christian Americans must think and think furiously. Communist tyranny is crumbling, though no man can say what streets of desolation and rivers of young blood must still be added to the holocaust of Budapest. Milovan Djilas, former close friend of Tito and Vice President of Yugoslavia, says that the uprising of the Hungarian people is comparable in significance to the French and the Russian revolutions. It means that the whole Communist system is on the way out. For this confession Tito jailed him.

Where will we be in that day? Possibly just where we are—comfortable, fabulously prosperous, obsessed with the desire for peace at any price, finding it incredible that men and women, boys and girls could fling their lives away with calculated abandon.

“Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” These words still determine the ultimate course of this world, and in our age of anxiety and storm, the purposes of the Kingdom “not of this world” are strangely fulfilled.

Charles Wesley Lowry, born in 1905 in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), holds a B.D. degree from Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, and a Ph.D. from Oxford. From 1934 to 1943 he served as Professor of Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, and from 1943 to 1953 as Rector of All Saints’ Church, Chevy Chase, Md. Since 1953 he has concentrated his energies in the field of religion and public affairs. He is Chairman, with Dr. Edward L. R. Elson as Co-Chairman, of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order.

- More from Charles W. Lowry

Cover Story

Evangelism in Scotland

Tom Allan

In Scotland today, as in every other country in the world, there is a completely new sense of urgency about our evangelistic responsibility.

The word “evangelism” has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past quarter century in our religious vocabulary. Twenty-five years ago evangelism was regarded as an activity on the sidelines of the Church’s life. Evangelism was regarded, by and large, as a sphere for the specialist, not a concern of the whole Church. Evangelism was not thought of as integral to the Church’s existence.

Evangelism Is Lifeblood

Today that situation has been completely transformed. Perhaps the most significant thing in the life of the Church in Scotland is the growing awareness that evangelism is in no sense simply a sectarian concern, but that it is, on the contrary, absolutely inherent within the life of the Church itself. We are beginning to recognize in Scotland that evangelism is the life blood of the Church.

The Church exists in the world for two purposes. One is to be the bride of Christ. The Church is the household and family of God, the beloved community that God bought with the blood of His Son, the bride of Christ. As the bride of Christ the Church exists to offer worship to God, to glorify God, to love Him who first loved us. This is its primary function, and ought to be its major concern: so to worship God that He is truly in the midst of His community.

But the Church is also the body of Christ. In Scotland, we are beginning to recognize more and more the Church as “the body of Christ.” The Church is the instrument that God Himself has appointed to carry forward the saving work of Christ in the world. As this body of mine is the instrument of my intention and my desire, so the Church, according to the New Testament, is only the Church when it is acting as the agent and the instrument of the intention of Jesus. And where the Church is not concerned with missions it has ceased to be the Church.

Some people in Scotland—and I am sure there are some also in the United States—still do not believe in evangelism. Some people in the very heart and center of the Church’s institutional life in Scotland look blithely on our evangelistic concern.

A missionary home on furlough forty years ago was spending the night with Principal James Denney, one of our great Scottish theologians. The missionary arrived, filled with despair, after a meeting in a church. Denney asked him what was wrong. The man said, “Well, I met so many people in the church who don’t believe in missions.” Denney’s reply was succinct and memorable. He said, “These people have no right to believe in missions; they don’t believe in Christ.”

What is the situation to which the Scottish Church addresses itself in its evangelism? When Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr came to give the Gifford Lectures in 1947, he said that the United States was the most church-minded nation in the world with the single exception of Scotland. I think that is true. In Scotland the total communicant membership of all the churches in our national census in 1950 emerged as 58 per cent of the average population, and that included, of course, the Roman Catholic Church. I understand that the figure in America is 60 percent. No other nations in the world have such a high percentage of communicant members as Scotland and the United States.

But I believe that figure means very little, at least in Scotland. In fact, it can be misleading, in that it induces in us who are ministers the complacent thought that our task is at least half done.

Statistics For Scotland

A census was taken recently of church attendance in Glasgow. It showed that less than 20 per cent of the people go to church on a Sunday; and Glasgow is perhaps the best churchgoing community in Scotland.

Perhaps 35 per cent of the total population attend church on such special occasions as a national day of prayer, for baptism or for the sacrament.

But the real issue confronting the Church in Scotland in its evangelism cannot be assessed statistically. It is that for vast numbers of the people in Scotland, in every section of the community, among the intellectuals, among the agricultural laborers, among the workers in the shipyards, the Church might as well not be there. There’s no hostility, there’s no antipathy, there’s no vociferous opposition, but in Scotland today the institutional church is largely irrelevant for vast sections of our community. And that is the situation in which our evangelistic task is set.

Three-Pronged Effort

Now how is the Scottish Church dealing with this situation?

Following the war, evangelistic activity in Scotland followed three main lines.

The first line of experiment was the special mission, organized outside the local parish, and extending over a limited period. Perhaps the outstanding example of this kind of mission was the Glasgow Churches Campaign of 1950. Three hundred ministers from various churches in Scotland and England, and indeed from Ireland and Wales as well, came into Glasgow for three weeks. During that period we preached at the street corners, we showed films in the streets, we went into pubs, dance halls, cinemas, theaters, football stadiums. We preached the Gospel wherever we could. This “commando” type of campaign was carried into factories and shipyards, seeking to establish a bridgehead between the Church and the world.

Second was the approach to such special groups as workers in industry, through industrial chaplaincies and the emergence of movements like the Scottish Christian Industrial Order, which set up cells of workers within factories and workshops and shipyards to witness to the faith in daily occupation.

Third, an evangelistic approach was made through the parish. This began, probably about 1935, when Dr. George McLeod initiated an experiment in his working-class parish. He sent out volunteers, two by two, from his congregation to visit every home in the community. That missionary experiment through the parish, recognizing the congregation itself as the agent of mission, remained in the years following the war the most widespread form of evangelism in the Scottish Church.

It is significant that during all these years from 1946 until 1952, when the Church in Scotland was trying by all these methods to come to terms with its missionary responsibility, there was not one single major campaign of mass evangelism. In my book, The Face of My Parish, I committed myself in writing to this conviction held in common by most of us in the Scottish Church who were really concerned about our mission, that the day of the mass meeting was over. Five years ago I believed that within the whole strategy of modern evangelism there was no place at all for mass evangelism, for the big meeting with the appeal for decision. All our evangelistic experiments in those years following the war completely excluded mass evangelism as an authentic and a valid method.

In 1952 it seemed time to launch a national movement of mission, a movement to give coordination and homogeneity to the efforts taking place all over the country. In the perfect setting of a small country such a movement might press the gospel claim in every section of the community at a national level.

“Tell Scotland” Mission

And so the “Tell Scotland” movement was born. That movement represents all the historic denominations of the Scottish Church—the Church of Scotland, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Congregationalist the United Free, the Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Churches of Christ.

The movement is based on three convictions. First, we believe that effective evangelism is not an occasional or sporadic activity, but a continuing engagement with the world at every level. The effective mission is not something that takes place for a fortnight or three weeks as a special effort, but ought to be going on all the time as the continuous, constant, compulsory daily task of the Christian community.

The second principle is that the agent or instrument of effective evangelism is the Church itself, constantly witnessing to the presence of its Risen Lord and constantly seeking to represent Him in terms of the whole of life.

The third principle is that the place of the layman is decisive. I use the word “layman” because there is no other word to use. If the Gospel is to be communicated to the world, it can only be communicated where the world and the Gospel come together, at that part of the front where Christ and the world meet. Where is that? It is in the life of the layman, witnessing to his faith in his daily vocation and in his leisure time.

Planned In Three Phases

The movement was planned in three phases.

The first year, September, 1953, to June, 1954, was a year of preparation. In it we sought to alert the church to its responsibility and to encourage discussion of the evangelistic theme among responsible laity throughout the whole Church.

The second phase, from September, 1954, until June, 1955, we called recruiting the laity. This was directed toward recruiting the lay forces of the Scottish Church. The movement was to express itself through the witness of small groups of lay people in their own congregations, witnessing to their faith in the local situation.

Anxieties Over Graham

Into that situation Dr. Billy Graham came to Scotland, in the year of recruitment. When it was suggested that Dr. Graham might come to Scotland there was much hesitation. There were reservations about certain aspects of Dr. Graham’s theology in many sections of the Scottish church. Primarily, there was an honest concern lest the Crusade, with its inevitable appeal to the national press and with its spectacular appeal to the whole nation, would irrevocably damage the central point of the “Tell Scotland” movement, which is the quiet, unspectacular and yet crucial preparation of each congregation for its own mission. There was much discussion.

After much talk and a great deal of prayer, the steering panel unanimously sent the invitation to Dr. Graham to conduct his Glasgow Crusade.

Since The Reformation

It was my privilege to act as chairman of the Executive Committee of that crusade in Glasgow. Five years ago I did not believe that mass evangelism was relevant within the context of modern missions. Twelve months after the crusade, after the closest study of the situation in Scotland and after the closest possible intimacy with Dr. Graham and his work while he was in Glasgow, it is my own absolute conviction that perhaps nothing has made a deeper mark on the religious and secular life of the Scottish nation since the Reformation than Dr. Graham’s crusade last year.

The thrilling story of that crusade includes the thousands of people who came night by night and twenty-five thousand people who during that time found new life in Christ or found reconsecration.

The crusade came in the second phase of “Tell Scotland,” and we were very worried about its coming. We were seeking to recruit the lay forces of the church for the unspectacular, quiet, humble witness of the laymen within their own situation, and we wondered how the crusade would affect us.

Results Of The Crusade

The crusade did these things for Scotland: First, it reminded us of the true aim of evangelism, by confronting us with that perpetual mystery of the power of God in Christ to change and transform a man’s life. Second, it reaffirmed the central message of evangelism, the unchanging good news that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Third, it underlined the essential conditions of evangelism, faithful and expectant prayer and the unity of God’s people. Fourth, it reasserted a powerful method of evangelism, the mass meeting with the simple proclamation of the Word of God.

What happened as a result of the crusade? I know a congregation whose minister had tried for five years to get a group of lay people in his church to undertake the work of the “Tell Scotland” Movement in his own parish. He preached about it; he appealed to his people to come for prayer, for Bible study, for witness in their own situation. He couldn’t even get the session in the congregation to move. We were in the second phase of “Tell Scotland,” to recruit the lay people, but he couldn’t recruit his own members, and I know scores of ministers in Scotland who were in precisely that situation. Men were committed heart and soul to “Tell Scotland,” but couldn’t find the response from the pew that is essential if we’re going to bridge the gap between the church and the world.

On The Last Sunday

The last Sunday of the crusade, this minister asked those in his congregation who had been deeply moved and challenged by the crusade—and this was unprecedented in this church—to rise in their places. In that select, exclusive, west-end church, a hundred men and women stood up. “Now,” he said, “I want you people to join me in becoming the agents of mission in this parish. If you are prepared, go home and write me a post card and tell me that you will be here Wednesday night to begin with me to study our responsibility in the world.” By Tuesday he had seventy-eight post cards. Today in that church there is a dynamic group of lay people who are translating the faith into practice in their own parish.

Mission Of Visitation

And so we have reached the third phase of “Tell Scotland,” the outgoing, the outreach of these lay groups throughout the country. During the last winter, 800 missions of visitation were in process throughout the whole of Scotland. I personally have knowledge of some 900 lay groups that are meeting week by week with their minister for prayer, for Bible study and to prepare and equip themselves for the work of witness in their own parishes. We are seeking thus to Tell Scotland, and our prayer, as it was the prayer of John Knox is, “Lord, give me Scotland, or I die.”

Field organizer of the “Tell Scotland” Movement from 1953–55, Tom Allan was executive chairman of the Billy Graham All-Scotland Crusade in 1955. Since September, 1955, he has been minister of St. George’s-Tron Parish Church, Glasgow. He holds the M.A. degree from Glasgow University, where in 1946 he also completed divinity studies interrupted to serve with the intelligence branch of the R.A.F. under General Eisenhower in France and Germany.

- More from Tom Allan

Cover Story

Rising Tempo of Rome’s Demands

C. Stanley Lowell

The year 1948 marked the beginning of a new epoch in the American history of the Roman Catholic Church and the beginning of a new epoch in American history itself. In November of that year the leaders of this powerful church undertook a drastic reorientation of their attitude toward the United States government. It was a change not of conviction but of strategy, not of direction but of pace; yet the new strategy and the new pace were so striking as to constitute in themselves a major change. The statement of the Bishops issued at that time will repay thoughtful reading by every American. These men serve notice that the vast power of their organization will henceforth be devoted to destroying the principle of Church-State separation.

When the Bishops sound the call to action, their language is clear. They say plainly that “Separation of Church and State has become the shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism.” They pledge themselves to “work peacefully, patiently and perseveringly” for its destruction. Thus, with a bold announcement supported by the cleverest of propaganda, this powerful church has set out to destroy the free position of the American churches.

Then And Now

This change in Roman Catholic strategy is expressed in the church’s attitude toward education. During much of the nineteenth century, its hierarchy was concerned to eliminate from the public schools every reference to God, the Bible and religion and to make the schools strictly secular institutions. Roman Catholics brought more than one hundred cases before the courts to achieve these objectives. I cite here but one of the hundred—that of People ex. rel. Ring v. Board of Education in Illinois. In this case Roman Catholics sought to eliminate Bible reading and devotional exercises from the public-school program. The court agreed with their contention that these practices did violate Church-State separation as expressed in the Constitution and ordered them discontinued.

Roman Catholics undertook to drive religion out of the schools not because they were atheistic or secularistic people, but because they were not powerful enough to determine the kind of religion to be taught. They preferred no religious teaching at all if they could not have Roman Catholic dogma. The provincial council of the Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore, 1840, imposed on priests the responsibility of seeing to it that Catholic children attending public schools did not participate in any religious exercises there. They were also to use their influence to prevent any such practices in the public schools.

The “secular public school” was in substantial part the achievement of the Roman Catholic Church. Today, however, this church has about-faced. Today it denounces the secular public school as “godless” and argues loudly for the return of religion to education. Today movements for the teaching of “moral and spiritual values” in the public schools, like the recent one in New York City, find the hierarchy in hearty endorsement. The change of front is due to one simple fact—the Roman hierarchy now feels strong enough to permeate any public-school moral and spiritual teaching with its own dogma, or to secure public funds for its own private, sectarian schools.

Toward A New Era

The 1948 pronouncement of the Roman Catholic Bishops pointed the way to a new era in American Church-State relations. As far as Rome was concerned, this pronouncement marked the end of the line for Church-State separation. The principle that had received grudging recognition from this group as long as it was a weak, ineffectual minority was now to be replaced by one more in keeping with the main line of Romanist tradition.

The resources of this powerful church were quickly marshaled for action. The Roman Church claims a membership of 33 million in the United States, which has become in the hands of the hierarchy a gigantic battering ram to breach the wall of separation. The adults in this membership comprise the “Catholic vote” of which we hear so much. There are, comparatively, not many Catholics holding high public office. This is actually a source of strength to the hierarchy since it is able to keep in perpetual intimidation the Protestant officeholders who fear nothing more than that the “Catholic vote” might be turned against them.

This political power is skillfully wielded to secure preferential treatment for the Roman Church. A good example is the nearly $1 million voted by the Eighty-fourth Congress to refurbish the Pope’s summer palace. The payment was for damages allegedly inflicted by American bombs upon a neutral power in World War II. The summer palace was not located in Vatican City, however, and the damage, according to impartial observers, was negligible. This subsidy to the Pope went through as a high-level, nonpartisan item. No one would have thought of voting against it. To do so might have offended the “Catholic vote.”

A far more serious matter was House Bill 6568, which was smuggled through the Senate in the confusion before adjournment of the Eighty-fourth Congress. This provides another $8 million plus for Roman Catholic activities in the Philippines. After the war, American lobbyists visited the Philippines and alerted Roman Catholic officials to the rich potential in “war services” and “war damages.” The church collected for services allegedly suffered to its installations. The Bishop of Zamboanga, the Archbishop of Jaro, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and the Knights of Columbus were among the Roman Catholic groups receiving generous grants. How many millions were paid is difficult for an outsider to determine.

The above mentioned act merely amended the law so that Archbishop Santos of Manila, whose “claims” had been rejected by the Commission, could get his millions along with the millions that had gone to his colleagues. Although the sum was “only $8 million,” it should be recalled that the Archbishop’s claims originally ran to $30 million. All of these claims will no doubt be revived, while others from the innumerable church orders will be added. All will be paid in time. Oh yes, there is a chance that the Protestants may qualify for about $30,000 under H. R. 6586.

The public schools of the Philippines received not one cent. Nor will they, because they lack a high-powered lobby and the unveiled threat of reprisal at the polls.

Sectarian Subsidies Unlimited

There have been other government subsidies to the Roman Church. The Hill-Burton Act, which authorized Federal grants to sectarian hospitals, has been a bonanza to this church. Under it the Roman Catholics have collected $112,039,000 for their institutions. Protestant institutions have received $23,118,000. Even the disparity of these figures does not tell the story. Close observers have noted the large proportion of the grants that have gone to Roman Catholic hospitals in the South. In Alabama alone, for example, this church has obtained $6 million for its hospitals. Baptist churches with a total adult membership about equal to the Roman Catholic have a conscientious objection to taking Federal funds. Only a pittance, therefore, has gone to this group. What is worse, businessmen have begun to refuse to contribute to Baptist hospital campaigns, asking, “Why don’t you get your money from the government the way the Catholics do?”

The Roman Church has found the Hill-Burton Act a marvelous means for penetrating the hitherto impervious Protestantism of the South. Handsome healing centers built with Federal funds serve as a strong means for the propagation of this faith.

The campaign to shift the cost of Roman Catholic sectarian schools to the American taxpayer bids fair to be as successful as the hospital program. The campaign began easily as fringe benefits were sought from the government—bus transportation, textbooks, health benefits, lunches and the like. More recently, as for example in the Bishop’s statement issued in November, 1955, there is insistence upon the “full right to be considered and dealt with as components of the American educational system.” This statement also claims for parochial-school pupils the same government aid that goes to public-school pupils.

A useful gimmick in softening the public for sectarian subsidies is the so-called “study” of education. Proposals for a “study” were slipped through the Connecticut legislature as a “noncontroversial” item. No sooner had the commission begun its work when there began a spate of press releases about how many children were in parochial schools, the proportion of the educational load being carried by the Roman Catholic Church, the “saving” thus effected to the taxpayer. Presently Roman Catholic leaders throughout the state joined in a well-directed chorus appealing for state subsidies. The demands were based on the commission’s “scientific study.”

During the past year the drive for tax support has developed yet a new twist. This is a demand that tuition payments to parochial schools be allowable income tax deductions. The fiftieth annual convention of the Knights of St. John meeting in Dayton, Ohio, and the Central Catholic Verein meeting in Wichita, Kansas, are among the many Roman Catholic groups that have appealed to Congress for this kind of “relief.” Thus a back-door assault on the public treasury keeps pace with the front-door demand.

In many communities where they are in the majority, Roman Catholics have simply taken over the public schools. They have staffed them with nuns and priests whose salaries, paid from state funds, go directly to their superior, without deductions. It took long and expensive litigations to clear up situations of this kind in Missouri, New Mexico and Kentucky. There are still numerous “trouble spots” all around the country. Last year in Indiana, for example, more than $2 million in tax funds went to “public schools” that were in effect parochial schools of the Roman Church. There are 152 garbed nuns teaching in the public schools of Kansas with their salaries going to their church.

A Major Decision

In simple justice it must be said that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is now within sight of its goal. Success has come even faster than its leaders dreamed. Many activities of this church are already receiving tax support. Hospitals, schools, orphanages and other “welfare programs” are in this category. Other activities receive sizable grants from community chests. The measure of this support is being constantly increased. The time is in sight when all the so-called “social service” activities of the Roman Church will be supported by tax funds collected by compulsion from citizens of all faiths.

The Protestants, if they are realistic, will see but two alternatives before them. One, they must accept the principle of government subsidies to churches—that is, the principle of plural establishment—and get into the scramble to get all they can for their own denomination. Or, two, they must stop kidding themselves with the false tolerance that plays into Rome’s hands, and battle to hold the line for Church-State separation.

The first of these alternatives—plural establishment—would have definite advantages over the “don’t look now” policy being presently followed by the Protestants. If the Protestants were to go all-out for government subsidies, they would probably be able to rectify the absurd inequities of the Hill-Burton grants. They must recognize, however, that in changing from the principle of voluntarism to the principle of official compulsion, they are taking a drastic step, which will have the most far-reaching consequences. Also, and this is a more practical matter, they are moving into competition with old hands at this business of obtaining political favors. It is a kind of competition that, because of their own predilections, the Protestants stand to lose.

Westerly, Rhode Island, is a tiny community that offers a good sample of the sort of thing we might expect under plural establishment. The Roman Catholics of Westerly, having developed their own schools to the point where certain public school buildings were no longer needed, proceeded to take them over for their own use. The town council voted them to the Roman Church at a purchase price of $1. The Methodists of Westerly were resentful as they saw these valuable properties falling to the Roman Catholics, one by one. They decided to get one for themselves. After working some wheels within wheels and getting help from Catholic citizens who believed in “fair play”—they were able to get one of the buildings for $1. Since their success, however, there has been a rash of such giveaways in Rhode Island. The recipient has been, in every instance, the Roman Catholic Church. Now that the principle has been accepted and “the Methodists are doing it too,” there is no restraint.

The worst feature of plural establishment, however, would be the extremity of its pluralism. Our culture would be hopelessly enclaved as 250 religious establishments or more threw themselves into the wild scramble for tax funds. The principal beneficiary would be the church that is prepared for an operation of this kind, a church that has, in fact, lived on state subsidies for many centuries.

The Alternative

The alternative is clear. Protestants must face this challenge frankly at the political level. As the Roman Church moves toward state financing and toward those favors which are the precursor of establishment, Protestants must stand in resolute opposition. They must do this in good humor and brotherliness, but with unbending firmness. The Roman Catholic propaganda that softens the nation for official favors must be dispassionately exposed. Protestants must recognize that they are not promoting secularism when they insist that the Roman Catholic Church shall raise its funds the way other churches do, or when they insist that there shall be no official favors or preferments for any church.

Roman Catholicism in the United States has come a long way in a century and a half. At first, as a feeble minority it accepted Church-State separation. The principle seemed best in the circumstances. Now, as a powerful minority—united in the midst of a divided majority—it calls for the end of Church-State separation. It intimidates Congress, censors and silences opposition, collects vast sums from the public treasury and drives toward official recognition and establishment. If the Protestants do not unite in determined opposition to this drive, another decade will see the end of Church-State separation here. We shall have, to all practical effect, a religious establishment in a country whose Constitution forbids it. That establishment will be pluralistic—or otherwise.

After attending Asbury College and Duke and Yale universities, the Rev. C. Stanley Lowell invested a year with the Methodist temperance movement and then accepted assignments to Methodist parishes for 20 years. Since April, 1956, he has devoted full time to Protestants and Other Americans United, an organization corrective of sectarian encroachments on the American policy of separation of Church and State.

- More from C. Stanley Lowell

Cover Story

Christian Missions in Japan

L. Nelson Bell

There is grave need for a complete revaluation of Christian missions in Japan today. Post-war policies of the major Boards, the tremendous influx of independent and diverse new groups and, most of all, the sobering fact that after many decades of mission work the Christian Church in Japan has yet to make the impact so needed in that land, all combine to challenge to a new concept for spreading the gospel message, and of the Church itself.

The average Christian abroad does not have the remotest idea of what has taken place and is taking place now. He does not know what policies are now being pursued, nor of the cross-currents of conflicting opinions which have such far reaching effect for or against the evangelization of that great nation.

A Difficult Field

Japan has always been a difficult nation for Christian missions. An old culture; an advance civilization by Western standards; one of the highest literacy rates of any nation and deep rooted religious practices inherently antagonistic to the Christian faith, all of these and other factors combine to make imperative that the Gospel shall be presented in its simplicity and power and in a complete trust in the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.

Where Christian missions have been carried on depending on the uncompromised Gospel and its implementation by the Spirit there have been corresponding results. Where there has been a tendency to deviate from the historical evangelical concept of the Church and her message there has been a corresponding deviation in both quantity and quality of results. Theological liberalism has more adherents in Japan than is probably the case in any other mission field of the world.

While the combination of difficulties outlined above are real and ever present, they are complicated today by matters having to do with mission policy. On the one hand we have the determined effort of some of the major Boards in America to erect an ecumenical Church on a man-made foundation and to maintain it by hidden but not the less very real ecclesiastical and financial pressures. On the other hand we have an influx of a great number of independent and often diverse groups, far out numbering the old line denominations, but lacking both in missionary experience and often in an adequate doctrine of the Church.

Because of these conflicting interests and policies missionary work in Japan is confused and confusing. To face the problems will require a work of grace and an outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit on all concerned. This is an end not too much to pray for, nor to expect if Christians will act as Christians should. But rest assured, it will require a work God alone can do.

The Rise Of The Kyodan

One of the serious bones of contention today is the Kyodan or United Church of Japan. The history of its organization is of great significance. Just prior to the outbreak of World War II the Japanese government determined to insure full control of all religious forces. It passed a law naming conditions under which any religious body could secure official recognition and immunity from arbitrary police action. When Christian denominations began to apply for recognition they were first told that no applications from bodies with fewer than five thousand members would be accepted. Then when the smaller groups had formed unions among themselves to meet this requirement they were told that only one Protestant group would be recognized. Rather than be left without any legal status almost all united.

Not by the wildest stretch of imagination could such a union have taken place without extreme government pressure, although it is true that from the earliest days of Protestant Christianity in Japan many denominational leaders had been working for union. Their successors now used the government-given opportunity to the utmost. This government sponsored union was enthusiastically acclaimed in America. Most of the major mission Boards of North America decided to further it and set up the Inter-Board Committee, which agreed upon resumption of work in Japan to support only churches in the Kyodan. In this way the Japanese churches were faced with a dilemma—continue in the Kyodan and receive mission board support, or, as some felt impelled to do, follow the dictate of conscience and withdraw from this government-sponsored organization and find themselves without missionary support. That many were led to take the latter step is a tribute to their Christian convictions and courage.

Among the major denominations the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (South) took a much more liberal viewpoint. The mission and the Board agreed to cooperate with Japanese ministers and churches, formerly associated with the work of that Board, both inside and outside the Kyodan, regarding the choice as one for the Japanese themselves to make. Had all Boards taken this statesmanlike position the Kyodan would largely have disintegrated as it lacked the spiritual unity necessary for a genuinely ecumenical church.

It is true that some smaller groups never entered the Kyodan and immediately following V-J day many other elements withdrew and assumed their former identity: Episcopalians, Lutherans, elements of the Baptist groups, Friends, Nazarenes and others. Some former Presbyterians withdrew to establish the Reformed Church of Japan, others reestablished their identity as the Shin Nikki, or new Church of Japan.

Virtually A New Denomination

Today something less than half of the Christians in Japan are in Kyodan churches and they are made up largely of Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians. The Committee of Cooperation, a group set up to administer the work of the Inter Board Committee and the Kyodan, is locating Methodist missionaries in fields developed by Presbyterian and Congregational missionaries.

Today to all intents and purposes the Kyodan has itself become a denomination. Strange to say, the ecumenicity and cooperation such a group should be expected to extend to others is lacking. Backed by the Inter-Board Committee and the Kyodan leadership, missionaries assigned to the Kyodan are not permitted to work with non-Kyodan ministers and churches. Where denominational differences existed before, differences which were often submerged in a spirit of Christian fellowship and love, an ecclesiastical wall has been set up.

Such a policy is an admission of weakness, not of strength, and it aggravates the already confused mission and church situation. Today there are some 143 Boards and Christian organizations working in Japan. Many of these groups are very small but some are large and are continuing to grow. The largest interdenominational group is T.E.A.M., The Evangelical Alliance Mission, with over 150 missionaries.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that 90 per cent of the 2400 Protestant missionaries came to Japan after World War II. This proportion of new missionaries, many from small and often divisive groups lacking both the wisdom of years and of experience, has created problems both in the realm of general policy and also, very often, with reference to an adequate concept of the Church itself.

An Impaired Witness

The Christian Church in Japan is weak; few of her leaders have the zeal and vision needed in a nationwide program. Tithing, to be found among the Seventh Day Adventists and to a lesser degree in the Reformed Church, is otherwise almost unknown. Japanese pastors are inadequately paid and this increases the power of those who dispense mission funds. The non-cooperative spirit of the Kyodan is largely matched by a similar attitude in many of the independent groups who in some cases are suspicious of each other and in others may join in a distrust of the older denominations.

The end result is a greatly impaired Christian witness in Japan, one totally inadequate to seize the opportunity and meet the desperate needs of that nation.

This is not a blanket criticism of any one group. Some of Japan’s finest Christians are in the Kyodan. Some of the most devoted missionaries from abroad are working in that group. Others of equal Christian faith, zeal and devotion are to be found in the noncooperating and independent groups. The Kyodan, with less than half of the church membership and only about one-fifth of the total missionary personnel working in Japan, has no right to arrogate to itself a priority it does not deserve. Nor do the other groups have the right to indulge in a wholesale condemnation of the Kyodan.

There is a desperate need today for some unifying influence in Japan, not directed towards a united ecclesiasticism but to a recognition of the fact that Japan needs Christ and that present personnel and policies are falling far short of the task.

Men inside and outside the Kyodan agree that the Billy Graham campaign of last March had a most wholesome effect on the church as a whole. But it was entirely too limited in time and scope. A nationwide campaign of gigantic proportions is needed. Japan is flooded with western movies and with propaganda of one kind or the other which presents western culture at its worst. This needs to be counteracted with the Christian message on a saturation basis. Christian films in large quantities, along with large sums spent in buying time on radio and TV networks, are needed to present the claims of Christ—not a mere system of ethics but the Gospel in all of its simplicity and power.

Many are convinced that some of the major mission Boards are missing the boat by maintaining a false ecumenicity which is doing harm to the Japanese Church, frustrating many missionaries who find themselves caught in the web of unrealism, and which is also drying up the source of giving, both in America and more important still, in the Japanese Church itself. There is a failure to measure up to the evangelistic need because of the channeling of missionary activities primarily into institutional work.

Missionary statesmanship at its very best is desperately needed, a statesmanship not now in evidence among the denominational Boards as a whole, the Japanese Christian leadership nor in the independent and interdenominational groups.

The effective evangelization of Japan is at stake, and the time for its accomplishment may not be indefinitely prolonged.

Preacher In The Red

TREMOR IN THE PULPIT

It was Easter Sunday morning in 1907, my third Easter in the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I stood before my congregation in Venice Center, N. Y., to read the Scripture lesson, as found in Matthew 28. When I came to verse 4, instead of the inspired words, “And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men,” I heard myself say, “And for fear of him the shakers did quake.” Appalled, I quickly proceeded to correct my mistake by solemnly declaring, “For fear of him the Quakers did shake and became as dead men.”

By that time solemnity was at an end!—HOWARD S. BACON, Elbridge, N. Y., retired member of the Central New York Conference of the Methodist Church.

L. Nelson Bell, M.D., F.A.C.S., missionary in China for 25 years and for 15 years a successful surgeon in Asheville, N.C., is Executive Editor of Christianity Today. At present he is making a six weeks trip to Japan and Korea.

- More from L. Nelson Bell

Cover Story

The East German State: Has It Feet of Clay?

Harold B. Kuhn

The title “Democratic Republic” sounds nowhere more hollow than when applied to the present government of East Germany. Its rulers can scarcely be reassured by recent events in Hungary, where the instruments of power in the hands of the ruling elite have perforce been turned against the people in whose name they profess to rule. It is the purpose of this article to note some of the major features of this “Republic” and to seek to evaluate its points of strength and its areas of weakness.

Soviet Advantages

In installing the puppet regime in their zone of occupation, the Soviet rulers had three major points of possible advantage. First, they had at their disposal the large Junker estates, which most of the world agreed should be divided. Thus the land reform should have pleased the beneficiaries, and should have brought to the government a broad popular support from the peasants. This advantage was not pressed; crushing agricultural quotas discouraged the tillers of the land at the outset. More important still, the history of such “reforms” in Russia convinced the East German farmers that collectivization would follow in short order. This they have not wanted. Many are not waiting for it, for farmers make up a good portion of the refugees who leave the “Republic” at a rate of 1,000 per day.

The population of the seven Lander or provinces comprising the East German state has been traditionally socialistic. Thus the workers would not normally be opposed to the basic objectives of socialization. Yet the regime seems to have failed signally to enlist the loyalty of the workers, who for some uncanny reason are largely unmoved by socialist inventives. The barrage of agitative propaganda seems to annoy and disgust them, so that the new political orientation fails to “take” on them.

The intellectuals of this land have been traditionally tolerant of bureaucratic administration and generally responsive to official dictation and to state planning. Why, then, has the regime failed to win the general support of the intelligentsia?

Leaders in East Berlin official circles complain of the ideological indifference among the intellectual classes. Conversations with those who flee to the West reveal, however, that there is much active opposition to the dogmatism of Marxist science. As one trained physicist told the writer, he faced the choice of assenting to the dogmas stemming from dialectical materialism (at the expense of intellectual honesty) or of rejecting them and in consequence running afoul of the regime. He chose the latter alternative.

One cannot avoid the impression that the Communist party and the major classes of the East German population are separated by a lack of rapport. With the exception of the events of June, 1953, this has generally manifested itself in passive antagonism. Rulers and subjects appear in the form of two opponents in a battle of attrition, each determined to wear down the other.

Weaknesses Of Government

The causes underlying the weakness of the government of Pieck, Ulbrich, Grotewohl and others are numerous. The government began under the handicap of having been installed by a conqueror. It has never been able to make the smallest logical claim to rest upon the popular will. Indeed, its leaders seem to feel no need to establish such a base of support. They have, moreover, been embarrassed by their own pretension to sovereignty. At the demand of their Soviet masters, they have insisted that they headed a government which could make up its own mind. This prevented any candid statement to their subjects of precisely which powers remained in their hands and which were reserved to the Kremlin. This failure to take the people into its confidence has compelled the regime to bear the responsibility for the repressive acts and arbitrary decisions which, in part at least, have been imposed upon it from without.

A further feature tending to alienate the government from its citizens is the exactness with which it maintains the features which are part of the ritual of communist dictatorship. These are: rigid censorship of press and mails, constant internal espionage, senseless restrictions upon travel into and out of the country, the secret police and a brutal administration of the penal code. Most of these seem senseless to the outsider, while to the insider they bear no obvious relation to the achievement of the goals set by the rulers for the land.

Brute Force

The Party itself, hated by the masses, maintains itself in power by brute force. It rationalizes its position by posing, through endless propaganda media, as the agent of transformation, which promises a glorious tomorrow through planned and managed change. Conversations with refugees from all classes fail to support the view that this appeal finds much popular response.

The regime justifies its rigid control of the social and cultural life of the land upon this basis, namely, that it must discipline in order to reform. Propagandistic attacks upon the West as decadent continue monotonously. Life is designedly austere, and no major concessions are made to the demands of the masses for emotional relaxation, save such minor ones as the qualified tolerance of jazz and lipstick.

The governing clique lack much of the creative inspiration which their counterparts in the Soviet Union may at times experience. In Russia there is some measure of realism in the adaptation of measures to conditions in the land. In East Germany, on the other hand, the processes of the Kremlin are applied without creative imagination to a situation that is radically different. This creates an air of unreality, a feeling that the land is a stage upon which an unconvincing drama is being played. It is against this feeling of unreality that the instruments of official propaganda work with fervor and without great apparent success.

Impermanence Of Two Germanys

In the light of the foregoing factors, the East German government seems a strange combination of strength and weakness. It is difficult to weigh the one against the other. It is doubtful whether the East German officials expect their government to survive for long should Germany be reunited. This may account for their continued demands for recognition of their state, and for the pressure of Vice-Premier Otto Nuschke upon the Church of East Germany to acknowledge its permanence. These and similar actions bear witness to a possible doubt in their minds as to whether the impossible situation of two Germanys can long be maintained.

It is well known that East Germany is predominantly Protestant. The Evangelical (Protestant) Church has attracted wide attention for its courageous resistance to the encroachments of the regime. Dr. Jacob, Bishop of Cottbus, declared in Berlin last June that the Church would accept no compromise with atheism and would resist the “theoretical and material godlessness” that underlies the dialectical materialism to which the government professes such slavish adherence.

The Church in East Germany operates currently upon the basis of the agreement which Premier Grotewohl signed with Bishop Otto Dibelius on June 10, 1953. This agreement was secured by the prompt and courageous action of Bishop Dibelius and provided for a reduction of the many forms of harassment of the Church by Red officials. It promised, among other things, a review of the sentences of imprisoned pastors, relaxation of regulations upon public services and the readmission of youth expelled from schools because of church attendance.

A Secular Confirmation

The major thrust of the government’s attack upon the Church has been against the youth work, the Junge Gemeinde. At no point has the war of attrition against the Church been pursued with more ingenuity. Knowing the place which Church confirmation held in the mind of the German people, the regime introduced its own secularized version of confirmation, the Jugendweihe, or Youth Dedication. This is an impressive ceremony, urged upon all East German children “who wish to become loyal citizens” and arranged to coincide with the time of Church confirmation, generally during Holy Week.

Bishop Dibelius spoke promptly for the Church, condemning the Jugendweihe and laid down the general principle that a youth cannot participate in both Church confirmation and the state’s “youth dedication.” The outcome of the struggle is at this moment still in doubt. There can be no doubt that the long-range objective of the government is the destruction of the Christian Church. At present, the regime tolerates the Church, provided it “refuses to become a refuge for reactionary circles”—meaning that it may take no part in any movement to restore freedom to the people of East Germany.

The struggle for the minds of the youth continues. The F.J.D. (Free German Youth) compels its members (numbering some 2,000,000) to pledge to destroy “capitalist moral standards and superstition”; in other words, to obliterate the Christian religion and the ethics which it seeks to inculcate. Youth who refuse to participate in Youth Dedication are barred from universities and incur other serious handicaps.

The Weight Of Restrictions

It is difficult for the outsider to imagine the weight of restrictions under which the Church in East Germany operates. A pastor may not be transferred from one parish to another, save under most unusual circumstances. His income is less than that of common laborers, averaging about $30 a month. His children may not enter schools for higher education, and he and his family are in constant peril of arrest for some imaginary or real infraction of obscure bureaucratic regulations. This writer’s knowledge of these pastors indicates that they are overworked, tired, poorly paid but withal courageous in their determination to perform their duties in the fear of the Lord.

The larger ministry of the Church is curtailed in every way imaginable. A church may receive little or no help from the outside; it may export no funds whatsoever. While the supply of paper for atheistic literature is abundant, the publication of religious periodicals is rigidly controlled because of “paper shortages.” Home missions are rigidly curtailed; all but a handful of the Railway Missions ministering to the aged, the infirm and mothers traveling with children have recently been closed.

It is clear that the regime tolerates the Church solely because it finds her obliteration too costly. This toleration is a temporary expedient, until the older generation dies, and until a new generation can be trained in atheism. Meanwhile Vice-Premier Nuschke (a member of the Christian Democratic Union who is currently tolerated in the government) advises “a united front” and suggests that there is no time for controversy over religion or “other minor issues.”

A Light In The Night

Today the East German Church finds herself on the defensive in this conflict of wills with the State. She is the only significant bridge between her unhappy land and the free world. Within her tight frontiers, she is exerting an influence which is surprising when measured against her problems. There is reason to believe that as she cannot extend herself laterally, she is finding her own spiritual life deepened through her sufferings, and that as she can draw but little from the Church outside her frontiers, she is drawing more heavily from the resources of her Living Head.

In the meantime the people of East Germany live in their meager and monotonous world, while their rulers live in isolation from them in their own world of words and of perfectly coherent ideological dogmas. Many from all walks of life can bear the stifling and unreal atmosphere no longer. By the hundreds, these walk away, making their way to East Berlin, and thence across the border into the refugee installations in Free Berlin. Others cross the border temporarily, upon the pretext of visiting relatives, and spend a few cherished hours breathing the better air of the free world.

If and when Germany is reunited, and if the present government of East Germany is liquidated, the question of what legacy the regime will leave behind is a crucial one. One dares to hope that such a time will reveal that the East German Church has been largely significant in keeping alive the ideas and ideals of Christian civilization during the long night of communist rule.

We Quote:

ROBERT C. COOK

Director, Population Reference Bureau

In our finite world indefinite multiplication of people must eventually pass any possible optimum. Standing room only becomes a possibility in no very long time … In about 4½ centuries population density of the entire 52 million square miles of the earth’s land surface would be some 25,000 persons per square mile. That is the concentration on Manhattan Island today.… Considering how much desert, arctic, and mountain land is uninhabitable, it is not too soon to give serious consideration to the question of population optimum for this unexpansible planet.—in “The Population Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, No. 8 (Oct., 1956), p. 296.

LORD BOYD ORR

Director-General, FAO, from 1945 to 1948

Our immediate problem is the provision of food for say 5,000 million by 2,000 A.D. and possibly a further 2,000 million in the following twenty-five years.… The limit to food production is neither lack of knowledge nor physical obstacles of soil or climate. The limit is imposed by economic factors. The amount of any food a farmer produces is determined not by what is possible but by what he hopes to sell at a remunerative price.—in “Science and Hunger,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. XII, No. 8 (Oct., 1956), pp. 309 f.

Dr. Harold B. Kuhn is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Ky. Summer after summer he has carried on an educational and evangelistic ministry to Russian zone refugees in Germany. He holds the B.A. from John Fletcher College, and the S.T.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has pursued post-doctoral studies at University of Munich.

- More from Harold B. Kuhn

Review of Current Religious Thought: December 24, 1956

William A. Mueller

That indefatigable searcher for facts, Wilbur M. Smith, reports some interesting findings in Moody Monthly (Aug., 1956). An analysis of the 29th volume of Who’s Who in America, that is, of pages 13–112, yields this result, namely that 30% of those listed indicated some religious affiliation. Of the 1650 biographical sketches 53 were of clergymen. “The list reveals more Episcopalians and Presbyterians than all the other denominations combined.” However, “by far the greater number of the more prominent educators, scientists and writers do not indicate any religious affiliation. The same goes for playwrights, musicians, radio and TV men.” What mean these figures? Has religion become peripheral among those who mould the American mind? Or are they merely too shy to disclose their deepest loyalties?

“All this, and Revival, too” thus runs an article in The Christian Herald (Sept., 1956) on the Sector Plan of the American Baptist Convention. This plan is helping the churches utilize their total resources in new communities. During the past five years more than 3000 churches, Baptists and other communions, have used the plan with remarkable results in spiritual growth and power.

Canon Wedel writes a welcome warning in The Journal of Religious Thought (Spring-Summer, 1955) on “The Meaning of the Church”:

The phenomenal growth of the Pentecostal ‘sects,’ which ignore, for a time at least, the call to erect Gothic shrines, could remind us of the fact that “Church” in the New Testament, meant first of all a people of God united by a common faith and the living presence of Christ as Holy Spirit and not by institutional ambitions.

Wedel decries the mania for pompous church buildings in America. Air-conditioning, luxurious appointments, expensive side chapels and streamlined nurseries are the order of the day. But can they ever be a substitute for what really matters in the house of God? Wedel speaks prophetically when he says that “the body of Christ is something more than genial sociability. It stands under the judgment of holiness.”

Cross Currents, a Catholic journal, contains a challenging article by Father Henri Dumery on “The Temptation to Do Good” (Winter, 1956). It is a serious and eloquent plea for full religous liberty. Read and ponder: “What faith finds is God Himself, and not dogmas”; or: “But we do not become believers by assimilating a theory, reciting a history or riveting together syllogisms”; or: “Faith does not recopy a formula, and it does not blindly underwrite a formula; Faith opens itself to a presence, it receives a new life, and is bound to a new significance of existence of history.” But what elates both mind and heart are words like these: “Only the belief that liberty of conscience is inalienable will re-establish true faith; with the correlative paradox of a sincere unbelief and an apparent incredulity which is faith within non-belief.”

Will some of the Catholic bishops in beautiful Spain take Father Dumery’s words to heart? This Catholic priest is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion against unbeliever, schismatic or heretic. Truth, argues Father Dumery, is always ready to hear St. Paul; it will refuse to listen to Torquemada.

Professor Bela Vassady, an exile from stricken Hungary, in an article in Theology Today (July, 1956) plows a deep furrow as he writes on “The Power of Christlike Living.” Over against the cults of assurance Vassady stresses the need of negative thinking in terms of the Gospel’s call for self-depreciation, self-denial, humility and repentance. But though we are summoned to lose our lives for Christ’s sake, this demand “is always embedded in the proclamation of a new, divine positiveness.” The bootstrap strategy of the cults of assurance, Vassady rightly maintains, cannot lastingly dissolve man’s feelings of loneliness, emptiness and insecurity. But where men experience by faith the divine pardon of their sins, wondrous powers of the spirit are being released. In view of man’s introvert face-saving, that is, bribing one’s own conscience or the ever present extrovert or manward face-saving—“the selling of lies, the playing up of vices for virtues in the sight of others,” or, what is by far the worst, Godward or vertical face-saving—“the most stupid as well as wicked act of man the sinner to strive to deceive God and to believe in the success of his Godward camouflage,” there is but one remedy, namely saving faith! Concludes Vassady: “Saving faith is just the reverse of the complex of facesaving. Whoever dies and is risen with the Lord is saved by faith, and no longer needs to take refuge in a technique of face-saving. The crisis of facing the loss of faith is by such a man again and again overcome by a voluntary act of face-renunciation in the sight of the Lord who died for him.” This is sound pastoral theology because these insights are rooted in God’s holy Word.

Writing on “The Literature of the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting” (Moody Monthly, Jan., 1957), Wilbur M. Smith is convinced that “the Revival of 1858 is the kind of revival America preeminently needs today: caused by a mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God, on every city and hamlet, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; a time of contrition and confession of sin; a time when waves of prayer will sweep over our land; when noonday meetings will see greater audiences than Sunday morning services now see; when ministers with even few gifts well speak with new power never before known by them, and will see hundreds coming forward to receive Christ in an otherwise ordinary service. This could be more nation-wide than any religious movement ever known in America, if a great work of God results from the Billy Graham campaign in New York, and millions are allowed to see, watching televised services in their own homes, the mighty working of the Spirit of God bringing eternal life to those who are receiving Christ as their Saviour.”

Indeed! Be it so! The Lord’s arm is not shortened that he cannot revive his people and with them this great land of ours. Though we perceive it not, spiritual battles are going on in our midst. God’s Spirit is striving mightily with the minds of men. May we acknowledge Christ’s absolute Lordship in all of life, whether in school or shop, home or hearth, in national and international relations, or in our relations with our neighbours of another race. Sursuam corda! Lift up your hearts! Regem habemus! We have a King, His name is Immanuel, God with us, the herald and bringer of life, joy and grace.

- More from William A. Mueller

Book Briefs: December 24, 1956

The Second Coming

The Blessed Hope, by George Eldon Ladd. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956. $3.00.

Dr. Ladd of Fuller Seminary has followed up his earlier book, Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God, by dealing directly with a vital part of the believer’s faith: Just what is the Blessed Hope? “The central thesis of this book,” he says, “is that the Blessed Hope is the second coming of Jesus Christ and not a pretribulation rapture” (p. 11). He continues: “The Blessed Hope is not deliverance from the Tribulation; it is union with the Lord at His coming” (p. 12). He shows that this was the historic view of premillennialists until about 125 years ago when J. N. Darby and others introduced a belief in a pretribulation rapture. Chapter 2, “The Rise and Spread of Pretribulationism,” traces this belief in England and America down to the Scofield Bible but also notes that important premillennialists up to the present day have rejected it. There follows a biblical study of the passages dealing with the Blessed Hope, the Tribulation, the Rapture, the Resurrection, and there is found “no support for the idea that the return of Christ will be divided into two aspects—one before and one after the Tribulation” (p. 89), but rather that the Blessed Hope is that reunion with Christ which “occurs at the Revelation of Christ in glory” (p. 100).

With this aspect of the book not all will agree, but we think Dr. Ladd has proved his point. Perhaps he might have made it even stronger by showing that a correct exegesis of Daniel 9:27 declares Christ, not the Antichrist, to bring sacrifices to end in the midst of the 70th week, thus leaving no foundation for a supposed three and a half-year tribulation under the Antichrist or a supposed seven-year lapse between the rapture and the glorious appearing of the Lord.

This book, however, is not only directed against the idea of a separate rapture but it is also directed against the idea of the “any-moment” coming of Christ, and there the reviewer feels bound to take issue with Dr. Ladd. He argues that, since such events as the tribulation and the preaching of the Gospel in all the world have yet to be fulfilled, the Lord could not come now. The command to watch “cannot be used to prove an any-moment unexpected coming of Christ for which the believer is to watch, for the day of the Lord will come only after definite signs such as the Antichrist and the apostasy which will indicate that the end is near” (p. 109). It is “a false assumption,” he says, “that belief in the any-moment return of Christ is identical with a biblical attitude of expectancy” (p. 153). In a chapter entitled “Watch,” he examines scriptural passages such as Mark 13:33–37 and Luke 12:37–39, and concludes, “The point of the warning is that we cannot say it will be soon; we do not know when” (p. 116).

But the point of the warning in these passages is rather that since we do not know the time, therefore we cannot say it will be either soon or distant and we must always watch. It is just as wrong to say, “My Lord delays His coming” as it is to insist that He must come now. No doubt Dr. Ladd would agree to this. His terminology may be elastic. He says, “If we are awake and Christ comes today, we are ready. If we are awake and Christ does not come until tomorrow, we will still be ready” (p. 115). And yet, in his identification of the pretribulationist view with the any-moment view of our Lord’s coming, and his emphasis on those events which must first be fulfilled, and in repeated rejection of the any-moment coming (“the biblical teaching of watching is not the equivalent of watching for an any-moment of Christ,” p. 163) he gives the impression that our expectancy of the Lord’s return ought not to be such as to allow us to sing, “Jesus may come today.”

Of course, the great problem is just how it is possible to expect Christ to return at any time, even immediately, if we also believe that certain signs of his coming have not yet been fulfilled. The most difficult sign is perhaps the conversion of the Jews. If this outpouring of God’s grace must precede the appearing of Christ, must we not then postpone His coming or at least hold our expectancy in abeyance, until the Jews turn to him? No. In matters of prophecy we have to distinguish between events about which we can have a high level of assurance as to their specific fulfillment, such as the Resurrection and the Judgment, and those of a lower level such as the exact nature of the millennium. And firmly on the higher level of assurance is the joyful duty of watching at every moment for the coming of Christ, for we are told again and again in the plainest language always to be ready because we know not at what hour the Lord will come. On a lower level of assurance are the signs: the salvation of the Jews, antichrist, tribulation. They may be fulfilled or may have been fulfilled in another way than we would expect.

To reject the separate, secret rapture is not to reject the any-moment coming. The any-moment glorious appearing of Christ, whether now, soon, or distant, is in the reviewer’s estimation the Blessed Hope.

ARTHUR W. KUSCHKE, JR.

Not Orthodox

The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, by Hans Hofmann. Scribner’s, New York, 1956. $3.95.

This is a painstaking and faithful interpretive summary of the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, which traces its development from its earliest inception in his pastoral experiences in Detroit to its mature expression in The Nature and Destiny of Man and Faith and History. Hofmann uses a great number of quotations, often letting Niebuhr speak for himself.

Even though Niebuhr’s major works are readily accessible, a summarization is not out of place. An understanding of the background and development of Niebuhr’s thought is important, and this cannot be had by reading even his most systematic work. To get a rounded view without such an interpretive summary one would have to make a long and arduous study of a number of Niebuhr’s works.

Hofmann’s treatment is divided into four major sections: “The Beginning,” “Religion and Society,” “Sin as Man’s Severance of His Relatedness to God and Society,” and “Faith and Society as the Poles of the Original and True State of Man.” The treatment, therefore, revolves around the correlation of God, man, and society, in which man is the key link (pp. 91, 110). As Niebuhr sees it, the problem is not in God or in religion as such, nor is it in the external conditions of society. The problem lies first of all in man himself. Because of a disturbance of man’s relationship to God, his relation to society and society itself are disturbed (pp. 114, 236 et. al.).

The main source of difficulty is found in man as sinner (p. 113 f.). Hofmann believes that Niebuhr’s entire theology may be expounded around this theme. His book was originally published in Switzerland under the title, The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, in the Light of His Doctrine of Sin.

Sin is indeed a major theme in Niebuhr’s thought. In terms of it he has criticized some of the most cherished tenets of social and theological liberalism. But to look at Niebuhr’s position from the biblical point of view is to rejoice on the one hand that he recognizes sin at all and especially that he sees the spiritual nature of sin; and yet it is to regret on the other hand that he refuses to recognize, e.g., an actual pre-fall state and an historical fall. Looking at man here and now, Niebuhr says, without any concern for his historical origin or development, what tools do we need to interpret his present condition? The answer is that we need certain myths that have come to us in the Christian tradition: e.g., the fall and original sin. The Christian doctrines are myths, supra-scientific, imaginative expressions which must be taken seriously but not literally, which God has used for his revelation of himself and of the state of man. As with the other doctrines of the Christian faith, we have in Niebuhr’s view of sin a basic reconstruction of the biblical position.

The question of myth has been widely discussed lately, and the controversy is by no means closed. Very interesting is Hofmann’s comparison of the position of Niebuhr and Rudolf Bultmann, who is famous for his program of demythologization (p. 75 ff.). Niebuhr sees the supposed myths in the Scriptures as indispensable vehicles of divine revelation, while Bultmann finds the essential thing in the existential meaning underneath the form of mythical speech. But it is clear that Niebuhr is as radical as Bultmann in relegating biblical material to the realm of myth (cf. p. 92 f.). For both men such doctrines as the original sinless state, the fall, the preexistence of Christ, the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, the ascension, the session on God’s right hand, and His coming again in glory are myths and cannot be taken literally in any sense. Observing closely one sees that the current fray is a variation on the theme of supernaturalism versus anti-supernaturalism. Whatever remnants of supernaturalism might remain in Niebuhr (as Tillich claims), he is quite solidly anti-supernaturalistic.

With this in mind, it is noteworthy that Hofmann’s book is almost entirely free of criticism. In addition, we note that Hofmann has not fully laid bare the change of meaning that standard theological terms have undergone in Niebuhr’s thought. I would judge that while Hofmann has been faithful in his presentation, he has pictured Niebuhr as somewhat too orthodox, just because he has not always let Niebuhr’s terms be seen in their changed meaning. Niebuhr’s theology is indeed a modification of liberalism, but it is in no instance a return to orthodoxy.

ROBERT D. KNUDSEN

Wisdom Of Prophets

The Parables of the Old Testament, by Clarence E. Macartney. Baker, Grand Rapids Michigan. $2.00.

There is an abundance of material on the parables of the New Testament, but very little that deals with the parables of the Old Testament. In his research preparatory to the writing of this volume, Dr. Macartney discovered that neither in America nor in Great Britain could he find a single book that dealt with the parables of the Old Testament. In the preparation of this volume, therefore, he described his feeling as being similar to the experience of the men of the sixteenth century who sailed upon seas that never before had been cleft by the keel of a ship.

Dr. Macartney finds that the principal difference between the parables of Christ and those of the Old Testament consists in the fact that nearly all of the parables of our Lord taught spiritual truth that is timeless, whereas the parables of the Old Testament were messages for a special occasion. Despite this fact, the author maintains that the parables of the Old Testament teem with suggestions of truth, which are relevant for any age, and in many instances they may be made the vehicle of evangelical truth.

Included in this volume are two fables, the only ones in the Bible, that of the Trees and that of the Thistle and Cedar. The general purpose of the fable and parable is the same, said Dr. Macartney, to illustrate moral and spiritual truth by comparison with what actually transpires. But the fable differs from the parable in that in the fable the subjects of the mineral or vegetable or animal kingdom “feign to speak and act with human interest and passion.”

The content of this volume will provide biblical material that will be new and fresh to most congregations.

The nine chapters in this volume, as Dr. Macartney expresses it, represent the garnered wisdom of prophets, chroniclers, and seers, some of them known and some of them unknown, but all worthy of a better acquaintance.

Dr. Macartney has written scores of volumes, but it is doubtful if any contains the marked originality, vivid description and powerful presentation equal to this work produced in his earlier ministry and reprinted for readers of today.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Typology?

Devotional Studies of Old Testament Types, by Fred H. Wight. Moody, Chicago, 1956. $3.50.

Perhaps no area of biblical interpretation has suffered more acutely at the hands of the higher critics than Old Testament typology. The reviewer once sat under a seminary professor who hurled the typical approach wholesale to the rubbish heap of antiquated imaginations. Wight justifies the method by appealing to Jesus’ and Paul’s use of it, an observation that ought to silence all objections.

Discreetly the author, a Baptist minister, in his introduction first defines a type as “a person, thing or event in the Old Testament designed (underlining my own) to represent or prefigure some person, thing or event in the New Testament.” It is regrettable that his presentation of the subject in many instances repudiates that definition by confusing and equating analogies with types. We could illustrate at length for the examples are numerous, but several will suffice. All are taken from the chapter on I and II Samuel: “The Kingdom of Saul, a Type of the Self-Life”; “David at the Cave of Adullam, a Type of Christ Our Captain”; “Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, a Type of Revival in the Church”; and “Mephibosheth, The Type of a Sinner Saved by Grace.” Parallels of this kind may be drawn by analogy, but they certainly do not belong to typology. Incidentally, this mode of exposition is largely responsible for bringing typology as such into disrepute.

Wight is at his best when he deals with characters who prefigure Christ, like Joseph and Moses, studies of interest and value. Elsewhere, however, he tends, even within the bounds of legitimate typology, to fanciful and exaggerated conclusions which bear reminiscences of Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament and Augustine’s comments on the parables. This of course critically weakens the historical impact. He further forces certain features into his dispensational eschatology.

The book exhibits a tendency to needless repetition, at times a lack of correlation of points and occasional deceptive literalisms. Though solidly evangelical and loyal to the Scriptures as the fully-inspired Word of God, it is difficult to recommend this volume. It will confuse and mislead the theologically unoriented and prove too much of a surface study for preachers who will want to stretch their mental muscles with works like those of Fairbairn, Habershon and Baron.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Perfumed, Beribboned

The Old Story of Salvation, by Sophia Lyon Fahs. Starr King and Beacon, Boston. $3.00.

It is evidently the author’s purpose in this book to retell the Story in the Bible (she would distinguish this from the story of the Bible) as a living narrative which may be found woven through the largely extraneous material from Genesis to Revelation; and then to discuss the meaning and significance of that story for the purposes of modern, liberal religion. The book is in two parts. The first is the aforementioned historical narrative and is a very fine, condensed Bible Story which includes, uncritically, the traditional theophanies, miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, etc., to the end of the Revelation. The second part, which is the meat of the author’s writing is called “The Unanswered Question: ‘What is Truth?’ ” In this last 40% of the book, she offers her opinions on the religion which she believes may be found, not by mutilating the story, but by understanding it as a myth and fable. The result is a perfumed and beribboned Hegelian idealism in modern dress. Except that not even Hegel would have taken such liberties with traditional religious concepts.

The author, who has no evident use for orthodoxy, whether traditional or “new,” identifies herself with the Council of Liberal Churches. She explains, in a burst of confidence, that she developed her ideas while working with the boys and girls in the Church School of the Riverside Church of New York City.

One of the milder views she elaborates in the discussion section is the now familiar one, that the “original” Christian faith was “not what Jesus believed, but what the Christian church early came to believe about Jesus.” And the author believes that her’s is “not a study of history directly, but rather of a great tradition which has molded history.”

She feels that it is “crude reasoning” to present the death of Christ as an atonement. He died, essentially for the same reason that Socrates and Ghandi died, an ideal person going down in defeat, despised, rejected, his cause apparently lost. Moreover, Jesus never thought of himself as a Messiah, never sent out disciples to preach and baptize in His name, never would have claimed to be the only savior among the world’s saviors. One’s heart goes out to those boys and girls at the Riverside Church.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Popular Biography

By Faith Alone, by W. J. Kooiman. Philosophical, New York, 1955. $6.00.

It is not necessary for any reviewer to tell evangelical Christians how valuable Dr. Martin Luther, whose biography is ably and attractively presented in this excellent book, is for our present-day evangelical believers who adhere to salvation by faith in Christ without works. But there may be a need to introduce the readers to Professor Kooiman of the University of Amsterdam since he may not as yet be known to many evangelical Christians in America. To say it briefly, he is instructor of church history in the University of Amsterdam and is a most influential preacher and radio speaker in the Netherlands, whose interest in Luther is deep and inspiring. Believing that evangelical Christendom must hold to the doctrine of God’s free grace in Christ Jesus, he proclaims this precious doctrine with a conviction that stirs and enlivens those who listen to him. His Life of Martin Luther was written as a pastor who keeps in mind his parishioners, both young and old. In 1954 the reviewer read it in Holland in the original. Later, he read it in a German translation, and now he has read it in an English translation by Dr. Bertram Lee Woolf which is so masterfully done that no fault can be found with it. Dr. Kooiman’s biography of Luther is not scientific in the strict sense of the term, but rather is popular. Yet in accuracy, depth, and comprehensiveness, so far as Luther’s life and work are concerned, it is truly scientific within its scope. The reviewer recommends Kooiman’s By Faith Alone to all evangelical Christians and hopes that it will become as popular in the English-speaking countries as in the Netherlands and Germany.

JOHN THEODORE MUELLER

News about North and South America: December 24, 1956

‘Deep Divisions’

Cutting the Gospel “down to a size that fits” into our culture has resulted in “one of the deep dilemmas facing contemporary overseas mission work.”

In expressing this opinion at the annual meeting of the National Council of Churches’ Division of Foreign Missions, Dr. Eugene L. Smith of New York, chairman of the division’s executive board, charged that Protestant theology in the United States has been moulded by “our fabulous and unmatched prosperity.”

The official, in his address to some 300 representatives of 45 Protestant denominations at the five-day conference in Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, stated:

“To the very degree we become successful, influential and established, we move away from the radical and, therefore, disturbing elements of Christian truth. We expurgate the Gospel of those elements which embarrass us by their radicalism, their grandeur or their terrifying purity.…

“By preaching a culturally-rooted Christianity, many have been guilty of theological parochialism at its arrogant worst. From such aggressive blindness, the Church has suffered deeply, and there have developed some of the deep divisions within Christianity.”

Charging that contemporary preaching often smacks of “obscurantism” and “lack of clarity,” he said ministers frequently feed their congregations “theological half-truths” and fail to preach “the whole Gospel” in terms that can be understood by the average man.

Dr. Roy G. Ross, general secretary of the Council, said Christianity in the Far East was hampered by Protestant divisiveness and an awakened new missionary zeal on the part of other religions.

Much of the divisiveness in Asia was attributed to “sect groups.”

Referring to a mass resurgence of Buddhism in the Far East, he said Buddhists “plan to train and send missionaries throughout the world.”

Dr. Leslie E. Cooke of Geneva, Switzerland, director of the Council’s Division of Inter-church Aid and Service to Refugees, said “the new independence of overseas churches established through western missionary activities does not mean they no longer need our help, but it does require the development of new patterns of assistance.”

He said a “significant part” in determining the new strategy for missions may be played by the growing program of inter-church aid in which Christians of one nation share funds and material goods with those of other nations in times of emergency.

Dr. Cooke emphasized, however, that inter-church aid can never be a substitute for missions.

Deadline For Ministers

Most ministers will forfeit their coverage rights under Social Security if they fail to file application forms by April 15, 1957.

The only clergymen not faced with the deadline are those already covered and those who became ministers after January 1, 1955. New ministers have at least two years after their ordination.

Under changes made in the Social Security Law by Congress in 1954, ministers for the first time can be covered. But each minister must decide whether he wants to be covered.

The coverage will be as a self-employed person, even though he receives a salary from the congregation. Each must file by April 15 a report of earnings to the Internal Revenue Service, along with the regular income tax form. A Social Security tax of three per cent will be paid on earnings up to $4,200. The tax will increase to 33/8 per cent for 1957.

Churches and institutions are not involved or obligated in any way. Many churches, however, are adding the cost of the tax to the salaries of ministers.

God Is Good

A young woman missionary, who helplessly watched her baby son slowly freeze to death and later saw hope ebb for the safety of her missing husband, will continue evangelistic work among the nomadic Indians of a lonely sub-Arctic outpost.

The husband, Albert Kelly, 26, serving with the Central Alaskan Mission, disappeared in a skiff while seeking help after his family was marooned on a desolate island in Glena Bay. His wife, Vera, 25, was later rescued from a rocky beach with her daughter, Rebecca, 3.

They had been without food or shelter for four days and nights. Nearby lay the frozen body of four-month-old Thomas, a victim of starvation and the bitter Alaskan cold.

Mrs. Kelly, recuperating in a hospital, said:

“My husband may be dead. My baby is dead. But I still have my faith in God. Despite everything, God has been good to us and I want to continue in His service.”

Inauguration Decanters

President Dwight Eisenhower has pulled the plug on plans of distillers to promote the sale of whiskey in special inauguration bottles listing the names of all U. S. Presidents.

Gerald Morgan, special counsel to the President, sent a protest to Judge William C. Bryant, Ohio liquor director, resulting in sales of the decanters being stopped there.

Clayton M. Wallace, executive director of the National Temperance League, said he had been informed that Morgan’s letter to Judge Bryant stated, “The President wished it known that he had not been asked to give his consent to his name appearing on the bottle, and that he had not given such consent.”

Assembly Line Art

“The most callous people in the country are making cheap church art by the tons; the most devoted people are sitting in front of it every Sunday, and somebody is taking in the cash at the expense of good art and good people.”

So said artist Siegfried Reinhardt while in Des Moines, Iowa, to judge a religious art competition. A teacher of advanced painting at Washington University, St. Louis, he assailed what he called a “cultural delinquency” in American church art and urged wider use of original paintings in churches.

Christian Athletes

A Fellowship of Christian Athletes is flexing physical and spiritual muscles for a big job in American cities.

Talks are planned before high school and college audiences by a star-studded lineup of speakers, including such noted athletes as Donn Moomaw, All-America football player at U. C. L. A.; Otto Graham, retired quarterback of Cleveland Browns; Robin Roberts, pitcher with Philadelphia Phillies; Doak Walker, former All-American and all-pro in football; Carl Erskine, no-hit pitcher with Brooklyn Dodgers, and others.

In a four-day conference at Estes Park, Colorado, this year the athletes gave tips to several hundred young men on how to play well and live right. Remarked Moomaw, regarded as one of the greatest linebackers in the history of football:

“You are either on the team of God, or you’re off. There is no in between … no second team. If you’re on God’s team, Jesus Christ is your coach and quarterback and you follow Him.”

The athletes have received a number of requests to appear in schools throughout the country. A few of the city fathers, however, added provisions that the talks be about God in general and not Jesus Christ in particular.

FCA directors have adopted a policy against the acceptance of invitations where members are not free to witness for Christ.

The decision, in addition to the conviction of members, was influenced by such remarks as the following from a track speedster at Michigan University:

“I’ve just realized I’ve been trying to lead a Christian life without Jesus Christ. It can’t be done.”

CHRISTIANITY TODAYis a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Religious Report Newsletter.

Not In Vain

The killing of five American missionaries by Auca Indians in Ecuador last January had a direct effect in the volunteering of some 2,000 young persons for foreign missions work.

This report was made by the Rev. Robert B. Savage, program director of radio station HCJB at Quito, Ecuador. He said he heard of the volunteers through the ministers of various congregations.

Digest …

► Dr. Arthur R. McKay, 38, pastor of First Presbyterian, Binghamton, New York, appointed president of McCormick Theological Seminary.… American Bible Society plans 225 translations of Gospels into new languages in next quarter century.

► Southern Baptist Convention announces goal of 425,000 converts for 1957. Denomination baptized 416,867 in 1955.… 100,000 new Protestant churches seen as need in next 20 years.

► Methodist Church increases membership to new high of 9,444,820.

► Missionary radio station HCJB celebrates 25th anniversary.… U. S. tobacco acreage allotment cut 175,000 acres for 1957.…

► Howard A. Hermansen, associate pastor of Moody Church for 10 years, resigns. No future plans announced.… 1957 budget of $13,290,000 adopted by General Board for National Council of Churches—including $7,636,000 for relief, rehabilitation and world missions.

► Presbyterian Church in U. S. A., with record budget of $9,112,398 for overseas missionary work, votes to dissolve three missions in India so work can merge with United Church of Northern India.

► Dr. V. Raymond Edman, president of Wheaton College, and Mrs. Edman plan to spend some of Christmas holidays in Ecuador with missionaries and the five missionary widows. As missionary in Ecuador, Dr. Edman was smitten with fever and once given up for dead. This will be Mrs. Edman’s first trip back in 25 years.

► Dr. Powhatan W. James, biographer and son-in-law of the famed preacher, George W. Truett, dies in Dallas, at 76.

Britain and the Continent News: December 24, 1956

Slaves Of Devil

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, has denounced the rulers of Russia as being “to a unique degree the instruments and slaves of the devil.”

In his most outspoken attack on Russian communism, he declared that the Soviets had become known throughout the world as the universal enemy of mankind.

Dr. Fisher, speaking in support of the Lord Mayor’s fund for Hungarian refugees at a meeting in Albert Hall, London, said:

“Today we stand amazed before an act of government altogether evil, with no admixture of any good purpose or any worthy of decent motive, utterly empty of any spark of human kindness, a total denial of freedom and God.

“Because the rulers of Russia have expelled God from their belief, they are able to violate and outrage not only all the laws of God but all the hopes and aspirations of the human spirit. Having left themselves nothing to worship but themselves, they have become to a unique degree the instruments and slaves of the devil.

“It is just here, in this extremity of evil power, that the glory of Christ, Saviour of the world, shines out in its purest. It is when Christian people find themselves impotent, scourged and crucified before an unveiled manifestation of evil that they best learn the power of Christ, of His sufferings and of His resurrection.

“Hungary’s sufferings are not in vain. The Soviet government is known throughout the world as never before to be the universal enemy of mankind. Her own action has disrupted communism in the West and discredited it in the East. The despots of Russia have found their circle of adherents on whom they can rely much smaller than they supposed. They know there are only two choices before them: desperate action or defeat.”

A minute’s silence was observed after the Archbishop’s speech, in honor of Hungarian martyrs and refugees. Resolutions were passed calling for the immediate return of deported Hungarians, the introduction of United Nations observers into Hungary and the holding of free elections.

F.C.

Surge In Norway

Thousands of new members were brought into churches during an intensive week-long evangelism campaign conducted simultaneously in Oslo and Stavanger.

More than 50,000 homes in 61 parishes were visited by laymen during the drive. Overflow crowds, the majority without previous church affiliation, filled the churches in a series of special services at the conclusion of the effort.

Similar campaigns are planned in other sections of the country.

Abiding Results

Rumors have circulated during recent months that lasting results of the 1955 Billy Graham Crusade in Glasgow, Scotland, proved negligible.

Some have stated there has been a decided fall away in church attendance since the campaign.

But Dr. John Highet, lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University, said such rumors have been found to be groundless. After a census of church attendance in Glasgow, he presented figures showing that church attendance and membership have risen.

Dr. Highet said nearly 6,000 more people were attending church in Glasgow a year after Graham’s departure.

The Christian, a widely-read magazine, pointed out that such statistics provide one significant result but do not tell the whole story.

“The fruitfulness of the crusade,” said the Christian, “is manifest still in many ways that do not lend themselves to statistics. It is seen in its influence on ministers and lay preachers who have been stirred up to make their preaching more evangelistic, in the quickening of spiritual life in churches that supported the crusade, in a deepened prayer spirit and in many young lives that responded to the call for service.”

‘Deeper Meaning’

East German Christmas parties, by order of the Communist Soviet Labor Unions Association, expressed the “new deeper meaning Christmas has in the Workers and Peasants’ Republic.”

Christmas songs and poems were restricted to those telling of the “democratic unity of Germany, peace, friendship and a prosperous socialist future.”

Plays featured “only such themes as the possibilities of a peaceful use of atomic energy and the discovery of outer space.”

The directive said Christmas festivities “quelled the working people’s joy of life” because they were “rooted in mysticism and promoted superstition.”

Famed Church Rebuilt

St. Mary’s Church, Islington, in North London, described as “The Cathedral of Evangelism” before being wrecked by Nazi bombs in 1940, was reopened this month.

A plaque was unveiled, bearing the inscription, “Destroyed by war—Restored by faith.”

Many well known evangelicals have served the parish during the last 200 years. Charles Wesley was at one time a curate of Islington. The present vicar is the Rev. Maurice Wood, a gifted preacher and evangelist.

For well over a century, the Vicar of Islington has arranged an annual conference for evangelical clergymen of the Church of England. The 123rd conference will take place January 8.

Freedom In Italy

A bill has been submitted to the Italian Parliament concerning the free exercise of religious rights and government relations with non-Catholic denominations.

Non-Catholic bodies in Italy are ruled by the restrictive laws enacted in 1929 and 1930 under the Fascist Regime—a sharp contrast with the Republican Constitution of 1948.

The new bill provides that “the exercise of religious rights by the evangelical religious confessions, their members and institutions should be recognized according to the terms, modes and limits appropriately established by the Constitution.”

Strange Broadcast

A church organ in Blackpool, England, startled parishioners when it “broadcast” a BBC weather report during a service.

Investigators found that a piece of wire had dropped among the tubes and caused the instrument to pick up radio signals.

Digest …

► Dr. George Otto Simms, 46, elected Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. Formerly Bishop of Cork.… Soviet Zone city of Rostock designated 1957 “City of Church Reconstruction” by Evangelical Church in Germany. Only three of city’s Protestant churches survived war without damage.

► Evangelical Church of Germany opens center at Mainz-Kastel to train Protestant ministers for pastoral work in industrial areas.… Dan Piatt, European director for Navigators, reports opening of fourth Christian Servicemen’s Center at Bitburg. Others at Naples, Wiesbaden and Kaiserslautern.

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Authorship Of James

Alleged Weaknesses

Addressed To Dispersion

Analysis

Tools For Exposition

Is Modernity Worth Sparing?

Fear Of Man Ejected By Fear Of God

A Preacher’s Great Temptation And The Spiritual Antidote

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Rejection Of Neutralism

Nothing But Words

Predicament Of Christendom

The Demonic In History

The Judgment Of God

Liberty More Than Life

The Inner Meaning

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Evangelism Is Lifeblood

Statistics For Scotland

Three-Pronged Effort

“Tell Scotland” Mission

Planned In Three Phases

Anxieties Over Graham

Since The Reformation

Results Of The Crusade

On The Last Sunday

Mission Of Visitation

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Then And Now

Toward A New Era

Sectarian Subsidies Unlimited

A Major Decision

The Alternative

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A Difficult Field

The Rise Of The Kyodan

Virtually A New Denomination

An Impaired Witness

Preacher In The Red

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Soviet Advantages

Weaknesses Of Government

Brute Force

Impermanence Of Two Germanys

A Secular Confirmation

The Weight Of Restrictions

A Light In The Night

We Quote:

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The Second Coming

Not Orthodox

Wisdom Of Prophets

Typology?

Perfumed, Beribboned

Popular Biography

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‘Deep Divisions’

Deadline For Ministers

God Is Good

Inauguration Decanters

Assembly Line Art

Christian Athletes

Not In Vain

Digest …

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Slaves Of Devil

Surge In Norway

Abiding Results

‘Deeper Meaning’