Rising Tempo of Rome’s Demands

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

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

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

Theology

Bible Book of the Month: The Epistle of James

Alexander Ross

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

Eutychus and His Kin: January 7, 1957

SOBER UP

Martyrdoms have been commemorated in stained glass through the ages. Only to our time, however, has come the happy thought of memorializing a hangover in glass. There on the neighbor’s serving table is a choice selection of beautiful “Swedish modern” decanters, the relics and mementos of the New Year’s binge that finished off the Christmas spirits. Through the generous self-interest of progressive distilleries a man may now hit the bottle and keep it as a trophy.

Perhaps a liquor manufacturer in search of art treasures for his advertising might be referred to the triptych on the Fall of man by Albrecht Altdorfer in the National Gallery. The left panel would be appropriate for an antique label: it pictures Bacchus, dissolute and obese, presiding over a loathsome mass of besotted revelers.

I sense the reaction of some of my “kin” among your correspondents: “You evangelicals find it so convenient to attack the sins of the flesh! Everybody is against dmnkenness and scarlet sin. What about pride … the self-righteous hypocrisy of a sanctimonious wife that drives a man to drink … the social sins that create economic misery from which alcohol seems to promise escape? Don’t you realize that the alcoholic is a sick man?”

Touche! But to plead that drunkenness is not the only sin or even the worst sin or that it involves physical consequences beyond the initial sin does not disguise the fact that it is sin. This plea suggests a mistake like that of the crusaders against “Demon Rum.” Passing social legislation is no more effective than smashing whiskey bottles in dislodging the demon from the sinner’s heart.

Only Christ can do that. Christian soberness is more than temperance in food and drink. Aroused from the drunken befuddlement of wordly stupor, the Christian sees the real issues. He knows what time it is—that the night is far spent and the dawn near. The sober Christian is not a lean ascetic, but a full man—drunk with the new wine of Pentecost!

EUTYCHUS

MARIOLOGY-MARIOLATRY

There is a common misuse of the world “Mariology.” The term itself is neutral and refers simply to the theology concerning the place of Mary in the Christian scheme of things. Mariolatry (literally: worship of Mary) is the better term to use in describing certain extreme Roman Catholic theological developments which seem to threaten the unique place of Christ as our Redeemer. How unfortunate it is that these developments seem to exalt the humble Mother of God at the expense of her Son. For Mary always points us, not to herself, but to Christ: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (St. John 2:5).

JAMES H. DAVIS

Ascension Episcopal Church

Hintong, West Va.

JORDAN’S STORMY BANKS

Having lived in Israel for three years I write … (1) The Arab conquest of Palestine was in 634 A.D., and this rule lasted till about 900.… The Jews had ruled the land for more than a thousand of the 3000 years of its recorded history, and had always maintained their claim. (2) Extensive Arab immigration came only after Jewish colonization brought new prosperity to land wrecked under Arab and conqueror misuse.… (3) The Jewish contribution to the allied cause in World War II was magnificent in man-power, applied science and money. The Arabs never lifted a finger to free themselves from the Turks.… The Arabs were given over 100 times as much land freed from the Turks.… On the basis of past history, what hope is there that any Christian hand or voice would … protect this nation, a pilot project for the world in working out the teachings not only of the Old Testament prophets but of him whom the Jews call their greatest Prophet.…

ELIZABETH G. CHAPMAN

May I, through your columns, ask Christian people three questions:

Are Arab refugees any less important or deserving in the sight of God than Jewish refugees? Or Hungarian refugees?

On what grounds can you justify the West’s support of Israel? (Surely not on religious grounds for if Egypt is a Moslem nation, modern Israel is out and out materialist with no claims to Christian partisanship whatsoever.)

If we believe in democracy and the sovereign right of a nation to determine its own affairs, how can we maintain this belief and, at the same time, deny these rights to ANY nation whose internal policy does not happen to please us?

The point is that through our support of Israel, the ancient foe of Araby, we seem to have driven the Arab nations into the arms of the Communists, and this seems to me to be not only a great pity but a very grave mistake.

M. B. JOSE

St. Paul’s United Church

Prescott, Ontario, Canada

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE

Will Gordon H. Clark answer this question in print: If the virgin birth is as essential as the Incarnation in Christian belief, why does not Paul mention it in Galatians 4:4, 5 nor John the Evangelist in John 1:1–18 …? Please notice that these two writers both strongly affirm the fact of Incarnation, emphasizing God’s initiating Incarnation into human nature. It is Mary’s humanness as revealed in the Gospels and Acts and not the method (virgin birth) of conception that is important to Paul and John the Evangelist.

Mr. Clark evades this question by saying that Paul’s silence about the triumphal entry or John’s about Peter’s confession means that their silence about the virgin birth means nothing; however, in the above two passages either or both would have included the virgin birth if it was as important as the Incarnation. But it wasn’t. Their common interest is in God’s action through human nature in the particular woman, Mary.

Mr. Clark cannot say that I find the virgin birth too much as a miracle, for he knows as well as I that the Incarnation and the Resurrection are both such drastic miracles that all others are minor by comparison. I am raising only one question, and this on the basis of the two above passages, how can the virgin birth be equated with the Incarnation as equally important in any way? The Incarnation is essential fact or we become Unitarian in view, but let us only affirm and declare with Paul and John that Christ was born of the woman Mary.

Mr. Clark in his dealing with the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke neglects the important discoveries of 100 years of scholarship. These two narratives are not part of the foundation of our Gospels, which foundation is the kerugma and the Passion narratives. Attached to this essential structure, which of course, presupposes the Incarnation as a postulate, are the various pericopes, most of them very important, but some as the birth narratives showing a less important interest and emphasis.…

JOHN YEAMAN

Edison St. Methodist Church

Fredericksburg, Tex.

Paul in Gal. 4:4–5 does not state and cannot state all that is essential to the Gospel. Nor can John, who in chapter one of his Gospel has selected the preexistence of Jesus as his topic and not his human birth. We cannot legitimately expect everybody to say everything.

Further, the question of the letter seems to depend on lack of attention to what I wrote. A belief in the Virgin Birth is not essential to one’s salvation. The thief on the cross knew nothing about it. At the same time I maintain that the fact of the Virgin Birth is essential to God’s plan; and further, a belief in the Virgin Birth is essential to a worthy ministry. The kerugma, or that which must be preached, is not some small part of the New Testament: it is the whole of the Bible; as Paul indicates in Acts 20:27.

I am not ignorant of the “important discoveries of 100 years of scholarship.” The destructive critics “discovered” that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because writing had not been invented in his time. They “discovered” that the Hittite nation had never existed. Wellhausen “discovered” that the culture reflected in Genesis was the culture of the Babylonian captivity. Orthodox Christians have always known that this scholarship was mistaken.

GORDON H. CLARK

Indianapolis, Ind.

FOR MEN ONLY

I did not notice a single woman’s name connected with your publication.… It is probably an act of chivalry on your part to keep the menfolk in the vanguard army.… I can’t find any record in the New Testment of a woman deserting, or being displeased with Christ. Even the Magdalenes tagged after Him without seeming to unruffle His composure, so you see it should be a measure of your divinity if you can allow the company of “sissies” in your very dignified columns without losing composure.

E. N.

Norwood, Mass

The roster of masculine names in CHRISTIANITY TODAY follows from the fact that contributing editors and correspondents were largely chosen from among the clergy. But the magazine spearheads no anti-feminine movement. The current issue contains one of a number of articles to appear by lady penmen.

—ED.

ON THE EDGE OF GLORY

The solution of the problem … (“Preaching on the Edge of Desperation,” Dec. 10, 1956) lies in a thorough study and application of the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul and of Acts 6:1–4. If we ministers could and would, as we should, follow the guidelines there laid down—and how many congregations specify as much in their calls?—… we’d have a chance to grow professionally.

E. P. SCHULZE

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N.Y.

NO INTEGRATION

I feel the need of commenting … It is said that “Organic Church Union could be represented in its most intense form by the National Council.…” If the verb “could” is supposed to mean “is”, I can only express amazement: the NCCC has never even had a Department of Faith and Order in its structure! And as to the NCCC’s being “integrated” within the framework of the World Council of Churches, I feel that too strong a verb has been chosen. There is good cooperation, but hardly integration.

J. ROBERT NELSON

Commission on Faith and Order

World Council of Churches

Geneva, Switzerland

Both editorials “The Perils of Independency” and “The Perils of Ecumenicity” are excellent! Anyone who objects … reflects the confirmed bigotries of his “camp.” Continue on this high level. God condescends to work on such a plateau.

RICHARD T. SMITH

Princeton Baptist Church

Princeton, Me.

Your twin articles … pertinent and timely … were written kindly and penetratingly.

JOHN EUMURIAN

Angelo Community Church

Sparta, Wis.

World Crisis Prompts Inauguration Decision

Christianity in the World Today

When President Eisenhower takes his second term oath of office at a private ceremony in the White House at noon on January 20, he will become the first President of the United States ever to be sworn in on a Sunday.

The decision against waiting until Monday, prompted by the tense international situation, will prevent the nation from being without a President for 24 hours. (Religious leaders, generally, are in complete accord with the decision.)

President Eisenhower will repeat the oath at noon on Monday, January 21, in a public ceremony on the steps of the Capitol. The Monday ceremony will be broadcast and televised throughout the world.

20th Amendment

Under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1933, the term of the President ends at noon on January 20. If a President has failed to qualify, the Vice President-elect shall serve as President until he does. Thus, President Eisenhower will have to step down as President at noon on Sunday unless he takes the oath for a second term. Presidential advisers warned against a 24-hour hiatus of executive power.

Vice President Richard M. Nixon also will take his second term oath at the private White House ceremony and will repeat it at the public ceremony on Monday.

January 20 will be the fourth time in U. S. history that an inauguration day has fallen on Sunday. On Saturday night, March 3, 1877, President-elect Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath privately at the White House. He repeated the oath publicly the following Monday. In 1849, Zachary Taylor refused to take the oath on Sunday and was not sworn in until Monday noon. In 1821, President James Monroe deferred taking his second term oath until Monday.

Plans for Church

President Eisenhower plans to attend the 9:30 a.m. service at National Presbyterian Church on Sunday, January 20. If he attended the 11 a.m. service, he would be in church at the time his term expires.

Four clergymen, including the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North America, will participate in the public inauguration. It will be the first time that a representative of Eastern Orthodoxy has taken part.

Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, pastor of National Presbyterian Church, where President Eisenhower is a member, will give the invocation. (Dr. Elson is a contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.)

Archbishop Michael, of the Greek Orthodox Archdioceses of North and South America, will deliver the first prayer, immediately before the Vice President takes his oath of office.

Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, will offer the second prayer immediately preceding the administration of the oath of office to President Eisenhower.

Edward Cardinal Mooney, Archbishop of Detroit, will give the benediction.

Traditionally, three clergymen participate in inaugurations—one each from the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths.

Private Communion

On Thursday, January 3, a private Communion Service was held in National Presbyterian Church at 8 a.m. for President Eisenhower, his Cabinet and members of Congress. Dr. Elson conducted the service.

Flood Of Indecency

The so-called small protests of concerned people throughout the nation have converged on official Washington and touched off the following major developments in the “flood of obscenity” flowing through U. S. mails:

★ Staff members of the House Post Office Committee are drafting a bill that will make habitual violators liable to as much as 20 years in prison.

★ Rep. John Dowdy (D-Texas), chairman of House Subcommittee on postal operations, has announced plans to close a legal loophole through which “peddlers of lust” flaunt the law.

★ Mr. Dowdy also plans to introduce a bill providing that publishers of indecent books and magazines may be tried at any place such mail is received as well as where it is deposited. (Kansas and New York differ greatly on views of pornography.)

★ The United States Supreme Court has taken under advisement an appeal by a convicted publisher of obscene books which, if granted, can upset state and Federal statutes and necessitate complete revisions of such laws.

Concerning habitual violators, Mr. Dowdy had this to say:

“We see the same fellows over and over again. They publish first under this name and then under another. As soon as postal authorities catch on to them in one place, they move somewhere else. They get fined, but it doesn’t stop them because they are after big, quick profits. If they do go to jail for six months, they only use the time to think up new ideas.”

The only answer, he said is “a good stiff jail sentence.”

In the matter of the legal loophole he plans to close, the Texas congressman said the Dowdy-Rees Bill gives the Postmaster General authority to impound mail of publishers violating postal regulations, but allows violators to flaunt the law because of a Senate amendment.

Designed to protect legitimate publishers, the amendment provides that the Dowdy-Rees act “shall not apply to mail addressed to publishers or distributors of publications which have entry as second class matter under the Act of March3, 1879, or to publishers or distributors of copyrighted books and other publications to whom a certificate of registration of copyright has been issued under the copyright laws.”

Publishers of racy “men’s magazines,” he said, are rushing to Washington to register the contents of their magazines for copyright and are going through the form of applying for a second class mail permit.

The Post Office Department is rejecting the applications for second class mail privileges, but publishers are entitled to a 30-day period in which to appeal. Not until that period is over can the department start legal action to impound the publisher’s mail. The copyright office of the Library of Congress does not have authority to deny a registration of copyright merely because it questions the contents of a publication.

Regarding the site for the trying of cases, Mr. Dowdy said most of the objectionable magazines and books are being mailed from two cities, New York and Los Angeles.A staff spokesman for the House Subcommittee said:

“Pornography may be viewed as one thing in Hollywood or on Broadway, and as quite another in Emporia, Kansas, or Athens, Texas. After all, it is in the latter places that the damage is done in terms of corruption of morals and juvenile delinquency. Judges and juries who see at first hand the results of such immoral reading matter may take a more serious view of the offense.”

In the Supreme Court appeal, Samuel Roth, a New York publisher convicted by a Federal jury and sentenced to five years in jail with fine of $5,000, has asked that the conviction be set aside on grounds of no evidence to prove his publications actually injured anyone.

The appeal has reached the Supreme Court at the same time that the justices appear to be moving toward a sweeping ruling that will decide the constitutionality of state statutes aimed at preventing the sale of indecent literature.

The justices have delayed until mid-January their decision in the case of Butler vs. Michigan, in which a Detroit bookseller has challenged a Michigan law aimed at preventing sale of books that may be harmful to the morals of minors. This case was argued before the high bench on October 16, 1956. Other cases heard by the court during October have been decided.

(Usually when a case is by-passed in this manner, it means either that the justices are divided and dissenting opinions are being written by some members of the court, or that the court considers its opinion so important and fundamental that extra time is being spent on preparation of the written opinion.)

Jerusalem + Judea + Samaria News: January 07, 1957

Route Of Moses

Extensive surveys, tending to support the theory of some that Moses took a northern route through the Sinai Peninsula on his way to the Promised Land, have been completed by two teams of Israeli scientists.

One team, consisting of archaeologists, historians, philologists and geographers of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, explored the famous Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

The other team, made up of archaeologists of the Israeli Department of Antiquities, investigated ruins in the Oasis of Kadesh Barnea, near the Israeli-Egyptian border north of Sinai.

At St. Catherine’s the scientists scrutinized and photographed manuscripts dating from the sixth century. Examination of the monastery buildings disclosed remains of a basilical church built by the Emperior Justinian in the fourth century, with only a chapel of the Burning Bush—a Crusader addition—still substantially intact.

The monastery was found standing on a Justinianic foundation on which were superimposed structures of the Crusader, Napoleonic and late 19th century periods.

Geographers surveyed a granite area between the monastery and the south Sinai coast. Archaeologists examined the ruins of a large fortified settlement at Wadi Feiran in ancient Paran. Paran, which reached its prime in the Byzantine period, was inhabited from the middle of the Iron Age to the early Arab period.

The scholars, headed by Dr. Benjamin Mazar, president of Hebrew University, reported they had found no remains of a middle Bronze Age, claimed to have been contemporary with the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

The second team found large quantities of pottery at Kadesh Barnea dating from the Patriarchal period, as well as remnants of a 10th century B. C. Judean fortress which had apparently been destroyed by the Babylonians. A wall three miles long protected the whole Kadesh area against nomadic tribes.

Unusual Infant

Noah, builder of the ark, was such an unusual infant that his father believed he had been supernaturally conceived and spoke to his wife “with vigor” about it.

This new light on the family life of Lemach, father of Noah, and his wife is contained in what is known as the seventh Dead Sea Scroll, the last to be unrolled, Dr. Yigael Yadin, one of Israel’s leading archaeologists, disclosed.

Dr. Yadin, former chief of staff of the Israeli army, is now on the staff of Hebrew University. He and a colleague, Dr. Nahman Abigad, have translated five columns of the scroll.

The account, said Dr. Yadin, is written in Aramaic “in a very pleasant hand” on the hairy side of what is believed to be goatskin. He said it was so brittle that only an inch or two could be unrolled at a time.

In the scroll, Lamech, speaking in the first person, tells of his growing fear that the boy he thought was his son was really the child of “the Watchers, the Holy Ones or the fallen angels.”

He explains that his fear was induced by the unique qualities of the child. Lamech describes the infant as having a body “white as snow and red as the blooming of the rose,” with long locks of hair “white as wool” and eyes that lighted up the house “like the sun” when he opened them.

The scroll then tells how Lamech confronted his wife and how she, finally “growing wrath,” swore by the “Most High Lord of Greatness and King of the World” that Lamech, not some supernatural being, was the father of Noah.

One More Seat

Another seat in the Chamber of Deputies has been granted to Iraq’s Christian minority, making a total of eight in the 138-member lower House.

The newly-created seat from Baghdad brings the number of Christian deputies from the Iraqui capital to three.

Projects In Israel

The government in Israel has allocated $140,000 for the improvement of biblical, historical and other tourist sites.

Landing facilities will be improved at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee, the site of the Multiplication of Loaves and at Capernaum, site of the ancient synagogue where Jesus is said to have prayed and preached.

A new tree-lined road to Mount Zion is nearing completion.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Religious Report Newsletter

Africa + Asia + Australia News: January 07, 1957

Missionaries Slain

Half-civilized natives of Dutch New Guinea became enraged when their pigs began to die in large numbers.

Blame for the plague (thought to be pig-cholera) was laid on the intrusion of missionaries in tribal territory.

A native uprising was planned for November 3, but failed to materialize, according to information received by the American Mission of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Then, about two weeks later, the natives, armed with axes and knives, surrounded the mission, located near the border of Dutch and Australian New Guinea.

Twelve unarmed native missionary teachers were killed and the bodies dismembered, the Sydney Mirror reported. An airplane belonging to a European missionary was ripped apart.

Had the November 3 attack been on schedule, 12 American missionaries, plus the 12 natives, would have been caught at a mission service.

The uprising was brought under control when the Dutch flew Marines, with Sten guns and mortars, to the scene. Americans and Europeans were kept under police protection in a government building for several nights.

‘Godless Monopoly’

A new universal primary education plan initiated by the East Nigerian government has been denounced by Catholics as a “godless monopoly of education.”

Under the plan, all new schools opened in the region are to be government-controlled and managed by local officials, who will be free to invite religious bodies to supply temporary faculty members.

Britain and the Continent News: January 07, 1957

Responsibilities

Dr. Regin Prenter, professor of theology at the University of Aarhus, has warned members of the Danish Parliament that too great a dependence upon government will stifle self-reliance of the people and make them incapable of democratic self-government.

Speaking at the annual worship service in Copenhagen, marking the opening of Parliament, he declared that “the greatest danger of the modern welfare state lies in its failure to acknowledge its limitations.

“The danger is that the State not only cares materially for those who are not able to take care of themselves, but that it will care both materially and spiritually for all of us … to such a degree that the personal responsibility of the individual is weakened by it.”

Taking as his text, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” Dr. Prenter praised “the far-reaching social legislation” of recent years which has “put an end to much human need and misery.”

“But,” he added, “a democracy can live only as long as there is a feeling of responsibility in the people. On the day when the politicians alone have any responsibility and all of us let ourselves be blindly led by them … democracy will be finished.”

Sharp criticism of the sermon was voiced by the Danish press. Editors took issue on the grounds that it was a “political sermon” rather than the “ordinary devotional service” customarily delivered on the opening of Parliament.

In response to the criticisms, Dr. Prenter said “a colorless church service is of no devotional value.” (He is chairman of the Commission on Theology of the Lutheran World Federation.)

Changes In Hungary

The presidium of the General Synod of the Hungarian Lutheran Church has acted in Budapest to widen a reorganization of the Church begun in the wake of the anti-Soviet uprising during October.

It confirmed the reinstatement of Dr. Jajos Ordass, head of the southern district and acting leader of the Church. The presidium announced that elections will take place this month to fill all other church posts, including bishoprics. Results of the elections are scheduled to be announced January 19.

The General Synod also reinstated all pastors who had been removed or suspended by the former Communist regimes for political reasons.

Bishop Ordass replaces Bishop Laszlo Dezsery, former head of the district which includes Budapest. Bishop Dezsery was named to the post, with the approval of the Communist authorities, in 1950, only a week after Bishop Ordass was released from prison, where he served 20 months of a two-year sentence for alleged “foreign currency manipulation.” Bishop Dezsery resigned recently and may soon quit the ministry.

The General Synod also named Bishop Zoltan Turoczy to replace, temporarily, Bishop Lajos Veto, another Communist appointee who resigned, as head of the Trans-Danubian district.

Digest …

Greater Manchester (England) Evangelistic Campaign, with the Rev. Joseph Blinco as speaker, scheduled March 23 to April 13, at Albert Hall. Mr. Blinco now serving as associate evangelist of Billy Graham team.

News about North and South America: January 07, 1957

Sparks In Canada

Nearly 500,000 persons attended 125 rallies in the first two months of a national evangelistic mission conducted by the United Church of Canada.

“It is impossible to estimate the number of persons influenced by these missions,” said Dr. W. G. Berry, crusade director, “but reports show that large numbers came forward to make personal decisions for Christ.”

The missions were held in cities across the country. Leading speakers were Dr. Alan Walker of Australia, the Rev. Joseph Blinco of England and the Rev. Leonard Griffiths of Ottawa.

Dr. Berry said the missions are “only a small part of a much larger plan of the United Church to conduct the greatest evangelistic campaign in its history.”

The crusade, he said, will “challenge every area of Canadian life and culture with the Gospel. We propose to offer the Gospel not only to individuals but also to society as a whole and attack sin not only in personal life but also in social life.”

The missions will continue through 1957. Over 300 rallies are planned during the Lenten season. Speakers from overseas will include Dr. Charles Duthie, the Rev. Tom Allan of Scotland, Dr. Donald Soper and the Rev. William Gowland of England.

Giving Goal Soars

The present goal for total Southern Baptist Convention giving in the year 1964 is $728,000,000—including $189,000,000 in missionary and benevolent work.

In 1955 the total was $335,000,000, with $35,000,000 used for missionaries and benevolences.

The following goals have been set by the SBC executive committee:

1957–$364,000,000; 1958–$416,000,000; 1959–$468,000,000; 1960–$520,000,000; 1961–$572,000,000; 1962–$624,000,000; 1963–$676,000, 000.

Along another front, a survey has disclosed some interesting facts about the average Southern Baptist minister in Tennessee. In his survey, Professor Herbert J. Miles of Carson-Newman College, found:

They agree (90 per cent or more) that Southern Baptists should not join the National Council of Churches, should not ordain women to preach, should not take part in the Lord’s Supper outside a Baptist church and should not accept by letter a non-Baptist even though he has been immersed.

They disagree on such issues as capital punishment, integration of races and performing weddings where one party has been divorced.

The average minister is 41 years old, has been preaching 14 years and has held five pastorates.

Lutheran Merger

Representatives of four American Lutheran churches have agreed to proceed at once toward a goal of organic church union.

Delegates, at a meeting in Chicago, voted to form a constitution for a united Church that will include articles of doctrine as well as “practical matters of organization.”

Involved in the merger plan are the United Lutheran Church in America (2,270,000 members), Augustana Lutheran Church (536,000 members), Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (Suomi Synod) (35,000 members), and the American Evangelical Lutheran Church (20,000 members).

“We have among us sufficient ground of agreement in the common confession of our faith, as witnessed by the Lutheran Confessions, to justify further procedure,” delegates announced.

Sales On Sunday

The growing trend of Sunday selling throughout the United States received a slight setback when the New Jersey Supreme Court outlawed the Sunday sale of automobiles in the state by a 6–0 vote.

It was a victory for religious forces in the state. They have been conducting a campaign against the rising tide of business-as-usual on Sunday.

The state legislature last year enacted a law prohibiting the Sunday sale of automobiles. Its validity was attacked by two New Jersey used car dealers.

In June, Superior Court Judge Howard Ewart declared the law unconstitutional. He said it had· not been enacted to promote the general health, safety and welfare, but had as its main purpose the controlling of competition in the sale of new and used cars.

The high court’s opinion, prepared by Chief Justice Arthur T. Vanderbilt, rejected this contention. It maintained that the dealers were not being discriminated against because the ruling applied to all motor vehicle dealers and all were “protected in their businesses.”

Floundering Students

Recent surveys prove that theological students are not being adequately trained to grapple with modern church problems, Dr. Colin Williams of Australia said at the 70th annual meeting of the Theological Faculties Union of Chicago.

Dr. Williams, new professor of historical theology at Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Illinois, asserted:

“Too many unapplied content courses and too many ungospelized practical courses leave the student frustrated and floundering when he takes a church. There is a big time lag—20 years or more—between seminary graduation and the time a man gets into a church big enough to count, and by that time he has forgotten his theology.”

Dr. Williams expressed fears that American Protestantism “identifies Christianity with Eisenhower prosperity and fails to bring modern culture under the judgment of the Gospel.”

He added:

“Contemporary religion in the United States lacks an awareness of Christ’s Lordship and sovereignty, which involves a break with the world.”

The speaker urged teams of seminary professors to go out for workshop conversations with laymen of the churches in order to bring the needs of the churches and the teaching of the seminaries into better focus.

F.D.W.

Educators Retire

The second president of a Southern Baptist College to announce his retirement, in recent weeks, is Dr. D. M. Nelson of Mississippi College.

Exact date of the retirement was not announced.

Dr. Harwell G. Davis has reported he will retire as president of Howard College in 1958.

Dr. Nelson has been associated with Mississippi College for 50 years. A graduate there in 1907, he later served as professor of physics before succeeding Dr. J. W. Provine as president in 1932.

The college increased from 360 students to over 2,000 during his span as president.

In announcing his plans, Dr. Nelson said:

“We have thought that with the completion of the library and fine arts building and with three other buildings begun and on the way toward realization, we should transfer the responsibility of the presidency to younger and more capable shoulders.”

The board of trustees appointed a nominations committee to seek a successor.

No Giving Up

Pilot John Keenan, who replaced the martyred Nate Saint, has been flying, in recent weeks, over Auca villages discovered after the death of the five missionaries.

He reports that the famous “George,” the Auca man who visited the martyrs’ camp with his two companions, always appears friendly and that he has in his possession the model airplane last seen floating in the water near the bodies.

It has been noted that Auca houses are adorned with the tin strips used to cover the graves of the missionaries.

College To Close

Shurtleff College, Alton, Illinois, 129-year-old American Baptist College, will suspend operations on June 30, according to a vote by the board of trustees.

One of the mid-west’s oldest educational institutions, the college was founded by a famous Baptist home missionary, John Mason Peck, in 1847.

The college has been unable to finance the additional personnel and equipment necessary for accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges. Its facilities probably will be taken over by Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, as a branch school.

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Then And Now

Toward A New Era

Sectarian Subsidies Unlimited

A Major Decision

The Alternative

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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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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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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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Flood Of Indecency

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Route Of Moses

Unusual Infant

One More Seat

Projects In Israel

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Missionaries Slain

‘Godless Monopoly’

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Responsibilities

Changes In Hungary

Digest …

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Sparks In Canada

Giving Goal Soars

Lutheran Merger

Sales On Sunday

Floundering Students

Educators Retire

No Giving Up

College To Close

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